In the village of Vosnse-Romanée, Bourgogne’s most famous vineyards of La Tâche and Romanée-Conti produce red wines with prices in the thousands, if not, tens of thousands of dollars per bottle. Few drinkers can afford to taste these wines. Fortunately, other delicious and affordable options readily exist literally from just nearby.
Go west up a steep hill from Vosnse-Romanée and then follow a path called Le Chemin des Moines (the “Way of the Monks”) through trees on either side. Vines appear shortly on a broad, rocky plateau. This is the Bourgogne Hautes–Cotes de Nuits appellation, a place where talented thirty-something growers, Amélie Berthaut and Nicolas Faure of Domaine Berthuat-Gerbet, work as a team producing red wines of remarkable quality and value.
“Our plot of Hautes–Côtes de Nuits on the plateau is in the commune of Concœur,” Berthaut notes. “Today we cultivate 4 hectares out of the 10 planted by my maternal grandfather in the 1970s, in low vines. Our Hautes-Côtes de Nuits vines are located on a beautiful terroir with a good average age.”
Winegrowers Amelie Berthaut and Nicola Faure collaborate at Domaine
Berthaut-Gerbet
Despite the efforts of Berthaut’s grandfather in the 1970’s, the Hautes–Côtes (literally “High Slopes”) surrounding the charming hamlet of Concœur have been better known for producing juicy raspberries, strawberries, cherries and black currant fruits. To this day, one of Concœur’s main attractions is Isabelle and Sylvain Olivier’s La Ferme Fruirouge. They produce an incomparable Crème de Cassis de Bourgogne, a sweet, fruity alcoholic syrup typically mixed with either dry white wine or sparkling crémant wine.
Historically, though, vineyards played an important part in the Hautes–Côtes.
History of the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits
Before the infamous phylloxera bug devastated vines throughout Bourgogne in the late 19th century, thousands of acres of vines covered the Hautes–Côtes de Nuits hillsides spread over 16 villages including Concœur. Indeed, L’Abbaye Saint-Vivant, a Benedictine monastery founded in the 9th Century to the west of Concœur in the village of Curtil-Vergy, gradually received donations of many vineyards in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits as well as the famed vineyards of Vosne-Romanée.
With over 650 years of hard work and observation, the monks identified Pinot Noir as the optimal grape for Bourgogne red wines. They also categorized their vineyards by quality, and the monks themselves cultivated the best Vosnse-Romanée vineyards for their own réserve wines. On the way to work, the monks followed the very same Le Chemin des Moines from the monastery right through Concœur and down to Vosnse-Romanée. (Today ambitious hikers can still walk the often hilly and rugged path of nearly six miles. The path affords terrific views near the monastery.)
With the French Revolution, the new national regime confiscated the monastery and its vineyards. Much of the limestone monastery building itself was sold off for use in secular constructions. Private individuals bought most of the monastic vineyards thereby creating hundreds of little, family estates.
Winegrowers Aubert and Pamela De Villaine, pictured in front of L’Abbaye Saint-Vivant, spearheaded the rescue and partial restoration of the site in recent years.
Then the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits vines declined until phylloxera almost eradicated them. Even after growers eventually learned to control phylloxera with new rootstocks, by the 1960’s the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits vines had shrunk to just over a thousand acres.
But a renaissance slowly took hold. Most importantly, growers identified the best sites to replant vines to compensate for the climatic differences of the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. Vines on the plateaus and slopes of the Hautes–Côtes de Nuits grow between 300 and 400 meters above sea-level. The Pinot Noir vines down below in the villages lie generally between 150 and 250 meters above sea-level.
This difference creates cooler temperatures in the Bourgogne Hautes–Cotes de Nuits vineyards. So traditionally, fully ripening Pinot Noir grapes with adequate sugar levels and mature skins and stems was more difficult.
This moved the late wine writer Clive Coates in his classic book “Cote D’Or: A Celebration of the Wines of Burgundy” (University of California Press, 1997) to advise as follows for Bourgogne Hautes–Cotes de Nuits reds, “This is a wine to buy in a warm, ripe year—the wines are then delicious, and some of the best value in Burgundy. Avoid the wines of a cold rainy vintage.”
Since Coates wrote, however, conditions have steadily changed. Higher temperatures make warm, sunny and dry vintages the rule, rather than the exception. For example, the vintages in 2018, 2019, 2020 saw very warm conditions in July and August with sporadic rains. This created opportunities for ambitious and hard working growers like Berthaut and Faure to produce delicious red wines in the Bourgogne Hautes–Cotes de Nuits.
A New Day in the Hautes--Cotes de Nuits
Amélie Berthaut grew up steeped in winegrowing. Her father, Denis Berthuat, comes from a winegrowing family firmly established in the village of Fixin since the 18th Century. Amélie represents the seventh generation of winegrowers.
Meanwhile, her mother, Marie-Andrée Gerbet, grew up in a winegrowing family in Vosne-Romanée. After marrying Denis Berthaut, in 1983 Marie-Andrée and her sister assumed responsibility for the Vosne-Romanée vines and operated independently.
Amélie arrived on the scene in 1988, and after high school, she pursued a degree in commercial agronomy with a minor in viticulture. She had an important internship in Bandol as well as jobs at Rudd Winey in Napa and Crater Rim in New Zealand.
In 2012 and 2013, she returned to Bourgogne to work harvests with her father in Fixin. Then in 2014, Amélie committed full-time to work in Bourgogne. Eventually she assumed responsibility for the combined estates of her father and mother to form Domaine Berthaut–Gerbet.
The domaine has vineyards totaling a sizeable estate (at least by Bourgogne standards) of almost 40 acres spread widely over the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits and the villages of Fixin, Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, and Vosne-Romanée. Amélie sought a partner. Enter Nicolas Faure.
Nicolas earned valuable experience while working at the prestigious domaines of Prieuré-Roch, Domaine de la Romanée–Conti and Domaine Jean-Louis Chave. At the same time, Faure formed his own small estate based in the village of Meuilley in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. With only around 2.5 acres of his own vines, Nicolas had the extra capacity to form a professional partnership with Amélie in 2017.
“Nicolas is responsible for managing the vines, with all decisions made together,” Amélie says. “We don’t have the same experiences, which allows us to complement each other.”
She focuses primarily on winemaking and sales, while together the duo takes a strict lutte raisonnée (i.e., “reasoned struggle”) approach with the vines. It is essentially an organic philosophy with labor intensive plowing. Conventional chemical applications are limited only as a last resort to combat the worst cases of mildew on the vines.
This kind of energetic, fresh perspective and hard work is just what is required to move the Bourgogne–Hautes-Côtes de Nuits forward. The last three vintages of the Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet’s Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits demonstrate their collaboration in full bloom. (And in fact, a few years ago the partnership deepened as the couple joined together as husband and wife. They have one child with another on the way.)
Current Releases:
Try the following wines. All come from older Pinot Noir vines growing in shallow clay over limestone bedrock. The grapes are 100% de-stemmed before fermentation with indigenous yeast. The wines age in older oak barrels and foudres (with no new oak). Berthaut’s exporter, Peter Wasserman of Becky Wasserman Company, observes:
“Amélie has a real balanced touch with the wines. They are the kind of wines that I purchase for my own cellar. They can be enjoyed either on release or after five or ten years in the cellar.”
The 2018 Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet, Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits (national average price on wine-searcher: $38) opens with a dark ruby color offering full, ripe aromas of red and black fruits with a touch of spiciness. On the palate, ripe red fruit with medium concentration balances with superb freshness and lovely smooth tannins. It was even better after being re-corked and finished on day two. The wine’s 13.5% alcohol by volume reflects the warmth of the vintage. And yet the wine has beautiful balance and energy.
The 2019 Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet, Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits (national average price on wine-searcher: $44) opens with a pure ruby color offering ripe, beguiling aromas of red cherries and cassis with earthy, spicy notes. On the palate, bright, succulent red fruit flavors with medium concentration balances with fresh acidity and elegant, fine tannins. Absolutely delicious and delectable, and a real pleasure to drink.
The 2020 Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet, Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits (national average price on wine-searcher: $38) comes from a very warm vintage with early harvest. So not surprisingly, the wine opens with a darker ruby color offering ripe aromas of blackberries and cassis with earthy, spicy notes. On the palate, rich succulent black fruit flavors with medium concentration balance with fresh acidity and elegant, fine tannins. A delicious wine that will benefit from a few years cellar aging. To drink it now, make sure to decant the wines for a few hours before serving.