Joseph Drouhin
Clos de Mouches Premier Cru Blanc
Beaune
2018

The producer

The 22-year-old Chablisienne, Joseph Drouhin, founded his own wine company in Beaune in 1880. His son Maurice succeeded him and started buying up premium vineyard land. Robert succeeded Maurice in 1957, acquiring even more vineyards including some in Chablis and was one of the first in Burgundy to stop using chemicals and pesticides in the vineyards. Today, Robert and his wife Francoise’s four children, Philippe, Veronique, Laurent and Frederic run the house of Drouhin.

With 80 hectares of vineyards, Joseph Drouhin is one of largest estates in Burgundy owning land from Chablis, in the north, through the Cotes de Nuits and Beaune, and finally Cote Challonaise, in the south. For the regional appellations, the Drouhins complements their fruit supplies by purchasing fruit from long time grower partnerships.

The pinnacle in the Drouhin wine list, is the Domaine Marquis de Laguiche piece of the Montrachet vineyard – which, with 30%, is the largest percentage of land in Le Montrachet. And furthermore, the Beaune Premier Cru vineyard, Clos des Mouches, which produces both a white and a red wine.  They also produce an excellent white from Corton Charlemagne.

The wine

The Joseph Drouhin Clos des Mouches Blanc 2018 is an outstanding vintage from this iconic Beaune Premier Cru vineyard, renowned for producing some of the finest white wines in Burgundy. The 2018 growing season was warm and dry, leading to an early harvest with Chardonnay grapes that achieved excellent ripeness and concentration. This vintage of Clos des Mouches Blanc is characterized by its brilliant golden color and a complex aromatic profile, featuring notes of ripe stone fruits like peach and apricot, intertwined with citrus zest, white flowers, and subtle hints of almond and honey. On the palate, it is rich and full-bodied, yet maintains a vibrant acidity that gives the wine an exceptional balance and freshness. The minerality typical of this vineyard adds depth and a distinct character to the wine, enhancing its long and elegant finish. While the 2018 Clos des Mouches Blanc is already showing beautifully in its youth, it also possesses the structure and complexity to age gracefully, offering even greater nuance and sophistication with time. This vintage is a shining example of Joseph Drouhin’s skill in crafting Chardonnay that reflects both the terroir and the excellence of the Clos des Mouches vineyard.

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.