France
The vast and diverse wine regions of France, each with its own unique terroirs, grape varieties, and winemaking techniques, are a treasure trove.
In Bordeaux, the birthplace of some of the world's most iconic wines, esteemed vineyards such as Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Margaux, Château Latour, and Château Haut-Brion produce exceptional red wines, showcasing the art of blending Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. The region is also renowned for its exquisite white wines, with vineyards like Château d'Yquem and Domaine de Chevalier producing legendary sweet wines.
Moving to Burgundy, the vineyards of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy, and Domaine Armand Rousseau capture the essence of the region's revered terroir, crafting exquisite red wines from the Pinot Noir grape. Meanwhile, Domaine Leflaive and Domaine Coche-Dury are celebrated for their world-class white wines, predominantly made from Chardonnay.
The Champagne region, known for its sparkling wines, boasts illustrious houses such as Krug, Dom Pérignon, and Moët & Chandon, as well as grower-producers like Pierre Péters and Jacques Selosse. These vineyards create exceptional sparkling wines using the traditional method, offering a symphony of delicate bubbles, elegant flavors, and vibrant acidity.
In the Rhône Valley, iconic vineyards like Chapoutier, E. Guigal, and Château de Beaucastel produce remarkable red wines in the northern appellations of Hermitage, Côte-Rôtie, and Cornas, showcasing the elegance and power of Syrah. Further south, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is celebrated for its rich and full-bodied red blends, with Château Rayas and Clos des Papes leading the way.
In Alsace, vineyards such as Domaine Zind-Humbrecht and omaine Trimbach craft exquisite white wines, including Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris, expressing the region's unique terroir and varietal character.
These are just a few highlights among the diverse array of wines that France offers. From the Loire Valley's crisp whites and elegant reds to the Languedoc-Roussillon's bold and robust wines, each region presents its own vinous treasures.
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France
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Wine Advocate (93-95)
There's just one half-barrel of the 2019 Montrachet Grand Cru, a rich, concentrated and textural wine that evokes honeyed pears, ripe peaches, beeswax and citrus blossom. Full-bodied and muscular, it's a powerful Montrachet in the making.HK$39,160.00 -
(1x75cl) 2020Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy (93-96)
An exchange enables Jean-Michel Chartron to offer some Montrachet. Pale colour with a light lime touch. The nose is tight and tense as yet ungiving, though on the palate the wine becomes super-sensual thereafter, rather ripe with peach and honeysuckle despite the comparative severity up front. The aftertaste delivers the persistence expected of a grand cru. Tasted: October 2021HK$9,660.00 -
Wine Advocate (93-95)
The 2014 Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru Clos de la Pucelle has an attractive earthiness on the nose -- quite brilliantly defined, very focused but somehow broody and introspective compared to its peers. The palate is very fresh on the entry with brisk acidity, very focused and lively; there is a sense of energy here and disarming mineralité, leading to a long saline finish. This is just so unmistakably Puligny and simply a beautifully crafted wine with a long future ahead.HK$1,765.00 -
Vinous (93-95)
The 2020 Puligny-Montrachet Clos de la Pucelle 1er Cru has a delineated bouquet with Granny Smith apples, freshly sliced pear and a touch of wet limestone. The palate is well balanced with real weight and concentration on the entry counterbalanced by a fine bead of acidity, taut and linear with the mineralité coming through on the finish. This is excellent.HK$5,665.00 -
Decanter (95)
Boasts an impressive concentration of lime, passion fruit and green apple aromas, with a firm, flinty minerality. The texture is dense but not heavy and surprisingly fresh for the vintage. The complex flavours echo on an interminable finish – this is among the great successes in Puligny this year. The grapes are from the 1.16ha of old vines at the north end of the clos that the Chartron family has owned for over a century. Cellar it for three to five years and drink over the next 20.HK$5,925.00 -
(1x150cl) 2018Wine Advocate (94)
The most youthfully reserved but also the most promising of Chartron's premiers crus is the 2018 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos du Cailleret, a fine effort that opens in the glass with notes of citrus oil, struck match, crisp green orchard fruit and pastry cream. Medium to full-bodied, tensile and tightly wound, it needs some bottle age to bounce back from its recent bottling, but there's lots of potential here.HK$1,970.00 -
Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy (93-95)
Excellent fresh lemon and lime colour. Relatively stern on the nose. This is backward, and very striking but not quite in place yet, very backward, all the intensity for sure. Stony white fruit as you would expect. How far does it stretch out. Youthful tension Tasted: October 2021.HK$6,965.00 -
(12x75cl) 2021Vinous - Neal Martin (94)
The 2021 Puligny-Montrachet Clos du Cailleret 1er Cru offers subtle tropical fruit on the nose: guava, passion fruit and hints of pineapple. Initially lacking a bit of mineralité and terroir expression, it comes through nicely with aeration. The palate is fresh on the entry, balanced and introverted at first, but just give it a few minutes and it reveals wonderful generosity and mineralité with a long, long finish. Don't be afraid to decant this. Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting.HK$17,395.00 -
Vinous - Neal Martin (94)
The 2021 Puligny-Montrachet Clos du Cailleret 1er Cru offers subtle tropical fruit on the nose: guava, passion fruit and hints of pineapple. Initially lacking a bit of mineralité and terroir expression, it comes through nicely with aeration. The palate is fresh on the entry, balanced and introverted at first, but just give it a few minutes and it reveals wonderful generosity and mineralité with a long, long finish. Don't be afraid to decant this. Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting.HK$7,480.00 -
Vinous - Neal Martin (96)
The 2022 Puligny-Montrachet Clos du Cailleret 1er Cru has a divine bouquet, so complex, unfolding with each swirl: crushed limestone, shucked oyster shells, a very nuanced menthol note. Wonderful focus and delineation. The palate is clean and precise on the entry. Intense and multi-layered, the same level of spiciness as Philippe Colin's Clos des Caillerets, yet more controlled and focused. It builds in tantalising fashion in the mouth and then fans out on the finish, a hint of shiso leaf on the aftertaste. Magnificent. Bottled under Diam 10. Tasted blind at the annual Burgfest tasting.HK$7,370.00 -
Vinous - Neal Martin (93-95)
The 2023 Puligny-Montrachet Clos du Cailleret 1er Cru has more precision and mineralité compared to the Clos de la Pucelle at this stage. It's vibrant and poised, with real drive and energy. The palate is concentrated and lightly spiced, with a keen line of acidity and plenty of energy and penetration on the finish. This represents an outstanding contribution to the vintage. I suspect it will land at the top of my banded score.HK$6,940.00 -
(12x75cl) 2018Vinous (91-93)
The 2018 Puligny-Montrachet les Folatières 1er Cru has a crisp bouquet of white peach, orange pith and subtle flinty aromas that gain intensity with aeration. The palate is fresh and taut on the entry, and strict at the moment, displaying an almost Chablis-like reserve toward the finish, but you can feel the salinity lingering in the mouth long afterwards. Good potential, but it will deserve three or four years in bottle.HK$12,845.00 -
Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy (88-91)
Jean-Michel has a contract to farm an extra five ouvrées of Puligny from the commune for five years. Mid lemon and lime. Fresh and floral, with a good fresh backbone, slight lime blossom. Quite chiselled on the one hand, yet with fair flesh on the other. Drink from 2026-2031. Tasted: October 2023.HK$4,115.00 -
Vinous (91)
The 2018 Saint-Aubin Les Murgers des Dents de Chien 1er Cru displays another case of "noble reduction" on the nose (indeed, it was very reduced from barrel). Taciturn at first, it opens gradually with aeration, revealing attractive apple-blossom, petrichor and later, blackcurrant leaf scents. The palate is well balanced with lime and orange zest on the entry, a fine-boned Saint-Aubin with well-judged acidity and a lively, lightly-spiced finish. Very fine. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2018 white tasting.HK$5,235.00 -
Vinous - Neal Martin (92)
The 2021 Saint-Aubin Les Murgers des Dents de Chien 1er Cru has a slightly richer nose than its peers with just a nod towards tropical fruit and a little lanolin. The palate is cut in a bigger style, more like a Chassagne perhaps, a little creamy in texture but with attractive grilled walnut and black pepper notes that enhance the well-defined finish. Good potential. Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting.HK$2,935.00 -
(6x75cl) 2023Vinous - Neal Martin (88-90)
The 2023 Santenay Les Pierres Sèches, from five barrels of purchased fruit, has a little more mineralité than the 2022, with hints of Clementine and lemon sherbet. The palate is fresh and vibrant. It's citrus-driven and not long in the mouth with fine tension. This already conveys a sense of joie de vivre that should make it irresistible in its youth.HK$1,365 - HK$1,670
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HK$3,000.00 -
(6x75cl) 2015Burghound (89-92)
In contrast to the expressiveness of the Damodes this is aromatically timid and only aggressive swirling eventually coaxes an attractively complex nose of wood, cool and earthy dark berry fruit aromas that exhibit a whiff of the sauvage to reveal themselves. There is excellent richness to the subtly stony, rich and seductively textured medium weight flavors that also possess a taut muscularity on the mildly austere finale. This too could aptly be described as a classic Nuits.HK$2,030.00 -
(6x75cl) 2016HK$2,030.00 -
HK$2,850.00 -
HK$1,840.00 -
Vinous (91-93)
The 2019 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Bousselots 1er Cru veers much more toward red fruit on the nose, hints of meat juice and garrigue emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannins, quite saline and cohesive, leading to an energetic, peppery finish that lingers. Another promising NSG from Chauvenet.HK$3,555.00 -
Burghound (90-93)
(from a parcel on the northern end). Firm reduction masks the fruit though there is again a beguiling sense of underlying tension suffusing the detailed and stony medium-bodied flavors that flash good power on the moderately austere and lingering if mildly warm finish that is supported by relatively fine-grained tannins. In contrast to the Damodes that could reasonably be enjoyed young, this compact effort is clearly in need of at least moderate to longer-term cellaring.HK$3,760.00 -
(6x75cl) 2010Burghound (92-94)
A fresh but brooding and reticent nose only grudgingly gives up scents of pure essence of black cherry, cassis and earth with the telltale sauvage notes. The rich, supple and impressively deep broad-shouldered flavors possess an abundance of mid-palate concentration as well as plenty of dry extract that largely buffers the notably firm tannic spine on the palate staining and wonderfully long finish. This is a seriously impressive Vaucrains and one that should amply repay extended cellaring.HK$5,940.00 -
(12x75cl) 2017Burghound (91-94)
(from a .41 ha parcel). A fresh, cool and brooding nose only grudgingly reveals its aromas of dark currant, game, violet and plenty of earth that are trimmed in more discreet though not invisible wood. The dense and sappy big-bodied flavors possess evident power and muscle before concluding in a driving finish that is expressly built to age. This is potentially outstanding but once again, it’s a classically youthful, compact and austere Vaucrains that will need every bit of 15 years to reveal all it has to offer.HK$6,710.00 -
Jancis Robinson (17+)
Deep cherry red. Intense black fruit and savoury/stony restraint combined. All in embryo, like the Perrières but here the tannins are even firmer. The core is serious dark fruit and some oak spice but it is not intrusive even if it adds a note of dark chocolate to the aroma as it opens in the glass. Fine tannins slightly thickened by the oak but smooth and in harmony with the fruit. Long, savoury finish. (JH)HK$4,720.00 -
Burghound (91-94)
Outstanding - This is aromatically quite similar to the Perrières if perhaps just a bit earthier. The slightly larger scaled flavors are surprisingly supple on the mid-palate that contrasts materially with the firm tannins on the compact and youthfully austere finish. This is less powerful and forbidding than normal, though with that said, it's still sufficiently structured to reward 12 to 15 years of aging.HK$1,300.00 -
Burghound (91-94)
Outstanding - This is aromatically quite similar to the Perrières if perhaps just a bit earthier. The slightly larger scaled flavors are surprisingly supple on the mid-palate that contrasts materially with the firm tannins on the compact and youthfully austere finish. This is less powerful and forbidding than normal, though with that said, it's still sufficiently structured to reward 12 to 15 years of aging.HK$3,985.00 -
Burghound (91-93)
Ripe yet cool aromas include those of cassis, poached plum, an array of spice elements plus a whiff of the sauvage. The very rich and even bigger and more voluminous large-scaled flavors also brim with sappy dry extract before culminating in a balanced, powerful and lingering finish where a touch of bitter chocolate slowly emerges. This isn’t massive in the way that it usually is though it is borderline opulent, which is a descriptor I use very rarely with respect to the 2021 reds.HK$1,415.00 -
Burghound (91-93)
Ripe yet cool aromas include those of cassis, poached plum, an array of spice elements plus a whiff of the sauvage. The very rich and even bigger and more voluminous large-scaled flavors also brim with sappy dry extract before culminating in a balanced, powerful and lingering finish where a touch of bitter chocolate slowly emerges. This isn’t massive in the way that it usually is though it is borderline opulent, which is a descriptor I use very rarely with respect to the 2021 reds.HK$3,920.00
