2017 Vincent Girardin Les Vieilles Vignes Pouilly-Fuisse 750 ml

Vincent Girardin’s 2017 Les Vieilles Vignes Pouilly-Fuissé comes from perhaps the greatest white Burgundy vintage of the last decade. This wine is absolutely hitting its stride today, boasting a combination of rich texture and flinty minerality that’s the hallmark of Burgundy’s best winemakers.

Girardin was born into a family of winegrowers, with a legacy dating back to the 17th century. But when he took over the family domaine, quality skyrocketed—making Girardin famous among new-wave Burgundy connoisseurs and classicists alike.

His wines appear on wine lists like The French Laundry, Saison, and La Toque—where savvy sommeliers appreciate his fantastic quality and also the value Girardin delivers. Robert Parker clearly agreed when he wrote, “I know of no other producer in Burgundy that can deliver as broad a range of outstanding wines at such reasonable prices.”

In 2017, Girardin was blessed with a vintage that Vinous hailed as “a modern classic”—stress free from budbreak to harvest, with growers across the the region thanking their lucky stars—and this vieilles vignes (old-vines) white shows off the mineral intensity and elegance that we’re chasing in top vintages.

Notably, this is given a serious treatment from pruning to bottling. It’s sourced from limestone-heavy soils in some of Pouilly-Fuissé’s top villages, and then sorted twice—once in the vineyard, once in the cellar—before pressing. Fermentation takes place with native yeasts in 500L barrels, 10% of which are new, and then the wine is aged for nearly a year on its fine lees. 

It’s what you’d expect from a Meursault-based winemaker who made his name crafting some of the most coveted white wines in Burgundy—but not from a wine at this price.