Domaine Charton Bourgogne Chardonnay "Les Chaumes" 2020

91 POINTS: Wine Direct Tasting Team
89 POINTS: Burghound

"Bourgogne Chardonnay always provides impressive value amongst Burgundy wines and Chartons Les Charmes is one of the best. Vincent Charton has crafted a superb, creamy, mineral-fresh white."
- Wine Direct Tasting Team

"A much more citrus-inflected nose reveals additional aromas of various white orchard fruit. There is a bit better vibrant and delineation to the delicious medium weight flavors that terminate in a refreshingly clean, dry and inviting finale. This is a solid Bourgogne."
- Burghound

This 11.5 ha domaine is now managed by Jean-Pierre Charton's son Vincent who joined his father in 2011. The younger Charton described 2020 as "much like 2018 as it was another very hot and dry growing season where we saw some hydric stress in our parcels that have thinner soils as well as some of our younger vines. The fruit was perfectly ripe and absolutely spotless so there was very little sorting necessary beyond the odd leaf or insect. Potential alcohols were very good in both colors at between 13.5 and 13.8% with one wine at 14.1%. We figured that with wines this potentially ripe and rich that they needed no help so we did no punching down for the reds and no lees stirring for the whites. The big surprise though was that we expected the wines to be overly ripe and heavy but in fact, not at all. They are surprisingly fresh with better terroir transparency than I ever would have imagined." I too was impressed by a number of wines in the range and they're worth your attention.

ABV: 13.5%