Domaine du Four Bassot Bourgogne Chardonnay 2025

This Bourgogne Chardonnay comes from Domaine du Four Bassot, in Saint-Mard-de-Vaux, in the heart of the Côte Chalonnaise, between Mercurey and Givry. It blends three climats covering nearly 95 ares, planted on clay-limestone soils facing south-west and south-east. The vines, 30 years old on average, benefit from careful soil work, controlled cover cropping and leaf thinning that optimises the ripeness of the grapes, with respect for the environment.

The harvest is done by hand, with the bunches sorted directly in the vineyard. The grapes are pressed slowly, as whole bunches, then the juice is cold-settled before fermenting at low temperature in temperature-controlled stainless-steel tanks. The wine is aged on the lees for six to nine months, then lightly filtered before being bottled at the estate.

This wine reveals notes of lemon, grapefruit, green apple, pear, white peach, acacia blossom, honeysuckle and fresh almond. Lively and fresh, it opens generously on citrus fruit. The palate, light and thirst-quenching, offers lovely tension and a clean finish, ideal as an aperitif.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.