The Wine Times

This wine is simply breathtaking. It is the summer wine for white lovers. 100% chardonnay and hailing from Burgundy, with a taste as interesting and uncommon as its marred history.

According to myth, the winemaker purchased a plot of land in Mersault, which is known commonly for its rich, buttery, ripe fruit and exorbitant prices among other things. Yet there happened to be a large hole of some sort in the land. So, doing what any reasonable land-owner would do, he purchased some fill-dirt from a neighboring area and proceeded to fill in the hole.

That’s when the trouble began. France and its equally anal-retentive classification snobs Spain and Italy, have very strict laws dictating how a winemaker is permitted to label their wine. These regional specificities are in most respects a matter of history, tradition, and fair marketing practices. That is, you can’t make a wine in Macon Villages and call it a Mercurey. Yet the French are particularly obsessed with this system of order. So much so, in fact, that simply by filling in his hole with dirt from a neighboring appellation, he was no longer permitted to call it Mersault.

Bad news for him. But good news for the rest of us. Not bearing the name Mersault on the label cuts the price in half, to the $30-$50 range.

This is a positively stunning wine, tasting like few other chardonnays I’ve ever had. Though it does possess some of that buttery richness, it’s also exceedingly bright, full of lime, pear, and an immense amount of honey and honeycomb. It tastes, even, as if he’s snuck some chenin blanc into the mix.

For the price, I give it a solid 92-95 pts.