Chanterêves is the project of husband and wife Tomoko Kuriyama and Guillaume Bott, founded in Savigny-lès-Beaune in 2010 after careers at Etienne Sauzet, Simon Bize, and Weingut Altenkirch. Both trained in oenology — Tomoko in Germany, Guillaume in Burgundy — and met during harvest at Simon Bize, where their shared instinct for purity and restraint became the foundation of everything that followed. "We both like purity and elegance," Tomoko has said. They make wine by infusion rather than extraction, letting the fruit steep gently in its own juice; as The Feiring Line put it, wines of infusion "wash over you like a breeze instead of a heat blast." In 2020 they acquired 4.9 hectares of their own vines across Savigny, Chorey, and the Hautes Côtes de Beaune, and what began as a négoce has grown into one of the Côte de Beaune's most closely watched domaines.
Dessus de Montchenevoy sits above the premier cru Aux Guettes on a west-facing slope at 350 meters, isolated and surrounded by forest — one of the domaine's own parcels, acquired in 2020 and farmed organically and biodynamically with soil worked by horse. The forest moderates the site's temperature and extends the ripening season; the isolation limits mildew pressure and allows Tomoko to minimize intervention. The fruit is fermented 100% whole cluster in wooden vats with a pied de cuve, foot punch-downs only near the end of cuvaison, then aged ten to twelve months in used barrels before a further period on the fine lees in stainless steel. No fining, no filtration.
The 2023 vintage was Tomoko's favorite in Burgundy for its lush, seductive fruit, and Dessus de Montchenevoy in that year speaks clearly of its cool hillside origins: golden raspberry, violet, and a forest-floor earthiness on fine, supple tannins with a lifted, rose petal finish. A playful, beautiful wine with enough of a brooding edge to hold fascination.
