Author: Thomas Wilcox

Nicolas Paget continues to produce excellent, dry, delicious Chenin Blanc from his organically farmed vineyard in the central Loire Valley. We visited last year, and were reminded of just how lush this region is, deserving of its moniker “Le Jardin de France.” Paget’s wines are similarly lush – round and rich with excellent acidity and beautiful depth.

Our favorite this year was Nicolas’s Chinon Blanc “Passeur du Terroir” from 2022. The warm vintage provided ample ripeness, and this wine is round, luxurious and opulent. Paget raised it in large 500L barrels, and there’s a faint note of spice alongside the yellow pear fruit. A pleasant savory grape-skin minerality joins the lush fruit to give mouthwatering texture almost reminiscent of Chablis.

Fans of rich white Burgundy – think Meursault or Pouilly-Fuissé – will enjoy the depth and friendly mouthfeel here. But Paget achieves richness without sacrificing energy or punchiness – a successful and tasty marriage of both textures. Pair this with wintery dishes – a lobster bisque, a bouillabaisse, a plate of raclette.

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Paget Chinon blanc 2022
bottle price: $35

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The Domaine Boursot is a story both of Burgundy’s past and present. The estate was founded in 1550 (not a typo) by Guillaume Boursot, and has been handed down over centuries and generations in the tiny town of Chambolle-Musigny. The current winemakers, brothers Romaric and Romuald, are 15th generation vignerons farming an enviable collection of vines around the Côte de Nuits.

The family’s vines range from regional to Grand Cru, and concentrate around their hometown of Chambolle. The brothers’ recent improvements in cellar infrastructure and technology have begun to pay off – their wines get better every year, and no longer fly under the radar of the critics. Bill Nanson (Burgundy Report) calls them “delicious, consistently excellent;” Steen Öhman (Winehog) finds them “forward, quite vivid…truly exciting.” We love Boursot’s style, which combines Chambolle’s graceful essence with a sturdy, characterful core.

Boursot’s 2023 Bourgogne rouge 2023 doesn’t take itself too seriously – sure, it’s from vines in Chambolle-Musigny, a town responsible for some of the world’s finest bottles, but Boursot’s is humble, vibrant, and flat out delicious. The wine sees 25% old oak barrels (none new) and shows the faintest touch of earthy wood below the lovely fruit. That subtle Boursot rusticity that draws so many of our customers to this producer is here, but all wrapped up in a friendly, easygoing package.

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Boursot Bourgogne rouge 2023
bottle price: $32

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It’s been a while (too long!) since we imported from the Domaine les Goubert – their bottling schedule and our importing schedule hasn’t seemed to sync up recently. But we finally restocked a few months ago and are delighted to have them back. Their delicious, reliable, extremely well-priced southern Rhône cuvées have been customer favorites for the last few decades, and in recent years they’ve only gotten better.

Florence Cartier continues to steer her family’s domaine with a calm, thoughtful hand, producing traditional southern Rhône cuvées in the best sense of the term. They’re distinct in style from many of our low-intervention Southern Rhône sources – Joncuas, André, Malmont, to name a few. Goubert’s wines are clean and consistent, comfortingly old-school in character and taste.

Goubert’s Beaumes de Venise rouge was the standout cuvée during our last tasting – an exceptional wine with a weeknight pricetag. It’s a grenache-syrah-mourvedre blend from a single vineyard plot. The town is best known for its sweet dessert wine from Muscat, but this terroir is well suited to red. The nose is deep and floral with beautiful violet and lavender notes, and hints of plum jam. The mouth is smooth and rich with excellent freshness and a delicate stoniness inlaid among the abundant strawberry and raspberry fruit. The balance is impeccable, and the texture perfectly suited to the fruit. Serve with playoff football, a good book by the fireplace, or takeout pizza.

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Goubert Beaumes-de-Venise 2023
bottle price: $25

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The 2023 red Burgundies are still quite young, but they’ve already begun to reveal themselves as a tremendous vintage. From a growing season full of extreme heat and drought but with perfectly timed rains, the best wines are perfectly balanced – with modest alcohol, excellent density, and vibrant textures. We heard more than a few winemakers describe them as “digeste” (roughly, digestible), and it’s an excellent characterization.

Nobody was more successful than Gautier Desvignes, a humble thirtysomething winemaker with a near limitless attention to detail. Gautier landed back at his family’s domaine a decade ago, and has since transformed it into one of the region’s superstars. We find ourselves saying this almost every year, but his 2023s are the best he’s made – ripe and sleek with perfect extraction and maturity, vibrant textures, and elegant, lifting finishes.

Gautier’s village-level 2023 Givry “Champ la Dame” is excellent. The nose shows violets and spruce, with perfectly rounded tannins and a welcoming finish. The tannins are chalky and fine but almost disappear by the end of the palate. This is everything you want in a village-level red Burgundy, and a remarkably polished wine under $40. Serve with steak frites.

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Desvignes Givry “Champ la Dame” 2023
bottle price: $39

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Pierre Vessigaud is a committed biodynamic vigneron whose wines are Demeter certified, the highest organic classification. In the bottle this translates to superb purity and clarity, with careful elevage and excellent balance. Combine this with an envious array of vineyards, including two of Pouilly-Fuissé’s newly minted premier crus, and we think this domaine is a real find. As William Kelley puts it, “succulent but serious, any bottle bearing Vessigaud’s label is worth seeking out.”

Vessigaud’s premier crus are magnificent and offer tremendous value, but we’ve also been particularly impressed by his everyday wines. His regional-level cuvées perform admirable impressions of the fancier Pouilly-Fuissés, and offer exceptionally good pricing. Our favorite among them is the Macon-Fuissé “Les Taches,” a gem of a vineyard from just outside the appellation – we think of it as a baby Pouilly-Fuissé.

The vines are high up a hill right on the border with Pouilly-Fuissé. It’s both vinified and raised in 5-10 year old oak barrels, and while there’s no new oak this cuvée has the added weight and complexity of a more serious wine. The nose is gorgeous and floral; the mouth is rich and smooth and not a bit lacking in acidity. It’s a nice counterpoint to the totally unoaked Macon-Solutré-Pouilly – richer and longer but no less fresh. It well overperforms its appellation, and we think of it as a baby Pouilly-Fuissé.

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Vessigaud Macon-Fuissé “Les Taches” 2023
bottle price: $32

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St. Estephe is home to storied left bank chateaux that were ranked in the Classification of 1855, so new domaines are rare. Winemaker Henry Negrier spent the first half of his career working at other local chateaux; but thirty years ago he stumbled upon an unusual opportunity to buy his own St-Estephe vines, and decided to bet on himself. The new creation, Fleuron de Liot, has won acclaim from blind-tasting panels and Ansonia readers alike.

When we visited last spring, Negrier told us that 2022 was unequivocally the best vintage in the domaine’s 30-year-history. He attributes this partly to the very dry growing season, which also featured damaging hail early, at the cost of 40% of the crop. The result: tiny grapes and highly concentrated must.

Indeed, the Fleuron de Liot 2022 – a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon – is utterly delicious and keeps getting better. Right now this well-balanced wine is inky and dark, showing black cherry and cassis fruit. There is excellent density: the fine tannins coat the mouth and persist on the palate. Don’t let the bargain pricing fool you; this is serious, impressive left-bank Bordeaux.

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Fleuron de Liot St-Estephe 2022
bottle price: $35

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Vincent Boyer and his sister Sophie are the winemakers at Boyer-Martenot, a gem of an estate in Meursault. They farm a mouthwatering collection of vines in and around Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet, including all three famous Meursault premier crus. They farm organically, and use a long elevage in barrels then concrete eggs to give their wines a regal depth and complexity. These are some of our favorite white Burgundies from anywhere.

Boyer’s mouthwatering collection of vines at the premier cru level has produced another exquisite trio in 2022. From the ultimate Meursault trifecta of top vineyards – Charmes, Genevrières, and Perrieres – Vincent makes tiny quantities of extraordinary wine. Today we’re focused on Charmes, the richest and friendliest of the bunch.

Boyer’s Meursault 1er cru “Charmes” simply beautiful – bursting, luxurious, old school Meursault. The nose is deeply floral with notes of pear and stones. The mouth is fresher and more vibrant than usual this year, with a touch of sucrocité balanced on a beam of tension. Burghound similarly found “excellent energy” and a “tension-filled, linear finish.” Vincent told us last year the 2022s would be “difficult to resist,” and boy was he right. This cuvée has the density to age another 5 years or so, but it’s a real treat today.

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Boyer-Martenot Meursault 1er “Charmes” 2022
bottle price: $185

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In real estate and winemaking, location is everything – and nowhere is this more true than in Burgundy. A few yards difference in vine location can amount to a few extra zeros on the end of the price. Every wine from Vosne-Romanée – the most famous winemaking town in the world – is at minimum worthy of interest. But Vosne is not a monolith, and each corner of the tiny appellation has its own expression.

Nearly all the slopes in Vosne (and Burgundy for that matter) face some combination of East and South. But today’s wine comes from an unusual North-facing plot, and this fact defines its identity. “Les Barreaux” lies atop the slope in Vosne, adjoining the Grand Cru Richebourg and the Premier Crus Aux Brûlées and Henri Jayer’s famous “Cros Parantoux.” The view is spectacular, but the wine is somehow even better.

Barreaux’s northern exposition has historically been a limitation, and likely why it’s classified at the village level – the less sunny slope has made it hard to ripen fully. But in the new normal of hot, dry growing seasons, this exposition has become an asset. And in 2020, it’s produced something spectacular.

This wine blew us away when we first tasted it, and it’s only gotten better – impossibly fine and delicate, but with density and length. The shallow limestone soil and unusual exposition balance the extreme ripeness of the vintage, and the resulting wine is a masterpiece. Jasper Morris MW had a similar reaction – he gave it 5/5 stars and awarded it 93-95 points, finding “vibrant deep red fruit” and “very good acidity as well.” it “really quite a striking Vosne-Romanée,” with “superb length.” We agree – for anyone with a taste for the magic of Vosne, this is not a wine to be missed.

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Couvent Vosne-Romanée “Barreaux” 2020
bottle price: $125

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In recent years the Northern Rhône valley has become a source of unusual value. As prices in Burgundy have skyrocketed, and prices in Bordeaux have whipsawed back and forth, Côte Rôtie and Cornas have maintained a steady, modest rise. The wines have never been better, and suddenly they seem like bargains.

Take today’s wine – Patrick and Christophe Bonnefond’s 2020 Côte Rôtie “Rochins.” On a whim we opened a bottle this week with a pot roast, and it knocked our socks off. In complexity, layers, and depth, it easily competes with a premier cru from the Côte de Nuits – the meaty character reminded us of an old-vine Nuits-St-Georges. Those mostly run $120-$150 these days; while not exactly a by-the-glass candidate, Bonnefond’s Rochins doesn’t even crack $80.

Rochins comes from 60+ year old vines in a parcel just next to the famous Côte Blonde and Côte Brune. The nose is dark and woodsy with an irresistible mixture of spices, wild cherries, smoke and violets. The mouth is velvety and beautiful, still with plenty of material but beginning to put on a smooth patina now five years after harvest. It’s gotten pretty chilly here in Boston over the last few weeks – this wine is as cozy as a warm winter blanket.

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Bonnefond Côte Rôtie “Rochins” 2020
bottle price: $78

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Châteauneuf-du-Pape is one of the most recognizable brands in wine. Made famous by French popes in the 14th century, and then again by Robert Parker in the 1980s, the appellation’s place on the winemaking map is well established. For decades the wine from Châteauneuf was head and shoulders above the rest of the Southern Rhône – but these days it’s got company.

There’s loads of great wine coming from the Southern Rhône these days, but no star is brighter than Gigondas. The Chastan family has been making wine in the same style for a hundred years. They were among the earliest in the region to farm organically (they were certified in 1980!), and their winemaking is simple and straightforward. Vinification for all the wines is cement vats, followed by an elevage in either vats or neutral oak foudres. The wines are all whole-cluster, and neither fined nor filtered.

We’ve just restocked on their 2020 Gigondas, a wine that has gone from delicious to extraordinary over the last five years in the bottle. It is silky smooth and rich, with dense, sweet fruit and notes of allspice. Though velvety and rich, there is good underlying structure and a bit of earthiness in the finish. A dose of salinity balances the lush fruit, and the finish goes on forever without an ounce of heaviness. This would blow away many a Châteauneuf-du-Pape in a blind tasting, and given its sub-$50 price we think it’s also a steal.

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Joncuas Gigondas 2020
bottle price: $49

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Frederic Michot is a friendly, energetic winemaker who crafts refreshing, user-friendly, flat out delicious Sauvignon Blanc in Pouilly-Fumé. Forever in the shadow of its more famous neighbor Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé is often a source of excellent value.

Michot’s style is straightforward – no oak, old vines producing fresh, dry, low-alcohol wine. It’s rarely the fanciest wine on a table, but it’s often the first bottle empty. Its brisk texture and lovely dry fruit make it pairable with a long list of foods, from cheese (goat is best), to oysters, to chicken, to paté, to nothing at all.

Michot’s 2024 is everything you want in an everyday Loire white – dry, refreshing, low alcohol (12.5%), smooth, and inexpensive. Made from 40-70 year old vines, there’s excellent concentration and great length. The nose shows lime, stones and grapefruit; the mouth is clear and crisp, with an easygoing, dry finish.

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Michot Pouilly-Fumé Vieilles Vignes 2023
bottle price: $25

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Our visit to the Domaine Pierre André this year was a sad one, coming just a few months after Jacqueline Andre died of a sudden illness. Her father was a pioneer in organic viticulture, having decided in 1965 that chemicals were bad for his vines and having abandoned all of them altogether. Jacqueline was proud to have inherited and to tend vines that were up to 145 years old. The domaine was certified organic in the early nineteen eighties – among the first anywhere – and for many decades Jacqueline quietly carried on her family’s great tradition.

The 2022 vintage of her red Chateauneuf du Pape is the last that she saw all the way through to bottling, and no surprise, it is gorgeous. Like a few other great winemakers of her era, Jacqueline made a single cuvée of red wine, blending in all the wine from patches of terroir across the appellation.

The 2022 is outstanding – as always, the nose is expressive, showing the wild strawberry fruit of the dominant Grenache, as well as floral notes of violet and maybe a touch of licorice. The weight is medium, with just enough structure and an exceptionally long finish that completes this strikingly elegant wine. André was a master of channeling rich southern grapes in wines of poise and class, and the 2022 is a remarkable achievement.

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André Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2022
bottle price: $68

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Sofie Borhmann is a bit of an anomaly in Burgundy. She’s not French (she’s from Belgium), not well known, and exports very little to the US. In a tiny region with exploding demand and skyrocketing prices, her wines are quiet, well priced, and relatively unknown. We found them on a restaurant list in Beaune, and after some persistence managed to track her down.

It was worth the effort – her wines have become favorites among many of our readers for their clarity, meticulous oaking, and excellent pricing. Most of her wines in our portfolio are whites, but her reds – particularly today’s Bourgogne rouge – are terrific as well. The just-arrived 2023 is her best yet.

Borhmann’s Bourgogne vines are across the RN-74 from Pommard. At 35 years old, they’re more mature than many Bourgogne-level vines, and their fruit produces a wine of real complexity. She uses 70% whole clusters, giving the wines excellent definition and exquisite tension.

The nose shows seductive, crushed ripe red fruits, overlaid with a soft floral character – an unmistakably Côte de Beaune profile. The mouth is perfectly ripe, smooth, and delicious, with fine chalky tannin supporting the bursting fruit. The 2023s possess an extraordinary balance of fruit, tension, and texture – the bottle on our Thanksgiving table evaporated with haste.

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Bohrmann Bourgogne Côte d’Or rouge 2023
bottle price: $45

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Romain Collet is one of the most exciting talents in our portfolio. He’s the energetic and innovative grandson of Jean Collet, the domaine’s founder. He experiments with all of today’s means of elevage, so a visitor to the cellars now walks past not only stainless steel tanks and large oak foudres, but also cement eggs, clay amphoras, and barrels of all sizes, from traditional Burgundian to demi-muids holding 400 or 500 liters.

Today we’re focused on his Chablis 1er cru cuvée from “Forêts,” a terroir made famous by Dauvissat’s iconic cuvée. Romain uses large concrete eggs for his Forêts cuvée, and the wine has a smoothed layer of fruit over the piercing Chablis acidity. The resulting wine is dry, dynamic and delicious, at once mouthfilling and bursting with saline and zip.

The just-arrived 2023 is terrific. It’s packed with yellow fruit and oyster shells – for the next few months we expect a dose of lemon cream atop the concentrated flavors. Down the road it should dry out and focus; the eggs mean there’s a subtle gras amid the dry extract, and the combination is delicious and mouthwatering. Jasper Morris found it “promising” with a note of “fresh licorice,” and writes “I expect it to develop well from here.”

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Collet Chablis 1er cru “Forêts” 2023
bottle price: $45

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The 2022 red Burgundies are shaping up to be an extraordinary vintage. Expectations were high from the start: “beautiful and bountiful… very good wines and plenty of them” wrote Jasper Morris. William Kelley called them on release “succulent, suave and charming.” The last year of tasting them in our homes and at the warehouse has confirmed – this is an all around terrific vintage.

The fruit is modern and ripe, the result of a very hot, very dry growing season. And yet the wines show impeccable balance, with low alcohols and excellent freshness. Roger Belland’s 2022 reds are some of the best he’s made, coinciding with a shift in winemaking style: they’ve dialed back the oak, extended elevage, added whole clusters.

The Santenay 1er cru “Beauregard” 2022 is simply delicious, and just getting started. Tasting just after bottling, Burghound noted “fine richness…suave and succulent flavors…could be enjoyed young but has the stuffing to replay up to a decade of keeping.” Over the past two years months in the bottle its youthful red fruits have mellowed a tad, and the palate has deepened and softened a beat or two. It’s still youthful and fresh, and we think it’s in a terrific maturity window today.

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Belland Santenay 1er rouge “Beauregard” 2022
bottle price: $54

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