Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Monthelie 1er Cru Les Riottes 2021

Les Riottes is the step up from PYCM's village Monthélie Rouge — a Premier Cru climat sitting on the picturesque hillside between Meursault and Volnay, south and south-east facing, on a distinctive mix of pebbly Bathonien limestone topped with red clay and marl at elevations ranging from 230 to 370 metres. Some of the domaine's vines here sit on the Volnay side of the boundary, others closer to Auxey-Duresses, giving the wine real complexity drawn from more than one microclimate within a single cru. Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, who left his father Marc Colin's celebrated Saint-Aubin domaine in 2005 to build his own estate with wife Caroline Morey, applies exactly the same painstaking method here as across his acclaimed Chardonnays: crushed and cooled fruit, no settling of solids after pressing, no lees-stirring, an early and rapid fermentation followed by malolactic, all in 350-litre barrels. It's one of only a handful of red bottlings from a domaine still overwhelmingly known — and rightly revered — for white Burgundy.

The result is described as youthful and approachable in its early years, yet built with the fine-grained structure to develop further with time. Expect pure red fruit and floral lift, with the site's limestone-clay terroir lending real precision and a mineral edge beneath the fruit, and fine, well-integrated tannins carrying through to a long, harmonious finish. It's a wine that punches well above its relatively modest Premier Cru profile, thanks entirely to the same meticulous hand that's made PYCM's whites so sought-after.