Saint-Aubin, Burgundy, France
“Lamy is one of the great, not yet widely discovered Domaines in all of Burgundy. Readers should do whatever they can to check out these fabulous wines.”
- Antonio Galloni of Parker’s Wine Advocate
ESTATE
Domaine Hubert Lamy is located in St-Aubin very close to Puligny Montrachet and Chassagne Montrachet. Hubert Lamy built the estate in the 1980s and his son; Olivier Lamy is one of the figures of quality-focused winemakers of the younger generation who considerably established the reputation of Saint-Aubin as a reference for reliable attractively priced white Burgundies.
The estate is composed of 17 ha, spread over the communes of St-Aubin, Chassagne Montrachet, Puligny Montrachet and Santenay. With very appealing appellations in St-Aubin such as the 1er Cru En Remilly, an extraordinary wine which vines are located right next to the Chevalier Montrachet and Montrachet Grand Crus, a parcel that was classified as a Grand Cru on the same level as the Montrachet before the 1923 classification. Olivier’s 0.25 ha of 1er Cru Murgers des Dents de Chien, as ideally located as the En Remilly is well praised among Burgundy connoisseurs for delivering an outstanding complexity very similar to its neighbour Le Montrachet.
WINEMAKING
Olivier is fascinated by the ancient viticultural practices that were employed in the 19th century before the Phylloxera epidemic. His vines are planted at a high density, to limit the yields and increase the level of maturity, which is a capital factor in a late ripening area such as Saint-Aubin. For the whites, Olivier retains all the lees and after pressing, the wines are directly transferred into barrels for fermentation. Unlike most of white winemakers, Olivier resorts to 600L casks rather than traditional 228L barrels, and tries to minimize the effect of wood with only 20 % use of new oak to fully express the minerality of the Saint-Aubin terroir.
Thus his wines have a lovely balance of honeyed fruit and fresh acidity with a distinguished lingering mineral finish.