With eight premier cru vineyards – an impressive and enviable portfolio, the domaine is today overseen by Guillaume D’Angerville, following the death of his father Jacques in 2003. Guillaume heads a team which includes his brother-in-law, Renaud de Villette, who had worked alongside Jacques for a number of years, and François Duvivier, in the vineyard and cellar. Renaud, François and Guillaume are acutely aware of their responsibility to these great terroirs.
After years of research and experimentation, the Domaine is now fully biodynamic. In the most simplistic terms, biodynamic viticulture embraces cosmic rhythms, philosophy and metaphysics as much as agricultural disciplines. It encourages a complex variety of species which make for living, breathing soils and healthier, disease-resistant vines. With responsibility for some of the best of Volnay, meticulous care is fundamental to the Domaine’s philosophy and this is reflected in the finished wines. This is a complex estate with the highest rated vineyard being Volnay 1er Cru Clos des Ducs, monopole essentially the garden of main house. These are long-lived wines, at the very top of the quality ladder.
92-95 Points Allen Meadows
A restrained yet equally pure and even more complex nose only grudgingly reveals its aromas of both red and dark pinot fruit, spice, floral and discreet Asian-style tea nuances. The tighter and strikingly well-delineated flavors are even stonier while displaying a taut muscularity on the very serious if impeccably well-balanced finish. In a word, gorgeous. *Don’t miss! Outstanding*
93-95 Points Neal Martin (Wine Advocate)
The 2016 Volnay 1er Cru Les Taillepieds is more outgoing and expressive on the nose compared to the Caillerets with ebullient blackberry, blueberry and subtle floral aromas—very pure and delineated, still correct, never flamboyant. The palate is medium-bodied with lithe and fine tannin, a silver bead of acidity here that confers great tension to this Taillepieds and you can feel that residue of mineralité tingling on the tongue on the aftertaste. It will require five or six years in bottle but it will be worth the wait—an outstanding Taillepieds, one of the best that I have encountered from barrel.
92-95 Points Vinous
Saturated ruby-red. Very ripe blueberry and dark chocolate aromas project an almost liqueur-like quality. Then dense and sappy in the mouth, conveying an impression of sound acidity (this is the lowest in pH among these 2016s at 3.3) but not quite the texture or early balance of the Caillerets. The intense flavors of dark berries, licorice and menthol are at once chocolatey and slightly medicinal. With its significant baby fat, this wine boasts outstanding volume for Taillepieds and may well require a decade in the cellar to approach its peak. The yield here was only about 25 hectoliters per hectare, a bit higher than the Caillerets.