When I lamented to a good friend that my first encounter with Ramonet's 1973 Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru had been spoiled by a compromised cork, he was kind enough to open a bottle, which confirmed my intuition that this is a profound wine. Unwinding in the glass with scents of iodine, pear, mandarin, roasted nuts, bee pollen and fresh field mushrooms, it's full-bodied, racy and penetrating, with an incisive spine of acidity, chalky structuring extract and a long, penetrating finish. As seamlessly complete as it was intensely sapid, this numbers among the finest wines I've ever tasted from the late Pierre Ramonet, and it is in its absolute prime today.