Author: Thomas Wilcox

Sebastien Giroux is exactly the type of winemaker we love to work with. He farms a tiny 6-hectare estate in southern Burgundy’s Maconnais region essentially by himself. Some of his wines come in allocations with single-digit case quantities; his rooms for vinification, bottle stockage, labeling, and tasting, are all… the same room.

Yet his disciplined organic winemaking results in extraordinary wines – William Kelley describes them as “supple, pure and charming.” We’ve just restocked on his terrific Pouilly-Fuissés, but our favorite new find from his lineup this year was the Macon-Fuissé “Pelées,” from the stellar 2024 vintage.

This wine answers the question “what would happen if you combined Chablis and the Maconnais?” Giroux raises it entirely in stainless steel (no oak) and the wine is full of tension and zip. It’s long and has plenty of sunny richness on the mid-palate, but finishes dry and stony. Sebastien himself called it “angular” and we think it’s a perfect descriptor.

Dynamic, vibrant and full of life, this sub-$30 white Burgundy is a remarkable value.

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Giroux Macon-Fuissé “Pelées” 2024
bottle price: $29

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The Domaine les Goubert is one of our longest and most consistent sources. We’ve known them for nearly 30 years, and their wines have always been favorites of readers and family alike. They’re never the fanciest or the most showy wines on a table, but every one overperforms its billing, and they continue to offer tremendous value.

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. Nearly all of her cuvées are certified organic now, but their style is distinct from some of our low-intervention Rhône sources. These are clean and consistent, comfortingly old-school in character and taste.

Goubert’s Beaumes de Venise rouge is a flat-out delicious 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 at a tailgate or a backyard barbecue.

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

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The test of great winemakers is how they perform in the face of adversity. In sunny, dry vintages like 2023, just about everyone made tasty wine. But success in a challenging year speaks far more; and there’s rarely been a more difficult vintage than 2024. Some winemakers struggled, but others excelled; and Gautier Desvignes proved himself an exceptional talent.

We’ve long been fans of the Desvignes wines, but it was nice to see Vinous’s Neal Martin (a notoriously exacting critic) heap praises on Gautier’s wines – and particularly impressive when his first visit there was to review the 2024s. Gautier is best known for his reds, but he’s also become a real talent in white Givrys – Martin cited “clear evidence of thoughtful winemaking,” and called them “excellent.”

Gautier’s Givry blanc “En Cheneves” is beautiful and very well priced. In 2024 this is dry, linear, and very pretty, with white flowers in the nose and a smooth, fresh, dry mouth. There’s no new oak, and it’s a fresh, lively white Burgundy that might recall a Chablis. Neal Martin found notes of “Cornice pear and a touch of spice,” concluding “makes you dream of a plate of oysters to go with it!”

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Desvignes Givry “En Cheneves” 2024
bottle price: $42

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Hailing from the western end of the Loire, just before it flows into the Atlantic, Muscadet is France’s go-to wine for oysters. Walk up to a seafood counter in St. Malo or Cancale to slurp a dozen, and you’ll likely be invited to wash them down with a pitcher of Muscadet. Simple, saline and refreshing, it’s a delicious pairing of like with like, and when you finish it can be hard not to queue up for another six oysters or so.

The wine comes from a grape called Melon de Bourgogne, and “melon” (honeydew, not cantaloupe) is a pretty good match for the wine’s aroma. The varietal is light on flavor, so winemakers leave their juice on the lees (Sur Lie) for at least two years to impart flavor and savory richness to the profile. The resulting wine is bone dry, saline, and mouthwatering with notes of bitter grapeskin and stones.

Our source for Muscadet is the Domaine Martin-Luneau, whose wine is so popular as to be difficult to keep in stock. Their 2022 Muscadet “Clisson” has just arrived – notes of lime rind, salt air, and melon in the nose join a zippy, refreshing mouth that immediately calls to mind the stark, windswept Breton coast.

Shellfish is the most perfect match, but it’s not the only. The wine is a great pairing for a stir fried seafood, cutting through the fat beautifully. Or try it with grilled shrimp or fin fish — it’s a versatile companion for seafood of all sorts. Or just a crumbly goat cheese.

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Martin-Luneau Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine
Sur Lie “Clisson” 2022
bottle price: $25

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The 2022 red Burgundies continue to prove themselves to be a terrific vintage. From a warm, dry growing seasons, winemakers managed to craft vibrant and beautifully balanced wines, sporting low alcohol and classic Burgundian finesse. They’re modern in their sunny polish, but traditional in their middleweight, elegant textures.

Philippe and Paul Cheron are the father-son team behind Domaine du Couvent, an under-the-radar source with an impressive array of vineyards. In the cellar they use ample stems, and firmly extract their fruit, a style of winemaking that produces wines with real presence that age beautifully.

Many regional-level Bourgogne wines are meant to be drunk young, but Couvent’s continues to improve. Their Bourgogne Côte d’Or transcends the genre in a way few other Bourgognes do – if you told us it was a village Gevrey we’d believe you – humble in appellation, but striking in taste.

This is the most complex and elegant red Bourgogne in our portfolio. The nose is deep and beautiful with intense dark fruit but excellent lift – there’s a stony earthiness behind the plums that’s balanced and enticing. The mouth is clear, long, and nimble, bouncing from wild cherries to anise to black pepper and back to cassis. Burghound praised its “racy, delicious, well detailed flavors.” Now four years on from harvest, it’s firing on all cylinders, and is a remarkable value.

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Couvent Bourgogne rouge 2022
bottle price: $49

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Not everyone has the budget to fill their cellar with Puligny-Montrachet and other stars of the Côte d’Or. Luckily, the wines of the Maconnais have never been better, or offered more value. Thirty years ago Pouilly-Fuissé brought to mind an over-oaked, over-priced buttery Chardonnay; today the best examples can fool seasoned tasters into guessing Chassagne, and cost half as much.

Sebastien Giroux is a first rate organic winemaker based in the Pouilly-Fuissé appellation. He refuses to be rushed into bottling any of his wines on a rigid schedule, and when he believes a wine will benefit from more elevage, he waits. As such, when many producers are sending us their 2025 price lists, we’re just now getting Sebastien’s 2022s. This extra time allows the wines to develop into exquisite, refined, and perfectly balanced white Burgundies that are some of the best buys we know.

Sebastien raises his Pouilly-Fuissé half in vats and half in oak barrels of varying ages. The vines are at 250m altitude, so offer intensity from their age but fineness from their elevation. The nose is gorgeous and deep, with floral intensity and savory spice; there’s a classy reductive character that could easily be in Puligny or Meursault. The mouth continues the theme and adds a dollop of ripe yellow fruit and a burst of saline acidity; a dry core is perfectly coated in concentrated orchard fruit.

It’s a wine of unusual polish at any price – at $38 it’s a steal.

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Giroux Pouilly-Fuissé 2022
bottle price: $38

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Florence Cartier continues to steer her family’s Domaine les Goubert with a deft and steady hand. She’s converted nearly all of her plots to organic and has managed to adapt her winemaking style to the blazing hot provencal summers.

The resulting wines are the best she’s made: clear expressions of rugged southern terroir with impeccable balance and with remarkable pricing. They’re food friendly, crowd-favorites, and ready to drink early. We’ve (finally!) restocked on her flagship Gigondas cuvée, and the world feels in balance.

Goubert’s 2023 Gigondas has all the hallmarks of a classic Rhône red, but with extra depth, detail and class. It’s a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, and Cinsault, with a splash of Clairette (a white grape) thrown in for aromatics. It is raised fully in tank (no oak) and neither fined nor filtered. The nose is a gorgeous perfume of strawberry jam and earthy garrigue. The mouth is solid and smooth, but with a fresh texture across a juicy, delicious, low-alcohol (13.5%) palate.

Vinous’s reviewer found it “round and harmonious” with “excellent freshness on the juicy finish,” concluding “the 2023 will be approachable right out of the gate.” This drinks like a Châteauneuf-du-Pape but with a pricetag somehow still sub-$40.

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Goubert Gigondas 2023
bottle price: $35

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For many years we have known the Domaine Gautheron as a low-profile address offering consistently excellent wines in a style that is truly Chablisien. The quality remains exceptional, but the secret is out. Jasper Morris MW calls Cyril Gautheron “a superb producer making wines in a crisp cool classically Chablis style.”

The 2024 vintage in particular provides a ringing affirmation of this praise: steely, dry wines full of tension and elegance, and a beautiful showcase for Cyril’s skills and the subtleties of Chablis terroir. We had a hard time choosing favorites in 2024, but his superb Mont de Milieu premier cru was at the top of the list.

Located on the right bank, just a bit upstream from the famous hillside of Grand Crus, Mont de Milieu’s soil has ample clay mixed into the stony ground. Clay is often a harbinger of bigger, more powerful wines, and in this cuvée it provides ample, majestic roundness, cut by classic Chablisien salinity and chiseled stoniness. It’s a mouthful of a wine and one you won’t soon forget. Serve with lobster in butter or shrimp in a creamy curry sauce.

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Gautheron Chablis 1er “Mont de Milieu” 2024
bottle price: $55

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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 2023 it produced something spectacular.

The 2023 Vosne “Barreaux” from Couvent is strikingly good. The balance is impeccable – 13% alcohol despite the heat of the vintage, with soaring aromatics and a gorgeous silky core. Jasper Morris gave the 2023 five stars (the second time in four years) and praised its “deep glowing purple, with a pure racy dark cherry fruit.” Overall, he called it “a really fine village Vosne with impeccable length.”

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Couvent Vosne-Romanée “Barreaux” 2023
bottle price: $125

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Wine writer Rajat Parr describes St. Aubin as the “insider’s white Burgundy.” Wedged in a valley between Chassagne and Puligny, this town produces white Burgundy with hints of Chassagne and Puligny’s golden richness, but a less stratospheric price tag. St-Aubin has become rarer and pricier like everything else in Burgundy, but it’s still far more affordable than its famous neighbors.

At the western edge of the St. Aubin appellation lies a plot named “Murgers des Dents de Chiens.” Perched just up the hill from Montrachet itself, this St. Aubin 1er cru is a remarkable value – real, classy premier cru white Burgundy, but somehow still under $70/bot with St-Aubin’s (and Gérard Thomas’s) friendly pricing. The nose is deeper and slightly darker than the village level, with a hint more of woodsiness. The mouth is classic, with lemon curd sucrocité and a beautiful beeswax finish – it shows a similar grapeskin note as the village, but there’s more flesh around it.

Jancis Robinson’s reviewer was effusive: “Refined, understated. A very fine example of the best of Chardonnay from the Côte de Beaune but without the elevated prices of the better-known appellations. So precise! I love the focus here. Fresh, clean, mineral, the concentration is there but you don’t really see it until you let the wine linger in the mouth. Great result!”

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Thomas St-Aubin 1er cru
“Murgers des Dents de Chien” 2024
bottle price: $65

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The Hill of Hermitage has been famous for centuries, and with good reason. John Livingston-Learmonth, author of the definitive Wines of the Northern Rhône, calls it “the king of the Northern Rhône,” producing “the most complete and authoritative of all Rhône wines.”

Our newest northern Rhône source is Yann Chave. He’s not related to the famous Jean-Louis Chave in Mauves, but his wines are terrific – beautiful interpretations of signature Northern Rhône terroirs. Jancis Robinson writes of “really artisanal wine with masses of integrity and bags of personality.” The Wine Advocate’s reviewer writes “Chave’s continuing progress makes this one of the most exciting estates in Crozes-Hermitage.

Yann Chave’s Hermitage 2023 is everything we hoped to find: a beautiful floral nose dominated by violets, superb balance across the palate, plenty of concentration without heaviness, and a long, lingering finish. We’re not the only ones to be impressed. Vinous scored it a 94, finding “early notes of alluring orange rind, crushed violets, white pepper, raspberry compote and softly suggested cedar.” They found the wine “bursting with aromatic complexity and masterful refinement.”

It’s probably not your next by-the-glass house wine, but it’s less than half the price of the other Chave’s Hermitage. Sit on this for as long as you like, or open with a decanter this fall.

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JL Chave Hermitage 2023
bottle price:  $165

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Stop us if you’ve heard this before: another year, another flat out delicious wine from Poggerino – and still a bargain. Italian wine represents a tiny corner of our portfolio, but Piero Lanza’s impeccably balanced wines are some of the most popular in our store. They drink well young, age beautifully, and provide exceptional value.

The 2023 growing season in northern Italy was hot and dry just like Burgundy. But Sangiovese, a native of sunny Tuscany, is equipped to handle drought; combine that with well timed late-summer rains, and the 2023 Chiantis are magnificent. Poggerino’s 2023 Chianti Classico Annata is as good as ever: deep and rich without ever losing its balance.

Antonio Galloni of Vinous calls it a “very pretty wine,” finding “dark red cherry, leather, lavender spice and dried herbs…an open-knit, midweight wine that has so much to offer.” He concludes: “pliant and inviting, with tons of nuance, the Chianti Classico is an absolute delight in 2023.” Tasting at the vineyard in October, we also found it delicious – a deep, beautiful wild cherry nose, perfectly ripe fruit and loads of dry extract, but a (welcome) beat less intense than last year. The tannins are silky and lovely, with vibrant freshness amid the gorgeous fruit.

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Poggerino Chianti Classico Annata 2023
bottle price:  $29

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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 three years in the bottle its youthful vigor has mellowed, and the palate has deepened and softened a beat or two. It’s still lively 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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Lots of high end red Burgundy is ethereal, subtle, and delicate – but not all of it. Certain towns – Gevrey, Pommard, Nuits-St-Georges come to mind – combine Pinot’s natural grace and elegance with a rich muscly intensity. The result is often dynamic and delicious.

Today we’re suggesting a Nuits-St-Georges from a special plot of 80 year old vines of the Domaine du Couvent. Winemaker Philipe Cheron’s grandfather bought them in 1938, and the produce a gorgeous, inky, highly concentrated wine. Cheron leans into this spirit by using 100% whole clusters, crafting a wine that is, in his words, “dark, somber and rich.”

We love this wine every vintage, and had a chance to open the 2021 over the weekend. It’s terrific and with some time in a glass, a real stunner. It’s dense and sleek; the rich stem fermented core is entirely enveloped in deep plum fruit. Jasper Morris gave 93-95 points, calling it “gorgeous, airy, floral.” Serve from a decanter with a meat from the grill.

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Couvent Nuits-St-Georges 1er “Aux Murgers” 2021
bottle price: $115

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Vincent Boyer continues to steer his family’s Meursault domaine with tact and style. His sister Sylvie joined him a few years ago – her passion is viticulture, and her focus on the vineyards has freed Vincent up to focus on cellar work. Today the frère-et-soeur team is at the top of their game, turning out magnificent wines year and year out.

The Boyers’ village-level Meursault “Ormeau” cuvée comes from vines in clay rich soil planted by the siblings’ grandmother in 1924 – celebrating their centenary last year. Ormeau is prototypical Meursault: rich, opulent, shimmering white Burgundy that fills out the mouth. As always with Boyer the balance is impeccable – Burghound cites “underlying tension” and “a subtle bead of minerality” with a “clean and nicely dry finale,” concluding “delicious.”

If you’ve heard white Burgundy described as “weight without heaviness,” then you know what this wine is like. It’s packed full of fruit and flavor, but carries tremendous lift. Serve this with something impressive – lobster risotto, for instance – or use as an aperitif to set the mood for a grand meal.

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Boyer-Martenot Meursault “Ormeau” 2023
bottle price: $99

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