Coche-Dury Bourgogne Blanc Chardonnay 2022

Imported by Kermit Lynch

Jean-François Coche earned the title “The King of Meursault” from Jancis Robinson, a fitting tribute to a producer whose name is etched into the history of white Burgundy for his uncompromising standards and signature style.

No other Domaine in Burgundy commands such awe as Coche Dury. Famed for its precision, purity and age defying brilliance, the wines are produced in minuscule quantities and snapped up instantly by a devoted global following. They are among the most elusive and coveted bottles on the plan.

Critical Acclaim

91 Vinous

The 20222 Bourgogne Blanc has a delineated and focused bouquet that shrugs off the warmth of the growing season. It offers citrus peel, hints of chamomile and crushed stone. The palate is well balanced with a dab of stem ginger that defines the finish. There's plenty of energy coiled up in this Bourgogne Blanc and wonderful length. This is excellent. Raphael Coche greeted me at the winery just outside Meursault village. Before tasting his 2022s (since, like Olivier Lamy and Domaine Leflaive, they no longer show the wines in barrel), we ventured out into the vines for a brief inspection of his cover crops. As you might expect, Coche is fastidious about which cover crops he uses. He has a machine that “shoots” the seeds exactly 60 mm into the earth, a mixture of different sized bulbs, to make sure that the pedicule can take leaf over the surface. They intentionally use cover crops that do not grow too high, mainly types of edible salad. Coche was his usual voluble self, ever the contrarian on subjects surrounding Burgundy. “The 2022 vintage was very sunny and dry,” Coche explains. “We saw a little hydric stress, but rainfall at the end of July regenerated the vines. There were two bands of rainfall, the first covering more of the surface, but the second penetrated the soil. I was a bit worried in July. I started picking on August 25. The wines retain the freshness for both white and red, which are quite tannic.” Coche-Dury’s whites are exceptional, which is not unexpected.

90 Wine Advocate

From parcels situated around the domaine itself, the 2022 Bourgogne Blanc offers up aromas of sweet citrus fruit, mirabelle, freshly baked bread and vanilla pod, followed by a medium to full-bodied, satiny and seamless palate with excellent depth and grip. Raphaël Coche has turned out another terrific set of wines in 2022, exhibiting superb depth and structure united with a rare sense of ease and effortlessness. As I've written before, the last decade witnessed a stylistic evolution at Domaine Coche-Dury—although this is hardly news, as the changes have been underway for the better part of two decades. In Raphaël's words, the domaine now works with "less new oak, less bâtonnage and less heavy lees." The distinctively toasty, sometimes reductive signature that marked out the Coche-Dury wines of yesteryear is less pronounced. But, as Raphaël emphasizes, that has been the case for some time. "The last vintages marked by pronounced reduction were 1999 and 2007," he observes. "And I didn't initiate the move toward a purer, less stylized approach alone: my father and I agreed on the change of direction together." Some clients, Raphaël says, have complained, but his response is uncompromising. "They may want the vinification [techniques] in the glass, but I want to taste the terroir."