You Are The Best

It was nice to see Anne Leflaive's Chevalier Montrachet 2010 in 33rd place in the world's best wines ranking drawn up by Luca Gardini, and published recently in Panorama magazine. I, personally, would have placed it among the top ten and tapped it as the best white of the year, along with Batard Montrachet, of the same vintage and from the same winery. Whatever. These are two immense wines that are bio-dynamic (further proof, if it were necessary, that exceptional bio-dynamic wines exist) and the product of a year, 2010, that will be long remembered in Burgundy and elsewhere, seeing how it is perhaps the first real vintage of the century. I tasted these wines together and as far as I am concerned, and can understand, they are as close as you can get to perfection in regard to style and quality. The Chevalier Montrachet was, if possible, more taut and even more elegant, the Batard Montrachet more bold, while both were truly outstanding for their class, balance and persistence. Their only shortcoming, if you could call it that, is being too young to be able to fully express their complexity, which they have in spades, that you can now only perceive by intuition. For sure their price, especially in Italy, is almost prohibitive, some 400 euros a bottle. Despite the price they are selling like hotcakes and this is driving the cost even further out of the reach of 'normal' wine-lovers. Nevertheless, these are outstanding wines and I believe that, at present, Anne Claude Leflaive is the best producer of Burgundy whites, which is another way of saying she is basically the best in the world. On my own very personal scorecard I would rate the Chavalier Montrachet a 99 and the Batard Montrachet 98 and I remain convinced they will achieve perfection in a few years. I am left with the memory of having tasted two extraordinary whites and the regret of not being rich enough to buy some more bottles.