Today, from deep in the heart of Burgundy, I’m writing to you about one of the most spectacular whites I’ve enjoyed from this region in recent memory. I first encountered today’s bottle at a blind tasting of Meursault, Puligny-, and Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Crus. With one sip, and such impressive detail and tightrope balance between power and elegance, I held zero doubts about the origin of this delicious wine: I was certain it was Premier Cru Puligny Montrachet from a top estate.
As I tasted my way through the evening’s entire lineup, this bottle remained my favorite. So, you can imagine my exhilaration when I learned that it was (a) the least expensive wine on the table; and (b) comes courtesy of one of the most exciting ‘of-the-moment’ estates not in Puligny, but Saint-Romain! Domaine Buisson is no longer an insider secret—increasingly, these wines are taking star turns on top wine lists across Europe and the US—but for me, there is something especially magical about the family’s 2015 releases. Today’s Saint-Romain “La Perrière,” from a what many consider the village’s single top vineyard site, is a regal, powerful, and thoroughly convincing substitute for top Premier Cru Puligny-Montrachet.
It’s been a thrilling visit here in Burgundy so far. I spent the first half of the week giving my 11-month-old daughter a tour of historic cellars in Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault. While navigating our rental car through the ancient cobble-stoned village of Meursault a few days ago, I noticed a particularly high slope of vines just to the west. A few minutes later, as we drove closer, I realized it was the origin site of today’s delicious white from Domaine Buisson. It was a fortuitous encounter, and a wonderful opportunity to see face-to-face the origin sites of one of my favorite Burgundian whites of the 2015 vintage!
Just three miles into the hills west of Meursault, the limestone slopes of Saint-Romain offer a geologically similar but cooler, more rural, and protected white wine terroir. In moderate or cold vintages, both white and red Saint-Romain can be a little tense and edgy—after all, this is one of the highest-elevation villages in the Côte de Beaune. Still, the village’s more protected, windswept old-vine parcels are a welcome respite in year like 2015, whose intense sun and warmth was overwhelming for some vineyards elsewhere in Burgundy. So, whereas many 2015 Premier Crus from nearby Meursault and Puligny register on my palate as slightly lower in acid and higher in alcohol than I would prefer, this Saint-Romain is primed for delivering superlative, textbook white Burgundy for a significantly lower price.
The Buisson family has been farming in Saint-Romain since the 1100s and has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the village’s strongest and most consistent estates. The domaine’s renown is due not only to consistently great wine, but also to conscientious organic farming and an extremely judicious approach in the cellar with regard to additives and modern technology. The family has been farming their vineyards in Saint-Romain organically since the 1970s and was one of the first estates in the area to become certified (by EcoCert in 2009). This progressive, ecologically aware approach has made Buisson an increasingly hot ticket in all corners of the wine world. As I mentioned while offering this family’s Saint Romain Rouge earlier this year, a friend recently texted me a photo of the wine list at Septime, one of Paris’ hardest-to-secure dinner reservations. Sure enough, there were multiple vintages of Buisson on this destination restaurant’s otherwise short list. But no matter where you’re drinking Bussion, you have my assurance that right now, this is some of the most exciting wine in the region.
The site that produces today’s wine, La Perrière, is an organically farmed vineyard dominated by the region’s famed mix of clay and limestone. Here, decades-old Chardonnay vines produce what many consider Saint-Romain’s finest whites. There’s a reason why big-name producers like Jean-Marc Pillot venture out of Chassagne-Montrachet into a far-flung vineyard like La Perrière just to make two barrels of wine: It’s a unique site, situated at a relatively high elevation and skewing northeast, which turned out to to be a boon in the heat of 2015. There’s a sense of refinement, depth and “seriousness” here that sets it apart from most 2015 white Burgundies I’ve pulled the cork on recently.
From the first sip, this beauty overflows with powerful yellow apple and fleshy stone fruit, deep limestone minerality and a perfectly gentle touch of vanilla from aging in 10% new oak. It’s a wine that drinks 2-3 times beyond its reasonable price tag, and challenges any preconception that Saint-Romain’s top sites can’t compete with Burgundy’s more well-known vineyards. This wine easily has another four to five years of peak drinking, but for enjoying in the near term, I encourage you to skip the decanter and serve in large Burgundy stems at 55-60 degrees. It’s spectacular on day one, but I enjoyed it even more on its second night—and by the way, for me, this is a clear indication that it has a long life ahead of it. For such a brilliant and expressive white as this, I can think of no better culinary companion than a charbroiled platter of Hamachi Kama. It’s the ideally elemental and robust counterpoint for this impossibly elegant and detailed white. You can’t go wrong!
