Available for our Hong Kong-based clients.

By Linden Wilkie, 7 April 2020

Christophe Perrot-Minot is a man with both the intellect and the ambition to set and then follow his own high standards. They are standards that today few, if any producer in Burgundy exceeds, and they apply to every step of the work in the vineyard, and the winery. And they are not frivolous – they are standards that you can smell, taste and feel when you drink a bottle of Domaine Perrot-Minot at any appellation level. The style is always immaculately clean and pure, with clear expression from the terroir. The tannins are always ripe and supple, with no sense of any excess, great equilibrium, and there is always a beautiful expression of fruitiness in the wine. It can make them tantalizingly pleasurable to drink young, and they age beautifully.

Old vines, short guyot pruning to limit bunches per cane, and green harvesting in summer if needed, ensure low yields. Use of organic products is on the increase, and conventional ones on the decrease. Perrot-Minot is looking for an optimum balance, with lively soils and healthy vines.

Careful sorting takes place in the vineyard during harvest, which is all done by hand. A large team is used so that the optimum picking time can be chosen with precision. Bunches arriving at the winery are then sorted by hand on a conveyer-table, with the best bunches selected for the ‘whole bunch’ component of the cuvée. These are cut to remove the main stalk, leaving only the outer portion of the stem and the pedicels attached to the grapes. For the remainder, the fruit is de-stemmed, and then sorted a further time, by an optical sorting machine, finely calibrated to keep only perfect, healthy ripe fruit, that looks like caviar as it slowly piles up awaiting the fermentation tank.

Even then the work of selection is not over. If a certain vineyard parcel has not produced fruit at the quality level he is looking for, he will declassify it to a lower level. In Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru ‘Les Beaux Monts’, usually Perrot-Minot produces 9 casks (c2700 bottles), but in 2017 he made 923 bottles – the rest he declassified into Vosne-Romanée village. The part that was kept for the Beaux Monts was from older vines and a different clone than the rest, better able to resist the warmth of 2017.

Ageing for 12 to 14 months in Tronçais and Allier oak from Tonnellerie Rémond, maintains the quality achieved in the vineyard and through sorting, but these are not oaky-style wines. Village-level cuvées see around 25% new oak, 1ers Crus 40% and grands crus 50%. Wines are bottled without fining or filtration.

Every year when we visit we see another step in the evolution of this domaine. Christophe and nature dance the dance each season brings, and he applies his intelligence to a new vintage pattern, a new set of issues to consider.

Domaine Perrot-Minot has its origins down the Merme family line (the beautiful ancient house of the domaine lies just across from Domaine Taupenot-Merme, on the Routes des Grands Crus in Morey-St-Denis), and was created by Christophe’s parents, Marie-France Merme, and her husband Henri Perrot-Minot. Christophe joined in 1993. This land holding was expanded through the acquisition of Domaine Pernin-Rossin in 2000, and today the domaine comprises 13 hectares, from Nuits-St-Georges to Gevrey-Chambertin, run by Christophe Perrot-Minot, his wife Marit Lindal Perrot-Minot. Most of the bottlings are ‘Domaine Perrot-Minot’, while some are simply ‘Perrot-Minot’ – coming from plots Christophe oversees, and harvests, but does not own.

The low yield equation here begins with the benefit of very old vines, with a great portion in the 45-55 year old range, but there are also parcels much older. For the oldest, Perrot-Minot reserves the title ‘Ultra’: Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru La Combe d’Orveau ‘Cuvée Ultra’, from 77 year old vines, and Nuits-St-Georges 1er Cru La Richemone ‘Cuvée Ultra’, from a plot planted in 1902. These, we feel, offer the intensity, length and grace of a grand cru, and are a must-try.

While many producers make their Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru from a blend of Charmes- and Mazoyères-Chambertin (allowed for this AOC), Perrot-Minot make both Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru and Mazoyères-Chambertin Grand Cru – so distinct in personality it’s a wonder why anyone is permitted to blend them. We suggest you try the Perrot-Minot examples side by side to see for yourself.

The range extends through several choice 1ers crus and grands crus selections all the way up to Chambertin Grand Cru and Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru, and for quality each is a match for any other domaine-bottled example one might think of. The quality, and the pleasure begin right at village level.

We are proud to represent Domaine Perrot-Minot in Hong Kong, and offer an extensive selection of cuvées and vintages. Please get in touch with us if we can help you to make some selections.

By Florian Rossignol, 20 April 2021

Perrot-Minot wines are getting more and more famous for their top quality. In Burgundy, it has led to price increases. At the same time, Christophe Perrot-Minot has been investing massively for several years in the whole viticultural and winemaking process.

When I think about consistency, the first name that comes in mind is Perrot-Minot. I have opened quite a few bottles here in Hong Kong, and I never had any corked one, or any deviance from expectation. Last time I visited Christophe, I asked him what his secret recipe was. His answer: diligence and excellence. He is getting the best corks you can find on the market, someone in the cork factory will be smelling each piece. But then to make sure there is no issue with it, Christophe Perrot-Minot will send 10 corks out of a bag of 1000 for detailed analysis. The amount of time and money needed for this small step tells you how much attention he pays to details.

All his vineyards are ploughed by horse to have as little weight influence as possible. It is a very slow and expensive way to do this task. Yields are limited to obtain fruit with concentrated flavours, which makes wines with more depth.

That leads us to the winemaking, where he has one of the stricter sorting policies I’ve ever seen. Two sorting tables, the first one with a skilled team that selects the best bunches to do whole bunch maceration. The remaining bunches, that will be de-stemmed, will go on to the second sorting table, which uses the latest technology of ‘optic sorting’. It’s impressive to watch it work.

All that is to say that the Christophe Perrot-Minot is a real fine craftsman in Burgundy.

When it comes to his wines, I never hesitate to decant them, it blows of the noble reduction and gives a much clearer fruit profile. The fruit is juicy, clean, elegant and refined. From his village-level wines all the way to Grand Cru, I always enjoy drinking them.

Let’s be honest, 2011 and 2013 are not the best vintages of the decade. But they sing at Perrot Minot! They are on fire!! I remember tricking a group of fine drinkers. They opened a bottle of 2014 DRC La Tâche. I put it side by side, blind, next to a 2014 Perrot-Minot Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru La Combe d’Orveaux ‘Ultra’. They ended up liking more the Chambolle!

On another occasion with some friends that wanted to discover a bit more about this domaine, we opened side by side 2015 Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru and 2015 Mazoyères-Chambertin Grand Cru. It was a very interesting tasting. Those plots are very close to each other. (In fact they could share the same name. For “Charmes-Chambertin”, most of the producers located in Mazoyerès will choose to call it Charmes, one of the few exceptions in Burgundy). But those two wines are so different in their profile. Charmes is elegant, offering an array of red berries, and what struck us the most was the purity of the wine. Mazoyères is more masculine, bloody, black fruit driven, with a hint of licorice – a wild wine. They could be blended into one cuvée but tasting these side by side showed exactly why not to do that. My friends were impressed by the difference and the outstanding quality delivered by Domaine Perrot Minot.

I do think that Perrot-Minot has earned a space among top Burgundy producers such as Roumier or Rousseau. If you have not yet discovered this domaine I invite you to do so.