Dom. Marquis d'Angerville
Clos des Ducs Premier Cru
Volnay
2016

The producer

The Marquis d’Angerville purchased the family domaine, including the elegant house on the northern side of the village, in 1906. Focussing on quality he was one of the pioneers in bottling his own wines, soon establishing a fine reputation for his wines. His son Jacques took over after WWII and ran the domaine for fifty years and is majorly responsible for the esteem in which the wines were held throughout that period until the present day. Subsequently the vineyards have been converted to biodynamics by 2009 and the wines, if anything, are even better.

Marquis d’Angeville is firmly dedicated to Volnay and the 12.64ha of vineyards cover most of the best Premier Crus in Volnay. There is a small plot of Pommard Premier Cru Combes-Dessus located just across the border from Volnay, and the Meursault from the border Premier Cru of Les Santenots Clos des Ducs – where the house and winery are situated – is the leading light in this exceptional range.

The wine

The 2.15 hectares Clos des Ducs vineyard is monopole of Marquis d’Angerville. It faces south, southeast at 330 metres of altitude, and the soil has lots of stones and gravels and has excellent drainage. The winemaking is traditional, with complete destemming, moderate extraction and around 24 months spend ageing in new oak barrels with a maximum of 20% new. These are pristine Volnays of great purity, complexity, and style, and without a doubt worth seeking out. Clos des Ducs is the flagship wine of the estate and arguably one of the finest Pinot experiences to behold.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.