Domaine du Four Bassot Bouzeron 2024

This Bouzeron comes from the village of the same name, in the north of the Côte Chalonnaise, a few kilometres from Chagny. Bouzeron is the only village appellation in Burgundy dedicated to Aligoté. Domaine du Four Bassot farms a plot of nearly 47 ares there, planted on clay-limestone soil facing south-east. The vines, around 25 years old, benefit from careful soil work and sustainable protection inspired by organic pest control.

The harvest is done by hand and sorted directly in the vineyard. After gentle whole-bunch pressing and cold settling, a quarter of the musts ferment in oak barrels and three quarters in stainless-steel tanks. Ageing continues for eight months, before light filtration and bottling at the estate.

This wine reveals notes of lemon, grapefruit, orange zest, green apple, pear, white flowers, hazelnut and flint. Very fruity and marked by citrus, it presents a broad, fresh palate, both taut and generous, which stretches out on a saline finish.

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.