Some Fridays you simply drive. This morning I left Beaune just as the boulangeries were waking, and five kilometres down the Route des Grands Crus the walls of Château de Pommard rose out of the mist like a secret being kept for three centuries. Behind those stones lies Clos Marey-Monge — a walled monopole of roughly 20 hectares, one of the largest single-owned vineyard plots in all of Burgundy, and the only clos of its kind in Pommard. The château's story began in 1726, and since 2015 these very Climats have been UNESCO World Heritage.
And the timing? Deliciously wicked. It is the first Friday of September, les vendanges are barely ten days away, and the Pinot Noir hangs in the rows heavy, black, and impatient. The whole clos smells of ripe fruit over crushed limestone. You don't visit Burgundy this week — you feel it holding its breath.
Six-thirty in the morning, before the first visitor, I slipped into the clos in an ivory silk slip dress and let the dew decide how soaked my hem would get. The mist was still lifting between the rows — that soft grey veil Burgundy does better than anywhere on earth — and I cradled a cluster of Pinot Noir that was days from the press. The skins were taut, the light pure gold, and for a moment the only sound was my own breath in the vines.
By afternoon I had descended into the vaulted cellars beneath the château — cool, ancient stone, and rows of French oak barrels marching off into candlelit symmetry. The Signature Tasting poured six reds, including three vintages of the Clos Marey-Monge Monopole, and I sat there in burgundy silk swirling the 2023 like a question I wasn't ready to answer. The notes came slowly, then all at once: blackberry and blueberry lifted by streaks of char, smoke, and cut stone — the clos speaking in its own accent. The brand-new 2024 vintage was unveiled at the château just last Friday. I may have lingered longer than strictly necessary. I regret nothing.
When the light went long I changed into a deep plum silk gown and claimed the terrace. Below me the whole Côte de Beaune turned the colour of the wine in my glass — gold melting into violet, vineyard rows folding into the dusk like sheet music. I raised the Clos Marey-Monge Monopole to the valley and to whoever was lucky enough to be watching. This is what Burgundy does to you at the end of a September day: it makes a toast feel like a promise.
💫 Burgundy whispered, I obeyed. Come for the monopole, stay for the mist — and next Friday, mon chéri, I'll be somewhere the vines grow bolder. Guess if you dare.
Sources: Château de Pommard — Vivant Micault 2023 · Clos Marey-Monge Monopole 2023 — A Vintage Shaped by Nature and Mastery · Signature Wine Tasting at Clos Marey-Monge · Wine-Searcher — Clos Marey-Monge tasting notes
