Macon Pierreclos Juliette et Les Vieilles de Chavigne, Domaine Guffens-Heynen 2023

The 2023 Mâcon-Pierreclos Juliette et les Vieilles de Chavigne is even deeper and more muscular than the Tri de Chavigne, and more introverted too, unwinding in the glass with reductive aromas of peach, wheat toast, pear and toasted nuts. Full-bodied, dense and seamless, it's broad-shouldered and powerful, with a prodigious chassis of dry extract cloaked in layers of ripe fruit, girdled by racy acids and concluding with a long, penetrating finish. Drink 2033 - 2060.

The 2023 Mâcon-Pierreclos Juliette et les Vieilles de Chavigne is the latest rendition of this singular cuvée, a sort of ne plus ultra bottling from his holdings in Le Chavigne, blending juice from a parcel of 20-year-old vines named "Juliette" (a former aviator, Guffens enumerates his various parcels in lieu-dit Chavigne using the phonetic alphabet) that was stunted in the 2003 heat wave with juice from old vines in neighboring parcels. Every rendition to date has been extraordinary, and the 2023 is no exception. While it was less aromatically put together than some of the other cuvées in the range when I tasted it, there was no mistaking its deep, exotic bouquet or its full-bodied, muscular and multidimensional palate. Long, dense and girdled by chalky dry extract, it's nipping at the heels of the Croux this year.