Puligny-Montrachet is a working grower village with a share of four grand crus and famously almost no cellars, because the water table sits too high to dig them. On the square, a 19th-century inn has been taken over by COMO and reworked by Paola Navone, who kept the zinc bar and the beams and brought in sage, petrol blue and a woven willow wall ten metres tall. The sommelier arrived long before any of it and has pushed the list past 17,000 bottles, nearly all of them Burgundian, which in a village this size is quite the statement.
/4.754608772490845,46.94486170520074,6/600x400?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoidGltYnVrdHV0cmF2ZWwiLCJhIjoiY2poMGw1eHpkMmRkbDJ6bW8xYWZ5OGpjYyJ9.PYvAO7lUJ40SOpGvwmQLqw&attribution=false&logo=false)
Navone's hand is soft rather than showy: limestone left bare in the dining room, toile de Jouy, tactile fabrics, and two spherical lamps the size of small moons hung above the tables. The old zinc counter survived the renovation, which remains highly-regarded by locals. A heated pool runs the length of the garden through the warmer months, and e-bikes wait by the door. Wine is the spine of everything, from the Friday glasses to the enormous list below stairs.
Everything sits in three restored 19th-century buildings, with room types named after types of French dwellings. Petit Clos and Clos are at the compact end, a few of them looking straight onto the square. Manoir categories give you more room, and two of them have balconies worth asking after. The Montrachet and COMO suites occupy Villa Christine, the latter running to two bedrooms and a veranda. Décor barely shifts between them beyond the colour, sage or grey or petrol blue, which is rather the COMO way.
Grand cru walls begin a few hundred metres from the front door. The Voie des Vignes runs traffic-free through Meursault and Chassagne, and Beaune sits a quarter of an hour off, its Hospices worth the trip on their own. The hotel lays on vineyard hikes, market-to-table mornings and Thursday cookery sessions with the chef. Vintage cars turn up for anyone who would rather not pedal, which we can well understand in August.
Friday evening pours with gougères still warm from the oven, handed over by a sommelier who has worked this square for twenty-odd years and can name the row of vines your glass came from.
Caviar, in Burgundy. The owners come from the Petrossian family, which is why one of the great white wine addresses in France also serves a proper tin of it, and why the pairing works better than it should.
Silence falls after dinner, and with nowhere else to eat, a car or the twice-weekly shuttle into Beaune matters more than you'd think.
COMO Le Montrachet can be booked with Timbuktu as part of a tailor-made France trip, rather than as a standalone room reservation. Start online, customising one of our recommended France trips featuring COMO Le Montrachet or get advice and suggestions from one of our France specialists who will design the trip around your dates, check availability and handle every booking for you.
Stays at COMO Le Montrachet start from around $370, or US$370, per person per night as part of a tailor-made trip. The exact price depends on your travel dates, room type and the shape of the rest of your itinerary. A Timbuktu travel specialist can give you an accurate quote for your dates.
.jpg)
Bucolic and shyly beautiful, tasting your way around Burgundy is a surefire way to go from wine-drinker to oenophile rather quickly.
