2024 Domaine Chavy-Chouet "Les Narvaux" Meursault

2024 Domaine Chavy-Chouet 'Les Narvaux' Meursault Côte de Beaune, Burgundy, France | 100% Chardonnay

Domaine Chavy-Chouet is a seven-generation family estate, born from the union of two distinguished Côte de Beaune dynasties: the Chavy family of Puligny-Montrachet and the Chouet and Ropiteau families of Meursault, whose combined heritage explains the domaine's exceptional holdings across both villages. It was Romaric Chavy, succeeding his father Hubert in 2014, who transformed the estate into one of Burgundy's most closely watched producers, bringing international training and a firmly traditional sensibility to 15 hectares spanning Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Saint-Aubin, Volnay, and Pommard.

Romaric's approach is a deliberate counterpoint to current fashion. Where many producers in Meursault have chased an ultra-reductive, hyper-mineral style, he holds to a more classical vision of what the village should taste like — textured, generous, and built to age. He describes his techniques as traditional: the vineyards are ploughed, the fruit whole-cluster pressed without crushing, settled for 18 to 24 hours, then transferred by gravity into barrel for fermentation with indigenous yeasts. New oak is kept to a restrained maximum of 20%, the lees are left undisturbed throughout, and the wine is bottled unfined with only the lightest filtration if required. It is a winemaking philosophy of principled restraint, giving each lieu-dit the space to speak clearly.

Les Narvaux occupies a position at Meursault that its neighbors can only envy. Perched at the very top of the slope, on steep ground with shallow, skeletal limestone soils, this lieu-dit produces a style of village Meursault that owes more to altitude and mineral austerity than to the richer, creamier character one encounters lower on the hill. It is, by the standards of the appellation, an outlier — airy, precise, and deeply mineral — and in the hands of Domaine Chavy-Chouet, it is one of the most compelling village-level white Burgundies in the Côte de Beaune.

Les Narvaux in particular is a parcel that rewards this hands-off approach. The vines — averaging 70 to 75 years of age — send their roots deep into the thin limestone soils at the top of the slope, drawing from bedrock that imparts a distinctive waxiness and floral lift not found lower in the appellation. In the glass, the 2024 opens with a pale, luminous lemon-yellow colour. The nose is refined and aromatic, offering white-fleshed orchard fruit, citrus peel, white flowers, and the characteristic toasted almond note that has long defined this cuvée. On the palate, the wine is lively and balanced, with a chiselled, mineral-driven structure that distinguishes it clearly from richer, lower-slope Meursault. The acidity is bright and focused, the finish long and persistent. This is a wine that needs time to fully express itself but rewards the patient collector handsomely.

Drink: 2027–2032