2015 Macon Pierreclos En Crazy

The 2015 Mâcon-Pierreclos En Crazy is excellent, offering up an expressive bouquet of preserved citrus, wheat toast and peach. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, supple and intense, quite giving and open-knit in style but underpinned by good cut. The En Crazy bottling is composed of juice from young vines and the press—the free-run and first press fractions being reserved for the domaine's grander cuvées.

Bright, pale yellow-gold. Deep aromas of ripe apple, hazelnut and nutmeats come across as more exotic and evolved than the 16s. Fine-grained and broad, offering hints of quince and spices but seemingly in an awkward stage today, with its fruit a bit dominated by alcohol. Finishes with a slight acid burn as well. Most of the fruit that went into this wine was harvested late, according to Jean-Marie Guffens.

(14.3% alcohol; mostly from young vines of Chavigne but also includes the press wine from the other cuvées here; vinified in concrete, then spent two months in old oak before being returned to concrete): Bright medium yellow. Superripe and nutty, displaying an exotic tropical cast to its yellow stone fruit flavors; in a slightly oxidative phase today. Thick and smooth in the middle, showing an almost honeyed ripeness, then a bit aggressive and phenolic on the back end, with some alcoholic warmth. I wanted a bit more clarity of flavor. These parcels were mostly picked at the end. (Guffens did not make the En Crazy in 2014.)