Louis Latour Puligny-Montrachet

When the 5th-generation Louis Latour replanted phylloxera-devastated hillsides with Chardonnay after 1891, he was making a bet on limestone that would define Côte de Beaune white winemaking for the next century — the same limestone-driven philosophy that runs through every white in the Latour portfolio, including this Puligny-Montrachet. Puligny's soils are characteristically shallow, free-draining limestone and clay over hard Bathonian bedrock, producing Chardonnay of taut mineral tension and slow phenolic development — conditions that reward the house's deliberately non-interventionist white-wine approach. Grapes are crushed before pressing, fermentation initiated in stainless steel without settling, then transferred hot into 228-litre French oak pièces — made in-house at the Louis Latour cooperage from oak air-dried 24–36 months — to complete both alcoholic and malolactic fermentation. No lees-stirring is practised, a deliberate counter-move to the bâtonnage-heavy style common across the Côte de Beaune, producing texture from oak integration rather than autolytic richness. The wine is racked to stainless steel post-harvest, settled naturally, and bottled December–February; from 2022, sealed under Diam 30 closure — the first vintage to carry this change. The 2022 growing season delivered vivid natural acidity alongside generous fruit concentration, making it one of the more structured recent Puligny expressions from this house.