2023 Bourgogne Aligoté

It has been a pleasure to witness Simon Colin’s elevation from his earliest days when he was having to buy in fruit to his partial taking over of his father Philippe’s holdings. Colin has been ensconced in erstwhile Domaine Philippe Colin’s winery for three vintages now. Philippe still manages some of the vineyards that include the parcel in Chevalier-Montrachet, though he is spending more time down in South Africa where he makes his Topiary wines, so I am unsure how long that will continue. He told me that he is understanding the terroirs more and more with each passing vintage.

“We started picking on September 2 for eight days,” Colin tells me. “On the white side, the wines have good balance and acidity. Yields were 50 hl/ha to 60 hl/ha. We will take that after the 2024. The wines were easy to work with potential sugar around 12.5%. The reds were a large crop and so we sorted a lot, around 15-20% of the fruit. We worked a little more on the reds and the whites, trying to be more infusion in style. It was not like ’22. The reds had been racked a couple of weeks ago.”

There is something very assured about Simon Colin’s winemaking. It might be misinterpreted as “over-confidence” but more accurately, since first tasting his wines, I felt that he just has “the knack.” That is something that cannot be learned from reading a book or even experience. It is something you are born with. And the best of his 2023s, such as the Saint-Aubin Charmois or Chassagne-Montrachet Les Chaumées Clos St. Abdon or Les Vergers, are beautifully balanced and faithful to their terroirs.