Domaine Lucien Boillot & Fils Les Pruliers, Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru, France 2020

In a remarkable act of virtue and solidarity, Nuits-Saint-Georges declined to put forward any of their vineyards for consideration of grand cru status when the classification was made in 1936. The idea was to step aside and let the smaller, more struggling villages of Chambolle, Morey, and Gevrey take advantage of the new classification to get on the map, so to speak. If Nuits had chosen a more self-centered approach.

Les Pruliers—with its mineral-rich, wind-swept, mid-slope characteristics—would have been a shoo-in for the top tier. Today, Boillot’s Les Pruliers, eked out of vines now well over one hundred years old, would most certainly be considered one of the grandest of those grands crus. With its floral intensity and dense yet delicate layers of dark fruit, grand cru or not, this is Boillot at his best.