Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair

The Free Bacchus Story

La Romanée is the smallest appellation in France. Eight thousand four hundred and fifty-two square metres, a single vineyard owned by a single family, producing a few hundred cases in a good year.

Louis-Michel Liger-Belair took over the family holdings in 2000 and converted them to biodynamics, certified through Ecocert and Biodyvin since 2008 alongside AB organic. Before that the fruit had largely been sold or leased out; the domaine as it exists now is barely twenty-five years old despite the family's presence in Vosne-Romanée since 1815.

The family name is old and the working domaine is not. The Liger-Belairs have been in Vosne-Romanée since 1815, but for most of that time the fruit was sold off or the land was leased out.

The wines sit alongside Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's in price and in the estimation of collectors. Both estates farm biodynamically, on adjacent slopes, which is a reasonably strong signal about what the very top of Burgundy has concluded.

Nobody should read this as a purchase recommendation. It's a data point about where careful farming has ended up.