Domaine Bruno Clavelier, Vosne-Romanee, Combe Brulee 2021 - 75cl
The vines that make this wine were planted in the 1920s. Sit with that for a second — fruit off gnarled centenarians, farmed biodynamically by a man who trained as a geologist before he trained as a vigneron. Bruno Clavelier reads his soils the way most people read a wine list.
La Combe Brûlée sits in a tight little side-valley at the foot of the Vosne-Romanée slope, cooler than the vineyards around it, so the grapes ripen slowly. The limestone here carries silica, and Clavelier is convinced that's the source of the gunflint, struck-match note that keeps turning up in this cuvée. Around 40% of the bunches go in whole, fermented on native yeast with hand punch-downs, then eighteen months in oak before it's bottled without fining or filtration.
Pour it and you'll find a pale, fine crimson — this is not a wine of muscle. Fresh strawberry, a twist of white pepper from the stems, then with air the wild berries arrive alongside flowers and that hot-stone minerality. The structure is all length rather than weight; it stretches out on a mineral thread and lingers.
A wine for the table and for attention, not for background noise. Give it a few years if you can bear to — 2021 was a small, classical, cool vintage and this has the frame to reward patience into the 2030s.
How to Serve
13-14°C. Large Burgundy bowls genuinely matter with a wine this aromatic. Decant an hour ahead if opening young — it needs air to unfurl the wild-berry and mineral layers.
Where to Drink It
The Wolseley for old-world grandeur that suits the wine's pedigree. J Sheekey if you're pairing it against something delicate from the sea. Or Dandy in Newington Green, where thoughtful Burgundy finds a natural home.
Food Pairings
Duck breast, pink in the middle, with something tart alongside — cherries or blackcurrant. For a lighter route, a mushroom and thyme risotto meets that smoky minerality head-on.
