2016 Domaine Alain Chavy Montrachet 1er Cru Les Folatieres 750 ml

If you’ve ever wondered (or doubted) why certain oenophiles tend to genuflect almost exclusively at the altar of white Burgundy, this 2016 Domaine Alain Chavy Les Folatières from Puligny-Montrachet serves as a stark reminder. With its tension, complexity, and intensity, it’s exactly as thrilling as its Premier Cru zip code would suggest—yet costs a fraction of what its flashier neighbors command. 

From one of the world’s most definitive Chardonnay vineyards, this more than delivers with layers of lemon curd, white peach, and Asian pear that intertwine with white flower, sea salt, and an intriguing smoked kernel minerality. Precise and taut on the mid-palate, with a long, beautiful finish—it’s textbook Folatières, showing all the grace and elegance of that illustrious Puligny plot. There’s an agile purity that belies how much more this wine has yet to reveal, but it’s almost too perfect now to want to lay it down any longer. 

Little known outside of Burgundy, Chavy’s Chardonnays are one of Puligny’s rare remaining discoveries for those of us lucky enough to encounter them, especially the bottlings from this site. Or as Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate puts it, “Alain Chavy has quietly been producing some very fine white Burgundy in recent years…flattering wines that really reach their zenith with his excellent Folatières.”

Few Burgundy villages are as famous as Puligny-Montrachet, home to some of the world’s most glorified vineyards. Prestigious houses such as Domaine Etienne Sauzet ($160), Domaine Leflaive ($312), and Lalou Bize-Leroy's elusive (and astronomically expensive) Domaine d'Auvenay label ($1,800+) have all become synonymous not just with Puligny—but also with Les Folatières, Puligny’s finest, most coveted Premier Cru.

Located on the same line of the Puligny slope as the Le Montrachet and Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru vineyards, Les Folatières possesses identical rocky, marly limestone soils. Chardonnay from Folatières tends to have a great transparency on the nose—as if you are peering down a deep well into its mineral bedrock. And while Alain Chavy doesn’t own land in any of the marquee Grand Crus that stare down on his domaine, he is able to express the essence of Puligny through this spectacular site.

Chavy’s estate possesses the deepest cellar (18 feet) in Puligny, which is tucked away behind his house just a minute’s walk from the center square. The village’s water table is so high that almost no other producer has managed to dig a proper cellar (most Puligny domaines have above-ground “caves” that rely on slightly less romantic air conditioning). A couple of us have made the pilgrimage on separate occasions and we all agree that tasting through the barrels resting in Chavy’s beautiful, arched cavern, you get the sense that the mineral verve of each wine somehow pays homage to its rocky surroundings. 

That hallmark minerality shines through even more definitively in recent vintages, especially after Alain stopped using herbicides in 2009. He now naturally harvests organically by hand, using only 30% new oak for Folatières so the purity of the Chardonnay can speak for itself. 

The Chavy family has been in Puligny for almost 200 years. In 1976, after years of selling grapes to négociants, Alain, along with his father and brother, began to bottle wines under their own label, Domaine Gérard Chavy et Fils, which soon established itself as one of the top domaines in the village. They made so little wine that most was snapped up immediately on release by local restaurants and neighbors, leaving scant reserves for the rest of us. In 2003, the two brothers separated the holdings, leaving Alain with around seven hectares of white vines, exclusively in Puligny and St. Aubin. 

Now that even less is being made as a solo venture, Alain’s wines have an even harder time making their way into our cellars. Considering what its peers like Leflaive command ($269-$362!) for the same terroir, Chavy’s 2016 Les Folatières is a relative white Burgundy steal.