2024 Domaine Etienne Sauzet Montrachet Grand Cru

Fitting for the vintage, this is a gentle Montrachet—more focused on elegance and finesse than po er and e travagance ore pianissimo than fortissimo. The scents and flavors are tender: honeydew melon, chamomile tea leaves, chiffonade and golden kiwi. Savory spice stirs up in the glass as the wine opens. Still, the crystalline, fine-boned structure is very much in evidence with chiseled acidity carrying the wine into a substantial finish. There are four barrels all from purchased fruit from the Chassagne side.

Sauzet's 2024 Montrachet Grand Cru is beautiful, wafting from the glass with aromas of honeyed orchard fruits, ripe apricots, white flowers, freshly baked bread and bee pollen. Full-bodied, ample and fleshy, it's pure, layered and voluminous, concluding with a broad, lavishly fruity finish. As usual, it's produced from must purchased from Baron Thénard. Benoît Riffault presides over this 15-hectare Pulingy-Montrachet reference point, and his 2024s have turned out very nicely. Opting not to chaptalize, with the exception of the Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune, the wines are pure and precise, with increasing texture and density as one ascends the appellation hierarchy. But what are the rudiments of winemaking at this address today? Hand-harvested fruit is pressed without crushing, the press cycle lasting around three and a half hours and performing "quite a few" rotations to crumble the marc. The must is sulfited at the end of the press and settled for 24 hours, but Riffault retains most of the lees, fermenting in wood with ambient yeasts. Larger formats, including foudres, now complement 228-liter Burgundian barrels. The wines are racked to tank in July-August before the new vintage, whereas the premiers and grands crus spend as much as six months on their lees before bottling. All of Sauzet's wines are bottled with high-quality unbleached natural cork.(WK)