Author: Thomas Wilcox

The 2022 red Burgundies have just begun to arrive in the states, and they’re simply delightful. From the warmest, driest year in recent memory, they are nonetheless vibrant and beautifully balanced, sporting low alcohol and classic Burgundian finesse. It’s a magnificent vintage, and one we expect to enjoy for many years to come.

One particular success are the reds of Roger Belland, whose cuvées are universally delicious, and always well priced. His Santenay 1er cru “Gravières” 2022 is a triumph – loads of dark cassis and violet fruit packed into a solid and inky core of fruit and minerals. And all wrapped up in a neat, classy, 13% alc. package.

Burghound loved this wine, awarding it both “Outstanding” and “Top Value” designations. He found “fine volume and richness,” with “an opulent mid-palate mouthfeel,” calling the finish “firm and serious.” It’s juicy modern red Burgundy, but with perfect ripeness and an old-school texture. We enjoyed this last night with grilled chicken, and recommend the match.

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Belland Santenay 1er “Gravières” 2022
bottle price: $48

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At long last, our Sancerres are back in stock in the warehouse today. We’ve been sold out for months, and are delighted to have these crisp, vibrant Sauvignon blancs available once more. All four cuvées from Domaine de la Garenne are terrific this year, but the most popular is Bouffants, a laser-focused cuvée from limestone-heavy terroir.

Made from pure, unoaked Sauvignon Blanc, Bouffants is more dense and serious than Garenne’s regular cuvée. The 2023 is concentrated and very long, full of deep mineral intensity and dried fruit. Look for notes of pears and grapefruits, with a long, clean, very dry finish. Think of the ripe, intense fruitiness of a classic Sauvignon combined with the stony core of a Cru Muscadet.

Garenne’s Bouffants cuvée is a perfect food wine and can stand up to a wide range of diverse flavors. Serve it with lobster risotto or broiled fish. Sauvignon blanc seems to come from every corner of the world these days, but this will remind you: there’s nothing quite like Sancerre.

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Garenne Sancerre “Bouffants” 2023
bottle price: $32

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The South of France has always been hot, but like everywhere else, it’s getting hotter. Even with grape varietals adapted to warm climates, winemakers often struggle to achieve freshness in their wines. We taste plenty of high-alcohol flat wines these days, but few grab our attention.

One winemaker who doesn’t struggle is Nicolas Haeni of the Domaine Malmont in Séguret. Haeni’s vines lie on a terraced slope in the hills above Séguret, perfectly positioned to offset the blazing hot Provencal sun. The Malmont terroir is cooler and breezier, enabling the grapes to reach maturity without becoming baked or dried out.

Nicolas’s 2021 “Petit Rouge” is simply delightful, and a real bargain. It’s 70/30 syrah/grenache, raised in stainless steel, and alcohol clocking in at a cool 13.5%. The nose is dark and complex with classic syrah notes of violets and blackberry — by nose you might mistake it for a Northern Rhône pure syrah. But in the mouth the grenache shines through a bit more, with beautiful depth a splash of red fruit and cinnamon.

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Malmont Séguret “Petit Rouge” 2021
bottle price: $25

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Our first three vintages with the Forces Telluriques have been wildly popular. The magnificent, unoaked, biodynamic white Burgundy has quickly become a reader favorite. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, really – you won’t find the Forces Telluriques label on any CellarTracker accounts (except Ansonia customers), but the wine in the bottle is from an iconic Mâconnais source with an exclusive importer for the primary label.

The family who creates this wine are true believers in the theory of biodynamics — minimal vineyard intervention in the vines, meticulous and hands-off winemaking. William Kelley calls them “one of the best producers in the Mâconnais “ producing “ honeyed, concentrated wines that are imbued with remarkable concentration and energy.” Their extraordinary wines somehow continue to improve each year.

The 2021 Forces Telluriques is a triumph. The domaine harvested slowly, over about 15 days, achieving 13.2% naturally – a real feat in a cool vintage. The resulting wine is superb, showing ripeness without weight, a wine that is lively and alive; a touch of botrytis (traditional in this area) but entirely dry. The Wine Advocate’s William Kelley gave 93 points, finding “Aromas of clear honey, white flowers, beeswax and sweet spices” calling it “a suave and vibrant wine that’s satiny, bright and fine-boned, concluding with a bright, gently exotic finish.”

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Forces Telluriques Viré-Clessé 2021
bottle price: $45

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The red wines of the Loire Valley always play second fiddle to the region’s whites. But it’s a mistake to ignore them – they’re well balanced, low-alcohol, usually organic, and often exceptional values. Our favorites these days are the unblended, unoaked Cabernet Francs from the central Loire.

Winemakers Celine and Didier Sanzay are fifth generation growers in Saumur-Champigny in the central Loire. Their reds are pure Cabernet Franc, and fit modern Loire style — small batch, organic, wild yeasts, no fining or filtering. They’re lovely on their own, but it’s the freshness and vibrant texture that makes them perfect food-paring reds.

Sanzay’s just-arrived Saumur-Champigny is exactly what you want Loire Cab Franc to be: pure, joyful, unoaked, and refreshing. Clean, unadulterated fruit bursts from the glass on the nose — think wild cherries and graphite. The mouth is fresh, fruit forward, inky, and intense, with a bold and vibrant attack and a quick clean finish. Picture a juicy Beaujolais with more serious texture and darker fruit. Pour this on the front step or back patio all summer long.

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Sanzay Saumur-Champigny 2022
bottle price: $22

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The style of winemaking in Chablis is somewhat in flux these days. Recent hot summers in Chablis have meant a departure from the stony, crystalline expression of old. These richer, rounder wines can handle more oak, and some winemakers have extended their elevage, creating wines with richness and complexity to rival those of the Côte d’Or.

Not Cyril Gautheron. To him such wines may be tasty, but they’re not Chablis. Gautheron has doubled down on the classic style, dialing back his oak in some places, and relying solely on terroir and fruit for expression. The results are magnificent. From a cool, wet vintage, his 2021s may be small in number, but they are nothing short of exquisite.

One of our favorite Gautheron wines in recent years has been his “Fourneaux,” a premier cru raised entirely in steel. White peaches and lemon peel join chalk and minerals in the nose. The mouth is pure and lithe with exquisite tension and a long, beautiful finish. A perfect example of classical Chablis, and exceptional pricing that somehow still accompanies it.

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Gautheron Chablis 1er “Fourneaux” 2021
bottle price: $42

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Chenin blanc has an enormous range of expression, from bone dry to very sweet depending on vintage, terroir, and winemaker. Vouvray is the original source for Chenin Blanc, but the surrounding towns in the central Loire Valley produce excellent examples as well. We enjoy the sweet stuff from time to time, but our favorite is a dry, refreshing, unoaked, affordable Chenin.

Today’s wine comes from a tiny organic producer near Vouvray, and it’s become one of our most popular bottles of white from anywhere. Nicolas Paget is an energetic and impassioned young winemaker in Touraine-Azay le Rideau. Paget’s low-intervention, no-oak chenin blancs are vibrant, aromatically expressive and beautifully balanced — lush exotic fruit presented in a clean, fresh package.

Paget’s 2021 Melodie is lovely, with an almost Chablisien array of grapeskin and minerals — clean, pure and delightful. The nose is floral and dry, with faint pear notes and a hint of apple. Even in a warm year Paget has managed to craft a refreshing cuvée — at 13% alcohol it’s beautifully balanced, and a refreshing break from the palate-coating wines that dominate the market these days. Serve with fresh goat cheese on crusty bread on a hot summer day.

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Paget Chenin Blanc “Melodie” 2021
bottle price: $22

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Pascal Bardoux’s wines are just like the man himself: subtle, understated, and delightful. In a region where “le marketing” is king, Bardoux’s delicious, hand-crafted, well-priced cuvées stand out. A world away from shiny tasting rooms and glossy brochures, this is traditional, artisan Champagne authored by a humble farmer.

A blend of 60% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Noir, Bardoux’s humble non-vintage “Brut Traditionnel” has the complexity and depth to match the finest bottles from Burgundy or Bordeaux. The nose shows plum, chalk, lime zest, and buttered biscuits; the mouth is dry, elegant, and smooth, with notes of apple and toast. Much mass-market Champagne fetches between $80 and $150 a bottle; Bardoux’s small-batch Brut Traditionnel doesn’t even crack $60 — twice the wine at half the price.

We can’t recommend this wine highly enough. Think of it as a refined, complex wine in its own right; it just happens to feature bubbles. Some of our favorite pairings include: sushi, triple-cream cheese (like Delice de Bourgogne or Brillat-Savarin), or gougères. A case of this in your cellar will add class to our summer like little else.

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Bardoux Champagne Traditionnel Brut NV
bottle price: $54
case price: $48.60 (use code BRUT)

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Everyone needs a pantry wine — something to open without too much consideration or care. Thirsty guests looking for something to wet their whistle? Pantry wine. Back home after a long weekend away, with no energy for anything but takeout pizza? Pantry wine. Playoff game go into overtime and you need just one more glass of something simple? You guessed it.

For many years our pantry wine (and that of many readers) has been Goubert’s Côtes du Rhône. It checks the three boxes every Côtes du Rhône should: refreshing, dark, and inexpensive. It’s low alcohol and crisp, making it tasty and balanced. The blend of six grapes classic Rhône grapes forms a rich, hearty, dark wine. And it’s inexpensive enough to pull out at a moment’s notice.

Winemaker Florence Cartier has improved this cuvée perhaps more than any other since she took over a few years ago, and the 2022 is her best yet. The nose is expressive and surprisingly refined, showing dark wild cherries, raspberries, and a hint of menthol. The mouth is both jammy and refreshing, with notes of white pepper, licorice, raspberry and plums. This likely wont be the fanciest wine in your cellar, but it might be the most useful.

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Goubert Côtes du Rhône 2022
bottle price: $19

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Roger Belland produces a dozen cuvées from around the southern end of the Côte d’Or, including from famous vineyards in Chassagne, Puligny, and Volnay. But it’s the wines of his hometown Santenay that often appeal to us most. Belland’s style is plump and juicy, with approachable tannins and beautiful aromatics – they never last long in our cellar or on a dinner table.

In 2020 his accessible friendly style is even more on display than usual, and these are some of the most drinkable Belland reds we can remember. Winemaker Martin Boyer has expertly balanced the lush ripe fruit of the vintage with clean freshness and stony precision. The result is friendly, delicious red Burgundy that’s at once complex and gulpable.

The Belland Santenay 1er Gravieres 2020 is fresh and lively, with exquisite floral notes and a fine mineral nose of stones and roses. The mouth is crisp and fresh with excellent length. There’s classic juicy 2020 fruit,  and the stony fruit is perfectly supported by careful tannins. This is floral and beautiful today, but the mineral intensity should carry it easily for years to come.

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Belland Santenay 1er “Gravières” 2020
bottle price: $49

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Chardonnay in Burgundy is capable of extraordinary complexity and subtle sophistication – at its best white Burgundy can outshine reds of a similar caliber. But the region also produces straightforward, delicious expressions of the grape; more tasty than tremendous.

And in the hands of a brilliant producer and a top vintage, even humble appellations can produce excellence. Today’s wine is proof: a 2020 Pouilly-Loché from Sebastien Giroux. This young, talented winemaker with a few tiny plots of vines in and around Pouilly-Fuissé. His low- or no-oak Chardonnays burst with density, minerality and length.

From a tiny appellation and a near-perfect Maconnais vintage, the 2020 Pouilly-Loché is simply a delight. The nose is clean and refined with notes of white flowers, citrus peel and almond. The mouth is silky and beautiful with perfectly balanced acidity amid notes of yellow fruit, ginger, and tangerine. Everyday white Burugndies are hard to find; this one is a gem.

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Giroux Pouilly-Loché 2020
bottle price: $29

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In most corners of France, the 2022 vintage was the hottest and driest on record. While this might not portend positively for the future, some wines have undoubtedly benefited. Particularly on the margins – regional level cuvées and lesser-known appellations – the extra heat has made ordinary wines quite impressive.

Christophe Bonnefond’s Syrah is one of the only wines in our portfolio with a “Vin de Pays” appellation, the broadest category in France. It’s always carried Bonnefond’s signature elegance and tension, most famously found in their terrific and well known Côte Rôties, but with less complexity and aging potential. It’s exactly the type of wine you’d expect to shine in a vintage like 2022…

…and you’d be right. The 2022 Syrah is downright delicious – bursting with cool blueberry and raspberry fruit, the tannins are juicy and delicious. At only 13.5% alcohol it’s not a bit flat or heavy – a gorgeous vibrant texture underlies the dark fruit and savory spice, making it as hard to put down as a bag of potato chips. Serve a bit cool outside on a patio or front step.

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Bonnefond Syrah 2022
bottle price: $25

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Particularly in the Maconnais, the 2020 white Burgundies have been almost universally terrific. The drought caused many chardonnay vines simply to shut down mid-season, stalling the production of their sugars and in the end producing wines with both a ripe concentration and tremendous energy. We’ve bought just about all the 2020s we could get our hands on, and they’ve rightly disappeared from the warehouse at quite a clip.

Nicolas Maillet is a well-known organic source in the Maconnais, Burgundy’s southernmost region. Maillet is a bear of a man with a quick smile and burly enthusiasm to match his impressive stature. His wines are characterful and charming, and still a bargain – William Kelley calls his Macon-Verzé “one of the Mâconnais’s perennial values.”

Maillet’s Macon-Verzé 2020 comes from vines on chalk-limestone soils, and offers beautiful tension, with terrific length and structure, and not a hint of wood. There’s a shimmering golden character to this wine that makes it irresistible. William Kelley found notes of “green apple, honeysuckle and orange blossom,” calling it “ample and lively wine that’s pure and mouthwatering.” It’s a perfect aperitif wine – a complete mouthful on its own. Serve it with anything and nothing.

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Maillet Macon-Verzé 2020
bottle price: $32

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Romain Collet is a mad scientist in the cellar. He’s matched each of his Chablis terroirs with a specific recipe of elevage vessels – a combination of stainless steel tank, concrete egg, clay amphora, and wooden barrels of various ages. Each is designed to bring out the unique character of every plot of vines.

The most clay-rich of Collet’s terroirs is “Butteaux,” a south-east facing sector of the Montmains vineyard on Chablis’s left bank. For this cuvée, Romain ages the wine in a combination of old oak barrels (5 to 10 years). The resulting wine has a concentration and layered complexity somewhere between premier cru and grand cru.

We were blown away by the 2022 Butteaux. It’s less brisk and bracing than some of his cuvées, but it’s perfectly balanced and simply delicious in the glass. It begins with a rich attack of concentrated fruit that might make you think of modern Puligny-Montrachet, but a vibrant splash of Chablisienne minerals bursts through the palate and it finishes dry and precise. A dynamic blockbuster cuvée with outstanding depth and complexity.

Jasper Morris MW was similarly impressed, finding “lovely generous fruit yet with tension. Very good this year,” and awarding 91-94 points – just a point behind Romain’s Grand Cru Valmur. Collet’s terrific lineup of 2022s will be in next week’s May Futures release, but we’ve singled out this special cuvée for focus today. Quantities limited, first come first served.

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Collet Chablis 1er “Butteaux” 2022
retail case price: $540
May Futures: $395/case ($32.92/bot)
Available by the case and half-case

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The pursuit of freshness is a perennial struggle for white Burgundy vignerons these days. They’ve adapted to warmer, drier summers by delaying pruning, harvesting earlier, and tweaking their cellar work. But Chardonnay loves the sun, and inattentive growers can end up with overripe, high alcohol wines.

The moment has been kind, however, to Chardonnay’s distant understudy Aligoté, a centuries-old Burgundian varietal encompassing about a tenth of the region’s white vines. Its natural high acidity is an advantage in the new climate, and a wave of young vignerons – the self-named Aligoteurs – produce wines that make a real case for the grape’s potential.

Our favorite among these is Vincent Boyer, a masterful author of exquisite whites from Meursault and Puligny. He gives his Aligoté the same extended elevage (nearly two years in old barrels and concrete eggs) as his Chardonnays, and the resulting wine is simply exquisite. Burghound found the just-arrived 2021 “exceptionally fresh” and “very well-detailed” with notes of “lemon rind, green apple, and spice.” He awarded it his “outstanding” designation, and concluded simply, “good stuff.”

Serve this on your front stoop or back patio all spring/summer long.

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Boyer-Martenot Aligoté 2021
bottle price: $29

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