2018 La Pousse d'Or Volnay 1er Cru Clos des 60 Ouvrees Cuvee Amphore (750ml)

91-94 points Allen Meadows - Burghound

A restrained, and equally pure, cool and airy nose reluctantly offers up a pretty array of red and black pinot fruit, rose petal, spice and an interesting hint of orange peel. The sleek and wonderfully refined flavors are lacy but punchy while also brimming with minerality on the tension-filled bitter cherry pit-infused finish that exhibits excellent length. This is lovely stuff though a wine that will require at least some patience.

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)