Michel Bouzereau
Les Champs Gains Premier Cru
Puligny Montrachet
2017

The producer

The Michel Bouzereau domaine owns 11 hectares mainly of Chardonnay in Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet, but also with a bit of red wine land in Beaune, Pommard and Volnay. Michel’s son Jean-Baptiste took over the running of this entirely family-owned domaine in 1999 and has since then introduced many improvements including entirely renovating the winery in 2009 along with a new barrel program. Vines are tended organically with some biodynamic practises also used.

Bouzereau is in many ways one of the more traditional producers in the area – wines are fermented in cask, following which they spend around 12 months on lees in barrel, and finally they are left to mature in older wood until bottling in their second winter. These are enchanting wines which we warmly recommend; there is great purity and energy, yet stone fruit density with spice and mineral citrus complexity.

The wine

Michel Bouzereau owns 0.30 hectares in Champ Gain premier cru, a vineyard located at the northern end of the village just below the Blagny vineyards, and with Folatieres premier cru to its south. Champ Gain is one of the highest elevation vineyards, of the area, with almost 360 meters above sea level and the soil is arid with lots of rocks and pebbles. Bouzereau’s expression is extra fine with accentuated chiselled stone fruit delicacy and freshness, yet great density and concentration.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.