2013 Domaine Leflaive, Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru 1×1.5L

Vinous 93+

Deeper-pitched on the nose than the Bienvenue, offering musky, slightly reduced scents of very ripe peach and grilled nuts. Sweet, large-scaled and powerful but youthfully laid-back today. More tannic than the Bienvenue but the firm finishing flavors of pear and minerals titillate the retronasal passage. Still a baby. [Stephen Tanzer, 09/01/2015]

Anticipated maturity: 2023-2033

Robert Parker 93-95

The 2013 Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru, like many from this vineyard, has an expressive and, compared to other vintages, you could almost say extravagant bouquet, bridled with intense citrus lemon, freshly sliced pear, limestone and even a faint touch of peppermint. The palate is intense on the entry with more depth than the Bienvenue at this stage. There is a pinch of spice here, shaved ginger adding a bit of fire at the front of the tongue, then attractive stony notes finally revealed on the finish and the aftertaste. Superb – for me perhaps superior to the 2012. You can more or less judge your Burgundy "cache" by the wines you are allowed to taste. You work your way up until you are deigned with a glass pipette full of Chevalier-Montrachet from Domaine d’Auvenay or Romanee-Conti or Clos des Lambrays (the elusive Taupenot-Merme of course.). There is one wine that has eluded me since I first visited the domaine back in the late 1990s: the fabled Montrachet from Anne-Claude Leflaive. My tactic is always the same. I ask whether there is the usual single barrel, the answer is "Oui" and then the momentary pause indicates that unfortunately it is not for tasting. It’s a policy I completely understand and support. This year I asked the question and Antoine Repetit de la Bigne instead replied: "Yes" and then invited me to taste it. I had come of age. It’s the same rush of elation as the first time you order a beer or drive a car on your own. I could give up here and think: "Yeah…Essex boy did good." Of course, hardly anybody is ever going to experience the luxury of actually drinking the 300-odd bottles, so perhaps we should get on and discuss what mere mortals can drink. Fortunately, the news is that Leflaive has produced an excellent set of 2013s… "The 2013 vintage started very humid. The end of the winter was very wet and the soils took time to warm up," the ever-congenial Antoine explains as he mounted a ladder to one of the stainless steel vats. "Everything was still very wet continuing into May, when the river in Meursault overflowed. In Meursault you could see vineyards under almost a meter of water! The flowering was late and we had poor [atmospheric] conditions because there were two rainfalls. It took three weeks for flowering to finish. July was average. We had a little hail on 23 July that touched the Meursault side of the vineyard (Combettes, Sous de l’Ane) but August was sunny and warm. We started picking 28 September and finished 6 October. The harvest was quite stressful. At the beginning we planned to pick slowly with a smaller team, but the forecast was unstable and unreliable. Sometimes they would say it would rain and it would be sunny – and vice versa! We had to stop on two afternoons because of rain. The reason was because they were unsure about the wind. It came from the Mediterranean: warm and bringing wet conditions that bought botrytis pressure. We finished picking with a much bigger team. We even had one of the pickers ph [Neal Martin, 01/12/2014]

Anticipated maturity: 2017-2032