100% Pinot Noir

Food pairings: Roast chicken, duck breast, pork tenderloin, mushroom dishes and soft cheeses.

Winemaking: Grapes are sorted in the vineyard and again on a vibrating sorting table in the cellar. Pascal Roblet favours a long, gentle infusion rather than extraction, with very little punching down, and long barrel aging that clarifies the wine naturally; the wines are unfined and unfiltered, with minimal sulfur. For this cuvée the grapes are fully destemmed and ferment for about four weeks; the wine then ages for about 24 months in used French oak barrels, about 30% of them 400-litre casks, and is bottled unfiltered.

Vineyards and terroir: The old vines (massale-selection Pinot Noir) come from Roblet-Monnot's biodynamically farmed parcels in Volnay, Pommard and the Hautes Côtes, on deep limestone soils over marl.

Family and history: Pascal Roblet's family roots in Volnay go back to the 1600s on his mother's side. His maternal great-grandfather Victor Delagrange created the domaine in 1865; it passed to Henri Monnot in 1926 and later to François Roblet, and in 1990 Pascal took over and renamed it Domaine Roblet-Monnot. He was one of Burgundy's early converts to biodynamic farming in 1997, works with high-density plantings and very low yields, ploughs with horses, and makes his wines in a small cellar in the hamlet of Bligny-lès-Beaune. He releases each wine only when he believes it is ready.

In the pictures: Pascal Roblet drawing a sample in his Bligny-lès-Beaune cellar; barrels and cellar notes in the domaine's working cellar (photos: The Sorting Table, importer press kit).