On a bluebird Saturday morning in May of 2023, I awoke in the village of Chablis. Peering out my hotel window, I could just distinguish the small moving shapes of workers among the hillsides of leafy vines. It was day one of my first-ever KLWM work trip, and the next two weeks would bring me and my colleagues through seven regions and two countries, driving more than a thousand miles and visiting three dozen producers along the way. On this particular day, we were focused on a relatively small slice of the map: Northern Burgundy.
     We had an early appointment in Chablis with David Lavantureux. He and his brother, Arnaud, are crafting a more diverse and terroir-driven lineup than ever before, steadily expanding the estate’s holdings in the decade since taking over from their father. The pair released the domaine’s first-ever red last year, an Epineuil from old-vine Pinot Noir planted by their grandfather, as well as a complex and chiseled Bourgogne Tonnerre. Wandering the Vauprin vineyard with David, we felt like giddy paleontologists, plucking fossilized shells from the Kimmeridgian soil like easter eggs. He told us the vines here sit higher than most of Chablis, resulting in wines with added intensity. My notes for the Vauprin say: “pure, fresh, & salty w/ electric acidity”; I also jotted a quote from my colleague, Tom: “It drinks like seawater… in the best way!” Indeed, as we tasted, the wines shared a distinct saline imprint, an echo from 180 million years ago when the Chablis basin was a warm and shallow tropical sea.
     Next, we headed half an hour southwest, to the home and winery of Benoît Cantin in Irancy. This inconspicuous appellation—known more for its cherry trees than its vines up until a few decades ago—produces Pinot Noirs with an optional splash of local, ancient variety César. After a quick, no-nonsense barrel tasting (Benoît is not one to wax poetic about his wines, which coincidentally speaks volumes to their style and grace), we piled into a truck bed with his son, Félicien, as our tour guide. We wound through dizzyingly steep vineyard valleys, the truck crawling slowly over the rocky limestone-laden terrain—an experience wholly different from bobbing among Chablis’ pastoral tidal waves of vineyards. Our plan was to grab a boulangerie sandwich after, but the gracious Cantins wouldn’t let us leave without a “snack”: aged boar’s cheek, Corsican figatellu, epoisses, and comté. The rustic spread was divine with Benoit’s silky, red-fruited Burgundies.
     Satiated and back in our rental cars, we set a course for Vézelay: the village is a Unesco World Heritage site with an incredible 12th century basilica; the appellation yields solely Chardonnay, with vineyards skirting the foothills of a densely forested, granitic mountain range called the Morvan. Valentin Montanet, humble and hilarious, is the man at the helm of both Domaine de la Cadette and Domaine Montanet-Thoden. When he’s not making himself (and everybody else) crack up, he’s saying things like: “I’m not interested in what makes Vézelay Vézelay. I want to elicit an emotion from the wine drinker.” Tasting through his wines, they seemed to leap from the glass with energy and expressive aromatics, exuding charisma that felt uncanny to its maker. After a chatty golden hour apéro in the backyard, we were treated to a roast chicken feast and a magnum of 2011 Montanet-Thoden Bourgogne rouge that was out of this world.
     It was a perfect day in northern Burgundy, and every time I open a bottle from one of these special outposts, I’m reminded of the stellar diversity to be found on Burgundy’s fringes.