At SommSelect, we have an unofficial rule with Jean-Marc Pillot’s Chassagne Montrachet 1er Cru “Les Vergers”—namely, to take as much as we can get our hands on. This is a Hall of Fame wine for us and Jean-Marc is one of the most consistently brilliant producers of classic white Burgundy.
I know that whenever I see his family’s familiar white and yellow label, there is bound to be spectacular wine behind it. This guy doesn’t miss the mark, ever, and we’ve learned that 1er Cru “Les Vergers” is the vineyard parcel that best showcases his full arsenal of talents.
Pillot’s whites balance impressive soil character and electric minerality with vivid, three-dimensional fruit. They epitomize the Chassagne-Montrachet terroir while offering remarkable approachability in their youth and impressive complexity and evolution after even modest cellar aging. We love these wines, our customers love these wines, and the only challenge with Pillot is summoning the willpower to sell our meager allocation each vintage instead of dividing it up into our personal cellars. Fortunately, our entrepreneurial instincts came out on top today and we are presenting our favorite bottling from Jean Marc, his Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru “Les Vergers.” Every vintage of this wine offered on this site has sold out and we don’t expect this gorgeous 2014 will be an exception.
Jean-Marc Pillot is the fourth consecutive generation of his family to be involved in winemaking. He began apprenticing directly beneath his father, Jean, in 1985. By 1991, he had assumed leadership of the family property, though he is assisted in numerous regards by his wife, Nadine, and sister, Beatrice. Pillot owns and farms a dizzying diversity of Premier and Grand Cru vineyards in the villages of Santenay, Puligny, Meursault, Montigny, and Remigny. Still, there is little debate that the family’s finest wines originate from their ample Premier Cru Chassagne-Montrachet holdings. This wine originates from Pillot’s tiny ¼-hectare parcel in the Premier Cru “Les Vergers,” a site whose steep, shallow soils are renowned for producing Chassagne-Montrachet of notable finesse and focus. The sub-parcel of Les Vergers that Pillot works was planted in 1949 and is farmed 100% organically.
The Pillot family harvests Les Vergers by hand, before fermentation in 90% neutral and 10% new oak barrels. Following fermentation, the wine is aged on its fine lees for a year, before being racked into stainless steel tanks where it rested and clarified for an additional six months. This patient, time-consuming approach means Pillot does not need to filter or cold stabilize his whites, so they always retain a certain vividness and dimension that is missing from many neighbors’ wines. These are authentic wines that express the Chassagne-Montrachet terroir in clear relief. This wine just landed in the US, having been shipped directly from Jean-Marc’s cellar. It is in immaculate condition, having never once seen daylight or anything but ideal cellar temperature.
Jean Marc Pillot’s 2014 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Vergers is bright gold and yellow with a translucent yellow/green rim. Vivid aromas of white peach, yellow apple, meyer lemon, vanilla bean, lemon blossom, honey, peony and jasmine blossoms crash into a solid vertical wall of limestone minerality. This is a flawless wine and, as always, the palate is where Jean-Marc’s Les Vergers distinguishes itself. It is remarkably enjoyable now with a mouthful of luscious, fleshy white and yellow fruits, but everything is wrapped around a powerful core of acidity and freshness, making it an ideal candidate for cellar aging. I had a difficult time not emptying this delicious bottle before dinner but I’m confident it will only grow more mysterious and exotic with cellar age. I recently unearthed Pillot’s 2008 Les Vergers (the first Pillot ever offered on Somm Select!) from my cellar and it was just perfect, with nuttier aromas and an intoxicating salinity beginning to dominate the youthful fruit. So, my point is that whether you enjoy the ‘14 now or in 7-10 years, just follow the same simple approach and you will not be disappointed: decant for 30-45 minutes and serve in large Burgundy stems at 60 degrees. And while you might scratch your head about pairing white Burgundy with Indian food, I can promise that the citrus/yogurt marinade used in this epic Tandoori game hen recipe is a sneakily compatible companion. Cheers!
