Bruno Lorenzon Mercurey Piece 15 Blanc 2017

Great chardonnay in all its glory of purity and absolute precision. Mouth of a very great righteousness, with beautiful landmarks and very energetic. A final stretching, stretching... Great wine.

A cuvée produced from 15 small, old-vine parcels growing on calcium-rich soils that Lorenzon considers his finest plots, the 2017 Mercurey 1er Cru Pièce 15 is an extraordinary wine that I'm certain would perform very well in a blind tasting of grand cru whites from Puligny-Montrachet and Aloxe-Corton. Wafting from the glass with a beautiful bouquet of lemon and mandarin oil, wheat toast, crisp green orchard fruit and subtle hints of confit citrus, the wine is full-bodied, deep and layered, with a seamlessly multidimensional core, striking concentration without weight and a long, precise finish. It's a brilliant bottling that smashes the glass ceilings that have so long been imposed on the Côte Chalonnaise's whites. Bruno Lorenzon's exceptional wines continue to expand the parameters of the possible in the Côte Chalonnaise, shattering the glass ceiling that's typically imposed upon the wines of Mercurey. His 2017 portfolio is a worthy successor to his 2016 collection, delivering whites of breathtaking purity that stand out for their weightless concentration and reds that display the effortlessness that only comes with a top winemaker at the peak of his powers. As I wrote last year, Lorenzon's vines are trained higher than his neighbors' and farmed organically--something that's still very rare in this appellation. Yields are routinely a mere fraction of his neighbors'. And in the cellar, attention is paid to every detail to safeguard the wines' finesse and precision.