Domaine Barolet-Pernot

There are parts of the Côte d’Or that have surprisingly remained secret, even after centuries of cultivation. It’s as if local residents at some point banded together to say, let’s keep this magic among ourselves – lest the wider world come and take it away.

Saint-Romain is one of those villages, a sunny amphitheater hidden behind a series of higher hills in the Côte de Beaune. This picturesque hamlet with its high-altitude vines is where the next-generation of native sons have had enough of secrets, and are ready to display their treasures and talents to a wine-thirsty public.

Granted, there have been Barolet family members tilling the racy limestone soils of Saint-Romain since the 1500s. The marriage of Andre Barolet and Huguette Pernot, a talented winemaker in her own right from the sprawling Pernot family in Pernand-Vergelesses, added more land plus a hyphen to the domaine in the late 1950s when family vine growing and winemaking began in earnest.

Yet it is Romain Barolet-Pernot, the family’s fourth generation, who in a few short years has turned this modest winery into one of the region’s up-and-coming stars. The best grapes (usually sold to Olivier Leflaive) came back into the family’s tanks and Francois Freres tonneaux; a more organic approach in the fields has transformed these wines to better reflect Saint-Romain’s fresh, high-altitude terroir, like a polished mirror.

Domaine Barolet-Pernot remains a micro-domaine, with just a few acres of land in both Saint-Romain and Pernand-Vergelesses, and some selections can be limited to a single barrel. But what Romain and his team do produce is worth seeking out, to discover the intensity and joyful vibrancy of the real Saint-Romain that’s finally out of the shadows.