Lucien Le Monie Aux Boudots 2021

Brand new box only opened to take pictures.

The manufacturer
Behind Lucien le Moine in Beaune, you will find the oenologist and winemaker Mounir - a "wild man" who, since the 1999 vintage, has thrown himself into producing the absolutely sublime from a number of Burgundy's great appellations - and his wife Rotem. He is in his early 30s and a Lebanese Christian, while his wife is from Israel.
After completing oenology studies in Montpellier and a few years as cellar master at a monastery in Israel, where his wife's parents supplied cheese..., he came to Burgundy in 1995 to work with the grapes he clearly preferred: Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Here he was employed as a cellar master in one of the largest wine companies in Burgundy and in this way got his daily routine in many of the best wine cellars in Burgundy. He considers the winegrowers of Burgundy to be very skilled at growing their vines and harvesting their excellent grapes. But where he believes the chain jumps off is during the vinification and especially during the maturation of the wines. Winegrowers can often ruin wines due to bad casks or too old techniques. An idea crossed his mind: Every year he wants to buy absolute top wines from selected producers on 1st Cru and Grand Cru fields and take them over immediately after the end of alcoholic fermentation at the winegrowers. He will then vinify them further in his own cellar in Beaune – built in the 17th century – exclusively on new classic "pièces" (228 l oak casks) from Burgundy.
The idea for Lucien le Moine wines was created, and the first vintage was 1999.

Both the whites and the reds are matured on their "lie" (sediment), something that Mounir believes is decisive for the wine's typicity: It is the "lie" that gives the wine fatness, structure and character from the terroir, and the wine must therefore remain on its lees as long as possible during vinification. A weekly "batonnage" (stirring) is carried out.
The malolactic fermentation takes place quite late in the spring and means that you do not need to preserve the wine artificially (e.g. with sulphur).
All the wines are bottled from the cask directly into the bottle without pumping or filtering – for 1999 in December 2000 and for 2000 in January-March 2002.
His first vintage was, as I said, 1999, and it is no exaggeration to say that Mounir's wines received a brilliant reception - both by wine enthusiasts and by wine writers.
The vines woke up early during the spring and the ripening period was long. The white wines from the 1999 vintage were generally delicate and harmonious with a good softness and freshness, and the red wines had a good structure, with intense tannins and great maturation potential. The 2000 vintage is generally softer, with a good richness of fruit, sweetness and finesse, and it develops faster than the 1999. 2001 seems stylistically to be almost a mixture of 1999 and 2000.