2016 Henry Fessy Pouilly Fuisse Sous la Roche 750 ml

The wine business is a never-ending quest for rare things, and this is one of the best treasure hunts we’ve had lately, delivering Premier Cru quality from Pouilly-Fuissé, the jewel of the Mâconnais. This golden Chardonnay proves dreams really do come true, in the form of Henry Fessy’s excellent single-vineyard 2016 Sous La Roche.

We discovered this outstanding white in idyllic circumstances, on a picnic featuring poulet rôti and grilled vegetables in Parc de la Bouzaize in Beaune. The wine’s pale but luminous shade of lemon was echoed beautifully on the palate by a bevy of yellow fruits—golden apple, quince, and fresh lemon—and balanced by notes of hazelnut, fresh cream, and flinty minerality. We recommend recreating this experience for yourself—and nothing will do it like a white wine that brings the classic, complex, and mineral-driven elements of Burgundy to the table for $30.

The estate of Henry Fessy, well-known in French restaurants, has been producing top-quality wines in the Burgundy sub-regions of Mâconnais and Beaujolais since 1888, and they control some of the best sites in the region. And while the Mâconnais has no classed vineyards, its leading AOC of Pouilly-Fuissé is in the process of elevating a few sites to Premier Cru status—almost certainly including Sous la Roche—because the vineyards truly rival their triple-digit-priced neighbors when it comes to quality and complexity. In fact, it’s actually only through a quirk of history that these sites haven’t been ranked until now.

Many of the Côte d’Or’s Premiers Crus were elevated during the Second World War, because all wines classed as villages or below were subject to appropriation by the German army—so the wine folk of Burgundy created a bunch of Premiers Crus to protect their production. But the line between German-controlled and Vichy France ran right between the Mâconnais from the Côte d’Or. Not feeling the pressure of impoundment, Mâconnais producers, despite boasting similarly excellent clay-limestone soils and ideal expositions, did not follow suit.

As Bruce Sanderson has pointed out in Wine Spectator, Pouilly-Fuissé is already the source of the best wines from the Mâconnais. Now, decades after their Côte d’Or neighbors’ elevation, these sites will finally be getting their deserved recognition. 

Sous La Roche is among the finest parcels in Burgundy for Chardonnay, sitting downhill from La Roche de Solutré, a dramatic limestone cliff almost 1600 feet high. Over the millennia, it’s been slowly shedding hunks of limestone full of tiny fossils, and this is the soil that Fessy’s 30-year-old vines dig through with their roots.

That top-quality terroir, paired with the ever-so-slightly warmer local climate of Pouilly-Fuissé, yields wines that are at once intensely minerally and luxuriously ripe. Fessy’s Sous la Roche, fermented with indigenous yeasts, spends six to eight months on the lees, adding depth and body to that ripe fruit. The 2016 vintage in the Mâcon was called “freakishly low” by Vinous’s Stephen Tanzer, but has gifted us with gorgeous wines. 

Pouilly-Fuissé’s slightly richer, golden-toned fruit quality is in perfect balance with the vintage’s mineral concentration. Now is the perfect time to grab some now before elevated vineyard status yields elevated prices.