Jerome Fornerot Saint-Aubin 1er Cru En Remilly 2023

Importers thoughts -  En Remilly sits at the southern limit of Saint-Aubin, in the heart of Burgundy's white wine coast between Chassagne and Puligny, exactly where the appellation gives way to the Grand Cru Chevalier-Montrachet next door. The soil here is heavily calcareous, with the underlying limestone visibly deformed and pitted by weathering, offering the vine little topsoil to work with and forcing roots down into fractured rock. The plot faces south, was planted in 1988, and is farmed sustainably, with vines pruned in simple Guyot or Poussard depending on their vigour, a distinction the estate makes plot by plot rather than uniformly across the domaine.

Fruit is hand-picked, lightly crushed and pressed in a pneumatic press, kept gentle to avoid harsh extraction from skins and pips. The juice is settled off its gross lees, then moved by gravity rather than pump into French oak barrels to begin fermentation on indigenous yeasts native to the vineyard and cellar. The wine ages in barrel for 15 months, with 15% new oak in the mix, a proportion the estate calibrates to support the wine's structure without masking site character. It then rests a further 3 months in vat to settle before bottling at the estate.

Pale yellow in the glass. The nose opens with a flinty, faintly reductive top note typical of the site before lifting into green apple, light stone fruit and white florals. The palate carries golden apple and lemon into a twist of sour citrus rind, all held on a taut, saline frame that closes with a gentle, ginger-spiced finish. Best suited to fine fish. Approachable young, but built to reward 3 to 10 years in bottle.