Domaine Joseph Voillot Volnay 1er Cru Caillerets 2021

Les Caillerets is locally regarded as one of Volnay's most classical premier cru expressions — and in the hands of Voillot, with vines of exceptional age, it delivers exactly what that reputation promises. Voillot's holding of 0.14 hectares is planted in 1984 on a gentle south-east facing slope, the ground littered with small pebbles — very stony, free-draining soil where the vines average 66 years old, producing a wine with very good fruit that certainly shows the Volnay lift, although quite rich too. Dark, almost exotic fruit that is not at all overcooked, with minerality underpinning the ripeness — structured and serious, needing a decade or more to shine. The terroir is classic Volnay upper slope: shallow soils over limestone and marl that can suffer in drought years but in balance deliver a precision and mineral tension that is this appellation's singular gift. 

Etienne Chaix notes that Caillerets always shows a touch more tannin than the more immediately silky Champans — a sort of rusticity, but rusticity in a Caillerets context, not in a Pommard context — with purer, more floral notes on the nose and fine, pure flavours that open in an airy volume around the palate, with depth of beautiful complexity. A mixture of red and black fruit with fine acidity and a healthy sprinkling of white pepper and sage toward the persistent finish — the whole wine poised between Volnay's ethereal tendencies and the structural seriousness that separates a great premier cru from a merely elegant one.