A monopole since 1141
In the early 12th century the vineyard was known as the Climat de la Forge. In 1141 the Cistercian nuns of the abbey of Notre-Dame de Tart, a daughter house of Cîteaux, acquired it and gave it their name. They kept it without a break until the Revolution, when it was seized and sold. In 1791 it passed to the Marey-Monge family, wine merchants who bought the whole of Romanée-Saint-Vivant that same year. In 1855 Jules Lavalle placed the Clos de Tart alone in the top class of Morey's wines.
In 1932, during the Depression, the clos was sold at auction to the Mommessin family, merchants from the Mâconnais. The appellation was recognised on 4 January 1939. Sylvain Pitiot ran the estate from 1996 to 2015. The Pinault family's Artémis group agreed to buy it in 2017 and took over in 2018. Its wine estates, run as Artémis Domaines, also include Château Latour and Château Grillet. Of the five grand cru monopoles, it is the largest. The others are Romanée-Conti and La Tâche of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, La Romanée of Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair and La Grande Rue, all in Vosne-Romanée.
The clos and its soils
The Clos de Tart is a single rectangle of about 300 by 250 metres, in the middle of the slope, between 269 and 302 metres. It faces east-south-east and sits inside a dry-stone wall 1.2 kilometres long, fully restored in 2006. To the north lies the Clos des Lambrays, most of which belongs to Domaine des Lambrays. To the south lies Bonnes-Mares. Further north come Clos Saint-Denis and Clos de la Roche, two more grands crus of Morey-Saint-Denis. The soil is clay and limestone, with 40 to 120 centimetres of scree over the limestone bedrock. Detailed studies of the soils and subsoils show several kinds of limestone. They mark out twelve sectors, each picked separately, and the upper half holds more marl.
Rows that run north to south
Most vines on the Côte d'Or are planted in rows running down the slope. At the Clos de Tart the rows have long run north to south, across the slope. The estate gives two reasons. The rows hold the soil in place during winter rains and so limit erosion. The bunches also take the sun on one side in the morning and on the other in the afternoon, which helps them ripen and protects them from scorching on hot summer days. The price is a steep sideways tilt that makes machines hard to use, so most of the work is done by hand. Replanting uses massal selections from the estate's own vines, kept in a nursery on site.
How the wine is made
Under the Mommessin family the vineyard was converted to organic farming, and biodynamic practices began in 2016. Artémis extended them to the whole vineyard, with Biodyvin certification in 2019. A new cellar came into use with the 2019 vintage: fourteen tapered wooden vats of different sizes replaced seven stainless steel tanks, so that each sector can ferment on its own. The grapes are sorted on a table, and fermentation relies on native yeasts. The estate keeps a large share of whole bunches, about a third in the lower, more limestone sectors and two thirds in the upper, marlier ones. The wine then spends about eighteen months in barrel, roughly nine as separate lots and nine as the final blend.
La Forge de Tart and the village wine
Vines in the clos younger than about 25 years usually go into La Forge de Tart, a Morey-Saint-Denis Premier Cru, since a grand cru may be declassified to that level. Its name recalls the old Climat de la Forge. It comes mainly from three parcels, its grapes are usually destemmed, and it reaches its peak sooner than the grand cru. Since the 2018 vintage the estate has also made a Morey-Saint-Denis village wine from young vines planted to replace old or unproductive ones across the clos. These young vines will one day feed the grand cru itself. Both wines sit within our premier cru Burgundy and village selections when we have them.
Style and keeping
Burgundy's interprofession describes a ruby wine, sometimes darker, with strawberry and violet, both robust and charming. It is quite tannic when young, then softens with age and gains in complexity. It is usually given ten to fifteen years of keeping, and twenty in great years. Serve older bottles at 15 to 16°C, with feathered game, a rib steak, braised veal or lamb. Production averaged 198 hectolitres a year from 2017 to 2021, about 26,000 bottles. The wines above are the Clos de Tart bottles in our cellar. See also the other grands crus of Burgundy and the full range of Burgundy wines.
