These wines are very, very, very good — yet they seem to fly under the radar. What am I missing?
A bit of background first: I’m part of a monthly tasting group that’s Burgundy-centric and blind. I’m the youngest in the group, and over the past few years, many of the members have been incredibly generous — effectively giving me a crash course in top-tier Burgundy. It’s been a rapid-fire education that’s incredibly hard to come by these days—something I could never afford on my own, and something I’m deeply grateful for.
It’s completely transformed my palate and, more importantly, my purchasing decisions. I can now confidently buy wines I truly love and avoid the landmines. One of the key (and sometimes frustrating) lessons I’ve learned is that the market for Burgundy is generally pretty efficient. Sure, some wines are priced irrationally — maybe because only 300 bottles are made — but as a rule of thumb, great wines command great prices.
That’s why, when someone blinded me on a 2022 Meursault Perrières from Latour-Giraud, it stopped me in my tracks. I immediately went to Meursault — the nose had that perfectly judged glossy oak integrated with sesame style reduction, wet stone, and white florals. Aromatic fireworks.
Roulot? No. Coche? No. Lafon??? No. Arnaud Ente? Antoine Jobard? d’Auvenay (grasping at straws)?“Absolutely not.”
When the bottle was revealed, I was stunned. I had never heard of the producer. Given how many domaines operate in Meursault, I shouldn’t have been so surprised to have missed one not in the same conversation as the big names — but the wine absolutely showed that level of pedigree.
So I did what any self-respecting Berserker would do: I started researching obsessively. It turns out Jasper Morris has rated these wines among the very best of the vintage in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In fact, in 2022, the Cuvée des Pierres was his highest-rated white Burgundy from Meursault. Granted, there were some notable omissions — Coche and d’Auvenay among them — but those are omissions for most of us.
Digging further, I found that several members here (@alan_weinberg, @Larry_Link, @Steve_McL among others) have, at various points, been enamored with these wines. And based on Jasper’s notes, they seem to be getting better every year. Not to mention, there’s no shortage of commentary these days about “modern” Roulot (“the wines are getting flabby”) or “modern” Coche (“the heyday was in the 2000s”).
Every May, one of our regulars — who happens to have one of the more enviable white Burgundy cellars in the country — returns to Seattle for the summer. This year, I decided to put Latour-Giraud to the test in a blind flight. I opened a 2020 Comtes Lafon Charmes alongside a 2020 Latour-Giraud Genevrières Cuvée des Pierres.
It wasn’t even close. The Giraud absolutely spanked the Lafon with several calls for Grand Cru. Maybe the Lafon was in a shut-down phase — who knows. All I can say is that several very experienced palates were completely captivated by the Latour-Giraud and pretty “meh” on the Lafon.
Which brings me back to my question: What am I missing? Do these wines premox like crazy? Do they age poorly? Is the label just not cool enough?
I’d love to cellar these wines, but they’re not under DIAM, and even though I’m still relatively early in my collecting journey, I’ve already had my fair share of heartbreak from oxidized white Burgundy.
