2022 Bourgogne Blanc, Clos-du-Château, Domaine de Montille

The 2022 Bourgogne Le Clos du Château is mainly from the clos in front of the Château du Puligny-Montrachet. The fresh nose has more vitality and tension than the Bourgogne Blanc with touches of lime and lemon zest. The palate has more weight than the Bourgogne Blanc and is certainly a tad spicier, with a tang of ginger on the aftertaste.“We had an uneventful 2022,” head winemaker Brian Sieve explains in their barrel cellar in Meursault. “We didn’t have any employee or tractor problems. The “noise” you have during a vintage didn’t happen. The biggest problem was finding good wood to prune after the frosts in 2021, which was early in the season. We had quite a bit of rain in June to sustain us through the dry periods, especially on the limestone soils. The Côte de Nuits, particularly Clos de Vougeot, seem to get more rain than the Côte de Beaune, 40mm there compared to 10mm down here. I believe the anti-hail canons in the Côte de Beaune ‘push’ the storms northwards. Marsannay and Gevrey get heaps of rain. You get more stress on more calcareous soils that are porous but free-draining. We had no heatwave or ‘canicule’ when the vines shut down. It was a warm season, but the stats are skewed because of the hot temperatures in February and March. It wasn’t like 2018 when maturity was advanced and progressing very fast. In 2022, the maturity came slower. We started with the kosher wines on August 26 and finished around September 8. We cropped at around 45hL/ha for the reds. The whole cluster percentages were based on whether it fitted into the vats. The wines underwent one extraction per day, pigeage rather than pumping over, which is just done at the beginning, whereas in his day, Hubert de Montille was doing three or four. Extraction happens by itself more than it used to. We found that we had very high-quality lees in 2022.”Drink 2024 - 2028Neil Martin, Vinous.com.com (January 2024)

Pale lemon yellow. This is markedly more refined, the smallest fraction of beneficial reduction on top of a very elegant floral bouquet. Super smooth texture yet refreshed by adequate acidity.Drink 2025 - 2028Jasper Morris MW, insideburgundy_com (December 2023)