"89 Points - John Gillman, ViewfromtheCellar.com
Jean-Michel raised his Hautes-Côtes de Beaune Blanc in ten percent new oak in the 2023 vintage. The wine is also already bottled and delivers a fine nose of pear, lime, chalky minerality, spring flowers and a deft touch of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, complex, fullbodied and shows lovely succulence at the core, with fine acids, good soil undertow and a long, well balanced and complex finish. 2025-2040"
Jean Chartron is the 5th generation to manage his family domaine, founded in 1859, and the past decade has seen a resurgence in the quality of wine being produced here. With 14 hectares, including Grand Cru’s and 1er Cru Monopole vineyards, they are an important vineyard proprietor in Puligny and Jean-Michel and his sister Anne-Laure are consistently producing outstanding wines.
The vines for this excellent value Chardonnay are 50 years old, predominantly from the Bois Guillemain vineyard in the village of Nantoux, just above Volnay. The wine is 100% barrel fermented, matured on fine lees for 8 months and then allowed to knit in tank for a further 3 months prior to bottling.
John Gillman, ViewfromtheCellar.com
Jean-Michel Chartron has fashioned a superb lineup of 2023s. He and his team were out in the vines on August 31st this year to start bringing in their chardonnay, and he had already bottled three of his white wines at the time of my visit on the 16th of January. As is typical at this time of the year, the vast majority of his beautiful white wines were already racked and assembled in tanks for bottling in the spring, with the grand crus still in cask and the aforementioned handful of mostly Bourgogne level wines bottled starting at the end of August of 2024. All of the white wines chez Chartron are utterly classic expressions of this excellent white wine vintage, offering up absolutely beautiful, succulent fruit tones that are perfectly ripe, but never overripe, great individual typicité and fidelity to their underlying soil tones, beautiful zesty structures and the precision and complexity that only the finest white Burgundies can deliver. Though the domaine is most famous for their two finest Puligny premier crus of Clos de la Pucelle and Clos des Caillerets, as well as their enviably broad selection of grand crus, there is not a single wine in the cellars this year that I would not be delighted to have in my own cellar. Jean-Michel also very generously offered up a sample of his extremely rare Puligny “Clos des Caillerets” Rouge to finish up our tasting on this visit. 2023 is a flat out great vintage chez Chartron!
