Pommard is the first village you come to as you head south out of Beaune. If you take the main N74 then it will appear on the right, with the Chateau de Pommard facing you surrounded behind its walled vineyards. If instead you take the Route des Grands Crus, which is the minor local road that is the first exit off the roundabout, then you drive for scarcely a mile between some of the best known Pommard vineyards before reaching the village.

Pommard is renowned for the forcefulness of its wines which is a little curious in that the adjoining village of Volnay is equally renowned for the relative femininity of its wines, yet both generalisations are accurate and once again demonstrate the close link between flavours and terroir.

Domaine LeJeune traces its roots in the village back to the late 18th Century and in the mid-19th Century it amounted to some 20 hectares. Today in the ownership of Monsieur Jullien de Pommerol, himself a former Professor of Oenology at Beaune’s Lycee Viticole, the Domaine owns 6.6 hectares of vines including some of the best known Premier Cru vineyards in the Appellation. Between 1977 and 1990 the Domaine gradually switched over from bulk sales of grapes to Domaine bottling. Since then there has been a steady re-investment in new equipment to improve the quality of the wines and much of the day to day work was recently taken over by Aubert Lefas, one of M Jullien de Pommerol’s sons in law. The Domaine has a traditional approach to its vinfication and makes wines that have good ageing potential. Their wines tend towards hardness in their youth but soften out into lovely examples with a few years of cellaring. One of the features of the Domaine is that it is possible to still buy older vintages in very small quantities, giving us the unusual opportunity to try fully mature bottles of almost all of their wines. They also have some interesting viticultural memorabilia, including the oldest traditional fermentation vat in Burgundy.

The village of Pommard is very traditional. There is a small Hotel with a terrace restaurant on the main road and there is a restaurant degustation immediately opposite, but aside from this the rest of the village seems to be devoted to wine growing. Domaine LeJeune has some lovely old buildings facing the church in the main square and they plan to convert an outbuilding into their new tasting rooms in the near future. Of their wines, Les Rugiens is only made in tiny quantities, while there are greater stocks of L’Argillieres and Les Poutres and they also have a Bourgogne Rouge and Blanc.