Bruno Lorenzon

Domaine Bruno Lorenzon is a small estate in Mercurey, in the Côte Chalonnaise. Bruno Lorenzon, the third generation on the family's vines, took it over in 1997 at four and a half hectares and has built it to nine, six in Mercurey and three in Montagny, most of that premier cru. He works it with his sister Carline.

Les Champs Martin, one of Mercurey's thirty-two premiers crus, lies on the commune's principal hill and accounts for three of the wines here: the straight Champs Martin; Carline, from the Clos des Champs Martin, a walled parcel of old vines within the climat, named for Bruno's sister; and Pièce 13, a red blended from thirteen Pinot Noir parcels and made in around eighteen hundred bottles. Les Croichots, another Mercurey premier cru, is made here in white, Chardonnay in a commune given over overwhelmingly to Pinot Noir. Further south the domaine holds Montagny premier cru Le Mont Laurent, in the Côte Chalonnaise's white-only appellation. Village Mercurey comes from Les Vignes d'Orge.

The vineyard work is intensive: no herbicides for more than thirty years, the soils ploughed, and high-density plantings put in from 2004, reaching twenty thousand vines to the hectare in Les Champs Martin, twice the Côte d'Or norm. Lorenzon was international commercial director of a cooperage in Mercurey before he came home to the vines; he now selects his own wood and has his barrels built to a light toast, using a fifth to two fifths new oak and giving the wines about a year in barrel before they finish in tank. The reds are dense and firmly structured, dark-fruited with an iron edge; the whites are taut, citrus-driven and saline. Arcana Cabinet lists six wines from the domaine: the Mercurey premiers crus Les Champs Martin, Carline Clos des Champs Martin and Pièce 13 in red and Les Croichots in white, the Montagny premier cru Le Mont Laurent, and village Mercurey Les Vignes d'Orge. The range also includes the Mercurey premier cru Clos des Barraults, Champs Martin in white, the Pièce 15 cuvée, Mercurey Le Chapitre, Montagny premier cru Les Truffières and a Bourgogne.