Domaine Jean Chartron Bâtard-Montrachet

A 2025 lunch and dinner at Con and Marie's place (Wellington, NZ) : Served double blind by me. Deeper gold than the Les Poruzots. Lovely bouquet, albeit a little tight, tangelo, peach and pear, spices, cut hay and beeswax framed by well-integrated toasty oak. On palate, broad, fully ripe 2016 vintage character, which Con picked. Clearly a Grand Cru white Burgundy, appropriately developed for its age. Huge mid palate volume, concentration and grip. Levels of lemon, pears and other orchard …

CdB Committee Meeting : Light gold color. Drank a glass double blind over an hour. This started out rather introverted, and slowly unraveled to show its class. Lemon, ocean minerality and earthiness, beeswax, stone, pear skins, honeycomb. This becomes more expansive and really build in the glass over time. It's all there, but needs a bit of coaxing to come and play. 93+ to 94pts.

Slightly tropical aroma, sweet fruit on the attack, intensely mineral long finish. The mineral stays on the palate for several minutes, quite impressive. Excellent now and likely to improve with time, though this is something of an unusual wine most likely owing to the vintage so maybe err on the side of drinking "too soon"?

White burgs at Wu's. : White Burgs at Wu's. My blind. According to Neal Martin, one of the potential wines of the vintage, though I can't say I loved this. It's a big wine, though it has a very floral nose which isn't necessarily my thing, and a dense body that's showing power but not necessarily depth. It's a grand cru in power, but not intensity right now. I think it was probably too early to open this despite the …