2016 Louis Latour Pouilly Vinzelles Les Champs 750 ml

Louis Latour White Burgundy Exclusive

Type “Macônnais” into the search bar on Wine Spectator and you’ll see one of the more recently published pieces that sets up today’s 2016 Louis Latour Pouilly-Vinzelles Les Champs, a Wine Access exclusive. 

“In the southern part of Burgundy, the Côte Chalonnaise and particularly Macônnais are the main sources of value white Burgundy,” writes Bruce Sanderson, noting that “many standouts” come from the Macônnais. And no producer is better equipped than Louis Latour to channel Burgundian terroir into a value bottling. The family has been farming in Burgundy since the 1730s, and today controls some of the region’s most exclusive vineyards. The soul of this fresh, vibrant, and ample Chardonnay stems from 30-year-old vines ensconced in the limestone-rich terroir of Pouilly-Vinzelles—a tiny Mâconnais village that Maison Latour’s been championing since the days of Prohibition. 

Winemaker Jean Charles Thomas employs the same attention to the village’s terroir that he uses to craft labels from Latour’s Grand Cru holdings in Corton-Charlemagne, the Côte de Nuits, and Chevalier-Montrachet, resulting in an opulent Chardonnay that mirrors the wines of the neighboring Pouilly-Fuissé appellation in every way except for the latter’s ever-increasing price. 

Gorgeously aromatic with white florals, and a creamy mouthfeel teeming with stone fruit, a touch of sweet honey and salty minerality, wrapped in a ribbon of orange and tangerine acidity. A touch of zippy lemon adds to a long, buttery finish.

All this courtesy of the growing area in Pouilly-Vinzelles, which is a sliver of a village wedged between a millennium-old fortified castle and a 13th-century château in the Mâconnais. Most negociants are too busy rushing past Vinzelles to explore its 122 acres of southeast-facing Chardonnay vines, which spend their days soaking up the character of the region’s limestone-dominant landscape. Such haste gives Maison Louis Latour prime access to the best fruit these succulent vines have to offer.   

Burgundy’s whites in 2016 turned out “charming, aromatically appealing wines that will give early pleasure,” according to Steven Tanzer of Vinous. The only issue is a small harvest means yields were down across the region.

So, the rule of supply and demand applies here: there’s going to be very little to go around of the best white Burgundy values from 2016, including this 2016 Louis Latour from the Pouilly-Vinzelles sub-appellation.