Despite owning some of the best terroirs for Pinot Noir in Burgundy, the Ligner family didn’t start out by being winemakers. Originally selling to negociants - wine merchants who assembled harvested grapes from various domaines and sold under their own name - the arrival of Virgil Lignier-Michelot in the early 1990s changed all that. Twenty years later, this very young domaine is now regarded among the very best in the Cotes de Nuits.

Known as one of “the haute couture of winemakers”, Virgil operates very small parcels with low yields for exceptional quality. He oversees the production of his 60,000 annual bottles himself and, like many viticulturists of his generation, sees the benefits of organic farming. His first major change once he took over the domaine was to limit, then stop, the use of synthetic pesticides in favour of natural pesticides. He added a state of the art winery that now allows him to work with temperature control and to gain a very gentle extraction of tannins for all his wines. His changes have been effective: wines show great energy with remarkable perfume, beautiful fine tannins and very silky structure. They are wines which are often very seductive at a young age which also clearly have the potential for ageing superbly.

With Burgundy prices for certain wines having more than doubled between 2017 and 2019, the time to invest is now. Pinot Noir particularly is enjoying its time to shine. Lignier-Michelot 2017 Chambolle Musigny went on sale in bond at €407 a case at its release in January 2019 and by April of the same year was already commanding prices upwards of €70 a bottle (or €840 a case, over double the release price). Investors might like to note that in the same time frame from January 2017-2019, Italian and Bordeaux fine wine values rose by “just” 25%.