Dom. Sylvie Esmonin
Clos Saint Jacques Premier Cru
Gevrey Chambertin
2015

The producer

Although the estate has small holdings in other parts of the Cote d’Or, the heart of the domaine is over four hectares in Gevrey-Chambertin and 1.7ha of the all-but-in-name Grand Cru of Clos-Saint-Jacques. Indeed, the house abuts her portion of that vineyard.

Sylvie worked as a consulting oenologist as far afield as New Zealand before returning in 1990 to work with her father at Domaine Michel Esmonin et Fille, not so gradually taking over the winemaking role. She started producing and bottling the domain’s production, previously mostly sold in bulk. Now considered one of the first ladies of Burgundy – and there is a load of talent in that pool – Sylvie Esmonin’s wines rate with some of the finest from the appellation.

Wines expressing the structure of Gevrey-Chambertin with bright fruit purity, silky texture and great elegance. The Clos-Saint-Jacques is the pinnacle of her winemaking.

The wine

Esmonin owns 1.6 hectares of 45- to 55-year-old vines in the Clos Saint-Jacques vineyard. Ferments takes place with around 70% whole clusters and is followed by ageing in 90% new French oak barrels from 18-24 months. Although always with the characteristic structure of the Gevrey village, Esmonin’s wines have enormous fruit purity with silky texture and great elegance. 

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.