As old as the Clos de Vougeot, The Clos Blanc de Vougeot was Cîteaux Abbey’s song of praise. The monks planted the first vines nine centuries ago, and the white wine pressed from the golden grapes filled the abbey-church’s cruets for almost 700 years. Such precious drops of gold, blinding and rare, are like an island of Chardonnay in an ocean of Pinot Noir... A single violin at the heart of an orchestra.
The Clos Blanc de Vougeot used to be known as the Petit Clos Blanc de Cîteaux, or simply Vougeot’s white vineyard. Like the Clos de Vougeot, it was founded by the monks of Cîteaux, which was constructed on the nearby plain in 1098. Saint Bernard was almost certainly present at the first harvests in Vougeot, which date back to 1110.
This vineyard has always been planted with white grapes, a tradition started when the Cîteaux monks planted the forerunners of today’s Chardonnay to produce a white wine for their sacrament.
This walled vineyard is special for another very rare reason. Despite the French Revolution in 1789 when national property was sold off, the Clos Blanc de Vougeot remained a monopole, an undivided property. Nurtured by Jules Ouvrard then Jules Régnier in the 19th Century, it belonged to L’Héritier-Guyot in the 20th Century and now forms a part of the Domaine de la Vougeraie, sole owner of the monopole.