2024 Sylvain Cathiard & Fils Les Dames Huguette Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits

Sylvain Cathiard & Fils own 0.167 hectares of Romanée-Saint-Vivant, which makes them the smallest landowner in the grand cru, and the queue for the Vosne wines is what it is. The Hautes Côtes cuvées are the way in. They arrived when the domaine roughly doubled in size between 2019 and 2021, and they are made exactly as the expensive wines are.

Les Dames Huguette is the stony one. Cathiard farm 1.45 hectares on the upper slope above Nuits-Saint-Georges, on the poorest soil they own: very thin, high in active limestone over clay. That is where the tension comes from. Fully destemmed, as every Cathiard red is, a long cold soak, indigenous yeasts in tank with punch-downs and no pump-overs, then fifteen to eighteen months in barrel at twenty per cent new, unfined since 2000. Vosne-Romanée hands, at Hautes Côtes money.

Tasting note

A pleasing ruby purple, with more density of fruit than its sibling Aux Chaumes and some darker berries alongside the red. Almost plush raspberry and crushed strawberry on the nose, then a firm and mineral palate with a stony, bittersweet fruit core, supple but strict tannins, good energy and a fine, lacy finish.