Meursault Les Chevalières AOC 2024

A focused, purist Chardonnay whose clarity comes from restraint: no overt oak, no toasty notes, but cool fruit and a taut mineral backbone. Dry, 13.0% ABV.

Domaine Rémi Jobard farms nine hectares in Meursault, Burgundy. More than two and a half hectares are village vineyards, among them the lieu-dit Chevalières alongside Sous La Velle, Narvaux and En Luraule, each with its own profile. Synthetic fertilisers and pesticides disappeared in 1994, herbicides in 1998. Today the rows are worked by hand and cover-cropped, with no fertilisation, while cordon pruning keeps yields low.

Single-varietal Chardonnay. Grapes picked in the morning are pressed for at least six hours, those picked in the afternoon often for twelve hours overnight, each time with the gentlest possible pressure so that only the finest must, free of bitter compounds and harsh phenols, reaches the barrel. The wine ages for around 15 months in 600-litre foudres from cooper Stockinger, made of French, Austrian and Slavonian oak; about a fifth are renewed each year. A resting period in tank follows. Two winters of ageing give it the stability to be bottled unfiltered.

Dense and focused, carried by taut minerality and a silky texture. Yellow stone fruit and citrus blossom stay cool, with a note of wet chalk underneath. The oak spice stays in the background, the finish is long and saline.

Turbot in brown butter, scallops and crisp-fried pike-perch. Also Bresse chicken in morel cream sauce and aged Comté.

The large barrel volume means less wood contact per litre, and the oxygen exchange proceeds slowly and in a controlled manner. This wine needs time to open up.