Just a few decades ago, books about Burgundy centered almost exclusively around Chablis and the famed Côte d’Or, leaving out many southern villages, which count among the region’s most exciting pockets of activity today. It’s not that the appellations to the south of Burgundy’s “Golden Slope” didn’t sit atop outstanding terroirs back then—of course they did—but rather that superstar growers in the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais were few and far between. Today, these places are glowing points on the wine map, thanks in large part to the brilliant work of Domaine de Villaine in Bouzeron, Domaine François Lumpp in Givry, and Domaine Robert-Denogent in Pouilly-Fuissé.
     Of this trio, Domaine de Villaine represents the exception, having made first-rate wines in Burgundy’s southern terroirs for upwards of five decades. In the early 1970s, as Aubert de Villaine joined Burgundy’s most esteemed house, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, he and his wife, Pamela, purchased a run-down domaine thirty miles south in Bouzeron, which they made their home. As derelict as the property was, Aubert and Pamela grasped the exhilarating promise of the Côte Chalonnaise’s relatively uncharted terroirs, not only for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but also for Aligoté, long before this sliver of Burgundy was on anyone’s radar. At the same time that Aubert was overseeing the most prized vineyards in Burgundy at DRC, he was falling in love with what may have been the region’s most overlooked vineyard land around his new home in Bouzeron. Today, his nephew Pierre de Benoist is in charge. Following in his uncle’s footsteps, Pierre has not only reminded all of Burgundy why Bouzeron is the region’s greatest site for Aligoté, but he has also doubled down on the greatness of the Côte Chalonnaise more broadly, adding several more esteemed vineyards to the domaine’s already stellar lineup of sites in Rully.
     By contrast, Domaines François Lumpp in Givry and Robert-Denogent in Pouilly-Fuissé launched in the early 1990s, and over the last thirty years, they have elevated their home turf so completely that the best of Givry and the Mâconnais now deserve their place at the same table as Volnay, Meursault, and Nuits-Saint-Georges. Inspired by their neighbors in those more prestigious villages to the north, François Lumpp and Jean-Jacques Robert began to emphasize extensive manual work in the vines, low yields, and patient élevages. In 1991, François replanted his land, replacing high-yield, but low-quality Pinot Noir vines with massale selection Pinot fin. Jean-Jacques’ family, meanwhile, was already blessed with outstanding vine material—most dating back decades—but when he took the reins, he stopped selling the grapes to the local co-ops and began to devote himself to vinifying Pouilly-Fuissé’s diverse terroirs through site-specific cuvées.
     Both François and Jean-Jacques did things with their appellations that no one thought possible, and their children continue to push the boundaries of what was previously expected in these southern appellations. Anne-Cécile Lumpp and her brother Pierre, for instance, have made adjustments in the vines with an eye toward even more progressive and meticulous farming. And the Denogent brothers have also elevated their family’s practices in the vines while, in the cellar, moving toward larger barrels, less new wood, longer élevages, and as little sulfur as possible to achieve even more purity and finesse. The highest praise I can give these two domaines is that their wines give forth such poise and purity that you’d never guess they were relative newcomers to this historic region. Their Chardonnay and Pinot Noir feel timeless.