2018 Meursault, Les Grands Charrons, Pierre Boisson, Burgundy

A lovely wine, the 2018 Meursault Les Grands Charrons opens in the glass with notes of pear, peach and apple blossom, framed by delicate hints of wheat toast and praline. Medium to full-bodied, elegantly textural and precise, it's built around lively acids and fine-structuring dry extract. This may not be the most long-lived rendition of this cuvée, but it's among the most immediately charming.

Once again, the bearded Bernard Boisson presided over my annual tasting in the usual, refreshingly old-school, manner, offering splashes from a variety of bottles, some open for several days and some opened for my benefit. As readers will remember, Bernard's holdings have been entirely divided between his son Pierre and daughter Anne, who work together in the vineyards and cellar, since 2017. As I've written before, in his day, Bernard Boisson was one of the village's latest harvesters; and his wines only spent a year on the lees, with much of the production sold to the négociants.

With Pierre's arrival at the domaine some 15 years ago, that changed dramatically: the domaine has returned, as Bernard puts it, to do things as they were done in his grandfather's era. That means early harvesting, little débourbage, long sur-lie élevage ranging from 19 to 22 months and restrained use of new oak—up to 30%, largely from Saint-Romain's Tonnellerie Gillet. The entire production is now bottled without filtration. This is a fine address, and this first look at the 2018s—as well as some later-released 2017s—revealed wines that are very much in the classic style that followers of these domaines have come to expect.

Drink 2022 - 2035

William Kelley, Wine Advocate (January 2021)