Last month, one of our most distinguished vignerons, Pierre de Benoist of Domaine de Villaine, joined us in New York to host a retrospective tasting in honor of 20 years of the Bouzeron AOC, a milestone marked by the freshly minted 2017 vintage. It’s no easy feat to restore the misplaced reputation of Aligoté from that of a high-yielding, workhorse grape to one of integrity and prestige, but with every sip we took back in time, Pierre’s wines did just that. 
     Lean and linear in its youth, the 2010 vintage, a notably cool year, discovered its warmer side with notes of summery tarragon and toasty hazelnut. The 2005, a sun-soaked vintage, smelled seductively of cloves and ginger, yet packed a pithy punch. And finally, the 1989 vintage–still labeled as Bourgogne Aligoté de Bouzeron–was a showstopper with the intensity of sticky citrus and savory sous-bois.
     Often ignored in favor of fleshier, earlier-ripening Chardonnay, small-berried, thick-skinned Aligoté–with its balanced ratio of alcohol to acidity–may actually be an even more precise conduit for Burgundian terroir.  
     When asked how he makes wine with so little sulfur, Pierre, whose passion for biodynamics recalls the enthusiasm of a zany, erudite biology professor, theorizes that like humans, young wine thinks it is immortal. Wine holds an eternity’s worth of souvenirs, he says. When we drink wine we are not eating a fruit salad of grapes! We are tasting the memory of fruit, water, soil, and savoir-faire. If this is true, pay close attention to the 2017 vintage–a bright white with a bitter-almond bite and tonic energy–it may be able to tell us everything we need to know about the great Bouzeron AOC.