Chandon de Briailles Corton Les Bressandes Grand Cru – 2018

“Fleshy and gourmand, the 2018 Corton-Bressandes Grand Cru evokes peonies, rose petals, red berries, cherries and loamy soil. Full-bodied, layered and velvety, it’s sumptuous and enveloping, with an ample core of pure, succulent fruit framed by lively acids and powdery tannins.” 94 pts The Wine Advocate

“The 2019 vintage has turned out very nicely chez Chandon de Briailles, though François de Nicolay is one producer who, I think, prefers his 2018s (revisited here from bottle), faulting the 2019s for their overt sweetness of fruit. I’d hate to have to chose between them, and such comparisons are a luxury that a domaine operating at such a high level can permit itself, for (as I’ve written before) Chandon de Briailles is in terrific shape. Over the last decade, vinification has become more and more gentle, with no pumping during fermentation or élevage and no filtration before bottling. The wines’ tannins are correspondingly finer, and their fruit richer and more vibrant than was formerly the case. The grapes are seldom destemmed (at least, not until well into alcoholic fermentation—an approach that I’ll explain in detail in the future) and new oak used sparingly, so the house style is strong; but for my money, these are among the small handful of wines that realize the true potential of the hill of Corton—to say nothing of the domaine’s reference-point wines from Savigny-lès-Beaune and Penand-Vergelesses.” William Kelley, the Wine Advocate