Bedeau, 2021, Bourgogne, France

Producer: Frederic Cossard

Grape: Pinot noir

Frederic Cossard is a larger than life character. He is a man with an infectious joie de vivre, with a real passion for life and a love of wine that runs deep. The Cossard’s have worked organically from the outset and now focus on homeopathic treatments and remedies tailored to the needs of each site. When fruit is bought, they give the growers a guide for looking after the vines and join them in the vineyards to ensure that work is carried out to their own lofty standards. In doing so they ensure that only the most pristine fruit makes it to their cellars tucked away amongst the limestone cliffs of Saint-Romain.

Such scrutiny is necessary to make great wine with no additions, which is exactly what they do. Whites are pressed directly straight to barrel, where they rest on lees until bottling. Reds spend around a month on their skins as whole bunches in open top casks, before being pressed off to barrel, also resting on their lees until bottling. It sounds simple, but the attention to detail in the cellar is second to none and Fred produces Burgundy of rare liveliness, purity and detail.

Pinot Noir from a number of plots of forty year old vines in and around the village of Volnay, for the first time blended with a parcel of fifty year old vines in Nuits-Saints-Georges. This makes for a more compact and elegant Bedeau than we have ever seen before.