Terroir Insight: Nicolas Faure Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Herbues

The Nuits-Saint-Georges village vineyard Les Herbues is attaining a special status, with extra appeal to the true vineyard geeks – in the most positive way. Independent and individualist producers are exploring this terroir and making exciting wines – and in some cases even vins d’emotion.

These are vignerons who spare no effort to make tremendous wine. Vignerons like Mathieu Moron and Pierre-Olivier Garcia of Moron-Garcia and, last but not least, Nicolas Faure, who has put this village vineyard on the Burgundy map.

Coincidently (perhaps), the producers mentioned above have chosen the same terroir: the otherwise unknown village lieu-dit Aux Herbues or Les Herbues. So let’s explore Herbues – a vineyard mostly overlooked in the literature.

Nicolas Faure paved the way, starting in the 2011 vintage. And now in 2019, we find other producers producing exciting new wines from this vineyard.

That said, let’s examine the Nicolas Faure Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Herbues. And let’s celebrate these wines.

Herbues … facts and figures

Nuits-Saint-Georges Aux Herbues is a little-known village vineyard located on the border between Vosne-Romanee and Nuits-Saint-Georges. Actually, it is rather surprising to see how far south and close to the village of Nuits-Saint-Georges Aux Herbues is.

The vineyard is large – 8.9123 ha⁴– and has until now been largely ignored. But it is starting a rise to recognition with producers like Faure and Moron-Garcia getting a chance to make wines close to Vosne-Romanée. Size-wise, Aux Herbues is larger than most Vosne village lieux-dits, aside from the important Aux Réas.

The map below shows Aux Herbues, located east of Aux Saint-Jacques with the Vosne vineyards La Croix-Blanche and Aux Raviolles just north of it, and the Nuits-Saint-Georges vineyard aux Croix Rouge to its south.

Aux Herbues in the literature

Nuits-Saint-Georges is a special appellation with many 1ers crus (no grands crus), and hence very little focus on the village terroirs – or at least this is how it was before the appellation was discovered by the new generation of independent vignerons.