With 50% whole bunches, the 2022 Volnay Robardelle 1er Cru has the purest bouquet from the Domaine this vintage with perfumed dark plum, raspberry and light cassis aromas. The stems and oak are neatly folded into the aromatics. The palate is medium-bodied with a smooth texture and a little more depth than the Sous La Chapelle. It is pretty sweet towards the finish, where some new oak (40%) needs some time to be subsumed. This is another very promising Volnay. Frédéric Rossignol greeted me in his barrel cellar on a quiet Saturday afternoon. “There was little stress in the vines, and I’d never seen such high quality of fruit. We started the harvest on August 28 and picked over seven days, starting with the reds and picking according to the vineyard. Everything is picked by hand, even the Passetoutgrain [which I did not taste on this occasion]. Actually, 2023 was more complicated than 2022. That picking started in mid-September, but you’ll taste those next year. The reds will be bottled at the beginning of December.” Not a bad line-up here. I have one or two questions about what I feel was excessive use of stems in the entry-level cuvées. They tended to obscure the terroir, and I’m not completely bought on raising an entire cuvée entirely in glass WineGlobes, which render wines a bit “skinny,” almost “sterile.” But hey, as I said to Rossignol, if you don’t try, you don’t know.(NM)