Seiichi Saito was born in China, grew up in Japan, and came to Beaune in 2006 to study at the town’s wine school. He moved to Burgundy for good in 2008. He then spent years in some of the Côte d’Or’s most revered cellars: a few years at Simon Bize in Savigny, plus stints at Mugnier, Rousseau, and Leflaive. In 2014 he co-founded La Lune, a Beaune restaurant with about a dozen seats at a single counter. Its cuisine of precision and deep umami made it one of the most prized reservations in town. Petit-Roy followed in 2017 in

Chorey-lès-Beaune. He farms 2.1 hectares of his own regional-appellation vines biodynamically, without certification, and adds fruit from friends who farm with the same care in Burgundy’s less-celebrated villages. Even Beaune’s own wine shops now limit his bottles to three per customer. Chorey-lès-Beaune didn’t receive its own appellation until 1970. Les Beaumonts, however, was already listed among the village’s vineyards in Danguy and Aubertin’s 1892 survey of Burgundy’s great wines, and local growers still count it among Chorey’s finest sites. It lies on flat ground on the western side of the old N74, the road that separates Burgundy’s slopes from its plain, between the vineyards of Savigny and Aloxe-Corton. The soil is mostly clay with some limestone, and it drains well. The fruit comes from a 0.2-hectare parcel. It is fermented as whole clusters, chilled to 12°C, and fermented in tank on indigenous yeasts with gentle punch-downs toward the end. It was then aged 17 months in used barrels and two more in tank, and bottled without fining or filtration.

The clay gives this wine flesh and depth: black cherry, damson plum, and violet, with clove and cracked black pepper from the stems. That long stretch in barrel has smoothed the tannins into something plush and fine-grained. A flicker of pomegranate keeps the finish bright. Drink through 2031.