Steven Spurrier’s wines of the month – March

From the cellar

Domaine Guffens-Heynen, Premier Jus des Hauts de Vignes, Pouilly-Fuissé 2003

I first met Jean-Marie Guffens in the early 1980s, buying his white Mâconnais wines from the first taste for my shop in Paris.

His reputation as ‘the mad Belgian’ had preceded him – he and his wife Maine having left their homeland of Flanders in 1976 for Burgundy, where studied at the local Davayé viticultural school.

In 1979 he purchased his first few parcels of vines on the hills of Pierreclos. The domaine now covers 5.3ha to include the villages of Davayé and Vergisson, and it produces separate cuvées of Pouilly-Fuissé, Mâcon-Pierreclos and Mâcon-Vergisson, and St-Véran.

All of them are wines that dominate their respective appellations year on year. Such was made plain, with Jean-Marie and Maine present, at Farr Vintners in London over a tasting of five flights covering a total of 53 white wines from 2013 to 1989, including those Côte d’Or and Chablis wines made under Jean-Marie’s Verget négociant label.

The third flight consisted of 12 magnums, the first being this extraordinary 2003 Pouilly-Fuissé. Harvested on 18-19 August with sugars already high due to the heatwave summer that year, but acidity still correct, just the first pressing spending nine months in oak and nine in cement, it showed wonderfully exotic fruit with great clarity and freshness: a sensational wine that expressed the very soul of great white Burgundy.

For the cellar

François et Guillaume Thienpont, Les Fillottes, Pomerol 2016

François et Guillaume Thienpont are cousins, the grandson and great-grandson of Georges Thienpont (1881-1960) who founded the family wine estates that are now so wellknown on Bordeaux’s Right Bank.

François, after working in the US, returned to work with his elder brother Nicolas at Château Puygueraud and in 1995 founded Wings SAS, a merchant selling the finest Bordeaux wines, notably those from the family estates.

Guillaume joined his father Alexandre at Vieux Château Certan in 2011. Together they now oversee a range of wines that evoke their terroir and vintage with the utmost integrity in an expressive, harmonious whole.

Such a wine is Pomerol Les Fillottes, from a selection of parcels covering 3.5ha between Châteaux Clinet and Rouget in the centre of the appellation, with 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc planted on gravel and clay-limestone soils.

The 2015 showed a nose of truffles, and rich but firm flavours; while the 2016 added an element of completeness with deep, almost crunchy fruit, both recognisably and individually in Pomerol’s top league.

Elegance and balance make it approachable now, but another five years will bring complexity and depth, and a longer future is assured. (94/100pts, £53 in-bond at BI Wines and Spirits, Jeroboams, Latimer Vintners, Vinum).

The Spurrier Selection

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