From: Cercot, Cote Chalonnaise, Burgundy, France
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Taste & Critical Acclaim: 16.5 points out of 20
Full bottle 1,297 g. Certified organic (Ecocert). Hand-picked. Made by Martine, Pierre and (son) Lucas d’Heilly-Huberdeau.
This is a terrific burgundy at a terrific price! What a find! What a gem! If only this was available in the US, I'd have scooped it up as a wine of the week. It's everything you want a Pinot Noir to be – the prettiest fruit, pure and glad and transparent; sylph-like tannins; a palimpsest of autumn and mushrooms. A wine that is both gentle and insistent. Full of sap and life. Lovely, mellifluous length. VGV (TC)
*This review was written last year (2024), though it wouldn’t be the first time we discovered, carried, and introduced a wine here in Seattle and subsequently went unrecognized for it, ha. As far as taste goes, I adored this wine as soon as it hit the glass. The clarity and purity of perfectly ripened red fruit shone wonderfully and transparently over a layer of mineral and umami undertones. - E. Lyman, Champion Wine Cellars. 04/2025
Pairing: This is one of those wines you’ll adore alongside appetizers, by itself, or with dinner. Some first course ideas for pairing include serving this with crispy mushroom focaccia, siu yuk (crispy pork belly), smoked gouda or gruyere flatbreads, stuffed mushroom caps, chicken or pork yakitori, fromage and charcuterie boards, and even Cubano sliders. As a main course pairing, you could easily serve this alongside miso-butter chicken, bangers with mashed winter squash and fried sage, grilled or roasted salmon, ssamjang pork meatballs, paprika chicken and potatoes, poulet roti with gravy and butter served with a baguette to sop everything up, and mushroom medley risotto.
About the winery. Many thanks to our friends at Wine Traditions Ltd. for the following information. The Domaine du Chétif Quart is a family domain of six hectares in the Côte Chalonnaise region of Burgundy. The family home and winery are in the small hamlet of Cercot at the foot of Mont Avril, just south of the Givry appellation.
Most of the domain’s vineyards are on the slopes of Mont Avril between 300 and 400 meters in altitude. Lucas D’Heilly Huberdeau took over his family’s domain in 2019 and, with the vintage 2021, changed the domain name from D’Heilly Huberdeau to Chétif Quart, reflecting the domain’s “lieu dit”. Lucas’s parents, Pierre D’Heilly and Martine Huberdeau, both professors of Ecology at the Sorbonne in Paris, arrived in Cercot in 1978 to, as one says, ‘practice what they preached’.
Since the beginning, Pierre and Martine have farmed organically, making their estate one of the earliest organic estates in Burgundy (1978!). Lucas divides his time by working half of the day in the vineyards and winery before going to his medical practice in the afternoons as a general practitioner. He has carried on his parents' work in the vineyards, and after creating 50 bird shelters in the vineyards, he has received certification from the government as a protected bird sanctuary. The harvest is gathered by hand, and the fermentations occur with indigenous yeasts.
Many thanks to the winery for providing the expanded information below on its terroir, philosophy, and viticultural practices. We’ve condensed the information from their website to what you see here.
