Meet Chanterêves: Inside Burgundy's Most Admired Micro-Négociant

Producer Spotlight · Burgundy

Tomoko Kuriyama and Guillaume Bott left two of Burgundy's greatest estates to make wine on their own terms. Fifteen years later, their bottles are swept up the moment they land.

When people talk about the new Burgundy (the wave of micro-négociants and young domaines reshaping a region long defined by aristocratic grand cru addresses), Chanterêves is the name that comes up first. Tomoko Kuriyama and Guillaume Bott have built one of Burgundy's most quietly admired projects from a cellar tucked beneath a modern house in Savigny-lès-Beaune. The wines are precise, alive, and unmistakably Burgundian.

Two winemakers, two countries, one vision

Guillaume Bott is a Burgundian through and through. Born in Dijon, raised in Beaune, he trained at the Lycée Viticole of Beaune and spent seven formative years at Domaine Etienne Sauzet in Puligny-Montrachet working under Gérard Boudot. That apprenticeship taught him how the great Chardonnay terroirs of Burgundy actually behave in the cellar. In 2002 he joined Domaine Simon Bize in Savigny-lès-Beaune as right hand to Patrick Bize. He remains cellar master at Bize to this day.

Tomoko Kuriyama's path was longer. Born in Japan (her grandmother was a cooking teacher with a national television show, her father a lover of Bordeaux and Burgundy), Tomoko left for Germany as a young woman and talked her way into an apprenticeship at Weingut Rudolf Fürst in Franken. She went on to work at Peter Jakob Kühn and Weingut Georg Breuer under Hermann Schmoranz, and ultimately earned an engineering degree in oenology and viticulture from the University of Geisenheim. Before Burgundy, she spent years as production manager at Weingut Altenkirch in the Rheingau, a historic estate specializing in Riesling and Pinot Noir.

They met in 2005, when Tomoko arrived at Domaine Simon Bize for a harvest internship. Guillaume remembers it plainly: we just seemed to share the same tastes. They launched Chanterêves in 2010 as a négociant-vinificateur, buying grapes from trusted organic growers and doing all the winemaking themselves under their own label.

From négociant to domaine

For the first decade, Chanterêves was strictly a négociant operation: no owned vines, just carefully negotiated fruit contracts across the Côte de Beaune. Guillaume's two decades at Sauzet and Bize opened doors most young négociants can't touch.

That changed in 2020. The couple acquired their first plot, an old-vine Aligoté parcel between Ladoix and Corgoloin, horse-plowed and organically farmed. More parcels followed: Savigny-lès-Beaune (Dessus de Montchenevoy), Chorey-lès-Beaune, and most significantly a cluster of vineyards in the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune around the village of Fussey. Around 4.9 hectares in total, sitting up to 460 metres above sea level on pale terre blanche limestone.

Those high-elevation sites on cool limestone are doing something special in the era of climate change. The same altitude that made the Hautes-Côtes an afterthought a generation ago (too cool, too austere) is now producing some of the region's most tensile, mineral-driven wines. Chanterêves was early.

How they farm and vinify

The farming is biodynamic. Soils are plowed by horse, vines are treated with fermented plant preparations, and no synthetic inputs go into the vineyard. Tomoko and Guillaume found their philosophical feet in conversations with Frédéric Cossard and Philippe Pacalet (two of the natural-wine movement's most serious minds in Burgundy), and it shows in the cellar.

Whites go through long, slow press cycles. Reds ferment with a high proportion of whole bunches for fragrance and lift. Everything ferments on its own indigenous yeasts in used oak. Daily pump-overs are done by hand, a few buckets at a time. Malolactic conversion happens when it happens. There is no fining. Filtration is occasional and light. Sulphur is added minimally, or not at all, and only at bottling if the wine calls for it.

The result is wines the Danish critic Steen Öhman once described as "made with a German precision, a Japanese attention to detail, and a French knowledge of the terroir." That about captures it.

The Chanterêves wines at Voilà

We carry a small allocation of Chanterêves across both whites and reds: négoce cuvées and the newer domaine bottlings. Each arrival is limited, typically 6 to 24 bottles per cuvée, and they move quickly.

• Chanterêves Bourgogne Blanc Uta Yume 2024. Uta Yume means "beautiful dream" in Japanese. Chanterêves' entry-level Chardonnay, biodynamic and full of energy. The best place to start.
• Chanterêves Bourgogne Aligoté Les Chagniots 2022. From a 470-metre parcel on the border of the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. Salty, taut, alive. Aligoté as a serious grape, not an afterthought.
• Chanterêves Hautes Côtes de Beaune Blanc Mainbey 2023. Single-parcel Chardonnay from the Mainbey lieu-dit. Precise, tensile, terroir-expressive.
• Chanterêves Hautes Côtes de Beaune Blanc Les Monts de Fussey 2023. Biodynamic Chardonnay from the cooler Monts de Fussey elevations. Delicate, mineral, very long.
• Chanterêves Beaune 1er Cru Les Blanches Fleurs 2023. Pinot Noir from a south-facing parcel next to Clos du Roi. 100% whole cluster, 12 months in used oak, then 12 more on lees in stainless steel. Beaune 1er Cru shown at its best.
• Chanterêves Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Morgeot 2022. The top white. Mineral, deep, complex. The kind of Chassagne 1er Cru that reminds you what the appellation is actually capable of in careful hands.

How to buy Chanterêves in the US

Chanterêves is allocated. Total domaine production is well under 40,000 bottles a year across every cuvée, and US importers receive only a fraction of that. If a cuvée is listed on Voilà, it's because we've secured a specific allocation; when it sells through, it's gone until the next vintage.

If you'd like priority on new Chanterêves arrivals, our Wine Concierge service reserves bottles for members before they go public. Otherwise the best way to stay on top of new vintages is our newsletter. We email subscribers 24 hours before public release.

Frequently asked questions

Is Chanterêves natural wine?

Chanterêves sits at the rigorous end of the low-intervention spectrum (indigenous yeasts, minimal SO₂, no fining, whole-cluster reds, biodynamic farming), but the wines are stylistically classical Burgundy rather than what most US drinkers picture as "natural wine." No funk, no volatile acidity, no haze. Just precise, terroir-driven Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

What's the difference between a négociant and a domaine?

A domaine owns its vineyards. A négociant buys grapes (or finished wine) from growers and vinifies or bottles under its own label. Chanterêves started as a négociant-vinificateur (buying grapes and doing all the winemaking themselves) and since 2020 has been transitioning toward a hybrid model with its own estate vines alongside the négoce cuvées.

Are Chanterêves wines worth the price?

For context, Burgundy grand crus from established domaines now routinely exceed $500 a bottle, and their entry-level Bourgogne wines often start at $60–80. Chanterêves delivers domaine-quality winemaking and some of the most interesting cool-climate sites in Burgundy at entry points below $70 for the Aligoté and Bourgogne Blanc, and under $200 for single-vineyard Hautes-Côtes and Beaune 1er Cru. That is as well-priced as serious Burgundy gets right now.

Where do they source grapes for the négociant cuvées?

From organically farmed vineyards across the Côte de Beaune. The contracts are long-term and personal. Guillaume's two decades at Simon Bize and Sauzet built the kind of trust that gives them access to fruit most outsiders never see.

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Paul Baldi is the founder of Voilà Wine and curates the US selection of small-producer French wines at voila-wine.com. Born and raised in Champagne, he spent more than a decade as a sommelier at prestigious hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants, including a palace hotel in Gstaad, Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, and Dominique Crenn and Quince in San Francisco.