This was a fine performance for Leflaive's 1996 Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru, a complex but reserved wine that opens in the glass with aromas of citrus oil, confit lemon, beeswax, dried white flowers and candied peel, with comparatively little in the way of reductive top notes that distinguished it even merely a handful of years ago. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, satiny-textured and concentrated, built around an incisive line of acidity and still decidedly tight-knit and compact in profile. This bottle is an example of a 1996 white Burgundy that is aging very gracefully, but if there's one criticism, it's that the wine can't match the plenitude of the great wines in this tasting. That may come with time, but I suspect the 1996 Chevalier will always be more impressive than it is pleasurable. By the numbers, this wine possesses 13.75% alcohol and a pH of 3.12—perhaps its full potential would have been unleashed, as my neighbor Michel Bettane opined, had it been harvested a week later?