2017 Gerard Raphet Chambolle Musigny Les Bussieres Cuvee Unique 750 ml

The 2017 Gérard Raphet Chambolle Musigny Les Bussières Cuvée Unique is great Burgundy from a classic producer, and at a reasonable price. With its aromas of pomegranates, fresh raspberries, and baking spices hovering above the glass and paving the way for a fresh palate of summer berries, and earth this is a Pinot Noir that will pay dividends for another decade with ease. Vinous called 2017 “a modern classic,” and with good reason.

For the Raphet family, wine is more than what they do, it’s who they are. Barrels are kept in a cellar beneath their house, and the best of them are selected each year by their American importer to be sold as the Cuvée Unique. There’s never much of it to go around—this is a barrel selection, after all—but what does hit the market is well worth a place in your cellar. 

The 2017 is a deeply personal wine to the Raphet family, which has passed down its winemaking acumen for four generations. Now helmed by the eponymous Gérard, who took over from his father Jean in 2005, the family is as tied to the land as any in the entire Côte de Nuits. And its future is every bit as bright as its past: Gérard’s daughter Marion has taken on an increasingly important role in both the vineyards and the winery.

Yet with every new generation of Raphets that comes into the fold, a deep respect for the past, for the classic way of doing things, remains. The 2017 Chambolle Musigny Les Bussières Cuvée Unique, for example, is fermented with indigenous yeast, aged in used French oak that softens the tannins without imparting an overabundance of the baking-spice notes that new wood tends to, and bottled without fining or filtering. It’s a transcendent example of just how profound great Burgundy can be.