2018 La Pousse d'Or Volnay 1er Cru Clos de la Bousse d'Or (1500ml)

90-93 points Allen Meadows - Burghound

An elegant, pure and super-fresh nose reveals notes of intensely floral-inflected black berries, plum, violet and a beautiful range of spice elements. This is arguably the most refined wine in the range texturally speaking with its punchy and well-detailed flavors that terminate in a serious and tautly muscular finish. As pretty as it is though, I would still observe that it isn't quite as refined as say the 2010, 2014 or 2017 versions.

Benoît Landanger, who has assumed the direction of this domaine and has converted it to biodynamic farming principles, noted that "one would think that a hot and dry vintage like 2018 would have been simple to manage but in fact it was surprisingly complicated for a variety of reasons. The most complicated of all was deciding on the optimal moment to begin the harvest. Despite a fast and even flowering, maturities were uneven in many of our parcels, so the picking order wasn't the same as it usually was. I finally chose to begin on the 27th of August, and we brought in very clean and ripe fruit that had good alcohols and fine yields, indeed they were about the same as what we realized in 2017. I also chose to vinify very softly for fear of extracting too much tannin and thus unbalancing the wines. In the end, I think we got most decisions right, but I confess to stressing about a lot of little details."

Once again, I had a chance to taste three wines that were vinified exactly the same as the regular cuvées but were raised in amphora; this is to say the En Caillerets, Clos de la Bousse d'Or and the Clos des 60 Ouvrées vineyards. I note these using the term amphore in the reviews, but the actual terminology found on the label reads "Vinifié et Élevé en Amphore". (4/2020)