Lucien Le Moine – Bourgogne Rouge 2015 – Burgundy France

Lucien Le Moine exists to make grand cru: around a hundred barrels a year, one to three per vineyard, from some of the most coveted sites in the Côte d'Or. The Bourgogne Rouge is the rare bottle that lets you taste that cellar's methods without the grand cru price.

🍷 At a Glance

• Grape: 100% Pinot Noir
• Appellation: Bourgogne
• Region: Côte d'Or, Burgundy
• Vintage: 2015
• Producer: Lucien Le Moine
• Winemaker: Mounir Saouma
• House: A two-person micro-négociant in Beaune, founded 1999, capped at roughly 100 barrels a year across as many as fifty different crus
• Élevage: Long ageing on full fine lees with no racking, no fining and no filtration; malolactic deliberately delayed so the wine is protected by its own carbon dioxide rather than added sulphur
• Bottling: By gravity
• Serving temperature: 15–17°C
• Style: Dry red wine

👃 Tasting Notes & Experience

• Color: Bright, medium ruby
• Nose: Red fruit with the depth and savour long lees ageing brings
• Palate: Fuller and more textured than most Bourgogne Rouge, thanks to the élevage
• Structure: Fine tannins with fresh acidity
• Finish: Long for its appellation

Mounir Saouma learned to make wine in the vineyards of a Trappist monastery in the Middle East in the late 1980s, then studied oenology at Montpellier and spent six years working in Burgundy, elsewhere in France and in California. The house name is personal rather than historical: Mounir means light in Arabic, of which Lucien is the French equivalent, and Le Moine — the monk — refers to those monastery years. He and Rotem Brakin founded the business in 1999 and still run it between the two of them, buying finished must from growers they know and raising it with almost no intervention. Critics sometimes call the approach modernist; Saouma's own view is that leaving wine on its lees without racking is as traditional as Burgundy gets. 2015 was a warm, generous vintage that gave real substance even at regional level.

❤️ Why We Love It

• The same hands and the same cellar discipline as the grand crus
• From a house that makes only about 30,000 bottles a year in total
• A generous vintage, at regional-wine money

🍽️ Food Pairing Ideas

• Roast chicken, duck and charcuterie
• Mushroom dishes and root vegetables
• Soft and semi-hard cheeses

👤 Who This Wine Is For

✓ Anyone curious about Lucien Le Moine without committing to a grand cru
✓ Drinkers who like texture and lees character in their Pinot Noir
✕ Not ideal if you want a light, simple everyday Burgundy