Domaine de la Cras Coteaux de Dijon Bourgogne Blanc 2024 750mL

FRANCE : BURGUNDY : COTEAUX DE DIJON

CERTIFIED ORGANIC : Chardonnay

MED-BODIED, SPICED APPLE, ORANGE ZEST, SEA SALT, FLINT, NEUTRAL OAK

The slopes above Dijon are supposed to be Pinot Noir country. Marc Soyard kept three of his eight hectares in Chardonnay anyway, and this bottling comes off the top and base of a single 2.5-hectare block planted in 1985, farmed organically and hand-picked into small baskets.

Direct-pressed, fermented on native yeast, then ten to twelve months in those same used barrels. No new oak, no fining, no filtration. Domaine de la Cras is the only estate on earth permitted to write Coteaux de Dijon on a label, a name left over from when the slopes above the city outranked Gevrey.

2024 was the whites' year in Burgundy. Chardonnay flowered better and shrugged off the mildew that gutted the Pinot, so the crop came in small but the acid is bright and the citrus is chiselled. One piece of advice everyone who writes about this wine repeats: give it thirty to forty-five minutes of air. It is a different bottle once it opens.

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