Top Chassagne & Puligny-Montrachet 2022 wines en primeur

Best producers: Domaine Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey (Chassagne) Domaine Paul Pillot (Chassagne) Domaine Blain-Gagnard (Chassagne) Domaine Lamy-Caillat (Chassagne) Domaine Michel Niellon (Chassagne) Domaine Jean Chartron (Puligny) Domaine Alvina Pernot (Puligny) Domaine François Carillon (Puligny) Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for Charles' top-scoring Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet 2022 wines [subscriber-content] The image of Puligny is one of flinty, citrus-inflected wines. In 2022, this profile comes mainly from the higher-elevation climats, particularly Champ Gain, Les Chalumeaux, and the upper reaches of Folatières such as En la Richarde and Peux Bois. It was also a banner year for Chevalier-Montrachet, with its firm, saline minerality. Montrachet can be toweringly good, although these tend to be very rich wines requiring years of ageing before they reach their full potential. The same is true of Bâtard, and it required a deft hand indeed to produce an elegant Bâtard in 2022. In Chassagne, a similar dichotomy held sway, with stunningly good wines with great acid balance and lovely lemony fruit coming from Les Chaumées, Caillerets, Grand Montagne, and La Romanée, while vines on the lower reaches of the Morgeot sector sometimes produced dense, heavy wines that lack the elegance of the higher slopes. Anne-Laure Chartron, managing the vineyards for Domaine Jean Chartron, said: 'There was no water stress in Puligny – one could look at the vines all summer and never see wilted yellow leaves. There was just a bit of hail in the Saint-Aubin vineyard of Murgers des Dents de Chien.’ Their pickers started on 24 August for the Crémant de Bourgogne. Fellow Puligny grower Alvina Pernot began a few days later on 28 August, while in Chassagne, Thierry Pillot did his best to preserve the freshness of the year and started picking on 24 August and brought in grapes with a potential alcohol of 12.5% that still had a lovely ripe fruit expression. Bouchard Père et Fils has extensive holdings in Puligny. For technical director Frédéric Weber, it was a beautiful but hot vintage. He noted that the average temperature for the season was 1.5° higher than ever recorded, even in 2020 or 2003, and that there were so many hours of sunshine that it was equivalent to having an extra month of sun. One of the techniques that they have used to counteract this is to spray the leaves with pulverised clay to act as a sunblock for the grapes. He began to pick Chardonnay in the Côte de Beaune on 29 August and ended up with Chardonnay between 13.5% to 14.5% potential alcohol. For him, the profile resembled 2015, giving sunny wines of impressive density. For growers in the southern Côte de Beaune, 2022 will be remembered as an easy vintage; the trap was over-ripeness, and the crux of the year was properly assessing when to harvest. After the mid-August rain, ripening was ferociously fast. Those who picked too early lacked fruit expression and risked green flavours from a lack of phenolic ripeness, but those who waited too long risked tropical fruit and a lack of acidity. Those who got it right, however, were able to make superb wine in 2022. [/subscriber-content] Score table listing Charles' top Burgundy 2022 wines all scoring 94 points or above All 700+ Burgundy 2022 tasting notes and scores Quick links: See further analysis and top-scoring wines of the following areas:

Northern Côte de Beaune

Top-scoring Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet 2022 wines: [wine-collection] Related content Burgundy 2022 en primeur: full report and top-scoring wines