Winemaker Notes
A wine of exceptional poise and balance, it is both nervy and rich, creamy and earthy, full-bodied but nimble. A perfect all-around, versatile, crowd-pleaser that does not sacrifice complexity.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Marcel Couturier started producing his own wines in 2005, working from his 27-acre domaine in the Mâconnais. He completed a winery in 2014 and this bottling is his flagship, from his younger vines (35 years old), fermented and aged in oak (20 percent new). It’s an ambitious wine, showing some sweet vanilla as well as some bitter-almond tannins from the oak. But there’s plenty of taut, juicy Granny Smith apple freshness to fill it. This is a clean, modern chardonnay that will benefit from several years of bottle age.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Macon Loche Les Longues Terres has a simple but not unpleasant bouquet of lemon thyme, yellow flowers and cold wet stones, gaining more and more definition as it opens in the glass. The palate delivers superb salinity on the entry that wakes you up, not shrill or bitter, but with a lovely piercing quality that makes you stand to attention. The oak is well judged and does not crowd out the finish, which has engaging spicy notes that linger in the mouth. This is an excellent Mâcon-Loché.
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.
These are the fun, fruit-driven and lively Chardonnays of white Burgundy, often offering some fantastic values and options that you don’t have to cellar. Flavors range from fresh green apple and lemon to melon or pineapple; some of the best are fleshy and mineral driven or balanced by a light touch of oak.
Mâconnais Chardonnay may have the weight of their more serious Côte de Beaune sisters, but not quite the refinement. Still, this appellation is one of the best ways to jump from California Chardonnay to something new and begin to understand white Burgundy.
The Mâconnais region is warmer and drier than the rest of Burgundy to its north (Côte d’Or) and has a landscape of rolling hills and farmland interspersed among vineyards. The region produces a lot of Chardonnay—Viré-Clessé and Pouilly-Fuisse are among the best—and a very small amount of red wine from Gamay and Pinot Noir. The soils of Mâconnais remain limestone dominant like in the Côte d’Or, making it a wonderful spot for Chardonnay to thrive. Gamay's home of Beaujolais lies just to the south.