Cuvées and terroirs
THE CUVÉES & THEIR TERROIRS
1988: A New Domaine on Ancient Ground
Domaine Leroy was built in four movements between 1988 and 1990, and the route by which each parcel entered the estate remains the most useful way into the range. The foundation was Domaine Charles Noëllat of Vosne-Romanée, bought in 1988 for 65 million francs, some twelve hectares together with the cellars and buildings on the Rue de la Fontaine that are still the domaine’s headquarters. That single purchase supplied the Vosne and Nuits spine of the portfolio: Richebourg, Romanée-Saint-Vivant and Clos de Vougeot, the premiers crus Les Beaux Monts, Aux Brûlées, Aux Boudots and Aux Vignerondes, and the village lieux-dits of both communes. Several of those parcels had been Noëllat property since 1925, when Charles Noëllat took over the Gaudemet-Chanut estate whose vines he had been tending for years.
The purchase of Domaine Philippe Rémy in Gevrey-Chambertin in 1989, for 19 million francs, added the northern grands crus: Chambertin, Latricières-Chambertin and Clos de la Roche, together with the premier cru Aux Combottes and the Gevrey village parcel. That a Gevrey estate carried a Morey grand cru with it is explained by its own history. Domaine Philippe Rémy was an offshoot of Domaine J.H. Rémy, a substantial property at Morey-Saint-Denis whose buildings stood just below Clos des Lambrays and which was divided between two brothers, Louis staying in Morey and Philippe setting up in Gevrey. Rodier records J.H. Rémy in 1920 as an owner of both Chambertin and Clos de la Roche, with no trace of the family in the surveys of 1855 or 1892, which places the original purchases somewhere between those dates.
Alongside the two estates, vines already in Leroy family hands were attached to the new domaine at its formation in 1988, among them part of Musigny and Pommard Les Vignots. A series of individual acquisitions completed the estate: Corton-Renardes and Corton-Charlemagne, Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes, Volnay Santenots du Milieu, and two parcels in the heart of Les Musigny bought from the Moine-Hudelot family in 1990.
The Noëllat purchase was made before the money to pay for it existed. Madame Bize-Leroy financed it by selling one third of the family company to Takashimaya, the Japanese department store group that had been Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s distributor in Japan since 1972, for sixteen million dollars. Maison Leroy and Domaine Leroy were thereafter owned in equal thirds by Madame Bize-Leroy, by her sister Pauline and her family, and by Takashimaya. The sale of that stake, and the loss four years later of the Romanée-Conti distribution contract that had run since 1968, are the commercial frame within which the domaine was created.
All of it was converted to biodynamics in 1988, before a single vintage had been made under the new name. The published holdings total 21.9966 hectares across nine grands crus, eight premiers crus, nine village wines and five regional cuvées.
A note on units: plot sizes are given throughout in ares (1 are = 100 m²; 100 ares = 1 hectare).
Grands Crus
Chambertin
Gevrey-Chambertin · 70.32 ares · First vintage 1988
Four plots · Acquired from Domaine Philippe Rémy, 1989, and Leroy family vines
Chambertin covers 12.90 hectares of the most consistently favoured ground on the Gevrey hill, lying mid-slope between Chambertin Clos de Bèze to the north and Latricières-Chambertin to the south, above Charmes-Chambertin, on thin brown limestone over Bajocian rock with an easterly aspect. Nothing more than a track separates it from Clos de Bèze, and the two have long been held equal in rank.
The Leroy holding is scattered rather than consolidated. Plots 145 and 146 run almost from the foot of the vineyard to the top, and 154 sits apart from them. Plot 192 is the odd one out, low on the slope just above the Route des Grands Crus, and it was in Leroy hands before the domaine existed. It made the 1988 on its own, producing only 300 bottles, a full year before the Rémy vines arrived. Leroy ranks seventh among the twenty or so owners.
Latricières-Chambertin
Gevrey-Chambertin · 57.15 ares · First vintage 1989
Acquired from Domaine Philippe Rémy, 1989
Latricières runs directly south of Chambertin at the mouth of the Combe Grisard, and the combe does more than funnel cool air down onto the vines through the growing season. Its geology extends underground into the vineyard, so that a site which looks uniform from the road is nothing of the sort. The Leroy plots sit within that intrusion, as do those of Drouhin-Laroze and Faiveley, on ground materially different from the straightforward continuation of Chambertin that makes up the rest of the climat. The soil is thinner here and the rock beneath harder, and the wine carries a higher aromatic register and a lighter frame than its neighbour above. Leroy is the sixth largest of twelve owners.
Clos de la Roche
Morey-Saint-Denis · 66.50 ares · First vintage 1989
Three plots · Acquired from Domaine Philippe Rémy, 1989
Clos de la Roche is not one climat but eight. The original vineyard was 4.5740 hectares, the figure Lavalle recorded in 1855 and Rodier still recorded in 1920, and the grand cru was then enlarged, principally around 1936, by absorbing plots from Les Chabiots, Les Fremières, Les Froichots, Les Mochamps, Monts Luisants, Les Genavrières and Les Chaffots. It now runs to 16.9 hectares on the upper northern side of Morey, which means position within it counts for a great deal.
The Leroy holding runs vertically through three of those lieux-dits: 20.11 ares in Les Mochamps at the foot, 17.74 ares in the original Clos de la Roche in the middle, and 28.65 ares in Monts Luisants near the top. Very few owners hold that kind of spread, and it gives the wine an internal range a single-plot bottling cannot draw on. All three sit at the northern end of the grand cru on the boundary with Gevrey-Chambertin, alongside the domaine's own Aux Combottes vines.
Musigny
Chambolle-Musigny · 27 ares · First vintage 1988
Four plots · Leroy family vines, 1988, and Acquired from Domaine Moine-Hudelot, 1990
Musigny divides into three sections: Les Musigny, the main body; Les Petits Musigny to the south, a de Vogüé monopole; and plots in La Combe d'Orveau brought into the grand cru in 1929 and again in 1989. All the Leroy vines lie in Les Musigny, on shallow soil over fissured limestone. Cadastre 58 and 59, at 3.90 and 4.10 ares, sit in a small flat area below a wooded ridge at the northern end of the vineyard and were family vines before the domaine existed. Cadastre 29 and 30, at 4.95 and 14.05 ares, lie in the centre, enclosed on every side by the de Vogüé holdings.
The central plots came onto the market in 1990 when the Moine-Hudelot family sold and Daniel Moine, then mayor of Chambolle-Musigny, could not match the price offered. The family kept one parcel, cadastre 27, which later passed to Drouhin-Laroze and lies immediately south of the Leroy ground. De Vogüé holds around seventy per cent of the whole grand cru, so the ten remaining owners divide what is left into very small pieces; Leroy is the fourth largest in Les Musigny, behind de Vogüé, Mugnier and Drouhin.
Clos de Vougeot
Vougeot · 190.69 ares · First vintage 1988
Three plots · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988, and one metayage
Clos de Vougeot runs to 50.9576 hectares divided into 134 parcels among some eighty-five owners, of whom around sixty-five bottle a wine. It falls into three bands between the Route des Grands Crus and the top of the slope: gravelly limestone at the top, limestone with gravel and clay through the middle, heavy clay on the flat below. Leroy holds one parcel in each, which is uncommon, and assembles the three into one wine, which is the original Cistercian practice.
Hardly an insider knowledge anymore but the upper parcel lies directly behind the château, in the best-drained ground in the Clos, and Leroy works it under métayage, a sharecropping tenancy in which the farmer pays the owner in a share of what the land produces. That is what distinguishes it from a fermage, a straightforward cash rent under which the tenant keeps the entire crop. The fruit from all three parcels is blended before bottling, so the share handed back to the Nourissat family is not a separate lot but the same wine, and it reaches the market under the Christian Nourissat label in the domaine's own heavy bottle.
Romanée-Saint-Vivant
Vosne-Romanée · 99.29 ares · First vintage 1988
Two plots · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The two parcels lie adjoining one another in the northern sector of the grand cru, immediately south of the track that divides Romanée-Saint-Vivant from Les Suchots, on soils deeper and more clay-rich than in Richebourg on the slope above. The vines were planted in 1924, the oldest planting the domaine has on record anywhere. Leroy is the second largest owner after Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which holds 5.28 hectares of the 9.4-hectare vineyard.
Charles Noëllat held 197 ares here, and the estate came apart through marriages rather than through sale. His granddaughter Odile Noëllat married Alain Hudelot, and after a legal dispute the couple took 48 ares in the southern part, next to the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti holding; that is today’s Hudelot-Noëllat. Andrée Noëllat, another of the family heirs, had married Jean-Jacques Confuron, and when the estate was finally sold in 1988 she took 50 ares from the middle as her share of the inheritance. What remained, the northern section, is what Madame Bize-Leroy bought.
Behind that lies a longer line. The ground came to Charles Noëllat in 1925 with the Gaudemet-Chanut estate, which had acquired it from the Marey-Monge family around 1890. Marey-Monge had bought at the revolutionary sale of 1791, when the holdings of the Prieuré de Saint-Vivant were seized and auctioned, and the lower part of the Leroy parcel, above La Croix Rameaux, was Prieuré land.
Richebourg
Vosne-Romanée · 77.65 ares · First vintage 1988
Three plots · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
Richebourg comprises two climats, Les Richebourgs and Les Verroilles ou Richebourgs to the north, and all three Leroy plots lie in the former. Cadastre 57, at 55.22 ares, and cadastre 69, at 9.22 ares, sit in the centre of the vineyard directly above the domaine's Romanée-Saint-Vivant holding, the larger of the two running up to the boundary between the two climats. Cadastre 61, at 13.21 ares, lies further south below Les Petits Monts, between the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Mongeard-Mugneret vines. The soil is warm, iron-rich brown limestone and the slope forms a gentle amphitheatre facing east to north-east, which between them account for the density the site gives in every vintage. Leroy is the second largest owner after Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
The provenance can be traced further back here than almost anywhere else in the domaine. Philibert Eugène Chanut bought 126.22 ares of Les Richebourgs in 1862 for fifty thousand francs. His daughter Marguerite married Paul Gaudemet, a lawyer and law professor in Dijon, and the couple built the Gaudemet-Chanut estate around her share. When Marguerite died in 1925 her two sons, one a law professor in Strasbourg and the other a doctor in Dijon, had no interest in the vines and sold the estate to Charles Noëllat, who had been managing it for them for years.
Corton Renardes
Aloxe-Corton · 50.14 ares
Acquired separately from the Noëllat and Rémy estates
Les Renardes occupies the upper eastern flank of the Corton hill within Aloxe, where the marl runs red with iron over limestone. It is one of the lieux-dits entitled to the Corton appellation for red wine, and traditionally among the most tannic and the slowest-maturing of them, holding on to a wild edge even in the ripest years. Corton is the only red grand cru of the Côte de Beaune, and this is the domaine's only red holding south of Nuits. It is the wine that opens the domaine's tastings each year, considered a point of reference.
Corton-Charlemagne
Aloxe-Corton · 43.15 ares · First vintage 1989
One plot · Acquired separately from the Noëllat and Rémy estates
The domaine's only white grand cru, planted to Chardonnay, and a single block sitting as high on the hill as the vines go. Plots 13 and 15, at 24.45 and 18.46 ares, make up almost the whole of it; plot 14 is a fragment between them that appears to have carried a cabotte, one of the small stone huts built for vineyard workers. All three lie in the climat Le Corton, at the top of the northern part of the hill within Aloxe-Corton, directly below the treeline.
Corton-Charlemagne runs as a band around the upper slope across Aloxe-Corton, Pernand-Vergelesses and Ladoix-Serrigny, at the altitude at which the soil turns pale and marly and the grand cru switches from Pinot Noir to Chardonnay. It is handled as the reds are, pressed without crushing and raised on its lees in new wood, and it asks for long cellaring by the standards of white Burgundy.
Premiers Crus
Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Combottes
Gevrey-Chambertin · 46.03 ares · First vintage 1989
Acquired from Domaine Philippe Rémy, 1989
Aux Combottes is the one premier cru of Gevrey to sit inside the grand cru band, with Latricières-Chambertin to the north, Clos de la Roche to the south and Charmes-Chambertin immediately below. Grands Crus on three sides and premier cru itself: the usual explanation is that it lies slightly further up the slope at the mouth of a small combe, where cold air spills onto the vines and the soil runs thinner and stonier than on the grands crus around it. The wine is firmer and slower to open than its position alone would suggest. The Leroy plot adjoins the domaine's Clos de la Roche vines across the commune boundary.
Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Charmes
Chambolle-Musigny · 22.94 ares
Acquired separately from the Noëllat and Rémy estates
Les Charmes lies on the mid-slope beside the village, on the band where Chambolle's soils run thin and gravelly over limestone. That shallow, hard-draining ground is the source of the fine-grained tannin and the aromatic lift the commune is known for, and it is why Chambolle premiers crus can carry a weight of extract without ever feeling heavy. The Leroy holding is among the smallest in the domaine.
Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux Monts
Vosne-Romanée and Flagey-Échezeaux · 261.13 ares · First vintage 1988
Two plots · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
Les Beaux Monts divides into four named sections across two communes, and the classification changes with them: village at the top in places, premier cru through the main body, and grand cru at the foot of the Flagey section, where it becomes Échezeaux. The Leroy vines occupy the southern end, immediately north of Aux Brûlées and Richebourg and above Les Suchots. Cadastre AB 58, at 235.50 ares, lies in Vosne-Romanée; cadastre D 731, at 25.63 ares, lies in Flagey-Échezeaux and is in practice the upper southern continuation of the same block, so that a commune boundary runs through what is visibly one piece of vineyard. This is the largest single holding in the domaine and the largest in the climat.
The ground sits higher on the hill than the grands crus below, on thinner soils and at greater altitude, which is the usual account of a wine that gives breadth and a long evolution rather than immediate charm. Rodier recorded four owners on the Vosne side in 1920 across 242.30 ares, almost exactly the area of AB 58 today. Charles Noëllat was one of them; the others were Gaudemet, Malbranche-Morand and Guillon, and Noëllat eventually absorbed all three. Earlier surveys put the ground in the hands of the Chanut estate, the Liger-Belair family and the Duvault-Blochet heirs, the last of whom founded the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.
Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Aux Brûlées
Vosne-Romanée · 27.13 ares · First vintage 1988
Three plots · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The vineyard falls into three parts: the northern and southern sections of Aux Brûlées, divided by a road, and the premier cru La Combe Brûlée above, which is almost never bottled under its own name. The southern section lies beside Richebourg. The Leroy plots are in the northern section, at the foot of the domaine's Beaux Monts block, and they are so closely integrated with it that the rows run on unbroken from one climat into the next. Leroy owns the ground on both sides of the line, so the boundary is invisible on the slope.
Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Aux Boudots
Nuits-Saint-Georges · 119.68 ares · First vintage 1988
Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
Aux Boudots is the northernmost premier cru of Nuits, adjoining Aux Malconsorts across the commune boundary, and the slope runs on unbroken from one into the other. That continuity is why the wine is so often read in Vosne terms rather than in those of its own commune, though the soils here are deeper and more ferrous than in Vosne and the wine carries more flesh as a result. The vines are very old, which is the other half of the explanation. This is the largest premier cru holding in the domaine after Les Beaux Monts, and all of Charles Noëllat's Nuits vineyards lay in this northern sector, on the Vosne side of the town.
Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Aux Vignerondes
Nuits-Saint-Georges · 37.80 ares · First vintage 1988
One plot · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The second of the two Nuits premiers crus that came with the Noëllat estate, lying a little south of Aux Boudots in the northern half of the appellation and still well clear of the town. The soil is stonier and shallower than at Boudots, and the wine is drawn tighter, with more evident mineral character where its neighbour gives flesh. In vintages of very small crops it has been folded into the village Nuits-Saint-Georges.
Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Les Narbantons
Savigny-lès-Beaune · 81.02 ares · First vintage 1988
Savigny’s vineyards form a V around the Rhoin, the small river that comes down from Bouilland and runs through the middle of the village. The northern arm, on the Pernand side, faces south. The southern arm, which continues towards Beaune and on which Les Narbantons sits, faces east to north-east at around 250 metres, below Les Jarrons and beside Les Peuillets. The climat covers 9.4828 hectares in all.
The ground on this side is deeper and heavier than on the Pernand slope, a layer of silt over gravel with marl beneath, and it holds water well enough to limit hydric stress in dry years. Les Narbantons is among the firmest and most structured sites in the commune, and the Leroy vines here are very old. Madame Bize-Leroy has often described it as a mini-Corton, a Corton in miniature, which for a Savigny premier cru is a considerable claim and one the wine largely justifies.
Volnay 1er Cru Santenots du Milieu
Meursault · 35.10 ares · First vintage 1989
A quirk of appellation law sits at the heart of this wine. Les Santenots lies within the commune of Meursault, but red wine made there carries the Volnay premier cru appellation while white from the same ground is sold as Meursault. Santenots du Milieu is the heart of the group and the best drained of its sections, on the Volnay boundary, on red iron-rich clay-limestone. The iron gives a wine closer in weight and tannic structure to Pommard than to Volnay, and it is the most reserved of the domaine's Côte de Beaune cuvées. Hail has repeatedly cut production here, in some years to a single barrel.
Villages
Gevrey-Chambertin
Gevrey-Chambertin · 10.95 ares · First vintage 1989
Acquired from Domaine Philippe Rémy, 1989
The smallest holding in the domaine after Pommard Les Trois Follots, yielding well under a barrel in most years, which is why it appears so rarely. It is also the only village wine in the range without a lieu-dit on the label; the other eight are all named parcels.
Chambolle-Musigny Les Fremières
Chambolle-Musigny · 34.99 ares · First vintage 1989
Les Fremières lies east of the village on the lower ground, below Les Noirots and sharing a boundary with the premier cru Les Beaux Bruns. The soil is limestone lightened by gravel and pebbles, which warms earlier in the season than the slope above and gives the wine a mineral edge that has more in common with the crus than the classification implies.
Vosne-Romanée Genaivrières
Vosne-Romanée · 123.31 ares · First vintage 1988
One plot · Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The largest village parcel in the domaine and the closest to its cellars, occupying the flat ground directly below the buildings on the rue de la Fontaine hence the large light-blue marking at the entrance of the Domaine "Les Genaivrieres LEROY"and running east towards the N974. Village land in this part of Vosne sits on deeper soils than the slope above, limestone mixed with clayey marl, with the rock further down and more clay through the profile. It is the sort of site that would normally give a broad, forgiving wine; that it does not is generally put down to the age of the vines.
Nuits-Saint-Georges Aux Allots
Nuits-Saint-Georges · 52.15 ares · First vintage 1988
Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The first of three village lieux-dits in Nuits, all of them in the northern sector on the Vosne side of the town and all from the Noëllat estate. Aux Allots occupies the lower ground below the premiers crus, on deeper colluvial soils carried down off the slope, and it is the most powerful and four-square of the three, needing patience where the others give earlier pleasure. Where volumes are too small to justify separate lots and separate barrels, the three are assembled into a single Nuits-Saint-Georges village bottling, which has been the more frequent arrangement in recent vintages.
Nuits-Saint-Georges Aux Lavières
Nuits-Saint-Georges · 69.16 ares · First vintage 1988
Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The largest of the three Nuits village parcels and the one with the most distinctive ground. The climat runs to 5.9717 hectares, alongside Aux Réas in Vosne-Romanée and bordering the premier cru Aux Murgers. Its name comes from laves, the flat limestone slabs cut here for roofing and for walls, and the vines that replaced the quarries sit on markedly calcareous soil as a result. That shows in the glass, in a wine usually described in terms of stone and graphite well ahead of fruit.
Nuits-Saint-Georges Bas de Combe
Nuits-Saint-Georges · 14.54 ares · First vintage 1988
Acquired from Domaine Charles Noëllat, 1988
The smallest of the Nuits holdings, sitting at the northern edge of the appellation on the Vosne boundary, at the foot of the combe on the stony fan deposits laid down where the valley opens onto the Côte. That position makes it more exposed and better drained than the two lieux-dits to the south, and also the most variable of the three from one year to the next.
Pommard Les Vignots
Pommard · 125.99 ares · First vintage 1988
Leroy family vines, 1988
The largest holding in the Côte de Beaune and one of the parcels the family already owned when the domaine was formed. Les Vignots lies high on the slope above the premier cru band, on thin stony soil that drains freely and holds little water, which makes it a cool site and a late ripener. In the warm vintages of the past two decades that has told steadily in its favour, and the wine has a habit of overachieving against its classification.
Pommard Les Trois Follots
Pommard · 6.82 ares
The smallest parcel in the domaine, at under seven ares, which is a fraction of a barrel. Les Trois Follots sits at the western exit of the village at the bottom of the slope, at much the same altitude as Les Rugiens Bas and immediately north of that climat, so it shares the low-lying, iron-tinged character of that corner of Pommard without the classification.
Auxey-Duresses Les Lavières
Auxey-Duresses · 23.45 ares
Planted to Chardonnay, and until now the least visible wine in the range. Auxey-Duresses is where Maison Leroy has had its cellars since François Leroy founded the house in 1868, and the commune remains the family's base in the Côte de Beaune, so the parcel sits at the historical centre of the business rather than at its edge.
The wine has been sold exclusively in Japan, through Takashimaya, which is why it is absent from almost every reference work and auction record. Its release to wider markets in 2026 is the first change to the composition of the selection in many years.
Regional
Bourgogne Blanc
Chardonnay · 35.19 ares
The rarest wine in the range to appear on any market. The location of the parcel is not recorded in any source consulted.
Bourgogne Rouge
Pinot Noir · 74.11 ares
The reputation of the wine, however, rests largely on a single vintage, a one-off cuvée.
In 2004 Madame Bize-Leroy declassified the entire red production of both Domaine Leroy and Domaine d’Auvenay, collapsing the whole range into five cuvées. The Bourgogne Rouge absorbed Clos de Vougeot and every Côte de Beaune holding from grand cru down to village. The whites were bottled as normal. Her stated reason was the fruit, a crop of unripe grapes in a year marked by hail, rot and the pyrazine taint widely blamed on ladybirds. Following her husband Marcel Bize passing that year, Madame Bize-Leroy fell into a serious depression, and she could not bring her usual attention to the wines despite having a capable team in place. It was a one-off, and it has never been repeated.
Bourgogne Aligoté
Aligoté · 257.91 ares · Multiple plots
The second largest single holding in the domaine after Les Beaux Monts, and by a wide margin the largest at regional level. Aligoté farmed to this standard produces a wine some way outside the variety's usual register, and it has built a following of its own, though it remains less hunted than the Aligoté of Domaine d'Auvenay. Viticulture is the same at both domaines but winemaking and consequently styles differ: the Domaine Leroy Aligoté has fermentation and élevage both in tank, whereas d'Auvenay is 100% new oak.
Coteaux Bourguignons Blanc et Rouge
26.27 ares blanc · 52.29 ares rouge
The two smallest cuvées in the range, and the two least seen. The appellation was created in 2011 to replace Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire, so these entries reflect an administrative reclassification rather than any new planting, and it permits Pinot Noir, Gamay, Chardonnay and Aligoté, singly or blended. Both are sold exclusively in Japan through Takashimaya, the arrangement that until 2026 also covered the Auxey-Duresses Les Lavières, which is why they are effectively unknown outside that market.
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