Thank you for a Fantastic Year

Chers Wine Lovers,

Thank you for a fantastic year of wine tastings, experiences, and education. How much we have learned together! We are so grateful for you, our clients, wine advisors, and partners. Your unrelenting desire to learn more and inspiration to each other is the reason we do what we do. Everything we have achieved in the past year is because of you.

2019 will be remembered as the first time in our 300 year history Château de Pommard bottled all the plots of Clos Marey-Monge as single cuvées; the year our wine experiences became really hands-on; the first time École V, our Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) professional wine school, opened to the public; and the year our ambitious site development project finally broke ground — after four years in the planning stages.

In 2019 we welcomed clients from 97 countries around the world! Incredibly this was up from 81 countries in 2018. The world loves Burgundy! What we heard from you is that you are thirsty to learn more, and grow your wine knowledge further. We developed and launched our Clos Marey-Monge Experience, where you learn the art of blending by making your own cuvée from the seven infamous plots of the clos. We opened École V to students beyond our employees, and 150 of our clients and partners passed WSET Level 1, 2 and 3. Congratulations! Finally in September, we were absolutely thrilled to launch our Burgundy From Above Experience. Aboard one of our two new hot air balloons, you can now see the Climats of Burgundy from the ultimate vantage point and really learn about terroir.

To continue to work with so many new and existing clients, in 2019, we significantly expanded our team of WSET trained Wine Advisors. We are now more than 30 in total. Our team visited Europe, the USA, and Asia in 2019. We created more than 100 Experiences in New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Zurich, Paris, Nice, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and more.

This September, we received the excellent news from INAO in France that the wines of Clos Marey-Monge have received Organic Certification. Look for our 2019 vintage to be labeled organic. France is currently the world’s third-largest producer of organic wines, where pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and GMOs are not permitted. The next step in our journey with Mother Nature is already underway. 2019 saw our formal relationship with Demeter, the global Biodynamic certification agency for winemakers. We hope to have our 2021 vintage certified Demeter.

Of course, no annual wine braggart newsletter can be complete without the mention of reviews. In 2019 Jasper Morris, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate, Neil Beckett, Paolo Basso, James Suckling, and others wrote excitedly about the wines of the Château. And the International Wine Challenge, Mundus Vini, Sommelier Wine Awards, the International Wine and Spirit Competition, and the San Francisco Wine Awards recognized our wines with multiple medals for several of our cuvées. We are honored to receive so much positive input from our peers, but our highest awards come from you, our clients. In 2019, clients visiting our experiences rated their tasting of our wines 4.95 on a scale of 1 to 5.

It would be impossible to accomplish what we did in 2019 without our Burgundy, French, and International Partners. Locally, our travel, tourism, experience, and hospitality partners are working with us to get our wines on the tables of your favorite restaurants. And of course, our architecture, engineering, and construction partners are all making possible the development of our new hotel, restaurant, wellness center, winery, wine education center, and employee offices. Thank you all for your dedication to working with us.

Despite our long and storied past, we are never ones to look in the rearview mirror for long. With the new decade here, we are more excited than ever about the world of wine and our place in it. The year 2020 will bring major new developments at Château de Pommard, including the launch of our new Exceptional Experience featuring Simone, grand cru, and premier cru wines. Our new Wine Education Center at Château de Pommard is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2020. And finally, with the new decade launching, so too will our new digital experiences platform, enabling us to engage with even more wine lovers, wine advisors and sustainable wine partners across the planet. As we’ve said so many times, you, our community, are what inspires us to do what we do. Whether you are just getting into wine, have fallen madly in love with wine, or are a wine expert continuing your journey in this fascinating and complex world — your enthusiasm strengthens our belief in what we are doing — every day. Thank you for your continued curiosity and support.

Happy New Year!

Michael Baum

CEO & Propriétaire

Château de Pommard