Albert Bichot : Clos de la Roche Grand cru 2018

Bichot buys the grapes from a single parcel in the Clos de la Roche to produce this wonderfully stylish expression of the Grand Cru. Aged in 35% new wood, it’s intensely floral and refined, with youthful, vivid rose petal and wild strawberry scents and flavours, chalky minerality, and the poise and definition you expect from such a great terroir.

Black-cherry hints on the nose have an intriguing note of smoked meat, but that is all this wine gives away for now. The palate also shows cherry fruit, but it is fresher, caught amid a fine-boned, filigreed structure of almost fragile tannin that nonetheless holds firm. There is grace and grandeur in equal measure, centered around a core of pure fruit, framed in vivid freshness and concentration.