The story of Domaine Arlaud begins with a wedding. In 1942, Joseph Arlaud, a young man from the Ardèche, married Renée Amiot, whose Burgundian family gave the couple vineyards in Morey-Saint-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin as a wedding present. Joseph began adding parcels in 1949, and in 1966 he acquired a 600-year-old cellar in Nuits-Saint-Georges, once the town’s salt store, that has appeared on every Arlaud label since. His son Hervé took over in 1983 and kept adding. The estate now covers 17 hectares and 19 appellations, including parcels in four grands crus. Hervé’s son Cyprien joined in 1998 and spent the next sixteen years taking the domaine organic and then biodynamic. In 2014 Arlaud became the first estate in Morey-Saint-Denis to hold Biodyvin certification. Since 2004 his sister Bertille has plowed the five hectares of premier and grand cru vines with the draft horses Nougat and Oka, whose hooves leave the soil loose where a tractor would pack it down. For years Cyprien braided only the Bonnes-Mares, weaving the canes along the top wire rather than hedging them, which spares the plant the stress of cutting and shades the fruit. In 2024 he extended the practice to every premier and grand cru. In the gravity-fed winery designed in 2003, the fruit is sorted on three lines, ferments uncrushed on indigenous yeasts in open vats worked by foot, and ages 15 to 18 months in barrel with no more than 20 percent new oak before it is bottled on the lunar calendar without fining or filtration.
The family's 1.14 hectares lie in the Mazoyères section of Charmes-Chambertin, at its highest point along the Route des Grands Crus, where the rows run up to the edge of Latricières-Chambertin. The parcel holds three generations of vines, the oldest now past 80 years, and Cyprien picks and ferments each by age in its own lot so that he can declassify the youngest fruit if a vintage calls for it. Only the oldest vines ever contribute whole clusters, and in 2024, with yields across the domaine down to 15 to 17 hectoliters per hectare after a spring of relentless mildew, about 30 percent of the fruit went into the vat with its stems.
The 2024 opens with wild strawberry and cranberry over a thread of autumn meadow, a fine line of acidity and a black-pepper finish that leans toward the stonier Mazoyères side of the cru. There is palpable backbone here, and it will benefit from three or four years of cellaring to soften its edges. Drink 2029 through 2049.
