While Burgundy has a lot of producers, there are not many that are successful in both red and white wines. One of the very few who succeed is Henri Boillot.
Before 2005, if we see a wine labelled as Henri Boillot, it will be a negoicant wine since Henri Boillot didn’t use his own name for their domaine bottles. Their domaine bottles before 2005 was named after his father’s name, Domaine Jean Boillot. However, starting since vintage 2005, Henri Boillot has decided to use his own name for their domaine bottles as well.
Henri Boillot placed great emphasis on viticulture and selection of grapes. Every winter, vines are severely pruned. This not only greatly reduce the yield and vigor the vines but also making green harvesting in summer unnecessary. Still, two weeks before harvesting, Henri would remove unripe bunches of grape from vines. Sorting table will also be used to remove grapes affected rot. Simply put, Henri Boillot would like to ensure every grape that goes into winemaking is perfectly heathy and ripe.
Henri Boillot’s red wine is typically deep in colour, very ripe, lush and smooth in palate. Stylistically quite modern. This is not only because Henri Boillot only use very ripe grapes, but also related to how Henri vinify his wines. Quite uncommon, Henri Boillot would let his wine to have a long two-week cold maceration before fermentation to maximize extraction. The use of oak is rather restrained. For a Volnay’s premier cru, typically about 40% of new oak would be used.
This bottle of 2005 Henri Boillot 1er Les Chevrets has intense and explosive nose of black fruits, sour black cherry, spices, pepper and dried herbs. Very complex. In palate, it shows sweet fruits flavours with abundant fine and silky tannins.
Although this is a very high quality Volnay, this is not my favorite style of a Burgundy Volnay. I found that it is slightly mouth-coating and lacks the superb elegance of a top-class Volnay. I also find the style of the wine is a bit too modern to me. However, all these are purely personal preferences and there is no doubt that this is a very good wine.