Benjamin Leroux is widely regarded as one of the finest vignerons of his generation in Burgundy, and the wines are legendary for their purity: each bottle he releases is snapped up by collectors around the world. He grew up in Beaune, where his parents ran a flower shop on the Place Carnot. There were no vines in the family. He enrolled at the town's lycée viticole at fifteen, and at twenty-four was handed the direction of Domaine du Comte Armand in Pommard, where he stayed for fifteen vintages before founding his own domaine and négoce in 2007. He now vinifies close to thirty hectares running from Chassagne-Montrachet to Gevrey-Chambertin, eight of them his own, certified organic since 2016 and worked biodynamically. He pushes for the same degree of care in the vineyards he buys from. In a full vintage that comes to some fifty separate cuvées. "It takes more time and more energy to work these plots," he says. "It fills me with energy, too. Touching so many different terroirs. I don't feel as though I am losing my time."
Les Vireuils sits high on the Meursault slope, just under the woods at the top of the hill, facing east to southeast on the limestone-heavy soils the village calls terres blanches. Leroux's vines went in during the mid-1970s. The fruit is pressed in whole clusters, lightly settled, and fermented with indigenous yeasts in 300-liter barrels, where the wine stays eighteen months.
Yellow apple and lemon oil, hazelnut from the élevage, and a finish that runs tight and saline. Drink 2027 through 2034.
