🚨 The best under $20 Pinot Noir we have ever offered? 🚨

08.13.2026

2024 Virely-Rougeot Bourgogne

Release Price: $30.00
SALE Price: $19.99 (net)

Lowest Online Price in the USA!

SALE ends SUNDAY August 16th, 2026

SALE ITEMS THIS WEEK:
$9.99 and it has become our 2nd best selling Chardonnay in the store...
THE rosé of summer 2026

We've told you about this small domaine before. The owners of the property speak almost no English at all, and they also produce wines in extremely minuscule quantities. Minuscule as in some of their wines they make less than 300 bottles per year.

We've actually never been able to send a newsletter out about these wines after 2 years of carrying them until now, as they sold out almost instantly.

I feel like the fact we found these people is almost divine intervention. They were in a booth the size of a small coat closet at the world's second largest wine trade show, mostly meeting with their restaurant and retail clients in Paris. They were kind enough to let us taste some wines three years ago (even though they had none to sell at the time) and we were absolutely floored by the quality.

Their story?

Wine families in Burgundy have generations-long histories to inform their winemaking. Often the style of their wine is determined by the character of the small parcels in their control. With only about 22 acres of vineyards, Virely-Rougeot is small and dedicated to the vines that they have owned for more than a century. Louis Virely set up in Pommard when taking over the domaine of his parents-in-law at the beginning of the 20th Century, and today it's the third generation, Patrick and his wife Virginie, running everything. Though they own some Meursault and Beaune vines (those will be here this fall!!), Pommard has always been their focus and their top vineyards lie within that appellation, one of the southernmost of Côte d'Or red wine vineyards.

Which brings me to today's wine, and a dirty little secret about Burgundy.

Appellation boundaries in Burgundy are drawn by committees, not by soil. The vines don't know where the lines are. And this Bourgogne Pinot Noir is the best example of that I can show you: the parcel it comes from sits at the very edge of the Pommard village appellation. The domaine's own technical sheet says it plainly: produced exclusively at the limit of Pommard Village. A few feet one way, the wine gets to say Pommard on the label and charge accordingly. A few feet the other way, it's "just" Bourgogne.

Same limestone soils. Same family. Same cellar.

And here's the part I love: they make this wine exactly the way they make their Premier Crus. Hand harvested (their words: for total respect of the grapes). Fermented for about fifteen days in wooden vats. Then into oak barrels through the winter until malolactic fermentation finishes. This is not the phoned-in entry level wine of the range. It's 1.87 hectares, about four and a half acres, of estate vines getting the exact same treatment as vineyards that sell for multiples of the price.

I know this was a lot to read, but I have all the "feels" for these wines. Wineries are a lot like fashion houses: some things just end up costing more because people are able to market them in the right way, to the right people, not necessarily because of any tender lovin' care. Here you're getting honestly the most TLC I've ever seen put into some wines, at a price to quality ratio that is simply outrageous by Burgundy standards.

If you've ever wanted to know what real, estate-grown, family-made Burgundy tastes like without the three-digit price tag, this is the bottle.

I have shared multiple bottles with friends and family over the last week, and every bottle has made me smile. It's just outrageous.

Maybe the best under $20 Pinot Noir we have ever offered?

First come, first served.