Domaine Andre Moingeon & Fils, Chassagne Montrachet 2021

Descrizione

A beautiful wine that is loaded with flavours: blossom, acacia, honeysuckle, citrus and ripe apples that lead to hazelnut, light toast and fresh butter. The palate is fleshy but mineral and flinty and, as it begins to age, will develop more ripeness of fruit characteristics and a mellowing of the body, becoming mellower and broader still.

This is a village that is home to the best white wines in the world. Together with Puligny Montrachet, the vineyards here are extremely highly-coveted and on account of the variety of soil types and vineyard aspect, they can produce wines of extraordinary difference, identity and quality. The crown of the two villages is the hill of Montrachet which fittingly straddles the two villages and is home to the five Grand Crus. Chassange is sometimes considered to be a lesser village, but this is not the case – it’s just different. While Puligny produces some reds, these have to be classified as Cotes de Beaune Villages, whereas 30% of Chassagne’s vines are red and a third of these are 1er Crus. It’s certainly diverse, but what it also is, is extremely good.

Jadot is a brilliant name in Burgundy and therefore the whole of France. Therefore the whole of the world and it’s not too far from the truth to consider them to be one of the most respectable names in wine. They produce an incredibly large number of wines from the length and breadth of Burgundy and though one might imagine that this dilutes the intensity of their production values, they manage to hit the mark with almost every appellation in which they work. We think that it’s because they apply a sensible attitude to each village: working with what they have they start at the bottom level and attach an identity to the Village, then seek out the same values albeit at higher quality from the 1er and then Grand Cru vineyards. This way the typicity of the village is preserved and the character of the rarefied single vineyard plots can be found in the village wines. Simplistic? Not sure, but even if it works, they have an absurd number of villages to work through and succeed with; and broadly speaking, they do much better than that. You want to know what Beaune tastes like? Try this; but it’ll also be one of the best versions you can get – that’s what a really good house like Jadot can do.