2013 Domaine Marc Morey & Fils Les Referts 1er Cru Puligny Montrachet 750 ml

Sabine Morey’s Les Referts is the kind of Burgundy we would love to offer every week: Showing piercing aromatics of jasmine, yellow pear, and lemon chiffon, vividly etched with wet stone minerality and polished with crème frâiche creaminess. After six years in the cellar, this wine is still fresh as a just-picked orchard peach, and it illustrates why almost no one can match the vignerons of Côte d’Or at age-worthy Chardonnay elegance.

Alas, this bottle is a member of a fast-dwindling allocation—one of just four releases off this 40-year-old vineyard still available on the market from the vintage. You could try to snap up the Les Referts from Jacques Carillon ($140) or Jean-Marc Boillot ($113) before they’re gone. 

Our relationship with the Moreys stretches back decades, to the days when great bottles from this region could be had for under $35. They were also the days before Google Maps—while lost on the winding roads of Chassagne-Montrachet years ago, we rolled down the car window to ask a gentleman on a bicycle with a bundle of asparagus for directions. Only later would we realize he was the legendary Marc Morey, a leading member of the highly regarded Burgundy winemaking family.

Today, his granddaughter Sabine runs the estate, and has caught fire as one of the appellation’s brightest young talents, “consistently producing a stream of successful, immensely attractive wines,” according to Remington Norman and Charles Taylor MW, authors of the landmark tome, The Great Domaines of Burgundy. 

Her focus is on expressivity, incorporating sustainable lutte raisonée farming principles on the estate’s Premier and Grand Cru holdings in Chassagne-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, and Bâtard-Montrachet. At the border of Meursault and similar to its neighbor in style, Les Referts comprises 13 acres that sit at the base of a slope amply exposed to sunlight, leading to dense concentration. Gravity keeps the soil of these calcareous lower plots deeper and richer, making for a more muscular expression.

We’ve always found Les Referts to offer one of Puligny-Montrachet’s most opulent expressions, laced with minerality and exquisite floral notes.