Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Served blind and from magnum, I was gratified to be able to identify both the vintage and producer of Ramonet's 2014 Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru. Offering up aromas of crisp green orchard fruit, iodine, warm bread and crushed mint, the wine is full-bodied and expansively textural but incisive, with terrific concentration and cut, concluding with a long finish. While I'm more than happy to drink it from my friends' cellars, my own bottles won't be opened for the better part of a decade, and I would counsel readers to approach any other vintage of the decade before they start attacking their 2014s.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
A source of some of the finest, juicy, silky and elegantly floral Chardonnay in the Côte de Beaune, Puligny-Montrachet lies just to the north of Chassagne-Montrachet, a village with which it shares two of its Grands Crus vineyards: Le Montrachet itself and Bâtard-Montrachet. Its other two, which it owns in their entirety, are Chevalier-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. And still, some of the finest white Burgundy wines come from the prized Premiers Crus vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet. To name a few, Les Pucelles, Le Clavoillon, Les Perrières, Les Referts and Les Combettes, as well as the rest, lie northeast and up slope from the Grands Crus.
Farther to the southeast are village level whites and the hamlet of Blagny where Pinot Noir grows best and has achieved Premier Cru status.