Domaine Henri Gouges
Burgundy
Côte de Nuits
Henri Gouges inherited 9 hectares of prime Nuits-St-Georges vineyards just after the First World War and expanded his holdings significantly between 1920 and 1934. Today, the domaine includes 14.5 hectares, including seven of the best-positioned 1er crus.
Along with Marquis d’Angerville and a few other domaines, he started bottling his own wines in 1933 and marketing them directly to his clients. Henri strongly believed in low yields and was obsessed with controlling them. This philosophy has been passed down to the current generation running the domaine, and Domaine Henri Gouges has since been famous for making consistently great wines, as well as for its innovations.
Since its founding in 1925, Domaine Henri Gouges has produced classic Nuits-St-Georges wines that respect the various terroirs. Today, the domaine is run by Henri’s grandchildren, Pierre and Christian, along with Pierre’s son Gregory, and now Antoine who is mainly in charge of winemaking.
One of the practices introduced by the domaine in 1977 was planting rye grass between the rows of vines, which has proven to have many advantages.
Since 2008, the domaine has been treated exclusively organically, and since 2007, a new modern cuverie has been in use. The winemaking is traditional for top Burgundy classics: there is severe sorting before complete destemming of the bunches. After relatively long cold maceration, fermentation takes place with only natural yeasts, at a low temperature (max 29°C). After fermentation finishes, the wines are kept in the tanks at 28°C for an additional 9-10 days to extract more color and tannins. Next, the wines are transferred to oak barrels, 15-20% of which are new. The wines are racked after malolactic fermentation, usually between spring and summer, and the different cuvées are separately blended in vats to ensure homogeneous wines. The wines then return to barrels where they stay until bottling—normally 18 months after the vintage.
The 1er crus include some of the very best vineyards in Nuits-St-Georges, namely Les Chaignots, Chêne Carteau, Les Pruliers, the monopole vineyard Clos des Porrets-St-Georges, and a full hectare of each of the appellation’s most famous vineyards—Les Vaucrains and Les Saint-Georges.
This great domaine is one of the very finest in the whole Côte d’Or!
