2020 Anne Boisson Aligote

Some of the best value White Burgundy in the region. Made from very small quantities by Anne Boisson, of the 200-year-old previously named Domaine Boisson-Vadot family. These wines come in very small quantities. This Aligoté is made from old vines entirely within the village of Mersault and is fresh and mineral driven.

“As ever, the inimitable Bernard Boisson presided over my annual tasting in his usual, refreshingly old-school manner, offering splashes from a variety of bottles, some open for several days and some opened for my benefit. As readers will remember, Bernard’s holdings have been entirely divided between his son Pierre and daughter Anne. On this visit, Boisson père reiterated that in fact Pierre and Anne operate separately though cooperatively (Pierre taking care of all the tractor work in the vineyards) and vinify in their own way—though the two labels’ styles are undeniably more similar than different. As I understood it, Bernard himself acts as a sort of unlikely business manager for the duo, hosting tastings and managing the wines’ distribution.

As I’ve written before, in his day, Bernard Boisson was one of the village’s latest harvesters, and his wines only spent a year on the lees, with much of the production sold to the négociants. With Pierre’s arrival at the domaine some 15 years ago, that changed dramatically: The domaine has returned, as Bernard puts it, to doing things as they were done in his grandfather’s era. That means earlier harvesting, little débourbage, long sur lie élevage ranging from 19 to 22 months and restrained use of new oak—up to 30%, largely from Saint-Romain’s Tonnellerie Gillet, recognizable for the toasty, nutty patina that it imparts. The entire production is now bottled without filtration under natural cork. Increasingly, the communal and regional appellations are bottled with lieu-dit names, under either the Anne or the Pierre Boisson label.” – William Kelley, The Wine Advocate Feb 2023