Winemaker Notes
Arguably Puligny’s most famous Premiere Cru and with over 33 acres under vine it is also it’s largest. Folatières sits mid hillside directly above the village of Puligny bordering 1er Cru Champ Gains further up the hill. Grade here is relatively steep and soil is well drained limestone. As with all Premiere Crus in Puligny, vines are very densely planted.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
There are two different bottlings of Folatières at Olivier Leflaive, the slightly better one coming from the domaine's own grapes. This is a very perfumed Puligny premier cru, with appealing white flowers and thatch on the nose followed on the palate by subtle 30% new wood, some pastry spices, and chalky minerality on the finish.
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James Suckling
This is so delicious already with sliced apples, honey and stone. Hints of cream and slightly ripe fruit. Lime, too. Full-bodied, tight and linear. Really excellent for the year. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Farmed biodynamically (as are all the vineyards owned by this producer), two parcels within the premier cru provided grapes for this wine. Superbly structured, it combines yellow and white-fruit flavors with generous spice, toast and minerality. The result is a wine that will age extremely well. Drink from 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Ripe peach and citronella flavors mingle with smoky vanilla, butterscotch and pastry notes in this big, muscular white. All the elements are still a little disparate on the finish, but this should come together in a year or so. Best from 2021 through 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Offering up aromas of fresh peach, candied peel, beeswax, pear and fresh pastry, the 2017 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Folatières is medium to full-bodied, fleshy and textural, with good concentration, lively acids and a nicely defined finish. It can't match the "Récolte du Domaine" Folatières this year—but nor, for that matter, can many other bottlings of Folatières. It's bottled under Diam 10.
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.