Wine Ratings

wines

The 2024 Chardonnay Willamette Valley is a bright yellow color and offers notes of honeyed citrus, poached apples, and pretty spice. Full-bodied yet carrying a medium-bodied, fruity elegance, this vintage includes fruit from Freedom Hill and Durant. Aged in neutral French oak and concrete amphora, it has a great texture and a long-lasting finish. Drink now or over the next 7-8 years.Jeb Dunnuck | 94 JDThe 2024 Chardonnay Willamette Valley wafts up with minty freshness, blending white flowers with nuances of ginger, flint and slate. The palate is soothingly round, with a pretty inner sweetness and supreme balance as lemon mingles with apricot and a saline mineral tinge. Lively tension puckers the cheeks while mouthwatering acidity and a salty flourish linger. The value here is unparalleled.Vinous Media | 93 VM

Unsurprisingly for this cool vintage, the 2024 Chablis Grand Cru Bougros—which can at times appear a little too powerful—has turned out to be a real success, wafting from the glass with aromas of beeswax, pear, orange oil and brioche. Full-bodied, layered and harmonious, it is enveloping yet racy, charged with tangy acidity and culminating in a long, saline finish. Consistently among the richest wines in the range, it is nonetheless beautifully balanced and comes warmly recommended this year. It is also the only grand cru Patrick Piuze produced in 2024.Robert Parker Wine Advocsate | 93 RP

Patrick Piuze’s 2024 Butteaux is a bit more structured and reserved out of the blocks than the lovely Montmains and will demand a couple years more in the cellar before it blossoms, but it may well be every bit as fine as the Montmains once it is ready to drink. The wine’s aromatic constellation is composed of scents of tart orange, lemon, apple, a fine base of limestone soil, paraffin, citrus blossoms and a deft touch of oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and youthful, with a fine core of pure fruit, excellent mineral drive and grip, lovely acids and a long, well balanced and very promising finish. 2032-2065.John Gilman | 93+ JG

The 2024 Chablis “les Séchets” from Patrick Piuze is also an outstanding wine in the making. The bouquet is very expressive already and is flat out stunning, soaring from the glass in a mix of lemon, pear, beeswax, a complex foundation of chalky minerality, white lilies, apple blossoms, citrus peel and just a whisper of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full, pure and succulent at the core, with fine soil signature, a lovely spine of acidity, great focus and grip and a long, complex and beautifully balanced finish. Fine, fine juice. 2030-2065.John Gilman | 93+ JG

Opening in the glass with aromas of spring flowers, Granny Smith apple, lemon oil and nashi pear, the 2024 Chablis 1er Cru Montmains is medium-bodied and taut, bright and chalky, with mouthwatering acidity and a long, precise finish.Robert Parker Wine Advocate | 91 RP

The 2024 Chardonnay Lady Marjorie is elegant, delicate and wonderfully nuanced. Lemon oil, crushed rocks, mint, slate and sage are finely delineated in a transparent, crystalline Chardonnay that is so impressive. The Lady Marjorie is a blend of sites in the Sonoma Coast. It’s such a pure, nuanced Chardonnay.Vinous Media | 94 VM

Aromas of fresh citrus zest, pear and peach mingle with notes of white flowers and toasted nuts, introducing Sauzet’s 2024 Puligny-Montrachet Village, a medium- to full-bodied, ample and satiny white with a bright spine of acidity and an elegantly mordant finish. It’s a blend of seven lieux-dits dotted around the appellation, with Benoit Riffault expressing a preference for Les Levrons, below les Réferts, as his favorite.Robert Parker Wine Advocate | 91 RPPale lemon colour. Less evident fruit on the nose, more closed than the Chassagne, just a question of needing more time. The intensity comes at the back of the palate and extends really well behind. Long, refined yet with a little muscle. Drink from 2029-2032. Tasted Oct 2025.Jasper Morris | 90-92 JMThe 2024 Puligny-Montrachet Villages comes from the usual 12 parcels around the appellation. There is a pleasant strictness on the petrichor-tinged bouquet, with underlying vanilla pod scents just loitering in the background. The palate is weighty and textural with fine acidity, quite pithy compared to previous vintages, although it does not quite kick on at the finish. But it remains a decent Puligny Village that will drink well for several years.Vinous Media | 88-90 VM

The May 2017 disgorgement of Fallon’s NV Brut Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Ozanne is showing brilliantly, wafting from the glass with aromas of citrus oil, crisp yellow orchard fruit, freshly baked bread, toasted nuts, candied peel and honeycomb. Full-bodied, vinous and concentrated, it’s layered and textural, with a bright spine of acidity, a pearly enlivening mousse and a long, intensely sapid finish. Its combination of power and tension makes this the finest wine I’ve tasted from Fallon to date. Of course, finding any of the thousand or so bottles released every year is next to impossible, but readers able to track one or two down are in for a treat.Robert Parker Wine Advocate | 95 RPThe NV Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Ozanne is laced with gorgeous scents of pastry, brioche, citrus, white flowers and yellow orchard fruit. Warm, oxidative tones add breadth and volume, but the wine remains weightless, impeccable and pure. The delineated, crystalline finish leaves a lasting impression. This is a super-impressive showing from a producer who appears to have a very bright future. Ozanne is the old, historical name by which Avize was known prior to 796. Disgorged May 25, 2012.Antonio Galloni | 93 AG