Joseph Drouhin
Meursault Perrieres 1er Cru
Meursault
2019

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. 

The wine

From this, arguably the finest, premier cru vineyard in Meursault, Drouhin makes a generous and complex white wine, with silky and ample texture, balanced by a lifted and firm structure. The stony minerality, so characteristic of the vineyard, is combined with creamy toasted almonds and tropical fruit concentration. Perrieres is aged for 12 months in oak barrels of which 25% are new.

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.