MICHELIN Grape Selection Burgundy: Three-Grape Estates

The Nine Three-Grape Estates

Nine estates hold the top tier. Two, Leroy and d'Auvenay, belong to Lalou Bize-Leroy. Each earns its place for different reasons.

Cécile Tremblay, Domaine Cécile Tremblay (Morey-Saint-Denis)

Cécile Tremblay reclaimed her family's Morey and Vosne parcels in 2003 and built one of modern Burgundy's most sought-after names. Allocations are tight and the wines rarely reach the open market.

Loïc Dugat-Py, Dugat-Py (Gevrey-Chambertin)

Loïc Dugat-Py, who took the reins from his father Bernard in 2015, farms old vines at tiny yields for some of Gevrey-Chambertin's most concentrated reds. Demand far outstrips the small quantities made.

Christophe Roumier, Domaine Georges Roumier (Chambolle-Musigny)

Christophe Roumier has run Domaine Georges Roumier since 1990; his Bonnes-Mares and Musigny sit among Burgundy's blue-chip collectibles, where provenance and allocation history matter as much as the vintage.

Bertrand de Villaine & Perrine Fenal, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (Vosne-Romanée)

The most famous name in Burgundy, now co-directed by Bertrand de Villaine and Perrine Fenal. A Three-Grape nod changes nothing about the near-impossible allocations, but it formalizes the domaine's place atop the hierarchy.

Lalou Bize-Leroy, Domaine Leroy (Vosne-Romanée)

Lalou Bize-Leroy's Domaine Leroy is Vosne-Romanée's second Three-Grape address, farmed biodynamically at some of the lowest yields in the region. Scarcity and pricing already sit at the very top of the market.

Lalou Bize-Leroy, Domaine d'Auvenay (Saint-Romain)

Domaine d'Auvenay is Bize-Leroy's tiny personal estate in Saint-Romain, the source of her rarest, hardest-to-find bottlings, and the second of her two estates in the top tier.

Raphaël Coche, Coche-Dury (Meursault)

Raphaël Coche has taken the reins from his father Jean-François at the Meursault benchmark. Coche-Dury's whites are among white Burgundy's most chased lots.

Thomas Bouley, Jean-Marc & Thomas Bouley (Volnay)

Jean-Marc and Thomas Bouley bring Volnay into the top tier with precise, ageworthy reds. A quieter name than its neighbors, the estate may reward buyers reading a step ahead.

Olivier Lamy, Hubert Lamy (Saint-Aubin)

Olivier Lamy's high-density plantings redefined Saint-Aubin, long a value hunting-ground now recognized at the very top. For now, its cellar-worthy whites are still priced below the marquee villages.

How MICHELIN's Grapes Differ from Appellations and Scores

The MICHELIN Grape Selection Burgundy does three things at once. It borrows MICHELIN's familiar tiered visual grammar, applies it to wine estates rather than restaurants, and asks buyers to think across vintages rather than through a single bottle note.

That last point is central for en primeur-minded collectors. A bottle score can be exacting, especially when tied to a specific vintage and cuvée. A vineyard classification can be precise in geography. But neither quite answers the practical question many buyers ask when the allocation email arrives: do I trust this producer across the cellar, across weather, across years?

MICHELIN's top wine distinction is framed around estate confidence. Three MICHELIN Grapes is the top tier, reserved for producers whose wines earn confidence across vintages. That is not the same as saying every bottle is equal, or that vintage no longer matters. Burgundy would not permit such laziness. It means MICHELIN wants the estate's consistency, identity and technical command to be read as the core message.

For buyers used to cross-checking The Wine Advocate, Burghound, Decanter, merchant notes and sommelier recommendations, this new symbol will not end the conversation. It may shorten the first step. If a domaine appears with Three Grapes, the collector can then move more quickly to the questions that actually determine a purchase: which cuvée, which vintage, which provenance, which price, and whether the bottle has a place in the cellar rather than just on a trophy shelf.

The Other 85 Estates, and the Collector Read

The Three-Grape tier will attract the first wave of attention, but the rest of the inaugural list may prove just as useful for buyers who like to read one step ahead of the obvious. The Two-Grape, One-Grape and Selected estates, with their appellations and tiers:

Burgundy collectors rarely buy by tier alone. A Two-Grape estate in an appellation you already cellar may matter more to your buying life than a Three-Grape name you will never be offered. The Selected category can still point toward domaines worth watching, giving the list a dynamic quality rather than a frozen hierarchy.

The presence of Côte Chalonnaise names, including Bruno Lorenzon in Mercurey, Dureuil-Janthial in Rully and Maxime Cottenceau in Montagny, also prevents the inaugural Burgundy selection from reading only as a Côte d'Or roll call. For travelers, that widens the map. For collectors, it invites a more disciplined look at producer identity beyond the villages with the loudest auction-room echo.

The market reaction should be read carefully. A Three-Grape designation will not create bottles where allocations are already tight, and it should not tempt anyone to ignore vintage, storage or provenance. Burgundy punishes shortcuts. Still, symbols matter. Restaurants will use them, merchants will cite them, and collectors will file them away alongside their own tasting notes.

The MICHELIN Grape Selection Burgundy arrives as a new layer rather than a new law. Its best use is comparative: place the grape tier beside appellation, producer history, critic commentary, cellar need and the actual bottle in front of you. If MICHELIN continues to apply the same discipline as the program expands through wine, the first Burgundy list will be remembered not only for its nine Three-Grape estates, but for changing how quickly a producer's name can travel from a cellar door in the Côte d'Or to a collector's buying decision.