Domaine Gerard Raphet Morey Saint Denis Vieilles Vignes 2018

We were arm-wrestling over who would take the rest of this sample bottle home. Wow! Rich and polished, mouthcoating but finesse-filled, this beautiful bottle will knock you out. Another “restaurant wine” that we now have access to that should be on your shortest of short lists (especially at this fine price!).

A village wine that ages in step with the finest premier cru bottles, Raphet selects old-vine fruit (60 years or older) from ‘Clos des Ormes’ in Morey, as well as fruit from the Grand Cru adjacent 1er Cru, Morey Millandes. Fermented on indigenous yeasts in tank. Aged in older French oak barrels (15% new) for 18 months. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. FANTASTIC.

The wines of Gérard Raphet are a Burgundy lover’s Burgundy. No Raphet ever went to enology school; winemaking has been passed from father to son, and now daughter, through four generations. There’s no pontificating, no philosophy — just the rhythm of a day that starts before sunrise, the years of history absorbed in each gnarled, 100-year-old vine, and the handful of barrels stashed in a dark cellar underneath the family home.

We have a scant few cases of this GEM. Please act quickly!