Dom. Jean-Marc Pillot
Les Champs Gains 1er Cru
Chassagne Montrachet
2020

The producer

The cousin of Francois Carillon in Puligny-Montrachet, Jean-Marc has managed his eponymous Pillot estate since 1991, today also joined by his son Antonin. The majority of vineyards are in Chassagne, but there is also a bit of land owned in Puligny, Meursault, and Santenay. Vineyards are currently in conversion to organics and preserving purity and energy in the wines has a high priority, why new oak use across the portfolio is generally kept around 10%. Pillot’s are wines of chiselled structure, in a lean, fresh, balanced, and complex style.

The wine

Jean-Marc Pillot owns 0.24 hectares of land in Les Champs-Gain, a mid-slope Chassagne premier cru, with south-east exposure, relatively rich soils, and one of the village’s warmest micro-climates. The fruit is whole-bunch pressed and then allowed to slowly ferment at 15 degrees to preserve freshness and purity. Ageing is usually in less than 30% new oak. The lean, fresh and complex Pillot style suits the rich and broad-shouldered Champs-Gain vineyard profile incredibly well.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.