Domaine Bertagna

Domaine Bertagna is based in Vougeot, in the Côte de Nuits. It was assembled by Claude Bertagna from the late 1940s, bought by the Reh family of the Mosel in 1982, and has been directed since 1988 by Eva Reh-Siddle. It farms around seventeen hectares spread across eighteen appellations, among them five grands crus: Chambertin, Clos de Vougeot, Clos Saint-Denis, Corton and Corton-Charlemagne.

The heart of it is Vougeot itself, a small commune whose vineyard is dominated by the walls of the Clos. Three wines here come from the village: the village red, Le Village; the premier cru Les Cras in white, white Vougeot being one of the rarities of the Côte de Nuits; and Clos de la Perrière, a walled premier cru of about 2.26 hectares which the domaine owns outright, a monopole. Its stone was quarried to build the Château du Clos de Vougeot. Premiers crus in Chambolle-Musigny, Vosne-Romanée and Nuits-Saint-Georges sit alongside them in the wider range.

Fruit is picked by hand into small crates and sorted twice, in the vineyard and again in the cellar; the soils are ploughed and worked without chemical weedkillers, though the domaine holds no organic or biodynamic certification. Reds are given a cold maceration and light pigeage, ferment on native yeasts and age twelve to eighteen months in French oak; the whites are barrel-fermented, the proportion of new wood varying by cuvée. The wines are neither fined nor filtered. The reds are perfumed and finely drawn, red fruit and spice over fine tannin. Arcana Cabinet lists five wines from the domaine: Vougeot Le Village in red, the Vougeot premiers crus Les Cras in white and Clos de la Perrière in red, and the grands crus Clos Saint-Denis in Morey-Saint-Denis and Corton-Charlemagne, the one wine here from the Côte de Beaune. The range also includes the grands crus Chambertin, Clos de Vougeot and Corton.