Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux has been in Vosne-Romanée since 1858. Charles Lachaux, the sixth generation of his family, has run it since 2012, alongside a separate label under his own name. He farms biodynamically, toward a single end: wine that tastes of its site and little else. The vines grow tall and untrimmed through the season, the rows are worked by horse, and pruning follows the natural flow of the sap. Fermentation proceeds with whole clusters and indigenous yeasts, maceration is brief, and pressing is vertical and gentle. With 2022, Charles retired oak from the cellar entirely, aging every wine in Clayver — the neutral sandstone vessels that breathe without contributing flavor — so that site, not cooperage, sets the character of each wine. He has said he wants Arnoux-Lachaux to stand beside Leroy, and his methods make clear that he means it.

This village Nuits gathers seven parcels in the northern stretch of the appellation, the side that runs up against Vosne-Romanée, from vines averaging around fifty years. At this end of the appellation the boundary with Vosne-Romanée is close, and the wine carries something of both: the perfume of one, the grip of the other.

It opens with a darker cast: blackberry and black cherry, a savory note of iron and crushed stone, a touch of dried violet. The tannins have more pull here, fine-grained but present, and the wine should drink well from 2026 through 2032.