Maxime Graillot’s estate Crozes comes from vineyards near the village of Beaumont-Monteux, only a few kilometres from the Domaine Alain Graillot vines. The lieux-dits are Les Bosquets and Les Pichères. Here, in the most southeasterly part of the appellation, the fast-draining soils mainly comprise alluvial stones and gravel. They are low in clay and, in fact, very similar to the Domaine Alain Graillot soils in Les Chênes Verts, just to the north. Planted throughout the 1980s, the vines are now managed organically.
The fermentations are entirely natural, and Graillot Jr. uses only a small bunch component, usually in the realm of 20-30%. It is, therefore, a wine that tends to ‘come around’ earlier than the 100% whole-bunch wines that carry the Alain Graillot name. The 2022 fermented in concrete vats and was racked into one-, two- and three-year-old Burgundy barrels—purchased from some of the top estates—and a 12-hectolitre Stockinger cask. There is also a tiny quotient of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Maxime has judged this beautifully. It’s a fleshy, elegant, engaging Crozes with liquorice and tapenade-infused succulence before a long, mineral close.