When we lived near Cluny in Burgundy more than twenty years ago, we stumbled upon a nearby producer in Viré-Clessé. The young couple who owned it tended their vineyards and made their wine according to organic and biodynamic principles – not at all the norm back then – and their work opened our eyes to the quality possible in the Maconnais.
We bought this wine enthusiastically for many years on behalf of friends and family, but the domaine already had a national US importer, and so we never sought to give their wine a wider distribution. We stopped importing the wine a decade ago, but have missed it ever since.
But we are delighted that we are now able to offer the results of this superb winemaking under a new label: “Forces Telluriques.”
In recent years the domaine has won praise from today’s top writers. The Wine Advocate’s William Kelley writes of the wine’s “remarkable concentration and energy.” Jasper Morris MW calls them “brilliant… refined, pure, complex, lush.”
The 2018 Forces Tellurique Viré-Clessé features clean, pure, lemony fruit, along with remarkable freshness and energy from such a sunny vintage. On the palate it’s unctuous and smooth with a long finish that would outlast many a Meursault. The nose bursts with yellow orchard fruit and notes of tangerine and honey. Reviewing the 2018 under its primary label, Kelley awarded 93 points, finding notes of “honeycomb, orange oil, and elderflowers,” calling it “layered and succulent… with a charming core of fruit and a saline finish.”
We’ve just received our first shipment in nearly a decade, and it’s like welcoming long lost friends back home – from a new vintage and in new clothes, but the same charming spirit.
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Forces Telluriques Viré-Clessé 2018
bottle price: $42
