2018 Bouzeron Blanc

Sylvain Pataille, busy man that he is, was gallivanting elsewhere when I called in at his Marsannay cellar, though I had the pleasure of tasting through the 2018s with his right-hand man Simon Gérard, who has worked at the domaine since 2016. “It is a vintage that is relatively complicated with a lot of rain up to June with a lot of mildew pressure," he told me. "The summer was very dry and hot up until harvest. We had the impression that this was shriveling the berries and could damage the skins, though it did concentrate the juice inside. The picking date was complicated depending on the parcel and how stressed the vines were, the terroirs and so forth. We started the harvest around 3 September for the whites and 6 September for the reds. We did the pigeage relatively early with very little mechanical extraction and more like infusion. The highest alcohol is around 14% percent for the Bourgogne Chapitre. Some cuvées had difficulty finishing their fermentation but it was OK in the end." This is the address to call at, for those seeking Bourgogne Aligoté at full flight. Pataille exploits various terroirs that demonstrate the multifarious forms this variety can take, via hands-off winemaking technique.