As it is, Burgundy is the most carefully mapped and officially stratified wine zone on earth. But the real obsessives (of which I am one) delight in going even deeper: Designations like Premier Cru and Grand Cru are all fine and dandy, and have generally stood the test of time, but that doesn’t stop us from further stratifying the existing strata.
Take today’s wine: It hails from the Premier Cru “Morgeot” vineyard in Chassagne-Montrachet, no doubt a familiar name to lovers of top-tier Burgundy whites (and reds). But Morgeot, at about 50 hectares, is the largest Premier Cru in Chassagne and includes a multitude of subdivisions—including the stand of 60-year-old vines that comprises Bouard-Bonnefoy’s prized, rock-walled piece of Morgeot: “Les Petit Clos.” Situated higher up on the slope and enjoying an ideal southeastern aspect, this prized family heirloom is considered one of the best terroirs within Morgeot—a ‘premier’ Premier Cru, if you will. When we tasted this wine at the domaine in March, it was the muscular, already-well-integrated highlight of a stellar lineup of ’16s. This is a bona-fide showstopper, one that tests the limits of the traditional hierarchy. Let’s just say not all Premier Cru are created equal and warn that just six bottles of this tiny-production gem are available to you until our stock runs out.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the vineyards of Chassagne-Montrachet were planted to more Pinot Noir than Chardonnay. Only in the last few decades have the proportions shifted, and rather dramatically, but Morgeot is among the better-known sites producing stellar wines in both colors. While the Côte de Beaune’s classic clay/limestone mixture is still a defining characteristic of the soil composition here, there are some sections—particularly at lower levels on the slope—with a higher concentration of gravel and more reddish clays, which favor Pinot Noir. Some tasters detect a ‘red fruit’ note in many of the whites hailing from Morgeot, which is a lower-lying, well-exposed site that tends to produce richer wines across the board. And while the 2016 “Les Petit Clos” does not lack for concentration, it also boasts that unmistakable limestone minerality that lends the wine firm backbone. It’s a big, opulent Burgundy Chardonnay—but rugby player big, not sumo wrestler big!
As we’ve noted in previous Bouard-Bonnefoy offers, theirs is the ultimate farmstead-scale operation—a ‘garage winery’ in the truest sense of the word. Fabrice Bouard and his wife, Carine Bonnefoy, farm roughly eight hectares of vines concentrated in Chassagne-Montrachet, most of them old-vine sites passed down from Carine’s family (she is descended from a long line of vignerons, including her father, who is still actively involved in vineyard management). The family farms according to lutte raisonnée (‘reasoned struggle’) principles. Chemical herbicides and pesticides are avoided at all costs, only indigenous yeasts are used in fermentations, and grapes are always harvested by hand. The couple still use an antique, hand-cranked wooden press and overwhelmingly favor used barrels for fermentation and aging (this bottling was aged for one year in 20% new oak). They even bottle their wines by hand.
This 2016 is already singing at this young stage in its life, but there’s so much wine here I have no doubt it has 10-15 years of graceful evolution still ahead of it. In the glass, it’s a deep yellow-gold extending to the rim, with serious viscosity on display as you swirl the wine. The nose is a deep, honeyed mélange of yellow apple, bosc pear, yellow plums, salted lemon, wildflowers, and more savory notes of button mushroom and crushed gravel. Nearly-full-bodied, it shows remarkable balance and freshness for a wine of this magnitude; much in the same way that the 2015s were accessible when young, the ’16s are quite approachable out of the gate as well: If you’d like to enjoy a bottle of this one now, decant it about 30 minutes before serving at 50 degrees in Burgundy stems. It is luxurious white Burgundy that will only improve with time in the glass, and while all manner of rich, saucy fish preparations would do it justice, I’m thinking of going “high-low” with a fried chicken pairing here. Check out the attached recipe from The Food Lab’s Kenji Lopez-Alt. This is exactly the kind of culinary geeking-out this special single-vineyard wine deserves!
