Domaine Vincent & François Jouard

Old vines before the cellar

The fruit comes in by parcel, not by abstraction. François Jouard, winemaker at Domaine Vincent & François Jouard in Chassagne-Montrachet, works from a family domaine whose language is vineyard, cru and village before it is style. The estate is family-owned, rooted in the center of Chassagne-Montrachet, and farmed across about 11 hectares, predominantly Chardonnay with a small proportion of Pinot Noir. Its modern chapter began in 1990, when Vincent and François Jouard repurchased the property and set the domaine again around the village’s white-wine identity. The family lineage reaches back more than six generations, a span that matters here because Burgundy does not separate technique from address. The named bottles carry the working grammar: Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, Chassagne-Montrachet AOC Vieilles Vignes, Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Morgeot “Les Fairendes”. Jouard’s role is to keep those names legible in the glass, through the season, the cellar and the final blend.

Premier cru by parcel

The domaine’s craft sits in the differences between its sites. Les Chenevottes lies north of the village in a cool hollow, with deep, clayey soils and Chardonnay vines averaging 35 years old; the wine is described through floral notes, gunflint and orange blossom rather than weight alone. Les Chaumées Clos de la Truffière covers 71 ares halfway up the slope, east-facing, on shallow red earth over steep rock, with vines averaging 50 years. Morgeot Fairendes Blanc sits south of the village at the bottom of the slope before Santenay, on limestone-dominant soil with more marl than clay, and vines aged between 35 and 94 years. In the cellar, the white wines age in oak barrels for 11 months, with one-third new barrels, before two months in tank. The cuvées may be fined and lightly filtered, and bottling takes place under nitrogen protection.

The village center and the cellar

The cellar belongs to a quieter Burgundy register: family-run, close to the vines, without the theatre of distance between the tasting room and the work. Chassagne-Montrachet presses in around it. The village center gives the domaine practical proximity to its parcels, while the portfolio keeps returning to the same terms: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, premier cru, vieilles vignes. In the cellar, oak is a tool rather than a signature; tank rest follows barrel time, and the bottling line protects what the élevage has gathered. The room’s texture is artisanal in the plain sense, built around decisions that recur each vintage and around bottles that state origin with little ornament.

Classification as the method

The domaine’s single current award sits beside a longer form of recognition: the way critics and merchants read individual cuvées by site, vintage and vine age. The 2022 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from the Truffière site was scored 92 by Vinous and 17 by Jancis Robinson; the 2014 Chassagne-Montrachet white was reviewed by Decanter with a drinking window of 2018–2030. Those figures do not replace the bench work. They point back to the same discipline, keeping Morgeot Fairendes, Les Chenevottes and Bâtard-Montrachet distinct under the Domaine Vincent & François Jouard name.