A Square of Vines in the Heart of the Village
The Clos de Tart occupies the southern part of the Morey-Saint-Denis slope, between the Clos des Lambrays to the north and Bonnes-Mares at Chambolle-Musigny to the south. Almost square in shape, it runs from roughly 270 to 300 metres in altitude, on a steep gradient that moves from 15 to 20%, facing east-south-east — the only one of the four great parcels of Morey not to face due east.
The clos includes a remarkable group of buildings: three structures, some of whose foundations are said to date from the twelfth century, with a cellar on two levels, the lower part of which was cut into the rock around 1860 by Ferdinand Marey-Monge, and a continuous-rope beam press of 1570, in service until 1924. Access is directly from the route des Grands Crus, in the centre of the village.
The Terroir: Crinoidal Limestone, Marls Above, Scree at the Surface
The Clos de Tart and its immediate neighbour Bonnes-Mares share almost identical physiographic and geological settings — two twins separated by a communal boundary. The rock of the southern sector of Morey is the Bajocian crinoidal limestone, 35 to 40 metres thick, which runs beneath the whole garland of grands crus of the Côte de Nuits. Above, the Marnes à Ostrea acuminata — clay and limestone in almost equal parts, strewn with fossil oysters — have been identified in the commune only in the upper parts of the Clos de Tart and Bonnes-Mares; higher still, a small fault forms a topographic step where a thin band of Bathonian clayey limestones outcrops.
At the surface, a mantle of scree covers the limestone base, with 40 to 120 cm of earth depending on the spot and very stony clay-limestone soils. It is this depth of earth — appreciably greater than the thirty centimetres of the Clos de la Roche — that gives clos-de-tart its flesh and its tannic density. Sylvain Pitiot and Claude Chapuis have moreover mapped the internal sub-climats of the clos, several distinct units vinified separately before blending. An unusual arrangement in Burgundy: the rows are planted not along the line of the slope but north-south, to limit erosion on a steep hillside.
Climate and Exposure
The climate is temperate with a slight continental tendency, with spring frosts always dreaded on this slope. The east-south-east exposure, turned a little more towards the south than that of the other clos of Morey, increases midday sunshine and favours slightly fuller ripeness in the pinot noir.
The clos lies south of the combe of Morey, and therefore outside the corridor of cool air that comes down from the plateaus to the west and directly freshens Les Bouchots in the Clos des Lambrays. Combined with the steep gradient, which speeds drainage, and with a deeper soil that holds water better, this position gives clos-de-tart wines that are more sun-filled and more robust than those of its neighbours to the north.
The Style of the Wines and Their Ageing
Clos-de-tart shows a dark ruby robe and a nose of strawberry and violet that opens with age onto more complex registers. The palate is robust and frankly tannic in youth, before becoming complex and beguiling; it is the most compact and the most "constructed" of the four clos of Morey, where the Clos Saint-Denis plays on finesse and the Clos des Lambrays on spicy suavity.
Ageing is traditionally in oak barrels, over a long period; the crop is largely destemmed, with a variable share of whole bunches depending on the ripeness of the stems. Allow ten to fifteen years of ageing, some twenty in the great vintages. In certain years the estate also makes a second wine declassified into Morey-Saint-Denis premier cru under the name "La Forge de Tart" — a nod to the name the site bore before 1141 — and, since 2018, a Morey-Saint-Denis village wine from the young vines. About 65% of production goes for export.
Nine Centuries Without Division
In 1141 the Hospitallers of Brochon sold the site — then called La Forge — to the young abbey of Notre-Dame de Tart, whose nuns, attached to Cîteaux, were established some thirty kilometres away, out in the plain. The site took their name. The clos is thought to have been entirely walled in dry stone, over a perimeter of 1.1 kilometres, probably in the fifteenth century. Confiscated as national property at the Revolution, it passed to the Marey and then Marey-Monge line, returned in 1919 to Edith Marey-Monge, and was bought at auction in 1932 by the Mommessin house of the Mâconnais — its only holding on the Côte, kept even after the sale of its merchant business to the Boisset group in 1997.
The Clos de Tart became Grand Cru in 1939. The decree then fixed 7.22 hectares; a parcel of 0.28 ha belonging to the neighbouring climat of Bonnes-Mares, but lying within the walls, was attached to it in 1965, bringing the whole to 7.53 hectares. Unlike the Clos de la Roche and the Clos Saint-Denis, approved as early as December 1936, the file for a monopole had to be submitted by its sole owner — hence the three-year lag. The cru recovered its level from 1996 under the direction of Sylvain Pitiot, cartographer of the Burgundy vineyards, who remained in post until 2015 and was replaced by Jacques Devauges and then Alessandro Noli. On 27 October 2017 the Pinault family announced the purchase of the clos through its Artémis holding, which already owns Château Latour at Pauillac, Domaine d'Eugénie at Vosne-Romanée and Château-Grillet; the transaction was registered in 2018. The Clos de Tart thus became the direct neighbour of the Clos des Lambrays, which passed into the LVMH fold in 2014.
A Cru at the Top of the Classifications for Two Centuries
Few Burgundian climats have been so consistently well judged. Around 1832 Denis Morelot placed the Clos de Tart among his "têtes de cuvée" of the Côte de Nuits, alongside the Chambertin, the Clos de Bèze, the Musigny, Les Amoureuses, the Romanée-Conti, La Romanée, Richebourg and La Tâche. Jules Lavalle, in 1855, likewise designated it "tête de cuvée" — the only one of the crus of Morey to reach that rank, while the Clos de la Roche and the Clos des Lambrays stopped at "première cuvée" and the Clos Saint-Denis at "deuxième". Camille Rodier confirmed this around 1920-1930.
An irony of history: it was nonetheless the name of the Clos Saint-Denis, less highly rated, that the commune chose in 1927 to complete its own. "Morey-de-Tart" sounded wrong, and a monopole lent itself poorly to becoming the surname of a whole village. The Clos de Tart therefore remains what it has always been: a single property, walled about, bearing the name of an abbey — one of the very few Burgundian crus, along with the Clos de Vougeot, to have kept as its inheritance the name of the religious house that created it.