“We are lazy, we don’t interfere with nature. My aim is to express the vintage and the terroir through my wines, not to express myself. Some people say we are inconsistent. To me this is the greatest possible compliment” – Laurent Ponsot
The importance of Ponsot stretches back to 1872 with William Ponsot who first purchased vineyards around Morey St Denis. Being among the first domaines to practice estate bottling in the 1930s, another first they implemented were their recognition of the importance of clones and clonal selection, and as such today many of the important Pinot Noir clones today originated from their own vineyards.
The dynamic and passionate Laurent Ponsot brought about organic and viticultural and even natural practices, yet would always deny belonging to any of the camps. Ageing is done controversially in very old barrels of ten years or more. What this leads to are wines of great concentration and are always impressive to drink, with Robert Parker even going so far as to say “the wines from this domaine can be absolutely staggering … These are perhaps the most powerful wines in Burgundy, profoundly impressive and proven to age magnificently”.