2021 Domaine du Chancelier Beaune 1er Cru Les Bessandes

The 2021 Domaine du Chancelier Beaune 1er Cru Les Bessandes is a single-vineyard Premier Cru Pinot Noir from one of Beaune's most prized hillside sites. Les Bressandes sits on the upper slopes of the Beaune mountain range, where shallow, stony clay-limestone soils force vines to dig deep and produce wines with lifted tension and mineral clarity. The vineyard's eastern orientation captures morning light, preserving natural acidity in the fruit even in warmer vintages. Domaine du Chancelier works thirty-year-old vines planted to traditional low-density spacing—ten thousand vines per hectare, trained in simple Guyot—an approach that prioritizes concentration over volume. The estate hand-harvests at optimal ripeness and sorts rigorously before fermentation. Vinification is sulfur-free and conducted entirely in five-hundred-liter oak barrels, a larger format that slows oxygen exchange and preserves primary fruit. Extraction is gentle, temperatures moderate, and the wine rests on its lees for twelve months in barrel, building texture without adding weight. The winemaking philosophy leans hands-off: the terroir does the talking. The 2021 vintage offers red cherry, dried rose petal, and a thread of iron-rich minerality that runs through the mid-palate. The tannins are fine-grained, the finish long and chalky. This is a Beaune built for the table—pair it with roasted duck, beef bourguignon, or aged Comté. It's balanced enough to drink now with an hour of air, but the structure suggests another five to eight years of graceful evolution in the cellar. Serve it slightly cool, around sixty degrees, to let the vineyard's stony character emerge. Available for pickup at our Lincoln Park bottle shop at 1128 W Armitage Ave, local Chicago delivery, or nationwide shipping.