If you want to deepen your understanding of a region or appellation nothing beats visiting in person.

But certain vineyards are more stubbornly inscrutable than others. I’ve been visiting Côte-Rôtie for years, yet every time I go there I learn something new.

On paper, it’s a southeast-facing hillside. In reality, it’s a succession of crumpled, corrugated slopes that are so mangled that vineyards can face in almost any direction.

What’s more, the appellation extends across three villages – it takes two hours to walk from one end to the other.

With 343ha of vines divided into 73 lieux-dits, there’s one thing that would make the vineyards of Côte-Rôtie much easier to understand – a classification or ‘cru’ system.

If it exists in Burgundy, then why not here?

Missed opportunities

It’s not a new idea. Marcel Guigal says some producers were using the term ‘premier cru’ in Côte-Rôtie until well after phylloxera. But the term was used liberally throughout France until the appellation d'origine contrôlée system instilled some order.

In the early 1980s, the idea of an official vineyard classification started to gain traction once more.

In 1983, Guigal says that growers voted on the measure – but with three quarters against the motion, it didn’t pass.

‘It was a big mistake,’ says Guigal. Back then, bottle prices were much lower, despite the same high cost of production, and validating vineyards via a cru system could have helped producers increase their prices.

But the idea refused to die. Stéphane Ogier says that not long after he joined the family estate in 1997, ‘the idea was on the table,’ and growers were talking about a possible classification once again. But they failed to achieve a consensus.

One sticking point was this: who has the knowledge and authority to draw up the plans? Finding someone with the necessary level of expertise – but with no skin in the game – proved intractable.

Possible grands crus

I asked Ogier if he could hypothetically draw up such a map. He said he would focus on the original heart of the appellation above the village of Ampuis: from (lieux-dits) Le Combard to Côte Blonde, then from Côte Brune to La Landonne and Côte Rozier, with the middle of the slope designated grand cru and the top of the slope premier cru.

I don’t think many local vignerons would find this suggestion overly controversial.

Then, further north, La Viallière, Les Grands Places and Montmain ‘could be very good premiers crus,’ says Ogier. I’ve no doubt there are others that would class the first two as grand cru.

Looking further south, Maison Rouge and Coteau de Tupin would have their advocates too, at least to premier cru level.

Ogier adds that this preliminary suggestion amounts to broad brush strokes, and that any final classification might end up more like a mosaic of premier and grand cru sites.

Patrick Jasmin has a more poetic suggestion: ‘When it snows, the first places for it to melt, those are the best sites.’

For him, these include lieux-dits Le Mollard, Côte Blonde, Fongeant, Côte Brune, Côte Bodin, Les Moutonnes, Rochains, La Landonne, La Viallière and Les Grands Places.

Sticking points

The further Ogier develops his idea, the more detailed the hypothetical map becomes.

Cognet, for example, would be designated a premier cru on the slope, but not at the foot of the hill where the soil is deeper.

Similarly, Lancement would be a premier cru at the top of the slope, then grand cru towards the middle.

This is where the problem lies. The climats of Burgundy were established around subtle differences in terroir and resulting wine style; whereas the lieu-dit boundaries of Côte-Rôtie follow roads, old estate boundaries and other geographical features.

In the words of Pierre Burgaud, in Côte-Rôtie ‘a lieu-dit does not necessarily correspond to a homogenous unit of terroir,’ as it can contain various soil types, soil depths and exposures.

For a reliable, consistent cru system, an entirely original map would need to be created. And this would create endless arguments among growers and a lot of bad feeling.

‘It would be war!’ says David Duclaux.

But what about renowned vineyards such as La Landonne – surely this would be a grand cru?

Jean-Paul Jamet vinifies his parcel of this vineyard by itself every year but only bottles it separately very rarely, as it can be simply too austere if unblended.

If the greatest grands crus don’t always produce balanced and complete wines by themselves, surely this undermines the idea to some extent?

Maintaining course

Single-vineyard wines are nonetheless increasingly common. But some producers, such as Burgaud, intentionally produce just one Côte-Rôtie, blending together all their parcels.

‘Historically, Côte-Rôtie is an appellation based on blending,’ he says, ‘blending allows me to achieve greater consistency, preserve the wine's complexity and maintain a high level of quality regardless of vintage conditions’.

And a classification system could lead to a proliferation of single-vineyard micro-cuvées, which in reality could make the situation more complex, not clearer.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Duclaux and Guigal, the appellation’s current co-presidents, state there is currently no intention to establish a cru system in Côte-Rôtie.

I’m actually quite pleased. Without this shortcut to understanding the vineyards, I’ll have to keep going back to this beautiful place.

And a lack of a cru system forces us to focus on the estate, rather than the vineyard – which tends to be a better guide, no matter the region.

In the meantime, if you see any of the lieux-dits named above on your bottle, you can take that as a very good sign.

Six Côte-Rôtie wines worth looking out for

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Matt Walls, Heather Dougherty and Alexandre Freguin tasted 105 wines, with 14 Outstanding and 34 Highly recommended

Southern Rhône cru whites: Panel tasting scores

105 wines tasted

Outstanding 14

Highly recommended 34

Recommended 41

Commended 16

Learn more about Decanter's blind-tasting process and scoring system.

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest release white wines from any of the southern Rhône crus (Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Vacqueyras, Cairanne, Lirac, Gigondas and Laudun)

‘A clear increase of precision and consistency’

These southern Rhône cru whites perfectly encapsulate why the style is growing both in popularity and availability, backed up by increasing quality.

This tasting comes at a transformative time for southern Rhône whites.

Production has never been higher, demand is growing year on year and winemakers are raising their game.

The number of crus producing white wine is also ticking up; Gigondas introduced them from the 2023 vintage, and from 2026, Vinsobres will, too.

It came as no surprise that Châteauneuf- du-Pape fielded the highest number of Outstanding wines and the three highest scorers.

But all appellations managed at least one Outstanding wine – apart from Laudun that is, which ‘needs to show some more ambition’, according to Heather Dougherty.

Outside Châteauneuf is where the best value is to be found.

It pays to spread your net widely; we found excellent wines from all over the region, particularly from Gigondas and Vacqueyras.

Alexandre Freguin noted ‘a clear increase of precision and consistency from all the appellations’.

Vintage breakdown

Most of the wines were from recent vintages: 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The 2023s were ripe, concentrated and drinking well; these are broadly wines to drink young.

The 2024 vintage was even better – it’s an outstanding year for whites, ‘smooth and silky across the board… very consistent and harmonious’, said Freguin. The best will age beautifully.

‘Producers have been excited about 2025 from the word go and we saw the beginnings of why,’ said Dougherty.

Though not quite the equal of 2024, they’re already showing their class, with little in the way of excess alcohol or heaviness, despite the heat.

But Freguin pointed out that these are often wines that benefit from long lees ageing, so it’s likely that the best wines of 2025 are yet to be bottled. An exciting prospect.

It’s not just the crus that are developing their whites.

The 11 Côtes du Rhône named villages, which aren’t currently permitted to produce white wines, have made a group appeal to the appellation authorities to relax this regulation and it’s looking likely to be accepted.

Lovers of textural, food-friendly whites have plenty more good things coming their way.

See all notes and scores from the southern Rhône cru whites tasting

The judges

Southern Rhône cru whites panel tasting results

Wines were tasted blind

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If the Champagne region, navigating a testing period of slowing sales and financial pressures, needed a reminder of just how resilient its top producers can be, the house of Louis Roederer would fit the bill.

The company is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and the 150th anniversary of its emblematic cuvée Cristal.

Cristal was created for Tsar Alexander II, emperor of Russia, in 1876. Its clear bottle with a flat base was supposedly designed to ensure it could harbour no hidden poisons, or weapons, when brought to the table.

The secret to the house’s success?

Independence, according to CEO Frédéric Rouzaud.

‘Independence is a state of mind,’ he says, ‘it enables us to take a long-term view’.

Roederer’s success today, which includes owning vineyards not only in Champagne but also in California, Provence, Bordeaux and most recently Burgundy, was hard-won.

‘When my grandmother inherited the house in 1932 it was nearly bankrupt,’ he says.

Yet the ability to rebound remained, thanks to the ultimate long-term play: the acquisition by the founder himself of much of what is known as the ‘Cristal Estate’ of formidable vineyards in today’s grand cru villages of the north of the Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs and Grande Vallée.

This vine-to-glass mentality has stuck, with the house enjoying more ownership of its grape supply than any other major Champagne house.

The visionary cellar master

The protagonist in the success story of this house over the last 30 years has been Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon.

A mercurial figure, he is responsible for everything from viticultural renewal, climate change resilience, organics and biodynamics, the preservation and study of historic variants of Champagne’s Pinot and Chardonnay, to the house’s precise, forward-thinking cellar work itself.

The newest release: Cristal 2018

All the single-vintage wines at Roederer are essentially ‘grower Champagnes’ made entirely from the house’s own vineyards.

The latest release of 2018 shows off the exceptional Pinot Noir resources in the northern Montagne de Reims villages of Verzenay and Verzy in particular.

The harvest began in August in 2018, and the vintage is remembered for its bountiful generosity.

This will likely be reflected in the coming years in a bountiful supply of vintage and prestige cuvées.

The generous yields presented a challenge for a wine usually built on intensity and longevity, though.

‘We had to look for freshness…there were plots lacking salinity, a bit diluted, and we needed more depth and concentration,’ says Lécaillon.

The solution was to forgo making the house’s fine Blanc de Blancs, and instead use that Chardonnay – alongside younger vines of Pinot Noir from the fresh, chalky village of Verzy – to ‘go for a cooler, more mineral’ expression, says Lécaillon.

Has this flexibility paid off? With Roederer’s whole estate worked under either organic or biodynamic viticulture, yields in 2018 were not as excessive as elsewhere in Champagne.

The resulting wines – not only Cristal, but also the vintage and the Brut Nature – all show a notable step up in depth and drive from many wines of the year that relied on fruit more susceptible to dilution.

There’s no doubt this is quite a different Cristal to the tighter, more inward 2016 or the more classical 2013.

Unlike some 2018s, though, Cristal holds enough substance and tension to set it on a path that will last as long – indeed decades – as its top vintages.

How does Roederer celebrate 250 years?

Befitting a celebration of this importance, Roederer is offering a series of rarer, long-aged releases of Cristal from the exquisite 2008 and 2002 vintages.

Both the white and rose Late Release bottlings from 2008 feature an unusual technique: ‘poignettage’.

By shaking the bottles as they age on their lees every three months, the wines receive a boost to all the savoury depth and texture that comes from this stage of ageing.

It’s like adding Marmite to Cristal, Lécaillon jokes (although any fans, or otherwise, of Marmite should take the comparison figuratively).

With 2008’s natural acidity, tension and energy, the end results are dramatic.

Finally, the house’s other programme of limited-edition Cristal releases offers the majestic 2002 Cristal Rosé Vinothèque.

It is what Lécaillon terms an ‘essentia’ of Cristal, made with a programme of shaking that lasts longer than the Late Release – four to five years – followed by 11 years on lees and seven on cork.

An ode to Pinot Noir, Cristal Rosé relies heavily on grapes from the grand cru village of Aÿ, extracting colour and aroma through a gentle infusion technique rather than via the more standard addition of a red wine to the blend.

Despite the allure of such rarities, though, the qualities of the straight, unadorned 2018 Cristal tell just as strong a story about the advances already revealing themselves by this time – and those which remain, tantalisingly, to be discovered in vintages to come.

Roederer releases: 2018 Cristal and more

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Collectors competed for a piece of Bordeaux history at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris on 1 October, as Château Haut-Brion released wines from its cellars spanning 90 years – celebrating stewardship by the Dillon family since American financier Clarence Dillon bought the property in 1935.

Sotheby's said total sales reached €3.4m (US$3.9m; estimate range €2.5m to €3.5m) in a further sign that buyers remain very much alert to opportunities despite an uncertain economic backdrop.

Several lots soared above high estimates. A magnum of Haut-Brion 1935 fetched €8,750, including the buyer’s premium, almost double its pre-sale high estimate of €4,500.

A five-litre Jeroboam of Haut-Brion 1989, considered one of Bordeaux’s 20th century benchmarks, sold for €62,500 (high e: €22,000). That’s a new auction price record for the wine in this format, said Sotheby’s, which also claimed several other records in the sale.

Charles Curtis MW described Haut-Brion Rouge 1989 as a ‘masterpiece’ after tasting it for Decanter in 2023, although it’s the white wine – Haut-Brion Blanc – from this vintage that is part of Decanter’s Wine Legend series.

Twelve bottles of Haut-Brion Blanc 1989 sold for €43,750 (high e: €32,000) in the Sotheby’s auction.

Bordeaux’s lauded vintages of 1982 and 1961 were also represented.

Three bottles of Haut-Brion 1961 sold for €62,500 (high e: €38,000), while a double magnum of Haut-Brion 1982 sold for €16,250 (high e: €5,000).

Several headline lots in the sale featured a mixture of wines and one-off experiences.

A whole barrel (barrique) of Haut-Brion 2025 was offered alongside a behind-the-scenes experience at the estate for six guests – including a private lunch and dinner, plus overnight stay at La Mission Haut-Brion. It sold for €162,500 (e: €100,000 – €200,000).

Another lot featured a limited-edition ‘Linley Console’, previously created to mark 75 years of Dillon family ownership, alongside a visit to the property and exclusive look at the new chais – plus eight Haut-Brion wines spanning 1935 to 2009 and including the lauded 1959 vintage.

This lot sold for €125,000, slightly below its estimate range of €130,000 – €260,000.

Nick Pegna, global head of wines and spirits at Sotheby’s, said, ‘This auction offered collectors a truly exceptional opportunity to acquire wines and experiences that could only come directly from Château Haut-Brion.

'The strength of the results reflects the enduring global appeal of this historic estate and collectors’ enduring appreciation for wines of impeccable provenance and extraordinary rarity.’

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The heart on the label may be Château Calon Ségur’s most famous symbol. But after 20 years at the Saint-Estèphe Third Growth, technical director Vincent Millet is increasingly preoccupied by the less romantic issue of water shortages.

More precisely, he is interested in the clay beneath Calon’s gravel and its ability to retain water as Bordeaux faces hotter, drier growing seasons.

Millet arrived in July 2006 and, by 2008, had begun paying closer attention to variations within Calon’s 55-hectare vineyard.

Today he points to Terrace 3, towards the southern part of the estate near its historic wall, where the estate’s geologist has identified more argile lacustre, or lacustrine clay.

The prized geological gravel layer of Terrace 4 running close to the Gironde estuary receives more attention historically in the Médoc, but ask Millet which matters more in our era of climate change, and he compares the debate to something that would keep lawyers or economists arguing indefinitely.

More important is what the clay can do. ‘It is our hydric reserve,’ he says.

Put to the test

The 2026 growing season provided a test. After a wet winter replenished reserves, spring and early summer turned hot and dry.

Just 22mm of rain fell in June and 26mm in July. As in 2025, Millet says, the lack of water contributed to very small grapes.

August brought relief: 42mm fell during the first 25 days, followed by another 49mm in the final six.

The rain came too late to increase berry size, but he says: ‘It certainly helped unblock ripening.’

More revealing was where the vines coped better. Despite temperatures well above seasonal norms compounded by water deficit, Millet observed no significant differences in yield between Calon’s various soil types ‘but as long as we have clay’.

On sandy soils, by contrast, ‘the vine suffers’.

For Millet, adapting to climate change is not yet primarily about planting different authorised grape varieties.

Water management is the immediate concern. If irrigation were required – subject to authorisation and depending on the age of the vines – Calon has a potential resource: a natural reserve collecting winter rainwater on the estate.

As Calon considers how it needs to adapt for the future, change is not new for an estate where continuity and evolution have long gone hand in hand.

Heart of the matter

Calon’s origins have been associated with the Gallo-Roman period, its name thought to derive from calones, small craft that once navigated the Gironde.

Its modern identity owes much to the 18^th-century Marquis de Ségur, the celebrated ‘Prince of Vines’, who also owned Lafite and Latour and is credited with declaring: ‘I make wine at Lafite and Latour, but my heart is at Calon.’

The heart eventually appeared on the château and, later, its labels. The vineyard itself offers another continuity: its footprint has remained largely unchanged since 1855, with a mere 0.4 hectares acquired from Château Domeyne in 2026 representing what Millet calls a ‘logical extension’ of Calon’s terroir.

The vineyard may have changed little in extent, but much has changed in how it is managed.

Since Millet’s arrival, the vineyard has increasingly emphasised Cabernet Sauvignon. Currently representing around 56–57% of plantings, it is intended to reach ‘roughly 70% by 2032’, he says, as the château continues a long-term programme of replanting, increased vine density, and massal and clonal selection.

‘I prefer the finesse of the Cabernet to the Merlot,’ Millet says, particularly Cabernet grown on Calon’s clay-gravel soils.

Of equal importance is precision. From 2008, Millet developed more detailed parcel and intra-parcel selection, allowing an increasing proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon into the grand vin.

That philosophy received a technological boost after Suravenir, a subsidiary of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, acquired Calon-Ségur and neighbouring Château Capbern from the Gasqueton family in 2012.

Extensive investment followed.

Finding balance

In 2016, a new gravity-fed vat room and renovated ageing cellar came into service. Production did not increase, but the number of vats doubled.

Today 75 stainless-steel vats, ranging from five to 120 hectolitres, permit grapes from individual plots, massal selections and even sections within a parcel to be vinified separately.

Grapes are destemmed, hand-sorted and cooled before descending by gravity into the vats, minimising the use of pumps and helping preserve intact berries.

The grand vin is subsequently aged for around 18 to 20 months.

The result, Millet says, is greater precision, but without losing the identity that has made Calon distinctive.

That balance between change and continuity defines the estate today. Climate has introduced a new variable, yet Cabernet is gaining ground and increasingly sophisticated tools allow Millet and his team to divide the vineyard more precisely.

The heart is Calon’s enduring symbol but, as it turns out, the real heart of the estate has indeed been its terroir all along.

Six older vintages of Château Calon Ségur

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The long days in Biarritz followed the same perfect rhythm: a morning surf, lunch and a siesta, then an evening surf followed by dinner.

Salty and sunkissed, we would slide into the local bars for pintxos and the catch of the day. Surfing leaves one hollowed out in a good way, and nothing filled that hollow like the local fare paired with the local white wines – sharp, saline, electric things that tasted like a perfect synthesis between the Atlantic out front and the Pyrenees behind.

These wines of Earthsea, I learned, were from Irouléguy, a hidden appellation east of Biarritz. With mysterious names, grapes and scripts, they open yet another dimension of French wine.

Irouléguy is the only AP within the Pays Basque – the French Basque Country, in that vast, undifferentiated region known as Southwest France.

A sliver of vines covering just 270ha or so, scattered across 15 villages in the foothills of the western Pyrenees, around St-Etienne-de-Baïgorry and St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the latter a storied pilgrim town that marks the start of the Camino Francés, the most popular route of the Camino de Santiago.

It’s French on the map and not far from Spain, but it’s Basque through and through: the bottles carry wording in Euskara, the Basque language, the villages are whitewashed and red-shuttered, the people, wine and cuisine speak their own vernacular.

Decline & rebirth

Vines have grown here since monks from the Abbey of Roncesvalles, on the Spanish side, planted them to refresh pilgrims on the route to Santiago de Compostela around the 11th century.

When the Treaty of the Pyrenees redrew the border in 1659, the vineyards ended up on the French side and passed to local farmers. Yet phylloxera and two world wars reduced the already small appellation to a mere 30ha of vines by 1950.

Almost forgotten, a handful of growers rallied to found a cooperative in 1952 and an AOC (now AP) was granted in 1970.

Independent domaines have since multiplied – from a dozen a decade ago to more than 20 today – in one of the more striking grassroots revivals in contemporary French wine.

The renowned geologist Yves Hérody, who spent seven years mapping Irouléguy’s soils, refers to the Basque Country as ‘a giant accordion that has been playing music for nearly a billion years’.

Red sandstone dominates, with pockets of ophite, a dark volcanic rock, and schist and limestone.

Most of the vines cling to hand-carved terraces on slopes that can almost be called cliffs. This is heroic viticulture in the most literal sense, every harvest done on foot, by hand, often on a rope.

Eight in 10 vignerons farm these bright green hills organically, a remarkable commitment given the relentless rain.

The Atlantic sends about 1,500mm of rain a year on average, far more than Bordeaux (roughly 900mm), yet the Pyrenees send back a warm, drying autumn wind known as the haize hegoa (‘south wind’).

Elemental wines

That elemental balance is palpable in these wines, shaped equally by mountain and sea. Rustic yet increasingly refined reds built mostly on Tannat and Cabernet Franc – dark, structured, slow to soften – account for the majority of production.

But it’s the electric white blends of Gros Manseng, Petit Manseng and Petit Courbu that have driven the appellation’s resurgence over the past decade.

Domaine Arretxea, organic since the early 1990s, when the banks and local restaurants alike doubted them, remains one of Irouléguy’s key reference points, along with a new generation of proudly Basque producers – Bordaxuria, Goienetxea, Apelxenia, Etxondoa – who are finding their way into top restaurants across France and beyond.

But perhaps the best place to taste them is in a small restaurant in Biarritz, with some pintxos and calamari, saltwater drying on your skin.

Mountain-born, ocean-rinsed, these are elemental wines in every sense.

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Visitors to Domaine Leroy are greeted with a version of a quote attributed to Salvador Dali: ‘Those who know how to taste no longer drink wine but taste secrets.’

Many would doubtless be delighted to learn the secrets of the proprietor, Madame Bize-Leroy, one of the wine world’s most successful entrepreneurs. Leroy has long been a name with which to conjure.

Maison Leroy was created in 1868 by François Leroy and developed by his son Joseph and grandson Henri, who took charge in 1919.

The present pinnacle of the house’s renown, however, is due to both Henri and his daughter Marcelle, known to the world as 'Lalou'.

Few winemakers have had as lasting an impact on Burgundy and the larger world of winemaking as she has.

Hers were the first notable estates in Burgundy to adopt biodynamic viticulture, and she has produced wines of hitherto inconceivable concentration and power.

Her leadership on biodynamic grape-growing has influenced generations of growers, with many implementing elements of this philosophy, even as the number of certified-biodynamic domaines remains fairly modest.

Lalou also inspired many with her commitment to producing concentrated wines through low yields and rigorous sorting, although her success here was often admired but seldom imitated, since few domaines could command the prices she did, which made this approach economically viable.

First steps

Born in Paris in 1932 to Henri Leroy and his wife Simone Brun, Lalou always longed to work beside her father.

Her dream didn’t take long to materialise – he gave her control of the négociant business in 1955 at the age of 23.

The family had long owned vineyards, and had developed other businesses as well, buying and selling both wines and spirits.

Henri’s great passion, however, was the wines of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC).

He had been a devoted customer and friend to proprietor Edmond Gaudin de Villaine throughout the difficult years of the Great Depression (1929-1939).

When de Villaine’s business partner Jacques Chambon decided to sell his half of the domaine in 1942, Henri Leroy leapt at the chance to purchase it, and in the years that followed, he lavished his attention on it.

As his daughter notes: ‘Henri Leroy made this domaine one of the jewels of Burgundy.’

Perhaps inevitably, his négociant business received less of his attention, and in 1955 his young daughter began to buy the wines for Maison Leroy.

She has long been famed for her acuity as a taster and, judging by the results, she did a remarkable job, even from the beginning.

I have had the extraordinary good fortune to taste many vintages of Maison Leroy wines from the 1960s and 1970s with collector friends, providing indelible wine experiences during the years I was living in Asia and later.

Bottles of 1962 La Romanée, 1966 Grands Echezeaux, and 1971 Corton from Maison Leroy were just a few of the spectacular wines from that era that I still remember vividly.

Frédéric Roemer, the maison’s sales director and Mme Bize-Leroy’s right-hand man, explained at the time that she looked for a classic style, remarking that 'the 1955 is the reference standard of where the house wants to be with the Chambertin, while 1949 is the reference for Musigny’.

Grand holdings

In 1974, Mme Bize-Leroy was named co-director of DRC upon her father’s retirement, working alongside Aubert de Villaine.

Then in 1988, she purchased Domaine Charles Noëllat in Vosne-Romanée and Domaine Philippe Rémy in Gevrey-Chambertin with the backing of Japanese partners, combining the vineyards to form the nucleus of Domaine Leroy.

At the same time, she purchased the interest of her sister Pauline Roch in the vines that they had inherited jointly from their parents and incorporated them into Domaine d’Auvenay, which she owns outright.

D’Auvenay is the home in the hills above St-Romain that she shared with her late husband Marcel Bize and where she still abides.

In 1992, she resigned from her role as co-director of DRC to focus on her two domaines; she was succeeded in this role by her daughter, Perrine Fenal. Domaine Leroy focuses on red wine.

Mme Bize-Leroy is quite specific about its dimensions, stating that ‘it currently comprises 22ha, 19 ares and 85 centiares’.

It includes eight village-level vineyards and eight premiers crus (see box). The pride of the domaine, however, are the nine grands crus.

At Domaine d’Auvenay, on the other hand, the focus was initially on white wine.

She began with vineyards in Auxey Duresses and Meursault, to which she added holdings in PulignyMontrachet and Meursault, including grands crus Chevalier-Montrachet, Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet and Bâtard-Montrachet, with red wines from Bonnes-Mares and Mazis-Chambertin thrown in for good measure.

Biodynamic from the start

Although the négociant wines Mme Bize-Leroy bought for Maison Leroy were brilliant, her lasting contribution to the art of winemaking stems from the rigour and precision she brings to grape-growing and winemaking at her two domaines.

From the beginning, these domaines have been cultivated organically and biodynamically.

Her conversion to biodynamics in 1988 was among the first in Burgundy, and she led the way for a great many others.

Today, many of the region’s top domaines are certified biodynamic, including Domaine Leflaive (certified in 1997), Domaine Trapet Père et Fils (2009), Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair (2012), and DRC (2016), among others.

Mme Leroy specifies: ‘Among other treatments, the vines receive herbal teas and plant decoctions tailored to the season, weather and temperature.’

Bottling is done according to biodynamic principles, on ‘fruit days’ – when the moon is passing through the ‘fire constellations’ of Aries, Sagittarius and Leo (her preference is for the latter two).

When necessary, vines are replanted one by one using massal selection (taking cuttings from a diverse group of the healthiest, highest-quality old vines) rather than replanting an entire block – a technique called repiquage in French, preserving the older vines and increasing the vineyard’s average age.

See articles on previous Decanter Hall of Fame Award recipients

Meticulous methods

The domaine also led the way in introducing a technique known as tressage to Burgundy.

Vines grown in this way aren’t hedged in the more common method; instead, the vine tips are folded back over themselves (tressage translates as ‘braiding’ or ‘plaiting’).

Mme Bize-Leroy believes this reduces the trauma to the vine from the traditional hedging, explaining that the vine tip or apex is ‘the force that pulls the vine from the ground’.

Once the shoots are set, in an effort to encourage photosynthesis the canopy isn’t trimmed. In her words: ‘Le soleil grille, les feuilles nourrissent.’ (‘The sun scorches, the leaves nourish.’)

Some winemakers resist using the technique, arguing that the larger canopies it provides can hold humidity and increase disease pressure, particularly in a humid year.

In all likelihood, however, disease pressure is diminished in the generally hot, dry climate of global warming, and tressage may be the way of the future.

If some decry this labour-intensive technique because it can triple the staff required to work a vineyard, Bize-Leroy values it for producing tiny, concentrated berries.

Some winemakers also suggest that sugar levels are naturally lower when tressage is used, which can be beneficial in a hot, dry year.

She goes on to describe another pillar of her philosophy: ‘Yields are controlled through strict pruning,’ noting that the canes are pruned to three or four buds.

Even in an optimal year, this will yield only 15-16hl/ha, dipping to 10hl/ha or less under problematic conditions.

Yields this low are possible only for exorbitantly expensive wines, and Domaine Leroy has some of the region’s lowest yields.

Leroy fans find that such yields give wines of intense concentration, although some top domaines prefer the equilibrium of wines made from higher yields.

After sorting at the end of the Pinot Noir harvest, the central stem (rachis) is removed with scissors, but the bunches are either left whole, re-shaped with scissors, or snipped with scissors and sorted berry by berry.

Above all, the grapes are left whole to preserve the yeast and other microflora on their skins. They’re gently trodden by foot as needed to release the juice.

Chardonnay clusters are also kept whole until they are pressed in a pneumatic press.

After a gentle fermentation in wood, the wines are racked by gravity into lightly toasted oak barrels from François Frères (made from wood that has been air-dried for three years) for ageing.

No comparison

In the vineyard and in the winery, Mme Bize-Leroy is fiercely true to her own principles.

Although she has many admirers, none have reached the same heights of renown or succeeded in fully implementing the full range of her techniques.

Many have followed her down the path of biodynamics. Fewer implement the laborious tressage technique, or are willing to sacrifice yields to the extent that she has or put in place the rigorous sorting and grape-reception methods that she uses.

Her methods are sometimes compared to those of Jean-Yves Bizot, but Bizot is organic (not biodynamic) and uses less sulphur than Domaine Leroy.

Mme Bize-Leroy prefers stable wines – when asked about ‘natural wine’, Gilles Desprez, her sales manager at Domaine Leroy, commented: ‘She has no interest in natural wine.’

Others have remarked on the influence that Mme Bize-Leroy has had on Charles Lachaux, but their paths have diverged as well.

Lachaux (like Bizot) employs tressage in the vineyard and keeps yields at a draconianly low level, but he eschews extraction and, since 2022, has moved away from ageing in barrel, now ageing his wines entirely in ceramic vessels.

Another vigneron who practices tressage is Olivier Lamy, but here the comparison is less apt, since he’s known for high-density planting in contrast to Leroy’s repiquage at standard density.

Similarities but also striking differences are found with other biodynamic powerhouse domaines such as Domaine Leflaive and even DRC, where the Leroy family still owns a 50% stake.

Perched at the pinnacle

One common point among the aforementioned domaines is the stratospheric prices of their top cuvées, which put these wines out of the reach of everyday wine lovers.

This unfortunate state of affairs is perhaps inevitable, given the attention to detail, extraordinarily low yields, high-touch vineyard and winery techniques, and a luxurious maturation regimen lavished upon all the wines at Domaine Leroy, from the Aligoté to the Musigny.

This is not a domaine that struggles to sell its wine, even when the economy slows.

It’s a testament to the rare ability of Lalou Bize-Leroy that she has maintained her perch at the pinnacle of Burgundian wine through good times and less good times, and, in doing so, has left us a vinous legacy that will surely stand for decades to come.

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Interview with Matt Wallace

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The wines of Pommard were once thought of as structured and substantial, but somehow impassive and mute; the antithesis of the flashy and expressive wines from neighbouring Volnay.

A new generation in Pommard, however, is making wines today that are engaging and approachable when young, but substantial enough to age gracefully.

Today, even the ‘old guard’ Pommard domaines are updating their game.

The 400 year-old Domaine de Courcel has a new director, Pierre Clair. Courcel’s neighbour, Domaine Comte Armand, has also recently seen a changing of the guard, with Jane Eyre taking over as manager from Paul Zinetti.

Below are eight key producers leading this renaissance, each demonstrating how modern winemaking techniques, organic practices and thoughtful stewardship are reshaping the reputation of Pommard.

Domaine de la Commaraine

The new generation is already well underway at Domaine de la Commaraine. The domaine traces more than nine centuries of history and a succession of owners.

Most recently, it was sold in 2017 to Americans Denise Dupré and Mark Nunnelly, whose partner and manager, Jean-Luc Vitoux, hired Paul Krug as director.

Paul is the son of Olivier Krug, who worked with Burgundy superstar Louis-Michel Liger-Belair and soil specialist Pedro Para, both of whom collaborated on early stages of this new project.

Early tastings with Paul amply demonstrate both the quality of the terroir and his ability as a winemaker.

Château de Pommard

The Château de Pommard is another venerable property, founded in 1726. The estate was sold to American entrepreneur Michael Baum in 2014.

Baum appointed Paul Négrerie as head winemaker in 2021, who led the estate to organic and biodynamic certification.

The vineyard, rechristened the Clos Marey-Monge, is huge at 20ha. Négrerie and his team realise that the entire surface is not of equal quality, and they manage it in seven different parcels as outlined by former consultants Claude and Lydia Bourguignon.

Results are encouraging, and the top wines seem destined to restore the estate's lofty 19th century lustre.

Domaine Lejeune

The Lejeune family is another longstanding presence in Pommard, founded in 1753.

Although diminished over time from the 50ha Lejeune amassed, the family achieved organic certification in 2021 before selling to Louis de Belleroche and investors in 2023.

De Belleroche honed his craft with the accomplished Jacques Devauges at Domaine des Lambrays.

His first vintage was 2023. Moving away from the estate’s former tannic style, De Belleroche now uses only the ripest stems and extracts more gently to deliver a modern Pommard style.

Domaine Joannès Violot-Guillemard

Another passionate member of the new generation in Pommard is Joannès Violot-Guillemard, who took over in 2015 from his father Thierry.

Joannès is restlessly experimental. He began returning to his grandfather's whole-bunch fermentations, while retaining his father's very gentle extraction.

He is now maturing half the wine in ceramic containers called Clayvers and half in barrel.

He is very optimistic about the long-term potential of the vintage: ‘2025 is particular, [but] I think it will be one of the best vintages ever in Burgundy.’

Domaine Yvon Clerget

Thibaud Clerget is among the brightest stars of the young winemakers in Pommard, even though many of his wines come from Volnay.

The domaine is located in Pommard, however, and its largest holding is in Pommard Rugiens premier cru, where they farm two parcels totalling almost a hectare.

Thibaud, the family's 28th generation of winemakers, took over in 2015. He has reduced the percentage of whole bunches in the fermentation and tells me he ‘has not punched down since 2019,’ keeping the grapes moist by gentle pumping over.

This careful treatment brings a supple, velvety texture to the wines. They are a pleasure to drink and are approachable when young, a key attraction to his style.

Domaine Georges Joillot

Based in the centre of Pommard, Domaine Georges Joillot offers a selection of the better terroirs from Pommard and elsewhere, including the Pommard premiers crus Les Charmots and Les Epenots among others.

The new generation has been making the wines since 2019: Jeanne Joillot, the founder's great-granddaughter, her husband Grégoire Guidot, and her half-brother Simon Goutard.

The grapes are picked by hand, destemmed and carefully fermented in concrete with minimal punching down before ageing in barrels with a modest amount of new oak.

Domaine Jeanson-Parigot

Jeanson-Parigot is a new domaine founded by Florent Jeanson and Anaïs Parigot in 2019.

The pair met while Jeanson was working at the estimable Domaine Parigot in the Hautes-Côtes with his brother-in-law Alexandre Parigot.

The pair are now based in the village of Pommard, and their wines show promise.

These organic wines are carefully made with moderate extraction and modest use of new oak to keep them approachable. It will be interesting to follow this young couple as their domaine develops.

Domaine AF Gros

Domaine AF Gros still lists an address in Pommard, even though the wines have been made for some time now in Beaune.

It is well worth a detour to taste their delicious Pommard, now being made by Mathias Parent and his sister Caroline.

The style is elegant and modern; in ripe years there is no punching down, with moderate maceration, and maturation is done half in barrels and half in ceramic Clayver vessels, for an admirably ‘updated classic’ style.

The ‘bodybuilder’ style of the Pommard of former times has a charm of its own. I regularly seek out top names from the 1950s and 1960s, which still drink well and can offer stellar value.

But with a new generation making wine in Pommard, you no longer need to wait 70 years to enjoy top wines, so it's time to discover – or rediscover – this Burgundian classic.

Eight Pommard wines that define a new era

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Fine wine prices have been pretty flat in 2026, although some top names are up slightly over 12 months after a gentle rally in late 2025, said Geraint Carter of international merchant Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform.

Data on prestige Champagne, one of the better-performing market segments, illustrates the point (see table, below). Miles Davis of Vinum Fine Wines offered a similar sentiment: ‘I think overall prices are stable, but it’s still a buyer’s market,’ he said.

‘You can still get deals.’ Vinum saw a notable uptick in Champagne sales in July, Davis said, led by Salon; other top sellers included Cristal Rosé, Krug and Jacques Selosse.

At Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, the multi-region Liv-ex 1000 index was up 1.2% in 12 months to 30 July. Its Champagne 50 sub-index outperformed, rising 0.9% in July and 2.6% in a year.

It was also up 8.7% in five years, although it hasn’t been a straight road.

For example, Liv-ex analysed Salon and said the 2012 vintage was ‘trading actively’ at £7,000 to £8,000 (12x75cl, in bond), noting it was released in 2021 at £5,800 and swiftly climbed to £13,300 before a subsequent market downturn.

Carter said top-tier Champagne has ‘taken its pain’, adding: ‘It’s a great time to be a Champagne buyer with such quality out there.’

Yet, he doesn’t expect prices to surge in the near-term, citing ongoing available stock levels. One general area to watch this autumn is the US auction scene.

Charles Antin, global head of auctions at Zachys, told Decanter that recent sales have been exceptionally strong.

‘We are having to revise our estimates upwards to keep up with a buoyant market, which is a strong sign for sellers.’

Zachys’ mid-year review reported a surge in demand for ‘super second’ Bordeaux this year, including Château Montrose, and stronger collector thirst for leading California wines.

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

Champagne conundrum

The Champagne market finds itself in an awkward, if familiar, position. After the manic exuberance of 2020-2022 and the swingeing correction that followed, prestige Champagne prices have settled into what has the makings of a prolonged rut.

At the mass-market end, things are arguably even less comfortable, with consumption and shipments continuing to decline.

The priority, more than ever, is getting consumers drinking again. In this context, price hikes ought to be off the table. This is not an easy message for the Champenois.

Costs have risen substantially over the past decade, while the increasingly extreme weather of recent years is a clear warning that, over the longer term, Champagne will need higher prices simply to compensate for the volatility of a more challenging production environment.

But that’s longer-term. For now, the stellar vintages of 2018, 2019 and 2020 are working through the system and will add considerable supply at the prestige end.

Total volumes may be falling, but that doesn’t automatically create pricing power when demand is, at best, flat and existing stocks remain plentiful.

The finer end cannot indefinitely act as a cash cow for shortcomings in the broader market.

Champagne rarely volunteers restraint; more often, the market imposes it. For now, keeping a lid on prices and getting corks popping ought to be the overwhelming priority.

Higher prices may be inevitable, but not yet.

Auction record for Judgement of Paris wine

A new world record auction price for a California wine that shot to fame in the 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting 50 years ago has been announced by Christie’s.

A bottle of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Stag’s Leap Vineyard (SLV) Cabernet Sauvignon 1973 sold for $22,500 (£16,657), including buyer’s premium, at a Christie’s online auction of wines sourced directly from the Napa Valley producer’s cellars.

That’s a record auction price for the wine, which eclipsed a pre-sale high estimate of $6,000 in the Los Angelesbased sale, Christie’s said.

The 1973 vintage is famous for having outshone top Bordeaux reds in the Judgement of Paris blind tasting organised by Steven Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher in the French capital in 1976.

Half a century later, supplies are relatively scarce. A Christie’s spokesperson told Decanter that, after this year’s 50th anniversary celebrations, there will be 19 bottles of the SLV Cabernet Sauvignon 1973 left at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

Another lies alongside a Californian white wine star of the same tasting, Chateau Montelena 1973, in the Smithsonian collection of American historical artefacts.

Juan Muñoz-Oca, estates director at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, said the recent Christie’s auction result is ‘a powerful testament to the enduring legacy of the 1973 SLV Cabernet Sauvignon and the vision of our founder Warren Winiarski’.

In 2022, Heritage Auctions sold a bottle of the wine for $12,300, a record auction price at the time.

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Didier Mariotti is the custodian of a 250-year-old Champagne house, overseeing a team of 40 and making decisions that shape millions of bottles each year, but if six-year-old Didier had had his way, he would be a fighter pilot.

‘It was my childhood dream,’ he says. ‘I was always interested in planes and reading comics about fighter pilots. Unfortunately my eyes weren’t good enough to pursue it.’

‘A moment for myself’

Mariotti’s family was involved in wine, so he followed in their footsteps instead. He always intended to learn to fly, but a busy career and raising a family got in the way.

‘When I turned 40, I thought, “This is the time for me to have my moment for myself,”’ he says. ‘I got my private pilot licence, then my night-flying and flight-instructor qualifications. Now I am treasurer of the flying club here in Champagne and help train the new pilots.’

He compares the joy of teaching people to fly to the joy of opening a bottle of wine: ‘When you open a bottle, it’s always about sharing something with someone else. It’s the same when teaching: you’re sharing your passion with other people.’

The skills required to fly a plane and lead a major Champagne brand are similar, too, he believes.

‘You need to be able to learn every year,’ he says. ‘With wine, every vintage is different. When you’re flying, the weather conditions will be different, the airport will be different.

'What I like with both is that you have to trust yourself – that you have the knowledge and you’ll be able to find a solution. But at the same time, you have to be humble: the weather is always stronger than you are. That’s a difficult combination.’

Where they differ is how they treat mistakes – and Mariotti firmly believes that what he has learned in the cockpit has made him a better boss.

‘The culture of flying is very different to wine and industry in general,’ he says.

‘In companies and in wine, most people try to hide or avoid their mistakes – or try to blame someone else. With flying it’s the opposite. We share our mistakes straight away to make sure they aren’t made again. I’m teaching my team [at Veuve Clicquot] not to be scared of their mistakes.’

Peace and freedom

Of course, neither job is without stress. ‘For me, the most pressure in flight is when you have to land without visibility. You go through the clouds and can only see the ground about 200m before landing. You have to trust your instruments,’ Mariotti says.

‘You have to be very methodical. We have checks at all times. I apply that to my work [in wine] – you have to double-check, triple-check everything.’

The feeling of being in the air, however, is priceless. ‘You have this freedom – you’re like a bird. I love flying above the clouds. It’s like soft cotton that you can almost touch with your hand. It feels like you’re surfing the clouds.

'I enjoy it most when the weather is bad on the ground. You take off, go above the clouds, and it’s beautiful, sunny. The sun is my energy – both in the plane and in my work.’

Part of the reason Mariotti wanted his licence was to be able to fly his family around Champagne. ‘We can see the vineyards from the air, the hills, the valleys,’ he says. ‘I love to fly over it [Champagne] in autumn, when all the vineyards are orange and red.’

He finds these moments very peaceful. ‘You’re not connected to the rest of the world,’ he says. ‘Your phone isn’t working and you can’t look at your emails. You just have to enjoy it.

'It’s the same when I go down into the cellar – it’s 20m underground, so my phone doesn’t work there either. The world is moving so fast; it’s good to disconnect sometimes.’

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When looking back at a great vintage that’s now ready to drink, it can make for a rather short column. If the weather was perfect and the wines are brilliant, what more is there to say?

But this is Châteauneuf-du-Pape; even in a good year, there’s usually a considerable qualitative spread.

And one thing I love about Châteauneuf is its unpredictability as it ages; there are always a handful of ugly duckling tank samples that, through luck or skillful winemaking, end up developing into something surprisingly beautiful.

There’s another important element that we need to face. Châteauneuf in a hot vintage like 2016 is inevitably high in alcohol.

But that doesn’t mean they should be avoided – I’ll explain why in a moment.

The growing season

Vincent Avril of Clos des Papes remembers a mild, dry winter with strong winds. The whole year was marked by regular bouts of Mistral in fact, making for healthy vineyards and concentrated wines.

It was Florent Lançon of Domaine de la Solitude’s first year fully in charge of the family winery, and he had just steered the vineyards towards organics.

‘The growing season was relatively easy to manage,’ he says, ‘featuring a cool, dry spring followed by a summer that was considered hot at the time – though far removed from the temperatures we have experienced in recent years’.

After a very dry August, 45mm of rain fell on 14 September. ‘I believe the success of the vintage really hinged on the rainfall,’ says Lançon.

Eric Bonnet of La Bastide St-Dominique agrees, saying that it ‘allowed the grapes to complete their ripening process under excellent conditions.’ It was a long, unhurried pick.

‘Ultimately, it was a harvest that can truly be described as exceptional,’ says Bonnet, ‘perfect fruit health, excellent phenolic ripeness, and a superb balance between concentration and freshness.’

Olivier Mousset, co-owner of Clos St Michel with his brother Franck, is also convinced it’s a magnificent year: ‘For us, 2016 is the most successful vintage in 30 years,’ he says.

Not only was it great in quality, it was generous in quantity. Lançon says that it was the largest crop he’s harvested since joining the estate in 2007.

The tasting

When I tasted the 2016s from tank and barrel in 2017 I was convinced of their formidable potential. Returning to them now, it’s clear that they turned out just as well, if not better, than I’d hoped.

The 2016 vintage will go down in the history books along with 1978, 1990, 1998, 2007 and 2010 as one of the greatest of the last 50 years.

Some wines that showed well to begin with have blossomed into something truly extraordinary, including Château La Nerthe’s Cuvée des Cadettes, Domaine de la Solitude’s Cornelia Constanza and Domaine de Marcoux’s Vieilles Vignes.

Those are wines which often excel in top vintages.

But for many less famous estates, 2016 represents a high water mark, producing brilliant wines that will likely offer great value for money if you can still find them.

They include Domaine du Père Caboche’s Vieilles Vignes Elisabeth Chambellan, Domaine du Grand Tinel’s Hérès, Domaine Tour Saint Michel’s Feminessence and Domaine Albin Jacumin’s La Bégude des Papes.

A quick search online uncovered many 2016s still for sale. Snap them up while you still can.

The style

Vincent Avril sums up the style of 2016 succinctly: ‘A powerful vintage with deep colour. Good extraction, ripe tannins, very good pH levels and good balance.

'It is a very nice vintage for cellaring, one that has gained freshness and elegance over time. The alcohol is well-integrated, so everything is there’.

For the best wines of the vintage, I agree with all of this. Most of these wines have at least 10 years still ahead of them, some 20 years, some even longer.

But despite the overall quality of the vintage, I wouldn’t buy indiscriminately. Of the 54 wines I tasted, there were a dozen or so that missed the mark for various reasons, whether overripe, overoaked or oxidised.

And some were simply too alcoholic.

The burning issue

From the beginning, the alcohol levels on the 2016s felt high – this was my one reservation when I tasted them from barrel.

Of the finished wines I tasted from bottle, only 12 of the 54 had a stated alcohol percentage of under 15%. Some were 16%.

For Grenache to reach its apogee in Châteauneuf-du-Pape – its most complex, texturally sumptuous and terroir-reflective – it has to be fully ripe. And that rarely happens under 15% alcohol.

Alcohol is an important component of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, contributing to its signature richness. But if it sticks out or burns, that’s a problem.

Some were gently warming on the finish, but not excessive. Three wines were way out of balance, and I didn’t include them in my selection on that basis alone.

For the others, the alcohol was technically high, but – crucially – it felt integrated and the wines tasted balanced for the style.

Not all drinks are the same

There is a current trend towards lighter reds with low alcohol. Like a crunchy Cinsault or a fresh Poulsard, they can of course be delicious.

But sometimes it feels like there is a push for all alcoholic drinks to drink the same – to quench thirst above all. But that’s not why we drink wine, not really. Not all wines are made to refresh, and Châteauneuf is a case in point.

Red Châteauneuf is a powerful wine that for centuries has been prized for its ability to age for decades, and take on layers of complex flavour as it does.

When I imagine people passing over these 2016s just on sight of their stated alcohol content, I can’t help but feel they’re missing out. Yes it’s an extreme style, but in wine, sometimes these are what create the strongest memories.

Another prevailing trend is to moderate our alcohol consumption, which is undeniably wise. But the answer here is simple: leave some in the bottle for tomorrow.

If we can’t adapt the way we drink different types of wine, we risk losing out on some wonderful, delicious experiences.

Which is exactly what so many 2016 Châteauneuf-du-Papes have to offer.

Châteauneuf 2016 wines to buy or drink up

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Champagne’s brands and blends may be better known than its villages or vineyards, but if there’s one place in the region that has broken through it is Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

What makes the Chardonnay grown in this sleepy Côte des Blancs village just south of Épernay ascend to such mythical status?

Perhaps it’s the famous names dotted discreetly around the village. Krug’s Clos du Mesnil and the house of Salon yield two of Champagne’s rarest blanc de blancs, often commanding bottle prices that exceed the cost of entire cases of other prestige cuvées.

Meanwhile, the famous Chétillon vineyard that straddles the road beneath the village was responsible for catapulting Pierre Péters’ Les Chétillons to fame and desirability, attained by few grower Champagnes during the 2000s.

At the heart of the question is time. Le Mesnil’s legendary longevity makes time an essential ingredient in almost all of the region’s blended Prestige Cuvées from the famous houses, from Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne and Charles Heidsieck’s Blanc des Millénaires to the likes of Dom Pérignon and Cristal.

Even if it would placate their bank managers, the vignerons of Le Mesnil have to wrestle with the truth that the village’s wines can’t be turned around quickly.

Perfection can't be rushed

At Guy Charlemagne in the village, sisters Justine and Marie are just a few years into their journey to transform and modernise one of the great estates of the village.

Their entry-level wine has, somewhat remarkably, spent six years on the lees – more than double a normal time for a non-vintage Champagne.

‘You can’t drop the ageing, though,’ says Marie, ‘for Le Mesnil, you need time’.

When Eugène Salon released his first wine in 1905, the concept of a blanc de blancs was almost unheard of. Chardonnay was still primarily viewed as a blending variety for Pinot Noir rather than a standalone star.

At Salon, with no oak and no malolactic fermentation, it is time alone that reveals the village’s secrets: it ages on lees for around a decade and then often decades more afterwards.

Rodolphe Péters of Champagne Pierre Péters notes that the village’s austerity serves it well amid risks of overripeness elsewhere.

‘People mistake it for high acidity,’ he says. ‘But the freshness is driven by a crispy, electric perception from the chalk, alongside an iodine-like minerality that can feel almost metallic.’

Some, like both Marine Zabarino at Domaine Vincey and Paul Girard at Domaine Girard-Bonnet, suggest that Mesnil is slightly less sunny, and more exposed, than neighbouring Oger, explaining the more inward style of wines.

There’s a chalky austerity here which can’t really be explained away just by looking at the slope, or the aspect, though.

Péters explains that the chalk is ‘dryer’ here than in other villages, and has been more subject to crumbling under the surface thanks to repeated freezing and thawing.

‘There’s no science behind it,’ he continues, ‘but there are deep veins of fragmented chalk here, and the vines go deeper in search of water and mineral sources,’ he believes.

Heart of the terroir

The good news, though, is that the village’s treasures are more accessible than in the past thanks to the riper, fruitier grapes found in today’s warmer vintages, and a new generation of growers unlocking them.

Paul Girard of Domaine Girard-Bonnet manages the austerity with super-ripe grapes, careful oak vinification and plot selection, believing that some parts of the village can yield more accessible wines.

He feels the very lowest vineyards, such as Hautes Mottes, can be ready in three years, whereas the heart of the terroir – the ‘cœur du terroir’ as the Charlemagne sisters refer to it – needs longer.

Views differ, though, and unlike Burgundy’s love of the mid-slope, the flatter vineyards nearer the bottom of the Côte des Blancs are often viewed as the classical, long-lived terroirs thanks to the closeness of the chalk just beneath the surface.

The vines of the village are also severely hit with the court-noué virus in the historical mid-slope sector, which dramatically intensifies ripeness and drops yields.

Girard notes he may harvest only 2,000 kg/ha in the famous Volibarts plot (which, with its intensity and ripeness also makes Louis Roederer’s still white Coteaux Champenois), whereas Hautes Mottes can yield 12,000 kg/ha.

‘Of course, you’re going to say that Hautes Mottes is better!’ he jokes.

Ripples and bumps mean that adjacent vineyards even on the same slope can have markedly different topsoils, and markedly different wines.

At Pierre Péters this is the source of the contrasting Les Montjolys cuvée, a companion piece to famous, chalky Chétillons that always offers a little more juicy breadth thanks, Péters believes, to the deeper topsoil that collected in the foot of one of these undulations.

‘Mesnil is very wavy thanks to erosion,’ he says, with Chétillons and Montjolys on ‘two extremes of soil’.

Blends and barrels

Girard, too, blends some of the purer chalk sites with those richer in colluvium for his Mon Village cuvée, aiming to keep the strictness and refreshment value in the wine but also yield something approachable (and sellable), with around three years on lees.

The strength of the village’s wines means he opens them up with 70% of the blend going through oak, something he feels a less structured, austere village such as neighbouring Vertus couldn’t take.

‘If I did this with Vertus,’ he says, ‘the wine would be dead’.

For some such as Girard, Zabarino or Mesnil expert Robert Moncuit, opening up the wines with a little oak helps soften the wines a little.

Adrien Dhondt, too, works with the higher part of Chétillon, Chétillon de Haut, which is richer with more clay than the famous Chétillons.

The beautiful concentration and oak fermentation yields a heady, intense yet not austere wine in the forcefully sunny 2020 vintage.

For more established names, though, reserve wines can help tame Le Mesnil’s force.

At Péters (where there’s no oak in the cellar), the family has maintained a perpetual reserve of base wines since 1988.

For Rodolphe, this is ‘security,’ not only smoothing out vintage variation but also allowing wines like his Cuvée de Réserve (two-thirds Le Mesnil Chardonnay) to achieve complexity without requiring extensive lees aging.

It’s a benefit, too, as the Côte des Blancs faces a second consecutive heatwave vintage in 2026, challenging its identity as the racy, restrained backbone of Champagne.

With frost wiping out some of the higher yielding parts of the village beneath the road – ‘the parts we usually use to compensate for the court-noué,’ Péters explains – the quantities of top blanc de blancs produced in both 2026 and naturally low-yielding 2025 are undoubtedly down on top years of the past.

More scarcity might drive up prices in an already elevated terroir, but thanks to the new growers on the scene this village’s mystical appeal is, for now, still relatively easy to access.

Eight Champagnes from Le Mesnil-sur-Oger

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Bordeaux châteaux from Médoc to St-Emilion have been ranked under the new Michelin ‘grapes’ selection, following the system's debut in Burgundy earlier this year.

There have been several attempts to reconfigure Bordeaux estates featured in famous 1855 Classification. Other classifications, such as those of St-Emilion or Cru Bourgeois, are revised at set intervals.

While Michelin’s ranking may raise a few eyebrows, it also puts a fresh spotlight on this historic fine wine region.

Nine estates were awarded the top-tier ‘three grapes’. From Médoc, Pauillac-based Lafite Rothschild is joined by two 1855 second growths: St-Estèphe’s Montrose and St-Julien’s Léoville Las Cases.

Both were already considered members of a prominent, yet unofficial, group of 'super seconds'. Michelin highlighted efforts at Montrose to ‘further refine vineyard management’ in recent years, with the grand vin focused on the estate’s ‘finest historic plots’.

First growths Châteaux Mouton Rothschild, Margaux and Haut-Brion were among 16 estates awarded two grapes.

Fellow first growth Château Latour was one of the highest-profile estates not listed. A Michelin spokesperson said this reflected its process, rather than a final judgement, and emphasised that its guide is the first edition of a selection that will be reassessed annually.

'Our methodology takes a long-term view of each estate, assessing its work as a whole and its ability to deliver quality consistently over time.

'For a small number of estates, including Château Latour, our evaluation process had not been fully completed by the time this inaugural selection was finalised, and our inspectors had therefore not yet reached a collegiate conclusion. In full respect of the rigour, independence, and integrity of our methodology, we chose not to publish an assessment of these estates at this stage.'

Legendary Sauternes estate Château d’Yquem also features in Michelin’s top tier, with five more estates on the Right Bank also awarded three grapes.

In Pomerol, Petrus is joined by La Conseillante, plus Lafleur (now a Vin de France). Cheval Blanc and Figeac are the St-Emilion estates ranked at this level.

Other estates with two grapes include Pichon Comtesse and Pichon Baron, Palmer, Angélus, Canon, Vieux Château Certan and Les Carmes Haut-Brion, among others.

Michelin also gave one grape to 37 properties, with a further 21 wineries listed in a ‘Michelin Selected’ category.

Michelin’s one-grape tier included Lynch-Bages, Cos d’Estournel, Trotanoy, Le Pin, Léoville-Barton and Bélair-Monange.

Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin guide, said of the Bordeaux launch: 'This selection reveals a region deeply loyal to its history, yet never static. Behind the great internationally renowned labels, our inspectors uncovered a new generation of winemakers, estates deeply committed to their craft, and expertise in constant evolution, all in service of an ever more precise and authentic expression of terroir.'

When Michelin announced its expansion into wine, it said properties would be judged on five criteria, including ‘quality of agronomy’ – related to vineyard management – plus ‘technical mastery’, ‘identity’, ‘balance’ and ‘consistency’. Wines would be evaluated across multiple vintages.

The group plans to expand its Michelin grapes system to other wine regions in France and worldwide.

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In recent years we have examined the decennial anniversaries of Bordeaux vintages that have yielded a broad spectrum of success from the ‘unlucky number 4’ to the spectacular ‘rule of 5’.

This year, looking back at vintages ending in ‘6’ has been far more interesting than I imagined at first glance.

Sadly, for any ‘experienced’ Decanter readers emanating from the 1956, 1946 or 1936 vintages, the news is not great.

Although I’m sure there are drinkable examples, they are few and far between.

However, if you are receiving your letter from the King this year and have the wherewithal to be opening a venerable old claret from 1926, you are blessed with one of the finest vintages of the era.

2016

So much has been spoken about 2016, many believing that it may ultimately surpass its peers as the finest vintage of all.

Indeed, tasting over 80 of the top wines earlier this year at 10 years of age, the consistency and uniform quality was sublime.

There is an argument to put forward that the very apex of the vintage does not stack up to that of a handful of others, but we are splitting hairs.

The 2016s are, across the board, impeccably balanced and wines that will stand the test of time.

All of the producers you expect to have hit grand slam home runs have done exactly that, but special mention should go to both Durfort Vivens and Calon Ségur for producing arguably their greatest wines ever.

From top to bottom, buy everything you can within your means.

2006

Often a vintage that splits opinion, but one I personally love.

The right bank is, in some cases, superior to 2006 while the left bank wines are linear and generally very well made.

I wouldn’t suggest that it is a vintage that will satisfy the hedonists but it’s a haven (particularly in terms of price) for traditional claret lovers that want a little more ‘oomph’ than can be found in 2004 and 2007.

The wine of the vintage is undoubtedly Mouton Rothschild which made a wine that vies for the best of the decade against 2000, 2005 and 2009.

On the right bank La Conseillante punches well above its weight alongside glorious expressions of both Cheval Blanc and Le Pin.

1996

An out and out left bank vintage, and the finest of the decade at that. The wines east of the Gironde leave a little to be desired although it is far from a disaster in St-Emilion and Pomerol.

From the Médoc, almost everything was exceptional and stylistically typical examples of the respective appellations.

Depending if you crave power or elegance, respectively Latour and Lafite are the wines of the vintage with Pichon Comtesse following closely behind.

If it’s quintessential Pauillac you are after then Batailley, Grand-Puy-Lacoste and Lynch-Bages offer exactly that at varying levels.

Léoville Las Cases is a world beating wine that is backward and still needs time whereas, further north in St-Estèphe, Montrose and Calon Ségur are both ‘a point’ right now.

For readers wedded to 1996, I’d urge you to experiment with well-stored bottles at all levels from the Médoc and you will rarely be disappointed.

1986

To my mind 1986 is a vintage that was somewhat misjudged. Not because the quality is not generally exceptional, but because the initial expectations and predictions for greatness were misguided.

Let’s be clear, there are wines here like Mouton Rothschild, Lafite Rothschild and Léoville Las Cases that are world beating mature clarets and deliver as such, but the structured nature of the vintage has meant that many lesser wines have simply never had the fruit concentration to outlive the tannin.

Some wines are dry and austere, some are still shut for business, waiting to emerge (or not!) from their 40-year slumber, that said, the very best wines are built to last a century.

Margaux and Palmer further south should be included in that bracket. Without breaking the bank Gruaud-Larose, Pichon Comtesse, Talbot and Lynch-Bages are all exceptional on the left bank.

And, while pickings are much slimmer on the right bank, I have always had a soft spot for Vieux Château Certan.

1976

Anyone born in the UK before 1960 will immediately volunteer in any conversation around 1976 that it was famously ‘the hottest year on record’.

The fact that very few people could proffer almost any other historical meteorological facts serves only to emphasise the gravitas of this infamous vintage.

Although achieving ripeness in the 1970s in Bordeaux was a genuine concern, heat of this nature was equally unwelcome.

There are good examples of 1976, but sadly no great wines produced outside Sauternes. A recent bottle of Duhart-Milon was delicious if not profound. Similarly, it’s big brother, Lafite Rothschild.

On the right bank Cheval Blanc is, I suspect, the finest example, and both Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion are both very acceptable.

The wine of the vintage is, without question, Yquem, an almost perfect wine. Alongside the undisputed heavyweight, Climens and Coutet are exceptional.

I’d suggest anything from Sauternes or Barsac that is well stored will still be wonderful.

1966

1966 is a vintage often overshadowed by other superb or, in the case of 1961, legendary vintages in the decade.

It is a vintage of great homogeneity. You will rarely find a wine to rival 1961 or indeed 1964 on the right bank but almost everyone made solid wines that have aged very well.

If this World Cup winning vintage is special to you, then I suggest seeking out a bottle from any château you love in more recent years.

For the sake of specifics, Latour is the wine of the vintage. Its neighbours, Pichon Comtesse and Léoville Las Cases are also stunning.

Gruaud-Larose, Lafite Rothschild, Haut-Brion, La Mission Haut-Brion and Cos d’Estournel come to mind as great examples of mature Bordeaux still drinking beautifully.

Cheval Blanc in St-Emilion would be my pick on the right bank and pushes Latour for the very best wine produced in this landmark year.

I also have a very fond recollection of a magnum of Lafaurie-Peyraguey 1966 which was outstanding, as is so much in Sauternes, especially when it is this mature.

If only it were more popular…

Best Bordeaux wines ending in 6

Wines are listed youngest to oldest

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Not far from the St Paul de Mausole asylum in St-Rémy-de-Provence, the olive groves look much as they did when Vincent van Gogh painted them during his convalescence there in 1889-1890.

His physician, Dr Théophile Peyron, allowed his patient to paint freely beyond the asylum grounds – a rare humane gesture in 19th-century psychiatry – and Van Gogh produced more than 140 paintings in and around what is today Les Baux-de-Provence, France’s first 100% organic appellation.

Walking the vineyards, olive groves and orchards today is like stepping into one of these swirling canvases, as an art student does in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams.

One of this tiny appellation’s 12 estates, Domaine de Métifiot, is justified in putting Van Gogh’s Olive Trees (1889) on its label – the estate is rumoured to be home to the groves it immortalises.

Les Baux-de-Provence may be one of France’s most visited villages, yet its wines are almost unknown beyond the region, with more than half sold at cellar doors and local restaurants.

The appellation has just 243ha under vine, situated within the Parc Naturel Régional des Alpilles.

Les Baux sits at a crossroads – closer to the Côtes du Rhône than to the Côte d’Azur in distance and wine styles. I arrived directly from Hermitage in the northern Rhône and found a kindred spirit in the elegant Syrahs.

This isn’t the Provence of platinum poolside rosé – indeed, the appellation eschews these associations.

Instead, the focus is on reds, which make up 52% of production, followed by 36% of rosé. Although only 12% currently, white production is on the rise, and these are the wines that surprised me most: crisp and vivacious, despite the southern heat.

The reds are Grenache- and Syrah-dominant, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Mourvèdre adding backbone.

The whites, assembled from Rolle (elsewhere known as Vermentino), Grenache Blanc, Clairette and Roussanne, tend towards the gastronomic and ageworthy in the better examples, with layered fruit and mineral tension.

Organic pioneer

The pristine environment lends itself to the appellation’s most significant achievement.

In 2023, Les Baux became the first appellation in France to achieve 100% organic certification, a move made voluntarily by all 12 estates – motivated not by regulatory compliance but ethics and ‘eco-logic’.

The relentless Mistral wind blows fungal threats and other pests away. The small vineyards, many old and gnarled, sit within a rich ecosystem, home to Bonelli’s eagles, Egyptian vultures and 19 species of bat, all actively encouraged by the vignerons as natural allies.

Vines and olive trees share the same limestone terraces, alongside apricot orchards, wild garrigue and pine forests: agroecology practised not as policy or trend, but as the touchstone of a place that has made wine since before the Romans arrived.

All of the wine estates also grow olives and the oil has its own appellation and ranks among France’s finest. Like the wine, it’s 100% organic and has been for 30 years.

The bottle of Château d’Estoublon olive oil I returned home with confirmed the quality – as did the wine.

This restored château, dating back to 1489, with stunning gardens that supply its acclaimed restaurant, is a destination in itself.

A dancing star

From the hilltop village of Les Baux, the surrounding patchwork is Van Gogh’s brush strokes made agricultural – violet shadow, burnt-orange earth, silver leaf, cobalt sky.

Even the immaculate golf course below, I learn, is tended organically. The same light that fuelled Van Gogh’s ecstasy in the final year of his life flows through the wines of Les Baux.

As he painted with visionary abandon around St-Rémy in 1888-89, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, also drawn to the south, blazing like a supernova before descending into madness, wrote: ‘One must have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star.’

It’s that same chaos the painter channelled onto his canvases that the vignerons of Les Baux channel through their wines, in a landscape he described as ‘too beautiful to dare paint’.

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Some time ago, I visited Emmanuel Reynaud at Château Rayas in order to taste his 2012s from barrel. I asked him whether he thought it was a great vintage or merely a good one.

He thought for a moment, then explained that he didn’t believe in rating one vintage over another.

Like people, all vintages have different characters and qualities, and shouldn’t necessarily be seen simply as better or worse. It made me realise something about the different stages of wine appreciation.

The first stage is getting to know what you like. The second stage is understanding why you like it. The third is recognising quality in wine, even if it’s not to your taste.

The fourth stage is what Reynaud was getting at – to be able to see the value in all wines.

Stage 1: Discovering what you like

Shortly before I visited Reynaud, I was pouring wine at a large tasting event. I had several different styles in front of me, and I was excited about one in particular – a vin jaune from the Jura.

A man approached the stand and I poured him a glass. He tasted it and said ‘it’s a bit Marmite*, isn’t it’.

‘Does that mean you love it?’ I replied, innocently hoping to find a kindred spirit. ‘No, I mean it tastes of Marmite,’ he replied. ‘And that’s weird.’

I wanted to tell him about the six years and three months this wine spends in barrels under flor. I wanted to tell him about the significance of its 62cl clavelin bottle.

I wanted to tell him how well it went with Comté cheese. All the stuff that makes this elixir so fascinating to a wine geek like me.

But I knew it wouldn’t be helpful. It’s a wine that’s challenging at the best of times, and, being at the start of his journey, he needed an easier route in.

He was still at that first stage of wine appreciation – figuring out what he liked. Perhaps even if he liked wine.

Hopefully he went on to find some things that did appeal to him, which excited his tastebuds and spurred him on to explore further. If so, he might have reached the second stage of wine appreciation.

*(If you haven’t encountered Marmite before, it’s an English yeast extract that you spread on toast. Its pungent, umami flavour divides opinion, so to describe something as ‘a bit Marmite’ means you either love it or hate it.)

Stage 2: Knowing why you like it

When you discover a style you like – whether it’s Bordeaux, Riesling or Sherry – inevitably you want to try more.

There are endless bottles to explore and each holds the tantalising promise that it might be better than the last.

But you can only glean so much from drinking one bottle of it each week over dinner.

A crucial moment on any wine journey is when you start to taste more than one bottle at a time.

Until this point, a simple yes or no will answer the question of whether you like it or not.

With more than one bottle on the table, the question becomes an open one – which do you prefer, and why?

Comparison creates discussion, and preferences need explaining. When you can put it into words, your confidence grows.

Stage 3: Knowing what makes a wine good

If everyone around the table is in agreement over which wine is the best, then that seals it; it no longer feels like personal preference but objective truth – this bottle is better than that one.

What makes a good wine becomes clearer.

Being able to recognise that a wine is good quality, even if it’s not to your taste, is another step up.

Next come wine dinners, courses and online forums... From here, there’s no going back. I’ve never met an ex-wine lover.

But I believe there’s another level to wine enthusiasm.

Stage 4: Seeing the value in all wines

I was asked a simple question the other day that I struggled to answer. A friend asked me what were my favourite types of wine.

I found myself listing nearly every region and style imaginable. So I stopped myself and gave them a shorter version: I like all wines, as long as they’re good.

It might sound flippant but it’s true. Almost every style of wine that has stood the test of time offers some level of interest and enjoyment.

Some have taken longer to reveal themselves to me than others – I must admit vin jaune took me a while – but there are few established styles, regions or grapes with no redeeming bottles.

We all have personal favourites that we return to, but discovery is what keeps wine interesting.

And the greatest terroirs, such as Château Rayas, are interesting year in, year out. Every bottle tells the story of its growing season, and offers a different lens through which to understand the place and its people.

There is one caveat. I’m talking about wines of place rather than industrial wines. And one of the most important things you learn in your wine journey is the difference between the two.

The way to do that of course is by tasting. Starting with what you like, then through discussion of which wines are interesting and which aren’t.

And why.

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The job of winemaking is a fairly simple concept: vinify a harvest.

For Champagne houses, though, being in charge of winemaking means much more than simply taking in the year’s grapes and guiding them to bottle, especially when it comes to the non-vintage wines which make up over 90% of the region’s production.

In Champagne, complexity begins in the vineyard.

The houses themselves own only 10% of the land, and the rest is divided between more than 16,000 individual growers, from which the houses buy grapes and wines.

The assembling of hundreds of these wines, coupled with the use and maintenance of multiple reserve wines from previous harvests, makes this one of the most demanding jobs in the field.

But what exactly does a cellar master – known in French as chef de caves – do?

Steering the ship

‘My goal is to stay true to the house style,’ says Séverine Frerson, cellar master at Perrier-Jouët.

As she illustrates, their first responsibility is to the wines themselves.

While they may not to get too heavily involved in the daily tasks of basic cellar management, they are the masterminds behind the all-important blending sessions once the base wines have fallen still after fermentation.

They work with a winemaking team to present blends composed of hundreds of individual wines to a committee, who vote on whether these fit the style and quality goals of the house.

In family-run houses such as Billecart-Salmon, cellar master Florent Nys presents potential blends to a committee that includes other winemakers and family members.

Elsewhere, in more corporate structures, the cellar master is more like a chief executive, having the last word on decision making: ‘I come with the blends 97% complete, and the remaining 3% we discuss as a committee,’ says Krug’s Julie Cavil.

‘In 20 years it has never happened that we are not unanimous.'

And when it comes to the final all-clear?

At Krug, it’s Cavil who has the casting vote: ‘I say OK!’ she laughs.

The committee is often called back for another job, too: deciding the dosage before release.

‘There’s always a tasting committee for the dosage,’ says Nys, who has built a mini-winery of 51 different dosage liqueurs based on different grape varieties, vinifications and ageing profiles.

The minutely calculated additions of these liqueurs is the final flourish from the hand of the winemaking team before the Champagne is shipped.

Masters of the reserves

Beyond the complexity of blending the year’s harvest lies a very Champagne-specific skillset.

Tank-by-tank knowledge of the reserves, the library of wines kept back from previous harvests for blending.

This is a house’s secret store cupboard. Its most prized wines which, depending on the way they are kept and the way they age, bring huge amounts of character to the final blends.

‘Knowledge of the reserves is critical to the job,’ says Laurent-Perrier cellar master Olivier Vigneron, who keeps 300 individual tanks from previous harvests.

Depending on the house’s approach, some reserves might be kept in smaller oak (faster maturing but full of character); some may be kept in large stainless steel, developing slowly for a decade or more; or some may even be part of a complex perpetual reserve system incorporating multiple harvests.

Consistency is key for Moët et Chandon’s Benoît Gouez, where the reserves, kept relatively young, are used more to ‘reinforce the potential of the wine’ than add noticeable aged characters into the wines, says Gouez.

Production size means that pre-blends (wines blended from multiple villages) are made before the final blends that make up wines such as Moët et Chandon’s Brut Imperial.

‘When you have a good year, I prefer to keep a lot of pre-blends in reserve,’ he says, confident that wines can be combined without any problematic ingredients tiring too early.

A weaker year, for example following a troublesome growing season, means more care is needed, and the reserves have to be specifically put together so as to be sure not to include wines which might not age well.

It’s a perfect example of the sort of crystal ball a cellar master holds, judging how these embryonic wines will behave after the lengthy, multi-stage process involved in turning them into Champagne.

In front of the cameras

The idea of a 19th-century cellar master being asked to sail the seas, meet clients, develop business and present their wines to markets would have been preposterous to the cellar-dwellers of the time.

Today, though, the role is increasingly ambassadorial.

‘I like to say it has made me a collector of shoes,’ Krug’s Cavil says, ‘one moment I need my boots to visit the growers. The next I am in heels to talk to journalists, and then I’m in flat shoes to go to Paris and discuss the budget!’

Some, such as Louis Roederer’s Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, are equally at home in front of a masterclass or press tasting as they are in their own cellars.

Other houses such as Laurent-Perrier, Pol Roger, Taittinger, Billecart-Salmon or Deutz, maintain a more traditional role, with cellar masters rarely seen in front of the camera.

The demands placed upon cellar masters to emulate the likes of Lécaillon – boundlessly travelling the world representing both technical and communication prowess – aren’t suited to everyone.

Although it’s normal for cellar masters to play ‘musical chairs’ – moving between different houses through the course of their career – some cellar masters in the prime of their working lives (at houses such as Bollinger and Charles Heidsieck) have quit the game entirely over the last two years.

A team sport

What’s clear is that, despite being thrust into the limelight as individual geniuses, winemaking itself is a team sport at this scale.

At Ruinart, the winemaking team even has its own Instagram account, where they discuss the more technical aspects of the job.

Ruinart's cellar master Caroline Fiot, previously a member of the wider winemaking team, says that technicality rests at the heart of the role.

‘I need to keep feeding my skills, to be innovative,’ she says, ‘I’ve worked on everything from microbiology, strains of yeast and massal selection, to singularisation of the vineyards and microvinifications’.

Even for a born technician, though, it’s hard to complain when days in the laboratory are broken up with a good deal of the glitz and glam of a Grande Marque like Ruinart: ‘It’s 360 degrees, and there’s no routine,’ says Fiot.

‘But I love this job!’

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Château la Commaraine: Stay in the heart of a top Burgundy vineyard

Few hotel openings in Burgundy have generated as much excitement as Château la Commaraine in Pommard.

Five years in the making, this ambitious restoration has been as eagerly anticipated by wine lovers as the annual en primeur tastings.

Set in the heart of one of the Côte de Beaune's most celebrated villages, it offers something many oenophiles have long dreamed about: the chance to stay not simply near a great vineyard, but at the heart of one.

Standing behind historic stone walls in the centre of Pommard, the château is surrounded by the vines of Clos de la Commaraine, a premier cru vineyard whose history stretches back centuries.

The estate itself dates from the 12th century, but following an extensive renovation by Champagne Hospitality, the group behind Royal Champagne Hotel & Spa, it has re-emerged as Burgundy's first luxury five-star hotel fully integrated with a working winery and premier cru vineyard.

The appeal begins with the location. Pommard remains one of Burgundy's most recognisable names, synonymous with structured, age-worthy Pinot Noir. Yet despite its reputation, the village retains a refreshingly understated charm.

Guests can stroll directly from the château into the surrounding vineyards, wander quiet streets lined with family-owned domaines, or reach Beaune's celebrated restaurants and wine bars within minutes by car.

Don't miss Beaune's lively Saturday morning market, where around 180 traders sell everything from seasonal produce and artisan breads to Burgundian cheeses, charcuterie and regional delicacies.

Burgundy heritage with modern luxury

Inside, the property strikes an elegant balance between heritage and contemporary comfort. Original architectural details have been carefully preserved, creating spaces that feel rooted in Burgundy's history while offering every modern luxury.

The 37 rooms and suites are individually designed, many overlooking the surrounding vines.

Natural materials, soft tones and thoughtful detailing create a sense of understated sophistication, while heated bathroom floors, Diptyque amenities and fluffy bathrobes add an extra layer of indulgence.

'Wine sits firmly at the centre of the guest experience'

The vineyards surrounding Château la Commaraine are as carefully nurtured as the hotel itself.

The estate has farmed its historic Clos de la Commaraine premier cru vineyard organically for several years, with biodynamic practices now guiding much of the vineyard work.

It's an approach that reflects a broader movement among Burgundy's leading producers to preserve the health of the land while expressing terroir with greater precision.

Wine sits firmly at the centre of the guest experience. Bespoke tastings and guided vineyard walks allow visitors to explore the nuances of the local terroir, while a new on-site winery will soon offer an even deeper understanding of the journey from vine to bottle.

For those keen to immerse themselves in Burgundy's culture, the château provides a compelling introduction to the region's intricate patchwork of vineyards and classifications.

Fine dining at Château la Commaraine

Gastronomy naturally plays a central role. Under the leadership of Meilleur Ouvrier de France chef Christophe Raoux and chef Jérôme Rioux, Burgundy's culinary traditions are given a contemporary interpretation.

At Le Clos, the relaxed bistro overlooking the winery, seasonal regional ingredients take centre stage, while the wine and cocktail bar, housed in a beautifully restored 14th-century tower, provides an atmospheric setting for an aperitif.

The terrace is the perfect place to watch the sun set as the swallows swoop and dip in the swimming pool nestled amongst the vines.

The culinary offering expanded further this summer with the opening of Le VIII, the château's fine dining restaurant. Located within the estate's ancient, vaulted cellar, it promises an ambitious gastronomic experience rooted in Burgundian flavours and ingredients.

The wine list, naturally, leans heavily into the strengths of the Côte d'Or, allowing guests to explore both established names and rising stars without leaving the property.

Beyond the wine, guests will find a spa and well-equipped wellness facilities. Yet what makes Château la Commaraine truly special is the sense of immersion it offers. This is not simply a luxury hotel in a wine region; it is an invitation to experience Burgundy from the inside.

For anyone whose ideal escape involves exceptional food, fine wine and waking up among premier cru vineyards, Château la Commaraine comes remarkably close to perfection.

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The name promises a tower, but there is no tower at Château La Tour Figeac.

A mill once stood on top of an old well, and this is likely where the name comes from.

Today only the well remains, on the neighbouring property, and the mill is gone.

The estate was born out of the break-up of a larger property, Château Figeac, which sold off parcels in 1876 and again in 1879.

It was from the 1879 sale that the Corbière family bought land to create Château La Tour Figeac.

The new property did not stay together for long: in 1881 it was divided again, half becoming La Tour Figeac and the other half La Tour du Pin Figeac, a separate estate that still exists today.

Since 1973, Château La Tour Figeac has belonged to the Rettenmaier family of Heilbronn. They bought it shortly after their hunting friends, the von Neipperg family, took over the nearby Château Canon La Gaffelière.

The family's main business is not wine but transport: they run TII Group (Transporter Industry International), a special transport company.

It was Otto Maximilian Rettenmaier, the current owner, who brought the family closer to the wine side, taking over the management in 1994.

Ownership is shared today: Otto holds 50%, and the rest belongs to his father's eight grandchildren.

Three of these are Otto's own children, but only one of his daughters has shown any interest in wine, so it is not yet clear who, among the next generation, will take the estate forward.

Illustrious company

The location is one of the best addresses on the Right Bank. Château Cheval Blanc borders the property to the east, Château Figeac to the south, and Pomerol begins just a few rows of vines away to the north and west.

Château La Tour Figeac has been classified as a Grand Cru Classé since the very first Saint-Émilion classification, in 1955.

The vineyard covers 14.5 hectares in a single block, planted with 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Franc. The soil is gravel and sandy clay over a clay subsoil, with more gravel on the side closer to Cheval Blanc.

Vine age is usually given as around 35 years, though Otto says this needs recalculation, since a number of parcels have been replanted over the years and the average is no longer very precise.

Some of this replanting is still ongoing: about 2.5 hectares have already been uprooted, and Otto thinks another 3ha or so may need to follow, a decision driven as much by the market as by climate adaptation.

Planting density is around 6,500 vines per hectare on average, and the most recent plots were planted at a much higher 7,900 vines per hectare but this is now changing.

For future plantings, the estate is looking at wider row spacing, which comes to roughly 6,700 vines per hectare – close to the old average density, and a step back from the recent high-density plots.

The idea is not to intensify further but to adapt to a warmer, drier climate, giving each vine more room and less competition for water.

Vineyard approach

In the meantime, 2026 has already been a difficult year for young vines, which have needed irrigation to cope with the stress.

The estate has worked with biodynamic-inspired methods since 1997, guided by Derenoncourt Consultant and, more recently, their partner Julien Lavenu.

The vineyard is not certified biodynamic – the approach borrows from biodynamic thinking without following it as a fixed rulebook.

Organic certification came later and briefly: the 2021 vintage was the first to be certified through Ecocert France, but the estate lost certification in 2024 after a difficult year forced it to use a treatment not allowed under organic rules.

The vineyard is not currently back in conversion.

Composers in the cellar

Grapes are picked by hand and sorted carefully on arrival at the cellar. In a difficult year, they will rent a densimetric sorter to help the manual selection.

Colour and tannin are extracted using both cap punching down and pumping over.

Fermentation takes place in a mix of stainless steel tanks and six wooden vats, each one named after a composer – Beethoven, Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Vivaldi are among them – a small sign of Otto's love of music.

Malolactic fermentation follows in oak, in a room kept apart for this purpose. Ageing lasts 13 to 15 months for the first wine and 10 to 13 months for the second.

The wines are aged in a mix of 225-litre and 400-litre barrels, with 40 to 50% new oak and at least a third of the barrel stock renewed every vintage.

There are also two 12-hectolitre foudres, and two Clayver spheres,. About 60,000 bottles are produced each year, all bottled at the estate.

Three wines are made at the estate, though not always in the same vintage. The Grand Vin makes between two-thirds and three-quarters of production.

It is joined, in most years, by two second wines: L'Esquisse, made from younger vines, and Cuvée Lucie 45, from selected parcels.

Château La Tour Figeac

Wines are listed youngest to oldest

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If you’re at a restaurant and you don’t have time to read the wine list from cover to cover, here’s an easy tip to remember.

If they have any 2016 Côte Rôtie, grab one. It should be a safe bet.

Is it the greatest vintage in the last 20 years? No, that’ll be 2015, or perhaps 2010. There are individual wines from these two that fly even higher.

But after tasting nearly 30 examples, what 2016 offers is this: quality, classicism and consistency.

And almost all are ready to drink.

Slow and steady wins the race

After a mild winter, the season got off to a fairly late start, with Bernard Burguad writing in his notes that ‘budbreak occurred quite late compared to the average of recent years’. Spring was mild and quite wet, leading to outbreaks of mildew.

Flowering took place unhindered in mid-May, leading to plenty of fruit; the showers, however, continued. The season wasn’t looking terribly promising until July, when hot, dry weather finally arrived.

‘Harvest took place under excellent conditions,’ Burgaud notes, ‘yielding grapes with perfect ripeness and sanitary health.’

He didn’t finish picking until mid-October, ‘something we hadn’t done in a long time,’ he remarks.

As long as grapes reach full ripeness, late harvests can be a good sign in Côte-Rôtie; slow and steady ripening often results in delicacy and precision.

Jean-Paul Jamet says: ‘I like this vintage a lot, thanks to its gradual ripening, harvesting between 28 September and 12 October, which conferred a lot of elegance and freshness.’

‘A great classic’

Coming after the bold, concentrated 2015 vintage, the 2016 was clearly less powerful, but was notable for its sense of balance, freshness and its classic proportions.

They’ve aged well – better than expected in fact – thanks to these qualities. At 10 years, they are largely beyond that awkward phase around seven to eight years of age and are ready to open.

Only a handful would benefit from a few more years in bottle. Julien Barge says: ‘I am very fond of this vintage; it is evolving beautifully.’

In fact, I would open the 2016s before the 2015s.

What I particularly appreciate about the 2016s is how frank and easy to read they are, clearly reflecting their origins and house style.

In the words of Jamet, the 2016 vintage ‘reflects the terroir of Côte-Rôtie magnificently. A great classic’.

Burgaud agrees: ‘It is the most sincere expression of Syrah from Côte-Rôtie.’

All the typical Côte-Rôtie markers are there, and are true to their soil type: those from the more southerly Blonde side are perfumed and elegant, those from the Brune side are darker and more intriguing.

The harvest might have been late, but there were clearly no problems achieving ripeness – there’s no greenness or bitterness and the wines are texturally very fine.

None that I tasted were past their best. If kept well, most will age for at another seven to eight years, and the best will endure twice as long.

Sign of the times

That these wines were made 10 years ago was clear from the tasting. Several had (non-dominating) hints of brett, which is less common today.

Use of smaller barrels and new wood was more common too in 2016 than it is today.

Some wines that appeared oaky when tasted from barrel have successfully swallowed it, but a proportion still display marked oak flavour and tannins that can blur some of the more subtle details of the terroir.

Barge is one of many winemakers who have changed their approach since then.

‘In the cellar, the ageing periods used to be longer – typically two years in demi-muids. Today, I prefer shorter ageing in foudres to better preserve the wines’ freshness and expression,’ he says.

He continues: ‘Paradoxically, my work has become more traditional over time. I have gradually come to appreciate the value of the practices handed down by previous generations.

‘My evolution, therefore, stems not only from personal exploration or technical advancements but also from a more conscious return to that heritage. What appears simple in winemaking is often the result of long, careful reflection.’

The summer felt very warm at the time, but compared to this summer it would feel decidedly comfortable. Tasting these wines made me pine for another 2016.

And today, with refined winemaking practices, more organic viticulture and vines that are 10 years older, the resulting wines would be even better.

But that doesn’t detract from what was achieved in 2016 – a great classic indeed.

Côte Rôtie 2016

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Beware clear bottles!

Rosé Champagne is often bottled in clear glass, but bottles that sit on brightly lit shelves or in windows are vulnerable to ‘light strike’, a fault that gives wine an unappealing vegetal, savoury flavour.

The red wine factor

Most rosé Champagne is made by the ‘assemblage’ method, with red wine from Pinot Noir added at the blending stage.

The amount of red wine added is the major factor in how deep the style is; Taittinger and Ruinart, for example (with at least 15% red wine), are deeper and fruitier than Bollinger or Charles Heidsieck (below 10%).

Upping the intensity

Less common are ‘macération’ or ‘saignée’ styles, which are made by extracting colour directly from Pinot Noir or Meunier grapes at harvest time.

Wines labelled ‘saignée’ tend to be darker and more intense.

Pink for white lovers

If you enjoy the blanc de blancs style of Champagne (made from the Chardonnay grape), there may well be a rosé for you – producers such as Ayala make delicate, citrussy rosés with more Chardonnay than Pinot in the blend.

Cellarworthy styles

Just because it’s pink doesn’t mean it won’t age. Vintage and prestige rosés can be just as ageworthy as the white versions; try cellaring them for at least three years after release to bring out delicious spicy, dried fruit complexity.

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I’m sure it won’t be lost on readers that the wines I taste and review are not necessarily the wines I am able to drink at home regularly. Especially when it comes to Burgundy.

As France editor, I’ve been lucky enough to taste some thrilling Burgundy over the years, from the new Domaine de la Romanée-Conti releases shrouded in mystery, to sipping samples of Domaine de Montille, Domaine Dujac and Domaine Leflaive while listening to hip hop in a 16th-century château.

I understand the compulsion to search for the kind of tension, precision, poise and concentration that stops you short mid-sentence.

But Burgundy prices remain at an all-time high, despite a general softening of the secondary fine wine market.

And with plenty of other fine and honourable wines available at far more accessible price points, the question has to be asked: why look to Burgundy at all for value or everyday drinking?

Well, even on a modest home-drinking budget, when you find the right bottle, things can just...slot into place. When you pick up a wine that’s reasonably affordable and delivers freshness and pleasure and not disappointment, you’ll keep going back to it.

So instead of abandoning the search, it’s a region I’ll keep hunting for value in – and if you have some good insights, there’s nothing like the thrill of a canny buy.

Confession time

When I’m opening wine at home, I don’t really think about how it will pair with what I’m eating. I’m just not that big on food and wine pairings. There, I’ve said it.

My partner is a great cook, so we pick a dish we want to eat, and we simply pick a wine we feel like drinking – unless there’s heavy spice and heat involved, in which case we tend to stick to beer or cider.

We cook hearty vegetarian dishes where good quality organic vegetables take centre stage. Pulses and grains feature heavily and bring great textural variety.

Our staple flavour palette ranges from the herbs and olive oil of the Mediterranean, to the deep spicing of harissa, ras el hanout, paprika and cumin, to miso, sesame and soy.

It’s simple cooking, but deep and warming. I get as much joy from the food and the wine as separate pleasures as I would from fussing over matching exact flavour, fat or acidity profiles.

That means when I buy Burgundy to drink at home, I’m not looking for a wine that needs a dish to complete it.

Wines that stand on their own

I recently discovered this £30 Montagny 1er cru 2023 from Domaine de Montorge. that packed in so much zesty flavour, there was more than enough going on in the glass to hold its own throughout the evening.

Looking for something more opulent, I recently reached for Maison Roche de Bellene’s Bourgogne Côte d’Or Chardonnay 2022. It has this gorgeous burst of ripe pineapple, the richness of vanilla cream and toast and a really appealing succulence of sweet fruit, balanced by the salinity of crushed sea shells.

It offers a lot of pleasure at the £25-£28 price point.

Beyond style I look for lesser-known appellations that punch above their price. The Pouilly-Loché Les Mûres 2022 from Clos des Rocs is one.

Loché is less well known that neighbouring Fuissé, so it’s a little cheaper, and from the 2024 vintage this site will be reclassified as premier cru, making this 2022 a sweet buy while it lasts. It’s vibrant, racy, with a little confit lemon and tarte tatin.

Auxey-Duresses is another example. The 2021 from Domaine Lafouge is a dainty, perfumed Pinot from a cooler vintage that’s perfect for early drinking and still retails under £30.

Some sleuthing pays off too. I love finding wines that are much more than what they appear.

Secret insights

Domaine Arlaud’s Roncevie Bourgogne 2023 is a favourite of mine for this reason. This 4.8ha plot of Pinot Noir was historically classified as Gevrey-Chambertin, but when Joseph Arlaud, an incomer from neighbouring Morey-St-Denis, bought it in 1964, Arlaud’s half was declassified while the other half remained Gevrey.

Essentially village-level red Burgundy at a regional-level price point, under £30.

I also look for lesser appellations made by renowned producers. Bret Brothers, the négociant side of top producer La Soufrandière, makes Cuvée Terroir du Mâconnais, Mâcon-Villages 2023 which is sourced from from parcels in Pouilly-Fuissé, Pouilly-Loché and Pouilly-Vinzelles.

It’s so mouthwatering yet also has these notes of buttery biscuit and spiced apple.

Or there’s Domaine Tessier’s Cote d'Or Bourgogne – made by a small Meursault domaine from two lieux-dits (Les Pellans and Les Herbeux) in the Meursault appellation and one (Femelottes) in Puligny.

With its rich and silky texture, it’s a steal for the quality.

I have a real soft spot for Aligoté; at its best it can be fragrant, floral, crisp and juicy. The Domaine Jean-Baptiste Ponsot, En l'Asne, Bourgogne Aligoté 2022 is a serious wine in its own right.

From 65-year-old vines (old vines are another thing I look out for, for the extra concentration and depth they can bring) grown in Rully.

And under £20?

If I want something under £20, I've more or less accepted Burgundy isn't really the place to look – personally for that money I'd rather buy something knockout from the Languedoc.

But when I need Burgundy that’s widely available and decent, I turn to a reliable cooperative, like Cave de Lugny.

It produces a fair amount of the own-label Burgundy sold at lower price points in the UK.

I particularly like the Bourgogne Blanc it makes for Yapp Bros (£18.50), and the Crémant de Bourgogne it makes for Tesco (£15).

I’m yet to be truly wowed by red Burgundy at lower price points, so for great value reds with real character I tend to look south instead, to Beaujolais, where fine and ageworthy Gamay can be found for a fraction of the equivalent quality in the Côte d’Or.

Finding everyday drinking wines in Burgundy isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either, and once you find some favourites they’ll have been worth the wait.

Some Burgundy to drink at home

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As in love, certain wines come into your life by chance. My affair with Jurançon began literally as far from its Pyrenean home as possible.

Browsing the shelves of Moore Wilson’s, the iconic grocery store in Wellington, New Zealand, I came across a bottle labelled Petit Manseng, from the Marlborough grower Forrest.

It sounded vaguely Chinese, possibly a miniature horse breed, though it is in fact one of Jurançon’s two principal grapes.

I took it home, where the off-dry little Manseng made a big splash: lush yet electric, exuberant yet poised – a tropical beach party in a wine glass. Yet each time I returned, the bottle was gone, and life beat on.

We were reunited years later in Paris, thanks to an astute sommelier at Macéo restaurant, who pointed me to a Jurançon Sec from Domaine Bellegarde.

Though the appellation is traditionally associated with sweet wines, this was a dry expression of striking tension and lift.

In the foothills of the Pyrenees

Spread across the verdant foothills of the Pyrenees southwest of Pau, Jurançon's vineyards climb in south-facing amphitheatres, framed by the Pic du Midi d'Ossau.

The appellation divides into three distinct zones: Chapelle de Rousse, to the northeast, where vines root into poudingue – a cement-like soil of chalk and river-worn pebbles; Monein, to the west, on more varied, molasse-dominant soils and now the most widely planted; and Lasseube, in the south, smaller and sandier.

Situated in the lee of the Pyrenees, the mountains shield the vines from harsher continental extremes, while the Atlantic keeps the growing season temperate – together preserving the acidity and aromatic intensity that define these wines.

Winemaking in Jurançon dates back to Roman antiquity and by the 14th century the Parliament of Navarre had classified its best sites – one of France’s earliest examples of vineyard classification.

Legend holds that the infant Henri IV had his lips touched with a drop of Jurançon at his 1553 baptism, by which time it had become a wine of court ritual.

Colette, 19th century French writer, actress and journalist, would later call it ‘a prince – warm, imperious and insidious, like all great seducers’.

Sweet to dry

For most of its history, Jurançon was synonymous with sweet wine. The appellation was classified for its moelleux (sweet) style in 1936 – among France’s earliest APs – while the dry expression was not recognised until 1975.

Since then, momentum has shifted toward the dry style, in line with a broader retreat from dessert wines.

Petit Manseng – the very grape that started all this – excels across the entire spectrum. Small and thick-skinned, it is defined by acid and concentration, which only intensifies through foehn-fanned passerillage (drying on the vine).

The traditional engine of sweet Jurançon, in dry form it delivers density, minerality and ageworthy grip, often developing truffled notes over time.

Its offspring, Gros Manseng, is the workhorse: larger-berried, less concentrated and more reliably ripe, generous and fruit-forward.

Supporting local varieties such as Camaralet, Lauzet and Courbu round out some blends, adding spice, aromatic lift and finesse, with Camaralet especially prized in dry wines for its peppery, cinnamon accent.

Three delectable styles

Like its three distinct zones, three styles express a striking range.

Jurançon Sec, often led by Gros Manseng, can be broad in texture yet focused by Petit Manseng’s vivid acidity, with flavours ranging from citrus and stone fruits to pineapple and quince, sometimes picking up a smoky or savoury edge over time.

Sweet Jurançon, the appellation’s historic heart, layers ripe mango, candied citrus, apricot and spice over a structure that keeps richness in check.

Vendanges Tardives (late harvest wines) are almost impossibly concentrated, unctuous yet vibrant thanks to the tensile acidity that is Jurançon’s signature.

Across all three styles, what lingers is not simply opulence or freshness but a radiant tension, like an autumn sun rising over cool Pyrenean hillsides.

The future is bright

‘What has always fascinated me about the Mansengs is their ability to reconcile power and freshness,’ says Antoine Arraou of the biodynamic Château Lafitte, one of Jurançon’s standout estates.

‘Few grape varieties are capable of reaching such high levels of ripeness while retaining such acidic energy.’

He is among the growers expanding Jurançon’s stylistic range and sharpening its contemporary identity.

‘Many astute observers have said this is the next Jura,’ says Arraou.

Having heard the same comparison applied to other up-and-coming appellations, such as Savoie and Bugey, I ask him to explain.

‘A hilly vineyard, a cool climate, distinctive grape varieties, geological diversity, limited volumes and wines with strong personalities – the reasons that drew wine lovers to the Jura also exist here.’

Yet while Jura’s cult success has pushed its prices steadily upward, Jurançon still offers striking value. At the cellar door, most Jurançon Sec sells for €12-€20; a smaller tier of ambitious cuvées runs closer to €30, with rare bottles climbing to €50-€70.

For readers who love the tension of Loire Chenin Blanc or the structure of serious dry Alsace, Jurançon Sec offers a compelling alternative: distinctive, long-lived and affordable.

As in love, what begins in contingency ends in necessity. Jurançon, for my money, deserves a seat at the table of noble white wines.

Whether you seek it out or stumble upon it by chance, taste and see if you do not fall for this great seducer, the little prince of the Pyrenees.

Six Jurançon wines to get you hooked

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Puligny-Montrachet is, for some, the centre of the white wine universe.

Although it is endowed with the smallest vineyard area among the ‘golden triangle’ villages of Meursault, Chassagne and Puligny, it boasts some or all of no fewer than four grands crus: Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet, Chevalier-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet.

From this epicentre of grands crus, top-notch premiers crus radiate north, and village-level vineyards stretch down the slope.

It is a compact, ideally situated terroir. Superlative wine, though, requires more than a brilliant site.

It also needs winemaking talent, and Puligny today enjoys a rich array of talent ranging from experienced domaines with deep traditions to newer domaines and innovative young winemakers that make this a truly exciting village.

Puligny: Five family names to know

Domaine Leflaive & Olivier Leflaive

Domaine Leflaive is among the finest producers of white wine – not just in Puligny, but in the world.

Despite a period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s when the domaine struggled with premature oxidation, the wines are today better than ever, thanks to the efforts of previous winemaker, Pierre Vincent.

A recent tasting of the 2024s showed that his replacement, Amandine Brillanceau, is carrying the domaine forward in style.

The domaine farms an enviable portfolio of vineyards, from the grands crus of Bâtard-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet (where it is the largest landowner), to Chevalier-Montrachet and on to the equally compelling premier cru offerings, making magical wines that age supremely well.

This domaine, however, is not the only Leflaive in town. Olivier Leflaive produces a range of delicious wines under his eponymous négociant business, alongside his brother Patrick.

Although Olivier became co-manager of Domaine Leflaive with his uncle Vincent in 1982, in 1984 he founded his négociant operation, and by 1994 he had departed the family business to focus entirely on this business.

The Olivier Leflaive négociant business has flourished; his Bourgogne Les Sétilles is among the most reliable entry-level white Burgundies.

He always makes wines from his own vineyards, marked ‘Récolte du Domaine’, which include Chevalier-Montrachet and the Puligny premiers crus Pucelles and Folatières.

The winemaking today is overseen by Solène Panigai, successor to Franck Grux, who had been the technical director for 35 years.

Chartron

Another luminous name in Puligny is Chartron. The domaine produces delightful wines throughout the range, but is known above all for its three clos: Clos des Chevaliers, Clos du Cailleret, and the Clos de la Pucelle monopole.

The family has owned these plots since the early 20th century. Portions have been replanted over time, and the oldest vines date to the 1950s and 1960s.

Jean-Michel Chartron is the fifth-generation owner and the winemaker. His style is elegant and sophisticated: the wines are concentrated and focused without showy amounts of reduction or oak, making them wines of restraint and timeless beauty.

The Carillon clan

The Carillon family has lived in Puligny longer than either the Leflaives or the Chartrons, tracing their ancestry to the 16th century.

Well into the years following World War II, however, the family was selling the majority of its production to négociants.

By the 1990s, the domaine, then known as Louis Carillon, was run by brothers Jacques and François. With the 2010 vintage, the brothers split the vineyards between them.

Jacques got the slice of Bienvenues-Bâtard Montrachet, premiers crus Referts, Champs Canet and some of the Perrières, and labels under Domaine Jacques Carillon.

François farms the Folatières, Combettes, Champs Gain and the balance of the Perrières and produces village-level wines from Enseignères, Aubues and Clos du Vieux Château, labelling under Domaine Franc.çois Carillon.

François’ sons Paul and Mathis have recently branched out on their own as Carillon Frères, and are producing delicious wines.

To date, there is the village-level Noyer Bret, and a premier cru Cuvée Loulou blended from the family sites and named for their grandfather.

Pernot

Another winemaking dynasty in Puligny is the Pernot family. The older wines from Domaine Paul Pernot age gracefully, while young Alvina Pernot is among the most exciting new voices in the village.

The granddaughter of Paul Pernot, she and her husband Philippe Abadie began their own domaine in 2018.

Alvina’s style is beguilingly taut, slightly reductive, with a racy finesse that suits the character of the village.

She presses the grapes as whole bunches without sulphur under the press and ferments with native yeasts in mostly used barrels.

The grands crus from Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet and Chevalier-Montrachet are superb, but the entire range bears investigation, particularly the premiers crus Peux Bois, Champs Canet Clos de la Jaquelotte, Clos de la Garenne, Clos des Folatières, Caillerets and Pucelles, and the village-level Rue aux Vaches and the Clos des Noyers Brets.

Thomas-Collardot

I was seduced on my most recent visit by the wines from another relative newcomer, Domaine Thomas-Collardot, whose vineyards were leased out until 2010.

The mother-and-son team of Jacqueline and Matthieu Collardot began bottling the wines under their own label in 2015 and received organic certification in 2023.

The wines are fermented and matured partly in barrels (mostly used) and partly in glass globes.

They produce delicious village-level Puligny wines from Enseignères, Nosroyes, Derrières les Velles, Houlières, Au Paupillot and Rue aux Vaches, along with a blended wine called Les Climats.

The range is completed by the premiers crus Hameau de Blagny and Folatières Au Chaniot.

Change is in the air in Puligny, and the village’s unique combination of established domaines and a new generation of players augurs well for the future of great white Burgundy.

Eight wines to try

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Don’t be in a rush to drink it

Most of us think of Sauvignon Blanc as an aromatic, early-drinking style, but Sancerre offers so much more.

Do as the growers do and wait a few years for the primary fruit characters to soften, revealing the complexities of the terroir.

The 2022 vintage is drinking beautifully right now.

Check out cuvées parcellaires

Small-batch wines from specific sites have proliferated in recent years, reflecting the appellation’s complex geology.

While there are no designated premiers crus in Sancerre, look out for wines from premium vineyard sites such as Monts Damnés, Cul de Beaujeu and Chêne Marchand.

The significance of silex

Following the success of the late Didier Dagueneau’s wine Silex, the name has almost become a brand in its own right, featuring on many Sancerre labels. ‘Silex’ is a reference to flint or silica.

These soil types make up a minority of the vineyard area in the region and produce wines said to possess a distinctive, powerful and smoky minerality.

It’s a great destination for wine lovers

One of the prettiest villages in France, Sancerre is perfect for a tasting trip. There are countless opportunities to visit and taste, often paired with a plate of the local goat’s cheese.

The vineyards are crisscrossed by a network of hiking paths and cycle trails for those wishing to get up close and personal with the vines.

Producer name is key

Sancerre sells at a premium these days, so it pays to seek out good producers.

Happily, there’s no shortage of winemaking talent, to be found at domaines Tabordet, Paul Prieur, Denizot, Claude Riffault and Jean-Philippe Agisson, to name a few.

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Five years ago in an article for Decanter I made a claim that Cinsault was the most underrated red grape variety in the world. I’ve held this belief for some time, and I stand by it still.

In 2021, I organised a blind tasting of Cinsaults from all over the world and it revealed countless brilliant examples of this wonderful grape.

So, five years later, it was time to repeat the exercise to see how Cinsault has progressed.

I was joined by two top tasters – Natalie Earl, Decanter’s regional editor for France, and author and podcaster Henry Jeffreys – and together we worked our way through 52 examples of this unsung grape.

A stellar variety

It turns out there has been an important development in the world of Cinsault since the last tasting. A group of like-minded winemakers has formed a body to promote this under-appreciated grape, called Les Cinsónautes.

One of the founders is Guillaume Baron of Clos de la Barthassade in Aniane, Languedoc. ‘I’ve always loved Cinsault,’ he says, ‘its drinkability, lightness, suppleness and its ability to translate terroir.’ He describes it as a cross between Gamay, Pinot Noir and Grenache.

He’s also part of Les Aligoteurs, a group formed in 2018 to promote another underrated grape – Aligoté. ‘I realised that Cinsault shared the same poor treatment that Aligoté suffered from in the past,’ says Baron, and so he wanted to help reverse its fortunes.

For too long, Cinsault has been widely considered a second-class grape variety, cropped highly to bulk out blends, make cheap rosé or basic vin de soif.

In fact, some believe the grape’s name comes from cinq sauts, meaning five buckets: if you crop it highly enough, one vine will give you that many grapes.

But with lower yields, gentle handling and appropriate care, Cinsault can make beautiful wines. What’s more, it ripens at just 11.5%-13.5% abv.

The tasting

Five years ago, it was South Africa that dominated the leaderboard. Since then, France has improved dramatically.

The top 10 this year contained five wines from each of these countries – but France took the top three places.

‘One of Cinsault's real strengths is its beautiful soaring fragrance,’ says Earl, ‘and that was really on show in the French wines… Many examples felt extremely well handled and cared for.’

Some of the French bottlings felt clunky and over-extracted last time, but now the grape’s innate delicacy and tenderness is being embraced and celebrated.

‘The French are clearly doing something exciting, they’re rediscovering it,’ says Jeffreys.

South African examples don’t seem to have progressed quite so quickly, and are stylistically more varied.

‘The South Africans weren’t as strong as last time but there were some absolute stand-out wines, especially from Natte Valleij,’ says Jeffreys.

There were very good individual wines from Chile and the USA, too.

Brightest stars

We all picked our top seven from the tasting, and occasionally our favourites overlapped. Four wines were chosen by two tasters:

- Domaine Allegria, Spirale, Pays d’Hérault, Languedoc, France 2024

- Mas Cal Demoura, Belle Fiolle, Vin de France, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Terrasses du Larzac)

- Leeu Passant, Old Vines Basson Cinsault, Wellington, South Africa 2023

- Domaine Sainte Marie de Crozes, L'Escapade, Vin de France, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Corbières)

Two wines were unanimously selected as favourites by all three tasters:

- Alain Chabanon, Cinq Saut, St Guilhem le Désert, Languedoc, France 2023

- Domaine du Pas de l'Escalette, Ze Cinsault, Pays Hérault, Languedoc, France 2024 (grown near Terrasses du Larzair

There was one main criticism however: the grape is prone to reduction, which caused certain bottles to show rubbery aromas on opening.

But there were fewer instances this time round, and usually a brief decant helps reduce this.

Cinsault doesn’t produce blockbusters or icon wines. Rather than structure, power and complexity, what it offers is freshness, aromatic precision, lacy tannins and a sense of purity and levity.

And it’s delicious on its own, lightly chilled.

‘They were incredibly drinkable, concentrated but not cumbersome or heavy, with refreshing acidity. A wine for modern times,’ says Earl.

The stars have aligned, and it’s Cinsault’s time to shine.

Matt Walls 20 highest-scoring Cinsault

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Are today’s collectors cellaring more white wine?

It’s hard to say for sure, but recent data points to a gradual, if limited, challenge to reds’ fine wine market hegemony. Chardonnay, and specifically white Burgundy, is the spearhead.

Geraint Carter, of Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform, said: ‘The white Burgundy share of our [total] trading over the last decade has gone from about 2% to about 5%, by value.’

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said trading by value on still white wine rose 650% from 2010 to 2025, when it reached 10.5% of total trade value. Sparkling wine also jumped 1,100% in that period, while reds dropped 15%.

Carter said the trend should be seen within a wider context of Burgundy, Champagne and other regions diluting red Bordeaux’s dominance. ‘It’s a much more heterogeneous [market] picture than it was 15 years ago.’

Tom Burchfield, head of decision intelligence at Liv-ex, told Decanter: ‘Collectors’ cellars have undoubtedly become more diverse, and that will be a factor. It is perhaps reflective of a broader change in taste and consumption habits, but I don’t think you can underestimate the impact Burgundy has had. Interest in Burgundy (both red and white) has soared over the past decade.’

How far can this go? Carter said trading was focused on icons (see table below), yet it’s necessarily a thin market due to relatively tiny production volumes on individual wines.

Prices are correspondingly high. While it has been affected by the broader recent market downturn, there is some evidence that top white Burgundy has been relatively resilient.

‘White Burgundy didn’t rise [in price] to the same degree as red Burgundy between 2021 and 2022, and subsequently didn’t fall as far,’ said Burchfield.

US auction house Hart Davis Hart highlighted white Burgundy’s allure after its June fine wine sale, noting: ‘White Burgundy continued its skyward trajectory, with everything from 1980s [Domaines] Leflaive and Ramonet to 2020s Bernard-Bonin and Paul Pillot setting new record prices.

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

Back to the future

The fine wine market is often described as fragmented and lacking direction.

In reality, today’s landscape looks less like disorder and more like a return to historical norms.

The true anomaly was surely the 15-20 years of boom, bust and boom again, when Asia exerted an extraordinary influence, elevating Bordeaux to an unprecedented position of dominance.

That era has passed. Bordeaux remains the cornerstone of the fine wine market, but its decline from overwhelming supremacy is the single biggest structural shift of the past decade.

The beneficiaries are well documented: red Burgundy, Champagne and, on the white side, white Burgundy have all captured a greater share of collectors’ attention.

Fragmentation extends beyond buying preferences. The days when one critic could make or break a vintage are over, and wine styles are less uniform.

Climate change is demanding new approaches in both vineyard and cellar.

And at the same time, outstanding wine is now being made almost everywhere. Even the most historic domaines increasingly face competition from ambitious terrea novea.

Perhaps the greatest change, however, is cultural.

Fine wine now behaves more like other luxury markets: trends emerge faster, information travels instantly and fashion exerts a greater influence than ever before.

Today’s market may feel fragmented, but it’s also broader, more transparent and, arguably, far more interesting.

Auction highlights: Italy & rare Sherry

Italian fine wines have been a highlight of the auction scene in recent weeks, but rarely sighted 19th-century Sherry also commanded bidders’ attention.

Giacomo Conterno, Monfortino is a hallowed name for Barolo lovers and, in late June, US-based Hart Davis Hart (HDH) brought forth what it described as ‘the most comprehensive offering of Monfortino ever to appear at auction’.

Highlights included the superstar Barolo 2010 vintage. Six bottles of Monfortino Barolo Riserva 2010 sold for $11,950 (high estimate: $9,500), including buyer’s premium, while a single magnum of the same wine fetched $4,183 (high e: $3,200).

From Tuscany, six bottles of Soldera, Case Basse, Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2004 sold for $17,925 (high e: $14,000). HDH’s June auction was 100% sold – its fifth consecutive ‘white glove’ result.

Elsewhere, Zachys offered Italian gems from New York’s legendary, now-shuttered Barbetta restaurant; the Rolling Stones and Al Pacino are listed among its past patrons.

A Delaware-based ‘live’ sale in late June featured several wines from the 1990s, including 12 bottles of Bruno Giacosa, Santo Stefano di Neive, Barbaresco 1995: sold for $3,750 (high e: $3,000), including buyer’s premium.

In a change of pace, a Christie’s online auction ending 19 June featured library wines direct from Sherry producer González Byass.

A lot containing a bottle each of Pio IX Moscatel 1846 and La Cuadrada Palo Cortado 1997 sold for £2,500, including buyer’s premium (e: £2,000 – £3,000).

LiveTrade and Wine Hub link up

Private collectors and merchants can benefit from a new partnership between the LiveTrade fine wine trading platform powered by Bordeaux Index and a leading business management system, Wine Hub, created by Wine Owners.

Both partners said their deal enhances access to global fine wine trading, such as by enabling businesses using Wine Hub to trade directly on LiveTrade, plus see real-time pricing and stock availability.

LiveTrade has nearly £50m of in-bond, pristine blue-chip stock readily available for trading at any one time.

On the benefit to collectors, Matthew O’Connell, co-CEO of Bordeaux Index, said: ‘Integrations such as Wine Hub make it easier for merchants to participate in the marketplace as part of their daily workflow.

‘Increased participation drives greater liquidity, and that means broader access to fine wine, improved pricing transparency and a stronger trading experience for private collectors using LiveTrade.’

Coming up

Burgundy charity sale

Christie’s will co-host a charity auction of rare Burgundy wines sourced directly from celebrated producers, plus exclusive experiences, from 4-19 September – in aid of restorations at the historic Cistercian Abbey of Cîteaux.

The sale’s conclusion will also coincide with a charity dinner at Chȃteau Clos du Vougeot.

Ex-Chȃteau Haut-Brion

August is broadly a quieter month for auctions, but autumn is hotting up. Sotheby’s announced in July that it will offer Château Haut-Brion wines sourced directly from the Bordeaux first growth’s cellars.

Bidding opens 17 September and concludes with a ‘live’ auction in Paris on 1 October. Stay tuned for more details.

The Golden Vines weekender

Philanthropy-focused fine wine and gastronomy event The Golden Vines returns to London in 2026, from 6-8 November, said organiser Liquid Icons in July.

Held in support of the Gérard Basset Foundation, the weekend includes The Golden Vines Awards Gala. Tickets are £10,000 per person. See liquidicons.com/london

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Just a matter of weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, heralding the end of division in Europe, the Cold War and (soon after) the USSR, almost exactly 1,000 miles south-west, the Bordelais saw the conclusion of one of the greatest decades in their vinous history.

With perhaps two exceptions (1984 & 1987) the 1980s was a transformative period in the region both economically and qualitatively after the various shades of brown that the preceding decade yielded.

Things were looking up for the world’s most aristocratic wine region, and it started with a bang…

1990

Many would argue that 1990 is a contender for the greatest global vintage in recent history, showing outstanding uniform quality in most regions around the world.

Bordeaux was no exception. This generally warm vintage has produced wines that are often voluptuous and decadent, a trait that we would not see again for a number of years.

The vintage is littered with stars on both banks and perhaps even more so in Sauternes.

Now 36 years-old the very best wines are hitting their peak but be warned that lower end examples may have succumbed to flamboyance and lack the structure of some other great vintages.

The finest wines are effortless: Château Margaux, Montrose, Léoville Las Cases, and Lynch-Bages to name but a few on the left bank.

Cheval Blanc, Petrus and Clinet all flirt with perfection on the right bank, as does La Mission Haut Brion in Graves.

There are dozens more world beating wines, but notable misses too. Latour is variable, but on its day one of the finest ever produced, while Mouton Rothschild and Pichon Comtesse both somehow miss the magic of so many of their neighbours.

Generally speaking I would happily buy well stored class growth claret across the board and expect to find a beautiful expression of plump, mature claret within.

1991

Now, dear reader, 1991 is a vintage where my opinion may differ from many of my esteemed colleagues.

My justification for the perceived quality of this wildly overlooked vintage is based upon dozens of bottles in recent years and an almost obsessive desire to vindicate my theory that, in this frost plagued vintage, those closest to the river fared best.

There is no denying that the right bank was not a success, with some châteaux opting not to produce a Grand Vin, but many of those in the Médoc that could afford to crop their yields produced good wines.

Palmer is the wine of the vintage, and even comparable to their legendary 1990, while neighbours Pichon Comtesse and Latour come a close second.

I would not suggest you research 1991 as extensively as I have, but if the vintage is of significance, then do try well cellared left bank wines from the most familiar names.

1992

Unlike 1991, I do not have such positive news for anyone who holds 1992 dear.

Generally the wines are well past their best, but passable bottles of Clinet (a wine I loved a decade ago), Gruaud Larose and La Mission Haut-Brion have piqued interest in recent years but perhaps not offered much on the hedonistic spectrum.

However, dry whites were largely a success with Laville Haut-Brion offering a genuinely outstanding effort even three decades on.

1993

More of the same sadly as the dearth of quality continues, even if 1993 is stylistically different, often hard, dry and tannic.

A recent bottle of Clinet, drunk at the château, was delicious as the plump nature of this great Pomerol overcame the tannins of the vintage.

Gruaud Larose and Beychevelle are wines I have enjoyed over the years, similarly Lafleur on the right bank.

But don’t go out of your way!

1994

There was an initial feeling that 1994 might have been the saviour of the region after a string of troublesome harvests.

The quality was undeniably better, but not close to what was about to follow. Latour is the wine of the vintage, closely followed by neighbour Pichon Comtesse.

At the more affordable end, half a dozen recent bottles of Branaire-Ducru have been delicious, if drying out a little.

The wines here feel more classic than either 1992 or the austere 1993s. If it’s a milestone year for you then I would suggest sticking to the Médoc for best results.

1995

Finally, Bordeaux waits no more! For decades to come Bordeaux lovers will argue the various merits of 1995 v 1996, but what the former has in its corner is a much stronger showing on the right bank.

I’ve always found the vintage slightly foursquare compared to its successor but the quality is undeniable and uniform.

On the right bank both Lafleur and Cheval Blanc are sensational.

Similarly on the left bank, not many people missed the mark, so perhaps it is more useful to mention the wines that I favour in 1995 to the more fleshy 1996s that followed: Pichon Baron, Léoville Barton, Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion to name four.

This is a vintage to buy with confidence, on both banks, relying on the fact that the structure here supports beautifully balanced wines that are just hitting their prime.

1996

Is this the vintage of the decade? For the left bank, probably. The wines from the Médoc are generous but reserved, structured but also ethereal.

A genuinely glorious vintage for almost everyone on the left bank. If I am splitting hairs, Pauillac performed best, with Latour, Lafite Rothschild and Pichon Comtesse all contenders for wine of the decade.

Lynch-Bages, Grand Puy Lacoste and Batailley are crafted from the same mould without the price tag.

Outside Pauillac, Léoville Las Cases and Margaux are also potentially perfect wines.

Almost everything west of the Gironde is worth seeking out.

The right bank is more patchy, so my recommendation would be to opt for 1998.

1997

Thought to be one of the weaker vintages of the decade, 1997 is (however) superior to 1992, 1993 and 1994.

The vintage is much lighter than those that surround it, which has given drinkers pleasure over that last few decades, in a way that other years have not.

There is no excess structure or greenness as you find in the early half of the 1990s. Just elegant, balanced, drinkable Bordeaux that would have, at one time, been labelled ‘luncheon claret’.

Recent bottles of Potensac, Meyney, La Conseillante and Gazin have all been delicious. Not more or less, just simply delicious.

Sauternes, however, is sensational. Those with a connection to 1997 may find some bargains as the wines have remained fairly priced.

A vintage that grows in my affection as I age and understand its place among its far more lauded siblings.

1998

If 1996 is THE left bank year, then 1998 is THE right bank year. The year Merlot turned to gold.

There are more successes on the left bank in 1998 than on the right bank in 1996, most notably a sensational bottle of Palmer knocked 1989 off the table, but St-Emilion and Pomerol displayed an embarrassment of riches.

It is little surprise that Petrus and Cheval Blanc both crafted wines that could last a century as well as La Mission Haut-Brion and Haut-Brion in Pessac.

The one word of caution I would add is, in this ‘peak Parker’ era, some estates were unnecessarily exuberant with their extraction.

Most wines here, on both banks, are still approaching full maturity.

1999

A curious and almost anonymous vintage to round off the century. Overshadowed by what was to come, I feel little affection for 1999, and the wines somewhat generic.

Perhaps because the top wines are some way off full maturity, but the first growths are all solid, if unexciting.

Gruaud Larose has always been nice as have dozens of other châteaux that produced very good examples on both left and right.

That said, an honourable mention should go to the often forgotten Tertre-Roteboeuf which produced a sensational wine to round off the decade.

The best is yet to come...?

It is fair to say that, next to the consistency of the 1980s, the 1990s was a more variable decade to end the millennium, but what was to come next might just be the greatest of them all…

Bordeaux vintages of the 1990s

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With its dark, pointed turrets and gleaming limestone façade Château Pichon Baron is one of the Médoc's quintessential châteaux.

A second growth Pauillac, it is renowned for the sleekness, polish and ageworthiness of its Cabernet Sauvignon-driven wines, produced from 92 hectares of vines planted in the region's famous gravels.

The estate was created in the 17th century when Baron Jacques Pichon de Longueville married Therèse de Rauzan, the daughter of a wealthy and enormously influential wine merchant.

The barons de Longueville owned the property from 1694 to 1933. In 1850 the estate was split with Baron Raoul de Longueville keeping the property known today as Pichon Baron, while his sisters inherited the other half that we know today as Pichon Comtesse.

The estate was bought by insurance group AXA – part of a wider portfolio of estates under the umbrella of AXA Millésimes – in 1987.

Under the group's ownership, the estate has been extensively renovated and remodelled, with state-of-the-art winemaking facilities and cellars.

The core plot at the centre of the estate's vineyards, the 'Butte de Pichon Baron', has been used to make the grand vin since 1694.

The property also produces two 'second labels', Les Tourelles de Pichon Baron and Les Griffons de Pichon Baron, and a white wine.

Pichon Baron vintages

Looking back over the most recent available vintages, we can see that Pichon Baron has averaged a score 97-points from various Decanter critics.

This puts it in the same category as Château Cheval Blanc or Château Haut-Brion.

However, an average case price of £1,038 (per 12x75cl) is a sizeable discount to either of those other estates which clock in at over £4,000 and £3,000 a case on average respectively.

Even better news for fans of polished Pauillac, there are currently four well-scored vintages available for under £1,000.

The most surprising of these is the 2017, which received a score of 98-points during a panel tasting. Not an especially renowned vintage, one judge, Andy Howard MW, called it: 'A classic Pauillac, which is remarkable in the context of 2017 overall.'

The wine has a current market price of £960 per case. According to Liv-ex, it is down from previous highs over the course of 2022-2024 but has seen some positive gains so far this year.

Another vintage that looks good value relative to other peers is the 2020. Like the 2017 it has a score of 98-points and costs under £1,000, with Georgina Hindle calling it: 'Generous, elegant and refined'.

Both vintages look even better value when compared to the 2022, which also has a score of 98-points but currently costs just over £1,200 per case. It's the better-viewed vintage but perhaps buyers have been overlooking other wines of similar quality?

Finally, the 95-point 2021 is really a very delicious wine, especially given the otherwise rather average vintage and the 2024 with 96-points is the cheapest available vintage by far at around £838 per case.

Although they sit under Pichon Baron's score-average their relative affordability makes them tempting potential pick-ups for thirsty buyers, especially given the estate's current track record for producing standout wines even in mediocre vintages.

Château Pichon Baron: Selected tasting notes

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Provence vineyard estate Château Vignelaure looks set to continue its resurgence after being sold to British entrepreneur Neil Utley and family for an undisclosed fee.

It’s the latest high-profile vineyard property deal in sought-after Provence, where vineyards mingle with lavender fields and olive groves close to the Mediterranean sea.

Vignelaure is one of the region’s pearls, said Adam Dakin, founder of independent property specialist Wine Objectives that helped facilitate the recent deal.

Once home to ancient Roman winegrowers, Vignelaure's modern era began in the 1960s under Georges Brunet, ex-owner of Bordeaux’s Château La Lagune.

While the estate makes rosé – now a Provençal calling card – it has a particularly strong reputation for high-quality reds, which are sourced from vineyards at relatively high altitudes (around 400m) for the area.

New owner Neil Utley said, ‘Having considered a number of vineyards in and around the region we were drawn to Vignelaure as it wasn't a blank canvas – our vision was to elevate something extraordinary. This is one of the few estates in Provence with a genuine red wine pedigree.'

Estate director and winemaker Philippe Bru will remain at the property, having been appointed by the previous owners, Swedish couple Mette and Bengt Sundstrøm.

Immediate plans include replanting some of the vineyard, as well as planting new vines on pre-prepared land. Vignelaure spans around 276 hectares in total, including woodland, with around 56ha under vine.

Utley added, ‘Our role now is to become stewards of an estate that already has so much to offer, and to support Philippe Bru and his team in taking Vignelaure to the next level through focus, patience and long-term investment.’

There are also plans to launch a cosmetics business, Maison Minu, to be based at the estate.

Olive trees will be planted and bee hives installed to both support biodiversity and the new cosmetics operations, the owners said, adding they plan to build an on-site spa in the coming years, too.

Provence and Loire vineyards in-demand

Provence’s vineyard market has ‘taken off again’ recently, said Wine Objectives’ Dakin. ‘There's quite a lot of movement. We've got another transaction down towards St-Tropez underway just now.’

Its appeal comes at a price, though. 'It's an area where land and buildings are relatively expensive', said Dakin.

As a comparison, he said that wine lovers dreaming of buying a vineyard on a tighter budget might find a winery with 10 to 15 hectares of vines for around €500,000 in Corbières in the Languedoc to the west, but it's a different picture in Provence.

‘That said, we’ve got a small vineyard in the process of selling just now at €900,000. It's a modern villa with I think eight hectares of vines around it and another building on the side which could be developed into a winery.

'It's odd, admittedly, to find stuff under the €1m mark in Provence, and reasonably rare to find vineyards under the €2m mark, but they do exist.'

Still, he said the heart of the market is in the €5m to €10m bracket.

Loire Valley is another fashionable area to watch, said Dakin. Wine Objectives recently expanded north in addition to its longstanding focus on Provence, the Rhône and Languedoc in southern France.

‘There are a lot of people visiting, a lot of professional clients looking to buy there,’ said Dakin of the Loire.

Climate change and consumer interest in white wines are among motivating factors for prospective buyers, he said.

In terms of vineyard land prices, Sancerre can reach €250,000 to €350,000 per hectare (p/ha), said Dakin. But he said prices elsewhere, such as Savennières, are much lower and the Loire overall remains relatively inexpensive.

Interest in both regions comes amid a tough market situation facing some of France’s major red wine regions, such as generic Bordeaux and the Southern Rhône outside top appellations.

A recent report by French rural land agency Safer showed Burgundy vineyard prices continued to defy gravity in 2025, yet also found declining values in Bordeaux.

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‘We never wanted to make wine’, says Youmna Asseily, and she means it literally.

When she and her husband Tony went looking for a property outside Bordeaux in the early 2000s, a vineyard was not the point.

They were looking for peace and privacy, but this year marks 20 years since the Asseilys bought Château Biac and ended up restoring it to its former winemaking glory.

The long way to Langoiran

Both originally from Lebanon, Tony had spent his career in finance in London. Youmna had lived in Switzerland and then in Lebanon before the two settled in London together to raise their children.

For the next 25 years the family lived between Beirut and London, never quite able to go home for good.

In 1990, with flights repeatedly delayed, the family chose to holiday in Entre-deux-Mers, as it turned out, just four kilometres from Château Biac.

They kept coming back to Entre-deux-Mers each summer for a decade and, in 2000, they rented the guesthouse in Biac and fell in love with the place.

The same year, Tony dissolved his wealth management company and began looking for something new to do. Youmna wanted to paint, and Tony wanted to write. Wine was not on the list at all.

What was on the list, when they sat down and made one, was oddly specific: half an hour from Bordeaux, 35 minutes from the airport, close to a motorway, near a town with everything they needed close by, a view over the Garonne, and, above all, somewhere private, not visible from the road.

Château Biac answered every point on it. The previous owners wanted to sell the main house but keep the vineyards and holiday homes.

Talks stalled over the split, and it took until 2006 for a contract to finally be signed.

A renaissance

Despite once carrying a serious reputation – Cocks & Féret's second edition guide to Bordeaux in 1868 rated Biac among the finest in the region – the property had been neglected for years.

The famous Bordeaux enologist Denis Dubourdieu, nicknamed the pope of white wine, who had once consulted there, told the Asseilys the terroir itself was exceptional regardless of its state.

The Asseilys soon gathered a top team around them.

Patrick Léon, a Château Mouton Rothschild retiree who had tried and failed to buy Biac himself years earlier, waited five or six months to be sure the couple were serious before agreeing to take the vineyard on.

Christine Sourdès, a consultant to Château Guiraud and Château de Myrat, and the first woman to open her own laboratory in the Sauternes-Graves area, came the following year to oversee the sweet wine.

Gilles Rey, an agronomist for Mouton Rothschild and, by his own account, familiar with practically every corner of Bordeaux, joined in 2006 to rebuild the vineyard itself.

Cellar master Sébastien Dupouy has been with the estate since 2008 – the year of Biac's first vintage under the new team.

The winery, meanwhile, was emptied of all the old stock and restored in six months flat.

The vineyard garden

Château Biac runs to 9.5ha split across 14 separate plots. The parcels are vinified separately in 13 small vats. Harvest dates are set plot by plot.

Rey has helped push the estate toward extreme precision, but it's Youmna who sums up the philosophy behind it.

‘We see it more as a garden than a vineyard,’ she says.

The blend changes every vintage – no formula, no house style to defend. As Youmna puts it, no two vintages, like no two children, are quite the same.

What stays constant is the combination of freshness and real ripeness, and the fact that Biac picks later than almost anyone else in the area. Harvest is done entirely by hand and sorted across four stations by a team of local workers.

The range itself has settled, too. There were once three reds, but in 2018 the Asseilys pared the line-up back to two – Château Biac and Félix de Biac.

Alongside them sit a dry white – Félicie de Biac – and a sweet white Cadillac – Secret de Biac.

There's a whisky too, born out of a necessity rather than a grand plan: new barrels are bought every year for the dry white and the sweet wine, which left the estate with a growing stock of good, used oak and not much to do with it.

A joint project with a distillery on the Isle of Harris followed almost as a matter of course, and the resulting single malt, aged in those ex-sweet-wine barrels, goes out under the name Haerach of Biac.

A name and a family behind

For a long time almost nobody outside the estate knew any of this.

Bottles were never sent out to critics or journalists. Biac was never sold en primeur – the Asseilys wanted to offer clients a wine that was ready to drink.

That changed by chance rather than design.

Daniel Boulud tasted the wine on a two-day visit, loved it, and began pouring it in his restaurants.

Jean Moueix director of leading négociant Duclot came separately and reached the same conclusion, and Biac has worked exclusively with Duclot ever since.

In 2013, eldest daughter Yasmina, who worked in finance in New York, took over the mission of building the American market.

Son Gabriel, previously in IT and trained in chemistry, joined as winemaker in January 2019, a few weeks after Patrick Léon's death.

Léon's son Bertrand has stayed on to work alongside him, as has Christine Sourdès.

The names on the labels trace back further still, to Youmna's own family – the Shihab (or Chehab) dynasty, which ruled Lebanon between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Félix de Biac takes its name from the family's coat of arms, a mountain cat representing strength and the protection of life, and the label itself features a stylised Kufic script.

Ask Youmna what the estate has taught her after 20 years of ownership, and she does not talk about wine scores.

‘You do something that will outlive you,’ she says. ‘It gives you the possibility to learn, to stretch yourself, to do something for the future. Agriculture gives you a lot of humility.’

Biac, in the end, seems to have given the family less a wine estate than a place to simply be together. The wine, it turns out, was what happened along the way.

A taste of Château Biac

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On a sunny April day, just before en primeur week, I stopped by to see the result.

What I found was the beginning of a new era for this fifth growth in the Haut-Médoc appellation south of Margaux. It’s a property reborn.

What a contrast to the Cantemerle I saw on my first visit to Bordeaux more than 40 years ago. Back then, the old cellar sported a dirt floor.

A few chickens pecked among the barrels. The grey-with-age limestone château and its ivy-covered tower seemed to echo a distant romantic past.

The cellarmaster dribbled wine from an ancient barrel in a smudged glass for me to taste, and later he proudly pulled out the château’s weather records, thick ledgers with tiny handwriting on yellowing paper.

The 20^th century proprietors kept a meticulous log of temperatures, precipitation, and weather events, and today they’re a brilliant source for tracking climate change.

Back then, Cantemerle seemed ripe for rescuing. There was the size of the property, nearly 500 acres, a long, fascinating history, complete with medieval lords, 19^th century awards in Paris, a visionary widow, and, of course, the gravelly terroir ideal for making great red wine.

Fast forward to its revival, which began with new ownership in 1981. The final part of the revamp was finished in time for the 2025 vintage, signalling a bright future for the wines, always at the top of the list of best value-for-money Bordeaux.

But on my visit, I learned there was much more.

A surprising history

Longevity testifies to tenacity and resilience, and Cantemerle’s origins go back to the 12^th century, way before Bordeaux’s most famous châteaux in the Médoc were founded.

It started as a fort that acted as a toll point, and the first record of vines was in 1354, when lord Ponset de Cantemerle paid a debt with a barrel of wine.

One theory suggests the name comes from le merle y chante, the song of the blackbird.

Then came various owners, but its golden age was during the 300-year tenure of the Villeneuve-Durfort family, which took charge in 1579 and oversaw it until 1892. The château as we know it today was built after the French Revolution.

Most important to its legacy was feisty visionary widow Caroline Villeneuve de Durfort, whose husband died in 1834.

Though her son inherited, he was only 19, and responsibility for the estate initially fell to Caroline. Then her son died tragically young, and she was left completely in charge.

She modernised everything, from the château to the winemaking, and pioneered an innovative method for fighting mildew.

She successfully sued a neighbour for using the name Cantemerle to sell his wine, but her unique contribution was making sure the estate was included in the 1855 classification.

One of my favourite Bordeaux tales is how she accomplished it. The famous list was based on the sales prices that local courtiers recorded, and she had long sold all the wine in the Netherlands, finally switching to Bordeaux négociants in 1853 or 1854.

When she discovered Cantemerle hadn’t been included, she was furious, demanded a meeting with the deciding brokers and brought 40 years of sales receipts to prove Cantemerle’s wine prices were higher than a few other châteaux on the list. It was added as a fifth growth at the last minute.

Then came the devastation of phylloxera, with Cantemerle among the worst hit estates in the Médoc. The influential Dubos family stepped in, owned it for nearly a century, and restored its reputation.

But, weakened by World War II, it was eventually on the road to ruin.

A real fixer-upper

I’m a huge fan of comeback stories, and so, apparently, was Albert Parment, the head of mutual insurance company SMABTP.

A passionate Bordeaux aficionado, he saw run-down Cantemerle as a unique long-term investment opportunity and, in 1981, paid 25 million francs (the equivalent of nearly US$6m) for it.

SMABTP was the first major insurance company to acquire a Bordeaux vineyard, and Parment poured in millions more to restore it.

First up was replanting and expanding the vineyard, which had shrunk to just 20 hectares. The idea was to bring it back to the 100ha it was at the time of the 1855 classification, using Mexican workers imported from California.

But the replant also included a shift in varieties, doubling the amount of Cabernet Sauvignon to nearly 70% by grafting over much of the Cabernet Franc, a change that’s reflected in current vintages of the wine.

Another ambitious woman, Laure Canu, arrived from Château Angelus to oversee the final phase (which started in 2022) and chart Cantemerle’s future course.

The renovated château, its stone façade cleaned, impresses, but the innovations in the huge vat room and underground cellar stunned me, especially a ceiling crafted from the recycled staves of 600 old barrels.

The delicious 2025 wine owes its quality partly to the parcel-by-parcel viticulture and winemaking that’s now de rigueur in Bordeaux châteaux with new cellars.

The vast vat room holds 114 shiny, conical stainless-steel vats, so each plot can be vinified separately, while the latest satellite technology tracks individual vines.

On a wall monitor with an interactive vineyard map winemaker Gregory Thibault showed me how he can zero in on the state of each vine, giving him the ability to pick old and young vines in each micro-plot at exactly the right moment.

The design of it all is, of course, eco-conscious, like the geothermal loop system that powers water from a pond to the entire facility.

Nature and the oenotourism future

Even as drinking wine is declining, wine tourism is rapidly expanding, and SMABPT – and Laure Canu – saw the trend.

The atmosphere in the new wine bar and boutique, featuring wine pairings, the chateau’s honey, children’s colouring books, and more, reminded me of the latest tasting rooms in the Napa Valley.

Cantemerle goes further, opening its park and woodland to visitors for the first time, as have other huge Bordeaux properties such as Châteaux Giscours in Margaux and Olivier in Pessac-Léognan.

While wandering the shady winding paths of Cantemerle’s leafy park, designed in the 18^th century, you get a sense of what biodiversity means: century-old trees, giant ferns, and about 160 species of plants and animals, including wild boar.

A wooden vat in the center of a labyrinth has been converted for observing wildlife. Hazelnut trees shelter ladybugs needed in the vineyard. There’s guided Japanese forest bathing, a floral cooking workshop, and, of course, you can picnic.

But what most fascinated me is their unique botanical project of collecting seeds from the estate’s plants, cultivating them, and then making space in the vineyard to replant them and create hedges and ‘ecological corridors’ connecting it to all those natural areas.

Spending a day at the revived Cantemerle is like immersing yourself in Bordeaux’s green future, discovering how important the ecosystem is to wine and people, while sipping great affordable wines that will only get better.

And there’s more to come. This year, Canu told me, they plan to graft over a hectare of vines to Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

Château Cantemerle: 2010-2023

Wines are listed by vintage youngest to oldest

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‘Everyday drinking’ is an important concept, but what, exactly, do we mean?

A topic such as this should write itself, yet I found the subject slippery while actually writing it.

Part of the reason is that it is necessarily a moving target, changing with the seasons and the weather, where one is located, and with whom one is dining.

The other difficulty is that one is spoiled for choice – how can the topic be narrowed to a reasonable scope if each day brings an exciting new possibility?

Below are my coups de cœur (heart throb) Burgundy producers, as the French would say; the vignerons I turn to for excellent mid-week drinking.

These personal choices are made on impulse rather than logic, and they are organised geographically for simplicity's sake.

The necessary criteria are quality, availability and price. To qualify for everyday drinking, it must be good, readily available in shops or restaurants, and at least reasonably affordable.

Chablis/Auxerrois

A quick look at my personal website reveals a profusion of Chablis. Once ridiculously undervalued, Chablis in recent years has taken off in renown, and in price, yet northern Burgundy still holds surprising value.

Domaine Jean-Hugues & Guilhem Goisot is not as well-known, particularly to anglophone drinkers, as the best Chablis producers, but it also sits at the top of the hierarchy.

It is based in the charmingly obscure town of St-Bris, where the appellation wines are Sauvignon de St-Bris, a close Kimmeridgian cousin of Sancerre.

The Goisot clan produces perhaps the most expressive versions available of this appellation (often on north-facing slopes, sometimes co-planted with Sauvignon Gris), but when the exposure or soils are better suited to Chardonnay (east-facing) or Pinot Noir (south-facing) these grapes are grown and bottled as Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre.

At an extraordinarily reasonable price point, they also produce a winning Aligoté that is widely available.

Côte de Nuits

The Côte de Nuits is the land of grand cru Pinot Noir and one might imagine a struggle to find everyday wines. Luckily, this is not the case at all.

Even top producers can still make wines here that are beautiful and affordable, and Domaine Trapet must surely be at the front rank.

Given the quality here, all the wines could qualify as reasonably priced, but the Passetoutgrain à Minima, a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ in Gevrey, is a true bargain, as are the Gevrey village-level cuvées 1859 and Ostrea.

These are cuvées produced by Domaine Trapet Père & Fils, formerly directed by Jean-Louis Trapet, whose sons Pierre and Louis are now at the helm.

They have also launched their own label, Pierre & Louis Trapet, where they produce classic styles and some more experimental bottlings.

Worthy of note, the wines from Trapet’s cousin domaine, Domaine Rossignol-Trapet, are also of extraordinary value from superb terroirs.

For the summer months it may be useful to highlight Burgundy’s only ‘cru’ rosé from Marsannay. I often mark the beginning of summer by buying in a case of pink for hotter weather.

The classic producer is Domaine Bruno Clair, whose careful combination of direct press and maceration on the skins produces a delightfully elegant summer rosé.

Bruno’s cousins at Domaine Bart and his neighbour Sylvain Pataille also offer worthy renditions.

Côte de Beaune

The wines of Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson are among the most frequent weekday visitors on my dinner table. The domaine is located in St-Romain, where they farm 19ha of certified organic vineyards.

Although the family has lived in the village since the 12th century and trace their work as vignerons to 1758, they have bottled wine under the family name only since 1947, the year in which the village received its own appellation.

Before 1947, St-Romain was considered part of the Hautes-Côtes, tucked away in a valley behind Meursault in the region’s upper slopes, which is why the village is less well-known to many.

The higher elevations meant that in the past the grapes ripened with difficulty, but with a changing climate, St-Romain has come into its own to produce wines with lush, forward fruit that still retain plenty of structure, making them excellent companions to food.

The vineyard-designated St-Romain wines are the star of the show at Buisson, but the red and white Bourgogne-level wines are delicious as well at an eminently affordable price.

Côte Chalonnaise

The Côte Chalonnaise is home to many diverse wine styles. One producer has mastered several: Bruno Lorenzon is producing some of the finest wines anywhere in the Côte Chalonnaise.

Although he is based in Mercurey, known for red wines, his 30 years at the family domaine have given him the experience to produce stunning wines in both colours.

He now produces wines from 9ha of vines, six in Mercurey and three in Montagny. As he noted: ‘I’m a white wine guy who makes Pinot Noir in a Chardonnay way.’

He sometimes delights in running counter to received wisdom, deriding the early-picked, reductive style currently in fashion for Chardonnay in very amusing terms, quoting Henri Jayer: ‘A wine must be good from the beginning’.

He presses whole bunches of Chardonnay delicately and vinifies in a minimalist way without chaptalising, acidifying, or adding sulphur, to sublime results.

In either colour or terroir, the master of Mercurey delivers beautiful wines of precision and impressive depth of flavour.

Mâconnais

The Mâconnais is a fertile hunting ground for the everyday value wines that often appear at my house.

The region is broad and varied, and numerous producers are making great wine at great prices.

Across the appellations of the Mâconnais, from Pouilly-Fuissé premier cru to Mâcon-Villages and beyond, however, the style pioneered by Jean-Marie Guffens and Julian Desplans at Maison Verget consistently delivers satisfaction.

They adapt the winemaking style to each cuvée across a broad range, but in general, the wines are concentrated and aromatic, with a slightly smoky, reductive edge imparted by the winemaking.

Despite picking fairly ripe fruit, the wines never lose their balance and retain a lively freshness that makes them refreshing even in a warm vintage.

Even in an era of skyrocketing prices, these producers show that Burgundy still offers abundant choices for everyday drinking.

Favourite Burgundy producers for everyday drinking

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How do you measure the greatness of any given wine appellation? One way might be to count the number of outstanding producers.

If using this method in the Southern Rhône, Cairanne would come out looking particularly strong.

Cairanne was promoted to Cru status in 2016, and there was never any doubt that it deserved this commendation. Ten years on, its wines are even better.

The Cairanne style is all about balance, elegance and consistency. Its reds have the characteristic generosity of the east bank, but more restrained than punchier appellations such as Rasteau and Châteauneuf.

Its whites too inhabit a comfortable middle ground. They have affable confidence rather than oaky swagger; they are proudly Southern Rhône, and with drinkability.

Both colours are approachable on release, and both can develop beguiling complexity with a decade (or more) in bottle.

And they’re not expensive; on the contrary, Cairanne offers some of the best value drinking in the Rhône Valley.

As in all appellations, the producer is what counts. Below is a list of some personal favourites.

If you can’t find them, there are countless other excellent producers to choose from, including Domaine Brusset, Domaine les Hautes Cances, Domaine Rabasse Charavin and La Cave de Cairanne.

Domaine Alary

The Alary family settled in Cairanne in 1692, and has been cultivating land here ever since.

It was Denis Alary who helped spearhead the passage to Cru in 2016; he has since passed the baton to his son Jean-Etienne.

They make numerous Cairanne cuvées, all with a unique raison d’être, and they excel at both white and red. Their white Estévenas is deep and rich but not heavy.

Of their reds, their Jean de Verde is the essence of Cairanne Grenache, and their red Estévenas is highly distinctive, brimming with mocha and black olive, thanks to its old vine Syrah.

Their 2016 Estévenas red was drinking brilliantly this year, with another decade ahead of it.

Domaine Richaud

If Domaine Alary embodies classical Cairanne, then Richaud personifies its wild side.

Richaud might not be the most consistently reliable estate in the appellation, but when the wines are on form, they’re unbeatable.

Don’t let the simple labels fool you: these can be highly complex wines.

Marcel Richaud has largely passed on the estate to his children Thomas and Claire now. They work organically, add nothing to their wines, or take anything away; yields are very low.

Even their cuvée classique is fresh, zesty and exuberant; their 50% Mourvèdre L’Ebresecade can be phenomenal; powerful and concentrated but crackling with energy. Their white is also delicious, rich or fresh, as the vintage dictates.

Les Chemins de Sève

What Loïc Massart has achieved since establishing his estate in 2013 is nothing short of extraordinary.

In a matter of 13 years, Les Chemins de Sève is among the top names of the appellation. The winery might be new but their vines are up to 85 years old.

He makes two red Cairannes. Métamorphose is 70% Grenache and 30% Syrah, aged in concrete for a round, approachable, juicy but structured style.

Apanage is 50/50 Grenache/Syrah, aged in recent barrels for a darker, more intense expression.

His white Cairanne Opale (40% Roussanne, 30% Clairette, 30% Grenache Blanc) is also highly accomplished. His 2014 Opale and 2015 Apanage, some of his first attempts, were still showing very well in 2026.

Domaine des Amadieu

Yves-Jean Houser, took over this 7ha estate in 2007 and promptly converted it to biodynamics.

His style is uncompromising – authentic wines with no make-up that offer a clear-eyed vision of this terroir.

His whites are broad, rich, supported by mineral freshness rather than acidity. I prefer his vibrant and invigorating reds.

Garrigues is juicily delicious, Vieilles Vignes more structured, made for the dinner table. His first vintage, 2007, was still holding up well in 2026, complex and compelling.

Clos Romane

Clos Romane is a fourth generation organic family estate in the heart of the village, their 30ha of vineyards are dotted around various soils and appellations.

Their wines have been improving from year to year and are now reliably excellent. The style here is all about richness and power, in both colours.

Domaine A. Berthet-Rayne

The Berthet-Rayne family has been making wine in Cairanne since 1880. Current owner André is the fourth generation, his daughter Alexandra joined the estate in 2017.

Their reds are very good, especially their Castel Mireio, which is particularly refined.

A generous 20% of their estate is planted with whites however, a house speciality; their Castel Mireio white is often among the best in the appellation.

Domaine Oratoire Saint-Martin

There were two branches of the Alary family who were instrumental in the history of wine in Cairanne. Domaine Alary is home to one; Domaine Oratoire Saint-Martin was, until recently, home to the other.

This latter estate was run by tenth generation brothers Frédéric and François Alary until 2020, when they sold the estate to the Abeille-Fabre family of Château Mont-Redon in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The estate is still being run biodynamically. Red wines are medium-bodied in style and can be enjoyable in good vintages.

Their strength here is their whites (which was always the case) which, in vintages like 2024, can be among the finest in the Southern Rhône.

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This isn’t the time for bold, oaky or concentrated Champagnes that demand large glasses (which warm up faster) and mild serving temperatures.

We want wines that offer ultimate refreshment value, and can be served very cold.

The key is to look for clean-cut Champagnes that, even if uncomplicated and affordable, don’t skimp on class.

Which styles to go for?

Head for Chardonnay-dominant Champagnes, made exclusively from Champagne’s brightest, zestiest grape variety.

Chardonnay tends to be a little lighter on its feet than Pinot Noir, often with slightly higher acidity and lots of refreshing citrus flavour.

For the clean-cut, polished examples, look for classic blanc de blancs from Champagne’s top maisons.

There are crisp, youthful and affordable non-vintage blanc de blancs from the likes of Henriot; classy, longer-aged versions such as Charles Heidsieck’s Blanc de Blancs; or purity and poise from Laurent-Perrier’s Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature.

Independent growers in Champagne make a range of Chardonnay-led styles, sometimes crisp and snappy, sometimes bolder and more suited to the table.

In the former camp, Etienne Calsac makes Les Rocheforts from Chardonnay, ripe but bristling with refreshing bitter citrus and stony intensity – a real pick-me up.

Other parts of Champagne, though, can still turn out beautiful and refreshing Chardonnays, even if they are often a little rounder and less piercing.

Charpentier’s Terre d’Emotion Blanc de Blancs, from the far western end of the Marne Valley towards Paris, shows beautiful clarity and texture from this under-rated biodynamic grower.

Rosé refreshment

There are plenty of rosé Champagnes that feature Chardonnay heavily, too.

Up-and-coming boutique house Lallier is a Chardonnay expert based in the Côte des Blancs, and its Réflexion R.021 Rosé sits beautifully between pink-grapefruit snappiness and fresh strawberry juiciness.

Pushing the Chardonnay influence even further brings us to what is informally called rosé des blancs, or rosé from white grapes – essentially blanc de blancs with a splash of light red Pinot Noir added before being bottled for second fermentation.

You get the colour, and a lick of red fruit, but the build is pure, racy refreshment.

Delamotte Rosé, from the Chardonnay-specialist house, is a sophisticated treat, while in independent Champagne you could look towards the slightly more fruit-forward, rounder A Bergère Rosé NV from just to the south of the Côte des Blancs.

Four Champagnes to beat the heat

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The best bottles are always something more.

They are talismanic rites of passage to a place distant from the putative truths of empirical analysis, or the shallow notion that a wine is only as good as what is in the glass.

In the brittle cold of Paris in early January, as I struggled with the ignition of my rental car, I reminded myself that I was on my way to experience one of those bottles: a Romanée-Conti 1899, believed to be the last remaining.

This sort of bottle is usually traded at considerable profit.

Indeed, Romanée-Conti 1945 holds the record for the highest price ever fetched at auction: US$812,500 at Acker’s La Paulée sale in March this year. But the 1899 was purchased by Soo Hoo Khoon Peng to drink, a belated celebration of his 50th birthday.

A collector, businessman and co-owner of renowned Australian Pinot Noir producer Bass Phillip, Soo Hoo believes that wine ‘isn’t about status, but learning and human connection’, and was adamant that the bottle be shared among friends. I was glad to be among them.

I arrived at Michelin one-star restaurant Auprès de Clocher in Pommard to glimpse the time capsule set on a mantle, replete with a gloriously tattered label and a relatively healthy fill.

Its heavy lead capsule was unblemished but for a chip here and there and a crease of rust.

The bottle augured well for the long lunch ahead, while photographers from major news networks dispersed and guests arrived.

‘Mercifully, the bottle wasn’t corked. Miraculously, it wasn’t volatile!’

Among those guests was Maison Pion fine wine director and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) specialist Régis Cimmati, who estimated the bottle’s worth at about US$118,000 based on provenance alone, going to great lengths to decipher the label’s nomenclature,

‘Seign…et’ indicating that the bottle had been sold to Bordeaux trader Seignouret, owned by the de Brou de Laurière family.

The guest of honour, however, was DRC co-owner Aubert de Villaine, who at 87 wove an array of anthologies with a historical loom, bringing the magical bottle to life with a glint in his eye and a spritely cadence to words that felt like an incantation.

He explained that the wine would have been bottled in Santenay back then, the barrels transported by horse and cart.

When the wine was made, Romanée-Conti was owned by families Guyot and Chambon, each surname visible on opposite sides of the label.

The Guyot clan later sold in 1912 to Jacques Chambon and Edmond Gaudin de Villaine and the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti was established.

Cimmati explained that the bottle was sold at a local auction in a six-pack, designated ‘19th Century Red Wines’, after the last member of the de Brou de Laurière family died, in 2011.

Due to label damage, the bottle went unrecognised and the entire lot sold for barely €50!

De Villaine celebrated this with a grin, inferring his displeasure with the secondary market and its extreme pricing, while admitting he had never tasted a pre-1900 bottle; the oldest in the domaine’s stock dates to 1911.

The 1899 was later salvaged by a discerning buyer and eventually sold to Soo Hoo.

Another guest, Wine Advocate editor in chief William Kelley, was nominated to draw the cork. I breathed a sigh of relief that the responsibility wasn’t mine.

Mercifully, the bottle wasn’t corked. Miraculously, it wasn’t volatile!

A shimmering tawny tinged with red, vital and poised, there were hints of dried quince and tea leaf, sure, but the wine transcended any obvious fruit flavours with an incandescent, ineffable beauty.

Monsieur de Villaine swooned over the lingering finish, while Kelley noted a ‘heady vinosity’, born of prephylloxera vines. Cimmati enthused: ‘These pre-war ungrafted bottles are the pinnacle of the craft.’

There were other great bottles served that day, with my hat tipped to the 1980 La Tâche. Yet as friendships were kindled, wine’s spellbinding capacity to bring people together in celebration of a moment, resolute and invigorating, was clear.

A memento mori amid a cast of stars, the 1899’s semiotic powers were unrivalled.

In my glass this month

Under the aegis of Federico Seghesio, Renzo Seghesio is a Barolo name on the rise, offering visceral joy across the range. However, it’s an outlier, Nebbiolo from the sandy turf of Roero – Roè 2023 – that sits in my glass most nights.

From a warm vintage, yet Nebbiolo’s perk and twirl are in full flight, as if the rose petal, kirsch and briar of Grenache has met the forestry accents of Pinot, all nicely compressed by Nebbiolo’s sinewy tannins.

One sip soon leads to a large draught and then an empty bottle. Best guzzled on the cooler side.

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High up on the Col de Durbize, near the top of the Chiroubles appellation in Beaujolais, the view is breathtaking.

Due south, across a rippling wave of vineyard-covered hills, the mounded form of the Côte de Brouilly towers over the landscape. Beyond it, a flat plain spills away towards the Saône river.

On a cloudless day you can often catch a glimpse of Mont Blanc in the far distance, its snow-capped shoulders marking the highest point of the Alps.

The sloping vineyards to the north of the col are punctuated by copses of trees and sunshine-yellow gorse bushes.

Even though you’re less than 3km from the village, it’s peaceful up here, the silence interrupted only by the loud song of blackbirds and the occasional quiet hum of a peloton of cyclists whooshing by.

It’s not just the view that takes your breath away. Even on a sunny spring day, you can feel the wind that blows over the col.

Its name, Durbize, is a portmanteau of bize, the moniker used in the Alps for a cold, dry mountain wind, and dur (meaning ‘hard’), a reference to just how biting that wind can feel when it really gets going.

The bize is often keenly felt by the producers working the steep vineyards that spread out over the slopes beneath and behind the col.

It’s worth bearing in mind that although the Col de Durbize, perched at 500m above sea level, is one of the highest points in the region, some of the Chiroubles vineyards are situated even higher.

Work your heart out

Furthermore, not only is Chiroubles the highest of the 10 crus of Beaujolais – its highest-quality sub-regions – it also features the region’s most vertiginous slopes.

Toiling up and down the sharp inclines in this hilly cru is not for the faint of heart or the weak of limb.

The growers’ task is made even harder by the nature of the vines they’re tending. The vineyards of Beaujolais’ crus are largely populated by ancient bush vines, almost entirely Gamay, many of them so low to the ground that they look like bonsai versions of the more vigorous plants seen elsewhere.

Bending and kneeling to prune these vines, and to harvest the low-hanging bunches, takes a physical toll on Chiroubles’ growers over time.

‘I love being up there in my vineyards. I love the landscape, and the feeling that I’m surrounded by nature, and I love the views,’ says Domaine de la Grosse Pierre’s Pauline Passot.

Then she sighs. ‘It’s incredibly hard work and I have to work my heart out. The vineyards are so steep they just can’t be mechanised – everything has to be done by hand.’

But although those steep slopes, buffeting winds and old vines may be a tribulation for grape-growers, they are a distinct advantage in the context of climate change.

While the Chiroubles cru may have struggled to ripen its grapes in past years, when chaptalisation (adding sugar to the fermenting must to increase potential alcohol) was the norm in the region, the freshness derived from elevation and wind is now a positive blessing in a changing climate, when those tending vines grown in riper sites sometimes struggle to keep alcohol levels under control.

Rocky descent

The final piece in the puzzle of the distinctive terroir of Chiroubles is geology. It’s the only one of the 10 crus to be composed exclusively of the pink granite soils for which the region is renowned.

Even Fleurie, the cru most strongly associated with pink granite in most people’s minds, has a fan of alluvial soils situated in the southeast of the appellation.

In some parts of the Chiroubles appellation, geology and topography combine to create incredibly shallow soils in which the bedrock lies exposed, while elsewhere these rocks have decomposed to create relatively deep, free-draining granitic sands.

It’s this combination of elevation, cooling influences and granite soils that gives the wines of Chiroubles a unique tension and energy, while vine age (many of these plants are well over 80 years old) lends concentration and focus.

Chiroubles is typically fine-boned and perfumed: the Beaujolais equivalent, perhaps, of Volnay or Chambolle-Musigny.

Unfortunately for the region’s growers, however, Chiroubles doesn’t command anywhere near the price of the wines of the Côte d’Or, despite their stylistic similarities.

As a result, it’s perhaps unsurprising that over the course of the two years I spent researching my book The Wines of Beaujolais (£35 Académie du Vin Library, September 2025), Chiroubles lost nearly 15% of its vineyard area – and a recent trip to the region suggests that a further 5%-10% of vineyards have been abandoned in the past 12 months.

All this in a cru that is already the second smallest of the 10 in terms of area.

Commercial realities

‘Lost’ is a euphemism in this particular context. What typically happens is that, when a grower retires, he struggles to find anyone to take over his vineyards. These are then left to lie fallow, the grasses growing wild between the tightly spaced vines.

For many growers, farming a hectare or two of Chiroubles is, it would appear, far more trouble than it’s worth.

As Passot points out: ‘Very few people want to take on these difficult vineyards, especially when it’s hard to make a return on the investment in the time and money it takes to farm them.’

She’s not wrong. A quick back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests that the steepest hillside vineyards in Beaujolais cost two or three times more to farm than those that lie on flatter land – possibly even more if you farm organically, as many of the best producers do.

The story of Jules Métras’ La Montagne, one of the finest wines made in Chiroubles, is a perfect illustration of the potential loss to the wine world.

The 2024 vintage of this wine – and of its stablemate, the Vieilles Vignes Chiroubles – is the last Métras will ever bottle.

When I visited him last year, he told me he was giving up his long-term lease on the vineyards with great regret, but with a pragmatic eye on both the commercial realities of the situation and his own physical limitations.

Métras’ father Yvon, one of the pioneers of the natural wine movement in Beaujolais, has recently retired from the viticultural fray, handing over the management of his Fleurie vineyards to his son.

Métras, having decided that he wanted to keep his production on a small enough scale to enable him to operate as a one-man band, was faced with a decision about whether to keep his father’s vineyards or the ones he’d been farming under his own label.

Ultimately, much as he felt an affinity for his plots in Chiroubles, Métras’ calculation was driven by the pragmatics.

‘It’s just far easier to sell Fleurie than it is to sell Chiroubles,’ he shrugged, adding that another factor that influenced him was having watched some of his relatives farm Chiroubles’ sloping vineyards until they reached their 60s.

‘All those years of climbing up and down those hills, tending those low-lying vines, simply wore them out,’ he told me.

And there’s a further issue that makes Chiroubles a challenge for any producer. The hailstorms that sweep through the region with increasing frequency seem to strike the cru with both monotonous regularity and devastating consequences.

Most of the growers in Chiroubles tell me that they count on losing a significant proportion of their crop at least one year in three.

Sometimes, when the hailstorms roll through, they’ll escape with relatively minor damage, but in the worst-case scenarios, 70% or 80% of a vineyard’s potential harvest can be lost in the space of half an hour or so.

For the love of it

And yet this troublesome, capricious cru has a way of working its way into the hearts and souls of those who take the trouble to get to know it.

‘The people who farm these vineyards are doing it for love,’ says Michele Smith of Domaine Chapel, who farms 3ha of vineyards spread across three of Chiroubles’ lieux-dits (‘named locations’).

‘They’re doing it because they believe in the cru. I think that eventually this will resonate with people. Chiroubles deserves the same amount of respect as the more prestigious appellations – maybe even more because of the challenges that it brings. These wines just have the most amazing energy and vibrancy.’

But if the wines of Chiroubles are so good, why are they so difficult to sell?

One of the cru’s greatest problems is that, unlike the larger, more famous crus of Morgon and Fleurie, Chiroubles doesn’t have a big winemaking name – either in its past or in its present – to drive its image.

Most of the grapes grown in the cru have been absorbed into big (and often rather bland) négociant blends, humdrum wines that aren’t likely to attract discerning palates or turn collectors’ heads.

Nevertheless, the wines recommended below are evidence that great winemakers – if not famous ones – are prepared to carry a torch for Chiroubles.

Another issue that may play its part in Chiroubles’ travails is that the distinctive identity of each of the 10 Beaujolais crus isn’t yet widely recognised.

One importer told me, off the record, that the typical response from retailers and restaurants (ones that happily list a couple of dozen wines from Burgundy or a generous handful of Piedmontese Nebbiolos) is: ‘Thanks, but we already have a Beaujolais’.

Given that, for an outlet that believes that listing Beaujolais is a box-ticking exercise, the first cab off the rank is usually either a Morgon or a Fleurie (or possibly a Moulin-à-Vent if they’re feeling really adventurous), poor little Chiroubles rarely gets a look in.

The exhortation to ‘use it or lose it’ is a familiar one to any gym-goer over the age of 40, but it’s less frequently heard in the context of wine.

Nevertheless, the clock is ticking for Chiroubles. It’s time we all realised that the hills of Beaujolais conceal a hidden treasure.

If we don’t, there’s a risk that this particular pot of elegant, perfumed vinous gold will disappear from our lives forever.

Gamay at the extreme: Natasha’s pick of 10 Chiroubles to try

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The story of Clos Cibonne represents not just the history of coastal Provence, but also of one family's stubborn belief in their traditions.

It has resulted in one of Provence's most iconic cult wines, often regarded by other Provence winemakers as not being Provence-like because of its atypical style.

Over 200 years of history

The estate traces its origins back to the late 18th century, when naval captain Jean-Baptiste de Cibon, based in nearby Toulon, built a hilltop bastide (a type of fortified manor) with a direct view of the sea, and called it Château Cibon.

Upon Cibon’s death in 1797, the property, a symbol of elite ownership, was taken over by France’s new Republic after the French Revolution, divided into small lots and sold to the general public.

A portion was sold to the Roux family, although not the Château Cibon bastide.

Provence's fortunes grow

The 19th century saw the development of the coastal industry. In 1857 the Cap Garonne sandstone quarry was opened on the hill just to the south of Cibon.

Copper and lead were discovered in 1862, and by the 1890s the copper was being used for Bordeaux mixture – a fungicide used on grapevines to prevent downy mildew.

The advent of the railway from 1859 revolutionised Provence, opening up the region to trade and to tourists seeking the summer sun.

The Roux family profited from this prosperity, planting citrus groves, vineyards and other horticulture to supply tourists and hotels.

Following the devastation of phylloxera in the 1880s, many vineyards were re-planted with high-yielding varieties, and Tibouren, Provence’s only indigenous variety, was abandoned.

Tibouren’s susceptibility to powdery mildew, uneven ripening and oxidative characters made it unpopular, endearing it only to those who loved its rich apricot flavours.

Early rebels, the Roux family was one of the few to replant the grape.

Part of the landscape

By the 1930s, Marius Roux (1875-1958) had developed the estate’s wine production. He bought large 5,000-litre beer barrels from southern Germany and, like the Otts at nearby Clos Mireille, started to sell his wine in bottles.

The current label design dates from this era.

Marius was followed by his son André (1905-1989), who changed the name from Château Cibon to Clos Cibonne.

André was active in getting Clos Cibonne recognised as a cru classé in 1955. The key requirements were that the wine was sold in bottle and could prove its ageing potential.

By the time the appellation rules were being written up in the 1970s, they had a clear precedent allowing them to continue selling their wines with Tibouren on the label – no other Côtes de Provence wines are permitted to label their wine varietally.

Following André's death in 1989, his daughter Jacqueline took over the estate with her husband, Emile Mourchou.

Emile restructured the estate by buying land, replanting Tibouren and developing a new cellar, choosing to retain some of the 5,000-litre foudres.

Their daughter Brigitte and husband Claude Desforges took over the estate in 2003, bringing the cellar up to date with modern technology.

Clos Cibonne catches the attention of sommeliers

It was around this time that local sommeliers were increasingly talking about Clos Cibonne’s exceptional wines.

Faced with the growth in popularity and fame for Provence rosé, there was considerable pressure on the family to change from their traditional dark glass bottles to a clear glass bottle, and to adapt to a modern image of pale, fresh Provence rosé.

Instead, they resisted this pressure, and the wines have retained their unique rich and concentrated style, and are still bottled in dark glass.

Clos Cibonne today

Some of the wines go through malolactic fermentation, and some develop a layer of flor while in foudres, although any oxidative flor character is barely noticeable.

As Claude acknowledges, their aim is to make good wine, not just rosé.

Claude continued to buy adjacent parcels that once made up the original Château Cibon property, bringing the estate to its current size of 24ha – except the original bastide, which still has numerous owners.

Although close to the sea, the vineyards nestle behind a range of low, coastal hills (on the other side of the hills lies the coastal region of La Londe).

The vineyards are located on the Colle Noire massif, and erosion has given rise to a mix of soil types.

Tibouren has different flavour profiles depending on its location and soil type: high up, the schist gives spicy flavours; in the middle there is clay-limestone and loam, with the more silty soils giving citrus freshness.

The warmer, sandier soils on the lower slopes are used for red wine.

The surrounding flat land is criss-crossed with drainage channels, lined with canes and reeds, and has a high water table – a problem for mildew-susceptible Tibouren.

Nevertheless, Cibonne has been cultivated organically since 2012, and certified since 2020.

Tibouren buds early, but luckily spring frosts are not a problem, and it achieves good sugar levels, even when one of the first grapes to be harvested.

The combination of ripe fruit and oak gives the wines great concentration.

Defiant wines

Clos Cibonne remains a family-owned domaine, increasingly rare in Provence, and Claude’s son Olivier is currently taking over.

He says he has no intention of changing the style of the wines. He also aims to continue the tradition of making special cuvées to honour family members: cuvées Caroline (his sister), Olivier, Marius, as well as new cuvées to mark the birth of Olivier’s children: Simon (born in 2023) and Valentin (born in 2019).

The rosés remain the standout wines in the range. Their ageing potential means they can be cellared and can accompany complex food pairings.

The wines may be idiosyncratic, not always perfect, defy market trends, and show more vintage variation than most rosés, but they definitely stand out from the crowd.

Clos Cibonne through time

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On 14 July 1789, a mob of Parisian citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison that had become a symbol of the oppression of the ruling monarchy.

It was a turning point in the French Revolution, a culmination of social upheaval and the dissatisfaction of the common people against the ruling elite.

It marked the end of the ancien régime – the old order – and the beginning of the first French Republic.

Wine, as it happens, was tangled up in all of it.

Quick-fire history of wine in France

The vine likely arrived in southern Gaul (the anicent area of Europe that roughly corresponds to modern day France) around 600 BCE – centuries before any king wore a crown or the concept of France even existed.

Winemaking and viticulture flourished under Roman rule, but it was the monastic orders in the Middle Ages that turned viticulture and wine into a discipline.

Monasteries often owned huge swathes of vineyards – especially in places such as Burgundy.

Both church and nobility used their vineyard holdings to fuel the feudal economy, while increasingly far-reaching and sophisticated trade networks in which wine was a key commodity contributed to the rise of wealthy bourgeois mercantile classes as well.

Into the early modern era, wine increasingly became a status symbol in the royal courts, the nobles drinking Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux.

But the Revolution toppled the monarchy, and broke the aristocratic leash on wine. Vineyards and land were redistributed, sold back to the people, and wine became their tonic.

Bastille Day is marked as a recognition of the power of the people. Here are five French wines with which to toast it.

Five French wines to toast to Bastille Day

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It's the semi-finals. Four teams, two games, one final match to decide it all.

And all four teams that have made it this far are from winemaking nations.

Whatever the results over these final games, the record of a winemaking country always winning the World Cup is guaranteed.

But who will be in that final game? France look like the best team overall. Spain feel like dark horses who could win in a closely-fought slugging match.

England and Argentina both have shown flashes of brilliance but also fraught, rather flawed performances from which they somehow emerge victorious.

And the potential finals are ripe with historic firsts. Will it be a third back-to-back final for France? A rematch against Argentina? A first-time clash against England who would be in their first final in 60 years.

Or maybe a rematch of 2024's Euros final? Spain vs England. Or, even, a first World Cup meeting between Spain and Argentina since (incredibly) 1966.

All to play for – here's what we're pairing with each match...

And if you feel the need for some... actual football analysis during this World Cup, do check in on our friends and colleagues over at FourFourTwo for all their updates and coverage.

Izzy: England

England (vs Argentina): The final four! After a rather nervy win over the Vikings on Saturday, England are through to the semi-finals for only the fourth time since 1966.

They’ll be meeting current title-holders Argentina in Atlanta, where both teams have previously pulled back from a losing position to overcome their rivals (England against DR Congo and Argentina in their dramatic win over Egypt last week).

Argentina have a particular habit of clawing back a win from the jaws of defeat, so England will need to show real grit and persistence to keep Lionel Messi at bay.

In this spirit, let’s continue to plumb the Decanter World Wine Awards for bottles that showcase the best of England winemaking, and try this platinum-winning sparkling rosé from Berkshire.

From a winery established less than 15 years ago – younger than Messi’s World Cup career – this is an extremely impressive wine, which shows the value of hard work and determination in the vineyard (as on the pitch!)

A wine that is delightfully English with rose garden, strawberry and red apple notes, it is described as an ‘allegory of national intent’ – a fitting choice for the team’s toughest match yet.

Rupert: France

France (vs Spain): Two European football and winemaking giants going head-to-head, and on Bastille Day no-less.

For two such famous footballing nations, it’s surprising that France and Spain haven’t clashed more often in major tournaments.

Spain has had the better of the most recent encounters in the Euros – beating France in the quarter-finals in 2012 and semi-finals in 2024 (going on to win those tournaments on both occasions).

The last – and in fact only – World Cup clash between the two was 20 years ago in 2006, the final hurrah of Zidane, Henry, Viera & co, and which France won (before losing in the final).*

In such circumstances it’s time to throw caution to the wind and lavish some money on a special bottle. It should be something ‘very French’ and is there anything more French than old Bordeaux?

Perhaps something from the 2006 vintage in honour of the last time these countries met.

An underrated vintage that, at 20 years old (and like this French team), is still revealing its charms, try snagging something like this Château Cos d’Estournel which continues to boast ‘abundant blackcurrant fruit and subtle hints of pepper, cedar, and smoke’.

*There was also the 5-4 Spanish victory in the semi-finals of the UEFA Nations League in 2025, but, honestly, who remembers/cares about that?

Ines: Spain

Spain (vs France): Would Spain have won its quarter-final duel if Belgium's goalie, Thibaut Courtois, hadn’t left the game injured? We’ll never know.

The road to victory is paved with unfair casualties and (a lot of) luck.

However, luck seems to often fail those who face France… La Roja needs, more than ever, to rely only on itself.

This semi-final calls for consistency, poise, nerve and resilience – the attributes of a good Ribera del Duero, such as the Finca las Dueñas Reserva from charismatic producer Francisco Barona, himself a great source of inspiration for Spanish players.

Barona's passion, work ethic and hands-on knowledge produce some of Ribera’s most exciting modern classics.

A recipe for champions?

Julie: Argentina