Domaine Jean-Baptiste Ponsot

In 1954 Lucien Ponsot established a domaine in Rully. He was later joined by his son, Bernard, who ran the estate until the turn of the century. At that point, although only 20 years of age, Jean-Baptiste stepped up to the plate and took over the family business. He has now been running Domaine Ponsot for more than half his life. Following quite a bit of planting unexploited plots he now farms 9 hectares in total, though that will jump to 10.5 shortly.

More than half of those are 1ers Crus. 2/3s of the estate are white with around 3 hectares planted to Pinot Noir. Jean-Baptiste is one of the hardest working vignerons you will meet; always on the go, he attaches, quite rightly, huge importance to his vineyards and spends a lot of his time ensuring that they are well tended and in excellent condition.

Stylistically, he makes wines that are impossible to not like. Oak is well used, the fruit is bright and crisp and the overall balance is spot on. In his early days much of his focus was on the white wines, but he has worked hard in recent vintages to bring the quality of the reds up a notch and now they are much more expressive and fruit driven than they were a dozen years ago.

It’s funny, every time I read an article by some disappointed journalist how Burgundy is getting so expensive, I think they need to step outside of the Grands Crus of the Côte de Nuits and come and taste wines like these which offer a great rapport qualité / prix.