Author: Thomas Wilcox

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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Sofie Bohrmann is a first generation winemaker from Belgium – hardly a recipe for success in the insular world of Burgundian vignerons where most inherit vines, and people even from the Maconnais (an hour south) are considered out of towners. And yet she’s cracked into the elite world of Côte d’Or winemaking. She’s a real winemaking talent, of course, but we’re betting her charming smile and disarmingly friendly demeanor go a long way.

Her wines are outstanding. Each year they get more refined and more impressive, and our collection of her just-arrived 2023s are full of hidden gems with terrific pricing. Sofie’s domaine is in Meursault, and most of her vines are from the surrounding Côte de Beaune towns. Her style is clear and juicy – the wines are packed with flavor, limited oak, and flat-out delicious textures.

Bohrmann’s Bourgogne Côte d’Or Blanc “Les Belles Goutes” is a core presence in many of our customer’s cellars, priced for regular drinking but showing the fine quality of Chardonnay from the Côte d’Or. The vines are from Meursault, and some of the storied village’s opulence seems to find its way into the glass. With alcohol at 13% in the 2023 vintage, the wine is generous, and its rich lemon curd fruit benefits from just the right amount of oak. It’s an excellent house Bourgogne blanc, and one that matches with everything and nothing.

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Bohrmann Bourgogne Côte d’Or blanc 2023
bottle price: $38

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Amid a trend of rising prices across Burgundy, Chablis has maintained its place as a consistent source of value. Even Grand Crus from top tier producers still rarely break the $100/bottle mark. Of the forty premier cru vineyards across the appellation of Chablis, Montée de Tonnerre is undisputedly the finest and most prestigious. As wine writer Rajat Parr puts it, Montée de Tonnerre “produces at Grand Cru status, but still goes for Premier Cru prices.”

Romain Collet’s 2023 Chablis 1er “Montée de Tonnerre” provides terrific value. It’s one of his most impressive cuvées – regal, refined, complex and vibrant. He’s got exceptional terroir, and he knows how to use it. There’s everything at once – richness, depth, stoniness, length, and polish.

Jasper Morris found that “white clay with plenty of stones lend it some Left Bank minerality, but the superb exposure of the hillside allows the Right Bank richness of fruit to dominate.” We think Collet’s 2023 Montée de Tonnerre shows the completeness for which the vineyard is famous. Serve this with a fine dish from the sea – lobster, scallops, branzino, dover sole, swordfish, etc.

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Collet Chablis 1er cru “Montée de Tonnerre” 2023
bottle price: $49

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We were thrilled to welcome Domaine Christian Clerget back into the Ansonia portfolio last year. Thirtysomething Justine Clerget (Christian’s daughter) is now in charge, and has brought renewed energy, refined techniques, and a passion for organic viticulture. The Clerget wines were always classical, terroir-transparent, old school red Burgundy; Justine has maintained this spirit but added polish and class.

This tiny gem of a domaine has always been a favorite of ours – from their winery in Vougeot (population 174) they farm 6 hectares (14 acres) of average 60 year-old vines across eight appellations. Clerget’s wines have made many friends at our depot tastings this year, often winning tastings’ “wine of the day” award. We’ve just restocked stock from the exceptional 2022 vintage, and none is more exciting than their village-level Chambolle-Musigny.

The Chambolle is a blend from six different plots around the town, and shows the village’s classic silky, seductive nature. Neal Martin gave 90-92 points, praising its “sense of vibrancy and tension” on a “very well-controlled and persistent finish,” concluding “this is worth seeking out.” This is a wine of perfume, elegance, and grace, but with real density from the hot, dry summer – we think it punches above its village weight.

We’ve got lots of tasty, affordable wines to suggest for Thanksgiving, but if you’re in need of an upgrade this one would be a showstopper.

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Clerget Chambolle-Musigny 2022
bottle price: $99

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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’re pleased to welcome their restocking this week. 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 has quickly become one of our favorite cuvées in recent years, and the 2023 is the best yet. 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. It’s hard to imagine a more impressive $25 red.

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

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Sofie Bohrmann summed up the 2022 growing season with one word: “parfait.” After the catastrophic 2021 vintage, in which some of her parcels lost over 90% of their crop, 2022 provided clean, healthy grapes, and plenty of them. It was hot and dry as it always is these days, but rain fell at exactly the right time – a bit of good luck after a season of bad.

We’ve long loved the terroirs of St-Aubin, and are pleased to see them increasingly receiving their due – even if it’s meant they’re scarcer and pricier. We have several producers who farm here, but our favorite is Domaine Bohrmann. Bohrmann’s style is low oak, pure fruit, and exquisitely balanced texture: richness, depth and energy all at once. Raised in only 15% new oak for a year, their St-Aubin 1er cru comes from “En Remilly,” considered one of the town’s top vineyards.

The 2022 is outstanding – lively and generous at the same time. It’s thick and full of a rippling intensity, combining perfectly ripe golden fruit with structure and minerality. There’s precision capable of enhancing your most refined dishes — sole meuniere, for example. The use of oak is perfect: support for the minerals and fruit, but without too much spice or toast.

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Bohrmann St-Aubin 1er “En Remilly” 2022
bottle price: $72

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Together with his son Remi, Christophe Mestre continues to make delicious, old-school Châteauneuf-du-Pape year in and year out. We have trouble keeping this wine in stock – it hits the perfect sweet spot for value, accessibility, food matching ability and crowd-pleasing popularity.

Lots of Chateauneuf-du-Pape is built for the long haul, and somewhat inaccessible young – not Mestre’s. It’s middleweight and delicious with gorgeous young fruit and friendly tannins. It ages for 5-8 years with ease, but drinks well from the moment it is in the bottle. The 2023 Châteauneuf-du-Pape is terrific – 50% grenache, 25% mourvèdre, 20% syrah, and 5% cinsault. The nose is focused and beautiful, with lovely deep sappy fruit bursting from the glass.

Grenache makes up only half this wine, but it’s the star of the show this year – luxurious red fruit of wild cherries, raspberries and hints of provencal thyme combine to make an explosive and seductive palate. This is accessible, popular, cozy wine that will perfectly match the season as fall weather returns.

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Mestre Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2023
bottle price: $36

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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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The wines of Margaux are some of the most celebrated in Bordeaux, admired for their unique blend of finesse and power. The soils are light and thin, full of gravel, sand and limestone, and the resulting wines combine Left-Bank muscle with an exquisite finesse and perfume.

Our latest arrival from Margaux is the Baron de Brane, the second wine of the prestigious second-growth estate Brane-Cantenac. The 2018 is simply beautiful, landing just in time for summer grilling season. This is 60% Merlot, 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Carménère.

Jeb Dunnuck writes “Another beautiful second wine…a rounded, sexy profile as well as terrific notes of blackcurrants, spice box, and earth, with hints of graphite.” The nose high toned silky character of classic Margaux that’s somehow both elegant and muscular. The mouth is no slouch though, with an extremely well balanced mouthfeel showing graphite, earth, cassis and an old-school weight and shape. Serve with something wintery.

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Baron de Brane Margaux 2018
bottle price: $55

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