Description
Domaine Paul Pillot Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos Saint Jean
Pillot’s whites balance impressive soil character and electric minerality with vivid, pure fruit. They epitomize the Chassagne-Montrachet terroir while offering remarkable approachability in their youth and impressive complexity and evolution after even modest cellar aging. We love these wines, our customers love these wines, and the only challenge with Pillot is summoning the willpower to sell our meager allocation instead of shuttling it into our personal cellars.
Jean-Marc Pillot is the fourth consecutive generation of his family to be involved in winemaking. He began apprenticing directly beneath his father, Jean, in 1985. By 1991, he had assumed leadership of the family property, though he is assisted in numerous regards by his wife, Nadine, and sister, Beatrice. Pillot owns and farms a dizzying diversity of Premier and Grand Cru vineyards in the villages of Santenay, Puligny, Meursault, Montagny, and Remigny.
Pillot’s 2018 “Clos Saint Jean” shines a brilliant yellow with silver and vivid green reflections. Salted lemon, white peach, and yellow apples ease right into a luscious core of limestone and crushed-rock minerality that radiates with citrus blossoms and myriad white/yellow flowers. The heavily curtailed vintage didn’t affect one ounce of this wine. Its aromas are enticingly seductive and the palate shines with brilliant energy and plush, fleshy fruit. The accessibility or ‘openness’ of the wine is always what gives Pillot its distinction: As long as it’s properly served, this provides every luscious fruit and tension-filled mineral that comes with the best white Burgundy—whether enjoying now or in 10+ years! If doing the former (there’s no harm whatsoever), serve in large Burgundy stems around 55 degrees after a 60-minute decant. Show it off next to a couple of your wine connoisseur friends and a flashy lobster pasta in a rich, herbed cream sauce. Prepare for a standing ovation because this is authentic Chassagne-Montrachet of the highest order.
