Louis Latour Chateau De Blagny Meursault 1er Cru

Château de Blagny sits at the upper edge of Meursault's Premier Cru hierarchy, where the limestone-rich soils give way to heavier clay and iron-bearing subsoils at altitude — conditions that push Chardonnay toward concentration and structural grip rather than the softer, butter-driven register of lower Meursault lieux-dits. Louis Latour, whose family has held vine ownership traceable to 1731 and who built France's first purpose-built winery into the Corton hillside in 1832, applies the same white-wine protocol here as across its domaine: grapes are crushed before pressing, fermentation begins in stainless steel without settling, then the must is transferred hot into 228-litre French oak barrels — made in-house from air-dried French oak — to complete both alcoholic and malolactic fermentation with no lees-stirring whatsoever. That deliberate absence of bâtonnage is the house's defining technical choice: rather than building creaminess through stirring, Latour relies on the barrel itself and the richness of the site to generate texture, producing a tighter, more vertically structured white than most Côte de Beaune peers. The 2018 vintage delivered outstanding balance of volume and freshness across white Burgundy — the fifth consecutive fine white vintage — making it approachable earlier than the more austere 2017 or the steely 2020.