Domaine Philippe Colin Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

When Philippe Colin separated from Domaine Michel Colin-Déléger in 2004, he inherited a sliver of Chevalier-Montrachet planted in two distinct moments — 1955 and 1978 — vines old enough to have witnessed the appellation's modern reputation being written. The 2021 vintage carries additional weight: it is the first in which Philippe formally began transferring the domaine to son Simon, making this bottling a document of generational inflection.

Chevalier-Montrachet sits above Le Montrachet on steeply inclined, shallow limestone and calcareous clay in Puligny-Montrachet. The thin topsoil forces roots deep into fractured bedrock, restricting yields and concentrating mineral tension rather than fruit weight — the structural opposite of the richer, clay-dominant soils lower on the slope.

Vinification follows Philippe's deliberate counter-style: manual harvest, direct pneumatic pressing, and alcoholic fermentation initiated in thermoregulated stainless steel at low temperature to lock in Chardonnay's floral register before the must is transferred to French oak barrels (228 L, 450 L, and 500 L from five cooperages) to complete fermentation and undergo malolactic. Lees aging runs 12–18 months with periodic stirring, followed by a further 3–6 months rest in stainless steel before light filtration and bottling under the domaine's signature technical wax capsule — applied to all whites since 2011.

The steel-start/barrel-finish hybrid is the rule-break: most Grand Cru Burgundy goes directly to wood, but Colin's method preserves aromatic lift that the site's austere limestone would otherwise suppress. Critics aggregated on Wine-Searcher score the 2021 Chevalier-Montrachet at 93/100 — a vintage of bracing acidity and structural tension that rewards cellaring well into the 2030s.