Dom. Robert Chevillon
Les Cailles Premier Cru
Nuits-Saint-Georges
2016

The producer

Although created five generations ago by Symphorien Chevillon, the estate takes its name from Robert Chevillon who brought the domaine to its current stellar reputation from the 1960s and until today. His sons Denis and Bertrand have managed the estate, which now totals 13ha, since 2003. Most of this land is in the best Premiers Crus of Nuits-Saint-Georges including 0.63ha of Les Saint-Georges, 1.18ha of Les Cailles and 1.55ha of Les Vaucrains. These are often considered the best Premier Crus of the appellation and the Chevillon wines are rich in fruit making them gorgeously drinkable fairly young. This can be deceptive because they retain the ability, despite their seductive elegance, to age to great advantage.

Like Domaine Henry Gouges, Domaine Chevillon owns an incredible line-up of 8 old vines Premier Crus vineyards in Nuits Saint Georges and the total area under vines is almost 13 hectares. They produce attractive, fruit forward wines that drink well relatively young but also have long aging potential. The wine making is traditional, with 100% destemming, cold maceration followed by slow fermentation, and spend 18 months in oak, 25-30% of it new (for the premier crus). The result is elegant, structured, fruity, fine and complex wines, made for long aging but also accessible at a relatively early age.

The wine

Robert Chevillon is, with 1.19 hectares, the largest landowner in Les Cailles premier cru. Bordering Les Saint-Georges, Les Cailles has richly stony soil, which lends a certain mineral elegance to the wines from here. The wine making is traditional, with 100% destemming, cold maceration followed by fermentation, and 18 months of ageing in oak barrrels, 25-30% new. Chevillon’s wines are attractive, fruit forward and drink well relatively young while also having a long ageing potential.

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.