Domaine de Bellene

I am excited about this one. I used to import this guys wines into Australia, we were there at the start when he established his Domaine de Bellene. He is Nicolas Potel, son of the famous Gerard Potel, born in the winery at Pousse d’Or, he used to play amongst this vines as an infant. This guy is wine. He is a prolific and prodigous wine maker, a character that can be observed speeding around Burgundy in his convertible, and, unusually for Burgundy he is a really nice guy. He is also rugby mad.

I reconnected with him this year at the Paris Wine show and I have gotten his wines into Ireland. They have never been sold here, so this represents a real coup personally, and also a huge bit of excitement thabellenet I get to drink them again. The Maison Dieu Bourgogne and the St Romain Blanc are a big part of the reason I Love Burgundy! I am offering this small allocation out to my Burgundy Buyers and will hold back a handful for the site. The pricing here for you is fantastic.

They’re all old vine, and they’re all biodynamic. The wines even look good, wax top, super classic. More info is below after the list of wines available. 

Domaine de Bellene Maison Dieu Bougogne Rouge 2022 

Ripe deeply pitched aromas include those of pungent earth, various dark berries and whiff of spice. The delicious, caressing and supple middleweight flavors possess a relatively refined texture for what this is though it contrasts with the slightly rustic finale...it is a quality Bourgogne. BURGHOUND - OUTSTANDING TOP VALUE

Domaine de Bellene Maison Clos Chapelle Chardonnay 2022 

No pro review, tasted on ground at Paris wine show, deadly little white Burg. High density planting, 50 year old vines - a very Nicolas Chardy! WS

Domaine de Bellene St. Romain Blanc 2022 

This is a very fine, linear, tight and delicious chardonnay from a Cote de Beaune village relatively off-the-radar, thus very well priced. The nose is well lifted, a touch reductive, flinty and mineral driven, with pear, lemon, hazelnut, nutmeg and subtle coffee roast. It is medium bodied, tightly wound but not austere. The length is excellent, exuding great acidity and minerality on the finish. 94 POINTS, WINE ALIGN

Domaine de Bellene St. Romain Rouge 2022 

Relatively new in the range, and absolutely gorgeous. Red St. Romain is becoming more common now and thank god as its bloody amazing! 60 year old vines, of a banking, sunbaked slope, i loved this. WS

Domaine de Bellene Cote de Nuits Village 2022 

I always love this wine and the 2022 is one of the best I've seen. Mostly the fruit comes from a couple of choice blocks in Comblacien, both old vine and organically farmed. Plum and cherry tinged with violets and a hint of spice on the nose. This wine doesn't see a huge amount of oak and that show; pure fruited effusive aromatic is disarming. On the palate it's suave and supple but not without some enlivening acidity. The combination of that supple ripe blue and red fruit, spice and then the saliva inducing acidity makes this wine hard to stop drinking. The kind of wine that restores your faith in value for money red Burg. MICHAEL MCNAMARA, PWS

This is the first wine to display much wood influence and there is a mentholated top note to the peppery red and dark pinot fruit aromas. Once again there is very good volume and excellent vibrancy to the sleek and delicious medium weight flavors that display good balance on the sappy and dusty finish. This has enough development potential to reward up to a decade of cellaring. BURGHOUND

Some More in Nicolas:

Potel is now an old hand in the Côte and it shows as the quality is excellent. Stylistically, if you've enjoyed the Potel wines in the past, there is no reason that you would not enjoy either variation of the Bellene wines as they are classic in the best sense of the term.  BURGHOUND

Nicolas Potel joked that​​​​​ "the 2022 growing season was so much easier than what we faced in 2021 that it almost seems anticlimactic, but I'll take it! We picked from the 1st of September and brought in ripe and super-clean fruit with good yields of around 35 hl/ha across all of our appellations, including the regional wines though they were higher for the négociant wines. We used between 20 and 100% whole clusters for the vinifications though the average was more in the 20 to 25% range. We also once again reduced the percentage of new wood and most wines saw no more than 10% though a few where we have limited quantities were more like 30%. As to the wines, it's interesting because the acidities are only average yet they drink like there's plenty of acidity as there is excellent vibrancy and freshness:” BURGHOUND

Nicolas Potel is a bit of enigma. he is both Burgundy royalty (the son of the legendary Gerard Potel) and at the same time he's been an iconoclast in his own career, always pushing the prevailing (and often entrenched) beliefs and methodologies of the day, so often being validated in ensuing years. In his winemaking and wine philosophy too, he is both revolutionary and conservative. Philosophically, he believes in making Burgundy that people can still afford to buy (he dropped his pricing back 10% in 2022 as the quantity returned to normal after a meagre 2021). Sacre bleu! That's not the norm by any means in a region that has come into such stratospheric wealth over the past 60 years. There's more than a few Gordon Geckos parading about the Cote.

Then there's his wine growing philosophy; one of the first to embrace biodynamics in the 1980s and now one of the first to see the value in training his vines higher in a warming climate, just a couple of examples. He believes passionately in only using old vine fruit and has been heavily involved in vine DNA research with the university in Dijon. Contrasting that is his work in the cellars, he doesn't take risks; fermentations and elevage are pretty standard practice with the only real change in more recent years being the use of less small and new wood than he ever did in the past - the aim being more freshness and transparency.