The 2022 Volnay Carelle Sous La Chapelle 1er Cru, containing 60% whole bunches, has an open-knit and expressive bouquet with raspberry and wild strawberry fruit, well-defined with a subtle white pepper and clove note. The stems are used very effectively here. The palate is medium-bodied with grainy tannins and attractive raspberry and orange sorbet notes. It becomes quite tangy towards the finish, with the sapidity to beckon you back for another sip. Very promising. 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)