2018 Le Montrachet

The 2018 Montrachet Grand Cru has a beautifully-defined bouquet. However, I had to afford my glass 10 minutes of gentle swirling to unlock the crushed stone, lemon skin and blackcurrant leaf scents. The palate is balanced with supremely well integrated oak, just the right amount of sapidity and spiciness. A very persistent finish fans out gloriously. Sophisticated and surfeit with breeding. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2018 white tasting.

The 2018 Montrachet Grand Cru comprises seven barrels this year. It has a stunning, penetrating bouquet that rivets you to the spot with astonishing mineral tension and scents of wet granite, citrus lemon and grilled walnut. The beautifully balanced palate offers hints of white chocolate and almond and amazing delineation and mineralité, not to mention stunning persistence on the finish. This is a wine that makes you go "wow," or rather "WOW" – it deserves capital letters.

There are fully seven barrels of the 2018 Montrachet Grand Cru—one fewer than the eight produced in 1982, but considerably more than the four that have been more or less the norm over the last decade—equating to a yield of around 45 hectoliters per hectare from Lafon's 0.32-hectare parcel. Bursting with expressive aromas of orange oil, white flowers, ripe pears, warm bread and toasted almonds, it's full-bodied, fleshy and enveloping, with a satiny-textured attack, an ample core of fruit and chalky grip on the impressively long finish.