2023 Domaine du Cellier aux Moines 'Clos du Cellier aux Moines' Premier Cru Givry

There's a corner of Burgundy that serious collectors have been quietly circling for years. Givry sits 30 minutes south of Beaune — same limestone bedrock, same Pinot Noir, a fraction of the Côte de Nuits asking price. The Clos du Cellier aux Moines is the address that keeps getting mentioned.

Cistercian monks from the Abbey of La Ferté established this 5-hectare hillside vineyard around 1130, making it one of the oldest continuously farmed sites in Burgundy. Philippe Pascal — who spent 20 years as a top executive at LVMH, including as CEO of Moët Hennessy — acquired the neglected property in 2004 with an ambition most in Givry would have called absurd: make it compete with Burgundy's finest addresses. The gravity-fed winery he built, and the Biodyvin biodynamic certification the domaine earned in 2023, suggest the absurdity was justified. Domaine du Cellier aux Moines was the first certified organic estate in Givry, achieving formal organic certification in 2020.

Pascal brought in Guillaume Marko to lead winemaking, and the résumé does the talking. Marko trained at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti — by most accounts the greatest wine estate on the planet — and at Arnoux-Lachaux, one of the Côte de Nuits' most coveted producers. Entry-level bottles from either address start well north of $1,000. Here, that same winemaking philosophy is applied to a Givry Premier Cru without the famous-address markup.

For the 2023 vintage, Marko worked from a barrel selection of the most successful parcels across the 5-hectare Clos, with 70% whole-cluster fermentation, very gentle extraction, and 25% new oak. The domaine's broader holdings now include Premier Cru plots in Chassagne-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, Santenay, Volnay, and Montagny — the expansion of an estate clearly playing a long game.