Domaine Paul Pillot

Domaine Paul Pillot was founded in 1900 by Jean-Baptiste Pillot, a barrel maker by trade, who decided to focus full-time on his vines. His sons, Alphonse and Henri, succeeded him after the conclusion of World War I, increasing the Domaine’s holdings significantly and beginning to bottle their own wines. Henri’s son Paul then took over the Domaine in 1968, and acquiring the prestigious Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru vineyards  of Clos Saint Jean, Les Grandes Ruchottes, Les Caillerets, and La Grande Montagne, and the Saint-Aubin 1er Cru of Les Charmois.

Domaine Paul Pillot now covers 13 hectares of vines, including 4.5 hectares in red. It is now run by Paul’s son Thierry along with his sister Chrystelle, the fourth Pillot generation to oversee these vines. Thierry began working with his father in 1999, and eventually taking over full time in 2004. Since then, the focus has been put squarely in the vineyards, with a discreet use of new wood and a non-interventionist approach in the cellar. The result are wines of finesse and purity that perfectly reflect the best terroirs of Chassagne-Montrachet. Its reputation has long been better than solid, but since Thierry Pillot joined the estate there has been an incremental but notable shift upwards in quality.

Thierry’s wines are all made with wild yeast fermentation and have a beautifully balanced acidity with a clean, vibrant mineral character. He favours his wines of tension and transparency, which he achieves by not picking too late and reducing the influence of oak in the ageing process which also means the wines are more expressive of the terroir. Thierry prefers traditional ageing with low intervention and long ageing of 12 to 18 months. The wines are rarely matured in more than 20% new oak and he uses a mixture of barrique and larger demi-muis barrels.