Outgoing and engaging on the nose, this starts with crushed flint, toasted hazelnuts, warm citrus and crushed sea salt. The palate explodes with waves of flavor: buttery pastry, yellow currant, star fruit and Bartlett pear. The finish glues onto the palate, doubling down of the sensational complexity. There are two 350L barrels this year from .15ha of vines.

Recently stirred, so cloudy. The nose has a buttery aspect with a little biscuit, probably as a result of the treatment. Biscuit again on the palate. This is altogether burlier yet less fine, but that is partly the embryonic stage it is at. What it is not is one of the broadly bottomed and slightly clumsy Bâtards I have seen elsewhere. Very persistent. Drink from 2032-2038. Tasted Oct 2025.

The 2024 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru is richer and toastier than the Bienvenues, offering up notes of honeyed pear, buttered toast and white flowers, followed by a full-bodied, satiny and seamless palate with a glossier attack and more pronounced structuring dry extract that asserts itself on the delicately mordant finish. 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)