Thibaud Clerget

Thibaud Clerget leads the modern work at Domaine Yvon Clerget in Volnay, France, where the family name returned to the label with the 2015 vintage and the focus shifted firmly toward vineyard presence and domaine bottling. His approach is practical and restrained, with farming decisions made first and cellar work measured against what the fruit can carry. The aim is to let Burgundy’s most transparent red grape express site and season without excess. Clerget trained at Beaune’s Lycée Viticole, gaining a Burgundian foundation in the region’s viticultural and cellar expectations before broadening his perspective through completed vintages with Pinot Noir specialists in New Zealand, Oregon, and Côte de Nuits. Those experiences gave him different readings of the same grape across climates, cellars, and sensibilities, and helped shape a style built on calibration rather than novelty. His work at Domaine Yvon Clerget since 2015 keeps that wider experience tied to Volnay. At the domaine, Clerget has managed the vineyards since 2015, making the rows the basis of the wine. The farming is organic and uses minimal intervention, with a stated target of purity, finesse, and intensity. All vineyards are ploughed. Vines are trained higher to improve photosynthesis in warmer vintages, and more leaf coverage is kept to protect grapes from heat. These choices respond to warmer conditions and to fruit that can show imprecision quickly, placing the first decisions of the wine under the pressures of weather, season, and the requirements of Pinot Noir. Since 2019, cellar work has moved toward less force. Clerget began limiting yields, adopted a more delicate vinification approach, and stopped pigeage completely. Extraction, texture, and structure are therefore handled with tighter control, relying less on mechanical insistence and more on what the crop can offer without being overworked. Whole bunch use varies by cuvée, with some wines around 50% whole bunch and others completely destemmed. New oak also changes from wine to wine. One special cuvée of Clos Vougeot is aged completely in wine globes, showing a selective approach to the available tools rather than a rejection of tradition. Within the range, Volnay 1er Cru Clos du Verseuil stands as a signature bottling. It gives Clerget’s aims a named Volnay reference, centered on transparency, purity, finesse, and intensity. The wine also carries a precise family and site link as a 0.68-hectare monopole acquired by the Clerget family in 1936, anchoring the domaine’s continuity in Volnay. Clerget’s tasting language stays close to Pinot Noir’s freshness, fruit, and color.