Lucien Le Moine
Bonnes Mares Grand Cru
Chambolle Musigny
2015

The producer

Unusually for Burgundy, this domaine – named “Lucien the Monk” – has no connection to any of the monasteries that dominated the viticulture for centuries. Founded in 1999, it is rather a unique “non-estate” as the wines are sourced throughout Burgundy, especially in Chambolle, Gevrey, Morey, Vosne and Vougeot, as well as in Corton Charlemagne, primarily from Grand and Premier Cru vineyards and usually in small parcels. 

The wines are then treated to elevage as deemed fit by winemaker Rotem Saouma who describes his wines as a “library of the greatest Premier and Grand Cru vineyards in the Cote d’Or”. The wines invariably show lovely sweetness of fruit and perfect spicing of oak. Unusual possibly, exceptional definitely!

The wine

Bonnes Mares is consistently a Lucien Le Moine favourite. With its seamless and dense fruit sweetness and spice, it is plush and flamboyant, with a powerfully compelling flavour profile. Fruit is actively sourced from the finest growers in the village, with whom the Saoumas have long standing collaborations, and the wine is always a blend of fruit from the north and south of the vineyard in order to achieve the most balanced result.        

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.