William Kelley's Notes on the 2025 Vintage - Domaine William Kelley

NOTES ON THE 2025 VINTAGE

The 2025 vintage makes an inflection point in the development of our project. In 2023, I became the proprietor of just under a quarter of a hectare of vineyards; by 2024, we were working with 0.8 hectares; but in 2025, our team farmed fully 2.5 hectares (that expansion continues in 2026 and into 2027). For the first time, domaine wines occupied a substantial place in the cellar, and for the first time, we were able to work with meaningful quantities of fruit farmed according to our own agronomic principles. The results encourage me in my convictions, and they are unquestionably the finest set of red wines that we have produced to date and among the very best white wines too.

            For much of the growing season, the 2025 vintage was picture perfect, the clone of 1865—probably the best vintage in Burgundy’s last 200 or so years. An intense heatwave in the first half of August, however, complicated matters, inducing heat stress and sunburn in vineyards managed in the “normal” way (low trimming of the canopy, compacted soils, de-leafing in the fruiting zone). Then, regular and recurring late August and early September showers delivered over 100 mm of precipitation.

Many opted to pick before the rain, but much of this fruit had been concentrated by dehydration rather than ripening, exhibiting unripe tannin, high sugar levels and high acidity. We opted to wait, beginning the harvest in earnest on September 1, though some early-maturing white parcels were picked before. If we could do this, it’s partly because we held our nerve; but it’s also because, with high canopies that shade the fruiting zone, living soils and unstressed vines, we are confident that our grapes will exhibit fresh flavors even when fully ripe.

The style of the resulting wines is hard to categorize with reference to other vintages. If anything, I’m tempted to compare them to the 2002s, even if they’re the result of an entirely different growing season. In 2025, late season rainfall restored balance to dehydrated fruit and completed the ripening cycle; in 2002, sunny, windy Fall days concentrated the crop and lent it a clarity and density the year would have otherwise lacked. The reds exhibit classical alcohol levels between 12.5 to 13.5%, ripe acids and velvety tannins, with exceptional site differentiation. The whites are dense, aromatic and often rather muscular. Both colors are already unusually harmonious and integrated.

Of course, the vintage itself is only part of the story. Incremental but still appreciable progress in the vines and cellar continues. Even my first vineyards, which I have fully farmed since Fall 2022, continue show meaningful gains each year, as we reap the fruits of pruning to respect sap flow, soil decompaction, the replacement of missing vines, and increasing soil vitality. During harvest, a bigger picking team and improved logistics helps to ensure that everything is picked exactly when we want it picked. And in the winery, we continue to strive to be ever more precise, and ever more respectful of the wines’ differing origins.

Since the first releases of our project, we have kept prices stable every year. With the 2025s, the wines produced from domaine fruit increase by an increment. That reflects the reality of the costs of production: at 1,500 man hours per hectare, and cultivating by horse, while working with almost exclusively very old, low-yielding vines, it costs us more to grow Aligoté than it does to buy Meursault grapes. As the quality of the vineyard work starts to show in the glass very clearly, it also feels like the appropriate moment to make the distinction clearer—even if the négoce and the domaine exist synergistically, and we continue to strive just as hard to elevate the grapes we buy to the highest possible level. This readjustment made, the same stable, long-term vision with regards to pricing and distribution will continue to prevail.  

NOTES ON THE 2025 WINES

The domaine

The 2025 vintage marks our first real exploration of Pommard’s different terroirs. The Noizons, from vines planted in 1935 and 1949, picked at derisory yields of eight hectoliters per hectare, is brooding, primordial and immensely concentrated (but not extracted), underlining the fact that this is by some measure the finest communal lieu-dit in Pommard: the acquisition of a neighboring parcel means that in 2026, we should be blessed with more than the 300 or so bottles we made in 2025. The inaugural vintage of the Pommard 1er Cru Le Clos des Saussilles is only some 50 meters away, but it is utterly suave and melting, from a small, south-facing walled vineyard of 56-year-old vines that touches the Clos des Mouches. Again, the crop was small: 18 hectoliters per hectare.

The Pommard 1er Cru Clos de la Chanière, at 14 hectoliters per hectare, might well be the domaine’s most uneconomically viable vineyard, yet its sensual, fragrant, violet- and rose-inflected palate more than justifies the effort that this unmechanizable, old parcel demands: it refutes every stereotype of Pommard. And the Pommard 1er Cru Rugiens du Bas, planted in 1943 and 1949 and cropped at 12 hectoliters per hectare, tastes like the blood of the vine itself, with unctuous density and a dark-fruited, nuanced bouquet that only very old vines seem to consistently deliver. Our white field blend of Aligoté, complemented by Pinot Blanc and Gris, derives from the Clos des Aures high above the village of Pommard, and in 2025 it will be bottled apart for the first time. Its ethereal aromas of honeyed Asian pears and white flowers and delicate, satiny texture render it remarkably sui generis, with little in common with our other Aligoté wines.

            Moving south, the Beaune 1er Cru Les Chouacheux is the best we have produced, reflecting all the attention that has been poured into farming this site over the last five years. That’s above all seen in the energy of the flavors and the quality of the tannins. The Côte de Beaune Les Pierres Blanches is more brambly and autumnal, more delicate than the authoritative 2023. Two new wines follow, both from the lieu-dit Les Languettes in the Corton Grand Cru: the red, rich and enveloping, from vines planted in 1953, is the other side of the coin of the unctuous, muscular, flinty but honeyed Corton-Charlemagne, the most dramatic and powerful white wine we have produced. In the Côte de Nuits, we also produced our first wine from the monopole Clos du Fixey for the first time. Perfumed and melting, it is the most immediate red in the range and is ideally suited to restaurant consumption. As we graft the parcel over to high quality proprietary genetic material from Vosne-Romanée, we expect this site to deliver more density and depth. 

The maison

The négoce range begins with the Bourgogne Cuvée Marey Monge, a wine that is neither entirely négoce (it includes from a parcel of old vines in Pommard that we farm) nor really Bourgogne, as the domaine fruit is complemented by grapes from 100-year-old vines in Ladoix, declassified premier cru fruit and the press wine from a number of cuvées including the Clos de Vougeot. Going forward, this reflects the sort of synergistic relationship between maison and domaine that I would like to explore more widely.

The communal appellations in red include the Gevrey-Chambertin Tête de Cuvée, a blend of our usual source of Aux Etelois combined with very old vine fruit from Les Crais, a chalky site adjacent to La Justice. Dark-fruited, spicy and supple, both sites deliver a more elegant visiton of Gevrey. From 2026, Aux Etelois becomes a domaine wine, so this bottling marks the end of one chapter. The Chambolle-Musigny Les Fouchères is as consistent as ever—pure, precise, perfumed—while the Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Charmes is broader, more structured and more exotic, with oriental spices and rose notes.

Moving to the Côte de Beaune, the Volnay 1er Cru Carelles sur la Chapelle is deep, concentrated and vibrant, our best to date from this parcel, planted in 1969 and always low yielding. The Beaune 1er Cru Les Epenottes is plush and generous, whereas the Beaune 1er Cru Aux Cras offers a more refined, ethereal, more intellectual vision of the appellation. The red range concludes in the Côte de Nuits, however, with an elegantly muscular Clos de Vougeot, from vines planted in 1925, an irresistible opportunity once I had seen the quality of the fruit.

On the white side of the ledger, the Bourgogne Aligoté numbers among my favorites to date, with the usual density and tension (12.7% alcohol, pH 3.16) but also an expression of fruit that is rare from a variety that, for all its merits, is very malleable in the winemaker’s hand. This year includes fruit from vines planted in 1928 in lieu-dit Le Pontot in Meursault that will shortly become a domaine parcel. From further up the slope, our Merusault Les Pelles, as ever only one barrel and a wine we seldom release, is joined by Meursault Les Chevalières, one of the village’s finest, and most naturally incisive, hillside sites. From around the hill, the Auxey-Duresses Les Hautés might be my favorite communal bottling this year. A kissing cousin of Corton-Charlemagne, a new bottling of Ladoix 1er Cru Les Gréchons, a terroir I’ve long wanted to vinify, concludes the range with density, tension and chalky extract.