Wafting from the glass with notions of cassis, dark chocolate, plums, spices and peonies, the 2020 Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Les Chaignots is medium to full-bodied, velvety and enveloping, with a rich core of concentrated fruit, lively acids and a penetrating finish. The 2020 vintage has turned out very well indeed at Domaine Robert Chevillon. With finished alcohols around 13.7% to 13.9%, these are deep and powerful wines that remain nicely balanced, and they're built to age. Indeed, in their vibrant, concentrated style, they remind me somewhat of the domaine's 2016s, something one wouldn't have thought possible on paper. The bad news is that yields were down, the Chevillon brothers having lost the equivalent of one entire harvest over the course of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 vintages. As I've written before, this is one of my favorite addresses in all of Burgundy. Old vines, cultivated soils, moderate yields and long fermentations with entirely destemmed grapes are the order of the day at this address, with the Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes seeing some 20% new oak and the premiers crus 30%. Nuits' Tonnellerie Sirugue is the dominant supplier of barrels. (WK)

The Chaignots is often the one premier cru in the cellars here that shows the possibility of earlier drinking, but in 2020, this beautifully sappy wine also has plenty of underlying structure and will demand some patience. The lovely aromatic constellation offers up scents of sweet dark berries, black cherries, raw cocoa, pigeon, a lovely base of soil tones, vanillin oak and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and chewy, with a superb core, fine soil signature, ripe, well-integrated tannins, bright acids and a long, nascently complex finish. This will be excellent in due course, but it is going to need plenty of time in the cellar before it really blossoms.

Intense black colour with a purple rim. Overwrought cherries. On the palate there is enough wealth of fruit to work more successfully than the village wine, with a slight youthful bitterness at the back. Roasted plums along with some black berry fruit.