drink-now2017 Nuits-St Georges, Les Pruliers, 1er Cru, Domaine Jean Grivot, Burgundy

This is one of the firmer and denser wines in the range, influenced more by the clay, which is more evident here than in the neighbouring Roncière wines. A compact and positive wine that will require a little more patience. Drink 2023-2029.

Jean Grivot, whose name continues to appear on the labels, took over from his father Gaston in 1955 and handed the estate on to his son Étienne in the early 1980s. Étienne, married to Marielle Bize from Savigny, has been through a number of incarnations as winemaker here. When he took over, his father’s style was for gentle, graceful wines which perhaps were a little weak in the lesser vintages. Since then Étienne has found his own voice and made a range of increasingly fine wines. The drive to reduce yields and fine-tune his work in the vineyards and cellar since the mid-2000s continues to enhance quality. The succession to the next generation is now well underway, with Mathilde and Hubert increasingly influential, under their father’s experienced and wise guidance.

Here the decision was to wait for a bit of rain, to get the skins and berries fully ripe. The rain did the trick and the resulting wines are among the best of the Côte this year. Adjectives tumbled from Étienne during the tasting: seductive and precise, glamorous, graphite and saline, luminous and suave. We both agreed we rather liked “resonant E Volumes are up 50 percent but Étienne warned us that the run of short vintages has depleted their reserves, and as such allocations this year will not move up in line.