Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes Premier Cru 2018
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Dunnuck
Jeb -
Parker
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Spirits
Wine & - Decanter
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Morris
Jasper
Product Details
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Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Aged on lees relatively long (for 18 months). One month before bottling, the wine, located in different casks, is placed in a stainless steel tank to make the assembly. The wine is fined and slightly filtered before bottling according to the lunar calendar. A wine with a lot of finesse and liveliness.
Pair with fish, crustaceans or white meat with cream sauce.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lots of lemon butter and orange blossom-like fruit notes as well as toasted bread, green almond, and ginger nuances emerge from the 2018 Puligny Montrachet Les Combettes 1Er Cru, and this medium-bodied beauty has a lively, balanced style, high yet integrated acidity, and a great finish. I love its mix of ripe, pure fruit as well as more bracing, bright acidity. It will benefit from 2-4 years of bottle age and have a good decade of prime drinking. It's in the same ballpark as the 2015 and might be even longer lived.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Combettes has turned out brilliantly, offering up inviting aomras of orange oil, pear, warm bread, white flowers and candied ginger. Medium to full-bodied, layered and textural, with fine depth and concentration, bright acids and a precise, saline finish, it's well worth seeking out.
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Wine & Spirits
This has a formal classicism, carved out of umami riches of pale, meaty savor and a sunny beeswax glow. That bridges to the acidity, expressed in the crisp shiver of green-apple skin and crab apple tartness. Concentrated and supple, those elements weave into a seamless wine, one that will benefit from three or four years of development.
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Decanter
Produced from domaine-owned, 60-year-old vines located at the northern end of Les Casse-Têtes, above Le Tesson. The fruit is lightly crushed and pressed, before being fermented in cask (15% new). The wine is lemony and bright, with an extremely silky texture and a lively freshness on the palate which is very rewarding.
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Jasper Morris
Pale lemon yellow. The bouquet shows a ripe, honeyed fruit, but this has not gone too far. Just a little honeysuckle on the palate, balanced by fresh acidity. Ripe greengage notes. Something of a mineral feel as well.
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The history of Maison Vincent Girardin is relatively recent. In 1980, at the age of 19, Vincent Girardin, the son of a family of winegrowers based in Santenay since the 17th century, decided to strike out on his own and began producing wine from five acres of vines that he had inherited from his parents. From his earliest youth, Vincent had a passion for working with vines and great respect for the potential that they represent, and his ambition was to produce his own wine. The quality of his wines was quickly recognized by connoisseurs all over the world, and this enabled him to expand his activity, focusing primarily on the great white and red wines of the Côte de Beaune. To cope with the growing demand for his wines, he developed an approach that was new in Burgundy: he purchased grapes from producers who shared the same philosophy and the same high standards. In 2012, Vincent Girardin sold his operation to a long-standing partner of the Maison. Jean-Pierre Nié, President of the Compagnie des Vins d’Autrefois in Beaune, naturally decided to continue with the small team of nine people that had been faithful to the Maison for many years. Today, Eric Germain continues to uphold the style of the wines, and Marco Caschera markets them all over the world.
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.