Our travels led us recently to Pessac-Léognan, the tranquil and heavily forested northern sector of the larger Graves subregion, and one of the few pockets of Bordeaux where we had never before worked. The appellation, famously, is home to Château Haut-Brion, the only estate in the original 1855 classification outside of the Haut-Médoc, and its gravelly soils—less sandy than those of Graves proper—yield age-worthy wines that combine silkiness and spinal fortitude.

While Champagne comprises the large majority of the 11-hectare Coulon estate's output, Edgar produces a few barrels each vintage of two absolutely spectacular Coteaux Champenois: one pure Pinot Noir, and one pure Pinot Meunier—the specialty of Coulon's home village of Vrigny.

During our most recent visit with the team at Le Puy, we excitedly tasted through a near-unbroken vertical of Pelan vintages, from 2015 back to 1999, and the magnitude of this unexpected bounty revealed itself to us more and more with each passing bottle. While Pelan presents a bit more broad-shouldered—Moro employed traditional punch-downs, in contrast to Le Puy’s distinctive “infusion” method—a deep kinship is evident between Pelan and Le Puy’s flagship “Emilien” bottling.

Gregoire is a dyed-in-the-wool Burgundian vigneron who broke off from his family (owners of the large Albert Bichot negociant house) in the early 2000s and founded this domaine which is situated on the outskirts of Nuits-Saint-Georges.

While they have long produced Champagnes of great character and typicity—as evidenced by an impressive lineup of older bottles we drank at our first visit—Bonville’s improvements in farming, along with their increasing emphasis on single-cru, single-vintage bottlings and a more nuanced approach to dosage (determined by blind trials), have elevated quality here to new heights.

We discovered Nathalie Richez through a bottle of her Bouzeron during a quick lunch in Nuits-Saint-Georges. Struck by its frankness and its satisfying depth, we arranged a visit for our next pass-through, and indeed both Nathalie and her simple setup proved to be a breath of fresh air.

Terroir is hardly the exclusive province of fermented grape juice, and it is thrilling to encounter ciders such as these which bear such an indelible sense of place.

We may be historical partisans of the Jura's inimitable and classic sous-voile style of white wine, but recent exciting developments at our beloved Domaine Montbourgeau in L'Etoile have left us no choice but to engage with the World of the Topped-Up... 

It is with relish that we begin our partnership with the La Raia estate in Gavi, in the rolling hills of Piedmont’s southeast. A fully functioning biodynamic farm, La Raia encompasses 180 hectares, with 48 hectares planted to grapevines and the remainder devoted to pastures and to woodlands of chestnut, elder, and acacia which teem with wildlife.