2018 Simon Bize, Savigny-les-Beaune Premier Cru, Aux Vergelesses Rouge

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The 2018 Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Aux Vergelesses has turned out nicely mingling hints of rose petals and exotic spices with aromas of sweet berries and forest floor in an inviting mélange. Medium to full-bodied layered and multidimensional it's deep and complete with a muscular chassis of tannin and a rich core of fruit. I can't remember tasting a more thrilling young vintage at Domaine Simon Bize. Certainly the frost-depleted 2016s were brilliant but those wines were more introverted from barrel and tank. The 2019s are concentrated vibrant and strikingly perfumed almost without exception soaring from the glass with captivatingly floral aromas. Chisa Bize and her team in short have excelled themselves and this visit stood out as one of my finest tastings of the year. As ever whole-cluster fermentation was the order of the day with comparatively little pigeage?less than in 2018 a vintage revisited in bottle in the accompanying notes?to moderate extraction. I will be adding a case or two of the Bize 2019s to my personal cellar and I warmly recommend readers to do the same.