Henri & Gilles Buisson Saint Romain Blanc Sous la Velle 2020
The Wine
Saint-Romain is a super attractive Burgundian village, located just west of Pommard. and is surrounded between sheer cliffs and a rocky spur. It's one of the oldest villages of the region. The vineyards of Saint-Romain are some of the highest of the Côte de Beaune. Sitting at an altitude between 280 and 450 meters, they are some of the earliest established sites in Burgundy.
Sous La Velle is Buisson’s signature white wine site, located beneath Saint-Romain village (Velle is an old word for village). It sits at an average of 370m all, in the sloping centre of the hillside vineyard, unlike the Sous la Velle climate in Meursault which is on flat ground. There is a great balance of clay and limestone (more clay than Sous la Velle).
“Planted on the marl scree of Saint-Romain, the vines take root in the limestone and thus offer a beautiful minerality to the wine. The attack is frank with notes of candied lemon then, this dense wine, fatter than the others, with complex aromas and multiple horizons, opens on a beautiful saline and iodized vibration. The divine alliance of a mineral world and an explosive fruitiness.” – Franck Buisson.
Mostly fermented and matured on full solids in large 30hl (3,000 l) casks, with some small portions matured in smaller barrel sizes. Look for a grapefruit, citrus element to the fruit profile and a tonic-like bitter twist to the palate.
The Details
Variety - Chardonnay
Country - France
Region - Burgundy
Sub Region - Saint Romain
Extra - Cork
Year - 2020
Volume - 750ml
About the Wine Maker 
I am constantly asked: Who is Burgundy’s next superstar? Who’s the next Roumier, Rousseau or Coche?”
From this question posed by Neil Martin from Vinous in May 2022 he nominated six emerging Burgundy producers: Domaine Marchand-Grillot, Domaine Boigey Frères, Domaine Benoît Moreau, Domaine Anne & Hervé Sigaut, Petit-Roy… and the wonderful Domaine Buisson.
The Buisson family name is etched deep into the history of Saint-Romain, the high elevation appellation in its own little Burgundy nook, to the west of Meursault and north of Auxey-Duresses. The Buissons reach back to the 12th century but they boast a semi-official start date of 1758.
Their ‘modern’ history reflects that of Saint-Romain itself, when in 1947 the climat was granted AOC status, and the pioneering Henri Buisson moved from farming to estate-bottling the first ever Saint-Romain AOC wines. Henri’s son Gilles took over in the 1980s, and he in turn passed the torch to brothers Franck and Frederick, who are the eighth generation of family vignerons.
Eleven of the twenty-odd hectares of estate-owned vines are in Saint-Romain, across eight different sites, headlined by the signature plots of Sous La Velle for Chardonnay and Sous Roche for Pinot Noir. The remaining holdings are spread across Cote de Beaune, Volnay, Pommard, Meursault and three plots on the hill of Corton.
They were very early exponents of organic and biodynamic vineyard practice, and are fully certified as organic (AB, or Association Biologique via Ecocert in 2006) and biodynamic (2019 through Biodyvin).
