Dark, Refreshing, Beautiful Everyday Rhône Red. $19

If we were to pick one thing we look for above all else when evaluating a wine, it would be balance. No matter the grape or region, style or price, a wine with all its elements in at the correct levels succeeds. Achieving balance between ripeness and freshness has become harder in recent hot, dry summers, particularly in the scorching south of France.

Lush, Gorgeous, “Layered” 92-pt Premier Cru 2020 Red Burgundy

Gautier Desvignes is among the most exciting young producers in our portfolio. He’s taken his family’s humble domaine and turned them into one of the Côte Chalonnaise’s leading sources. It’s easy to argue they’re the best value red Burgundies in our cellar. (Boston area readers, keep your eyes out for a possible winemaker dinner in April with Gautier.)

Exquisite, Velvety New 95-point Côte Rôtie

The Northern Rhône produces the world’s most complex and balanced expressions of Syrah. Particularly in Côte Rôtie, at the region’s northern limit, the wines combine inky, black, masculine fruit with extraordinary lift and finesse. Our producer in Côte Rôtie is Christophe Bonnefond, who seems to make more impressive and well-balanced wines each year. 

Cozy, Wintery, Mouthfilling Châteauneuf-du-Pape. $35

Christophe Mestre and his wife are from old Châteauneuf du Pape families. Like many such families, their vines are in plots scattered across the town’s remarkably diverse terroir. Their parcels cover all three of Châteauneuf’s famous terroirs: the famous galets roulés (see photo), sand, and clay-limestone. Mestre makes a single red cuvée from these terroirs, […]

Punchy, Crackling, Delicious Organic Loire Valley Red. $22

Some wine writers will tell you that we’re living in the golden age of Loire Valley Cabernet Franc. Twenty years ago winemakers would struggle to ripen their grapes, and as anyone who’s had one will agree, underripe Cabernet Franc is a particular sort of unappealing. Twenty years from now, if warmer summers and earlier harvests continue, the wines may become unrecognizable. Rejoice, they say, in this window of perfect weather.

Exquisite New 10-Year-Old, Small-Batch Grower Champagne

After several years away, we finally managed to catch Pascal Bardoux in his house in Champagne this spring. Pascal is a talker – thoughtful and articulate, somewhere between absentminded professor and soft spoken sage. It only took 20 minutes for his giant French-English dictionary to emerge from the back room for a precise tasting note translation he wasn’t sure we’d fully grasped. (The word was “whortleberry,” and he was right, we hadn’t.)

Inky, Smooth, Delicious New 2020 Northern Rhône Syrah. $25

The Northern Rhône represents (for now) the northern limit of where Syrah can ripen fully. As with many grapes, the area of northernmost range produces the most elegant and delicate expression of the grape – think South African Shiraz, now picture its opposite. But recent warmer drier summers have changed the character in frontier regions […]

Lush, “Terrific” New 93-point White Burgundy from Maconnais

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.

Dark, Inky, Delicious New 2020 Red Burgundy

We suppose it’s a good thing when in the opening paragraph of this fall’s article on “Insider’s Burgundy,” the Wine Advocate’s William Kelley mentions Gautier Desvignes by name as a face of a “new generation of quality-conscious producers” in the Côte Chalonnaise. We’re thrilled to see Gautier receive the recognition he deserves, even if it means his wines are a bit harder to come by.

Rich, Golden, Meursault-Like 2020 Bourgogne Blanc under $40

One of our most popular white Burgundies these days was the product of an accident. After tasting a Gevrey-Chambertin from a small unknown domaine in a restaurant in Beaune a few years ago, and spent a week full of emails, calls, and text trying to track down the winemaker. When we at last managed to get an audience, the rest of her reds impressed us; but her whites simply blew us away.