The 2014 Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières is touching grand cru quality, an absolute peach of a wine. It has a linear, stony, smoke-tinged bouquet that is the most sophisticated of Mounir's Meursaults. The palate is fresh and vibrant with fresh pear and citrus notes, long and sustained in the mouth with a saline finish that begs another sip. The pedigree of the vineyard is embroidered into this wine and it comes highly recommended, though it will deserve 3-4 years of bottle age.

The 2013 Meursault 1er Cru les Perrières has a typical, stony, quite austere bouquet that unfolds with subtle orange-blossom scents. The palate is fresh on the entry with a fine line of acidity and tremendous salinity on the finish that brings to mind a wild coastline. Wow - this is one of the best Meursault Perrières of the vintage. Seek this out if you can.

The 2012 Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières has a clean and precise bouquet with crisp citrus fruit and plenty of rock. The palate is tightly wound with good tension, although it needs a little more chutzpah and minerality on the finish. If I am being honest, I was expecting a little more from this cru at this stage so let’s wait and see.

The 2011 Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrieres has a fresh taut mineral-driven nose with hints of oyster shell that needs just a little more tension and intensity. The palate is very fine with hints of dried apricot, dandelion and citrus lemon, although I would prefer more terroir expression on the finish. Still, this is very fine. I have intermittently encountered the wines of Lucien Le Moine over the years and even spent an evening dining with the man behind it, Mounir, on one admittedly inebriated dinner a few years ago. But it was time to visit the winery tucked away down a side-street in Beaune, and taste through an enormous selection of wines with the man himself. Since his first vintage in 1999, he has focused on buying fruit that expresses individual lieux-dits, so that his cellar consists of dozens of micro-Cuvees that take a whole morning to taste through. He is an extremely principled winemaker with strong, some might say controversial beliefs. Even before entering the barrel cellar, he opined that too many white Burgundies are picked too late and that both the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations are completed too rapidly. Mornir likes two summers to complete the elevage and feels that too many vignerons bottle too early. He also used minimal sulphur for his wines, informing me that though his wines often start out deeper in color, they tend to become paler as they mature in bottle. I asked him about his opinion on the two vintages that we tasted together, the 2010 and 2011. “The 2010 and 2011 vintages have a lot of common points: low yields, fresh summer, both starting fruity and perhaps a little uniform,” he explained. “Then a year later, their personalities started coming out. The evolution of both vintages is similar. After a year and half they began to gain depth. When we picked 2010, people were talking about a light vintage, but now that is forgotten because they are so powerful. In 2011 they did the same. The 2010s achieved maturity naturally, but in 2011 we had to chaptalize most of the wines a little. I think it is an old style of Burgundy, how the wines were made before 1995. In 2010 we talk about tannins, but in 2011 we talk about more dry extract. You feel the presence of the wine but they are not dry. The 2010s finish with firm tannins, so in terms of longevity I think they will close down in a couple of years and then need another eight years. But I don’t think this will happen with the 2011. They are more like 2001 and 2007 that show their harmony early. They will be enjoyable over the next 15 years. The purity of the terroir in 2011 is exceptional, whereas in 2010 you have the power.” Apart from my marathon morning journey through Lucien le Moine’s 2011s, we sashayed over to the 2010s to see how a dozen were shaping up in bottle. These were bottled around August 2012 with a little sulphur in June. The bottles were double decanted at 90 minutes before tasting. Importers: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000; Atherton Imports, Menlo Park, CA; tel. (650) 328-6639

The 2010 Meursault Perrieres emerges from the glass with flint, crushed rocks, pears and smoke. This is pure Perrieres from its cool, inwardness all the way through to the long, crystalline finish. Everything simply comes together in the glass. The 2010 Perrieres is a wine to savor over what will hopefully be a long life. Today, it is a bit restrained. The only thing missing is time. Anticipated maturity: 2014. Proprietor Mounir Saouma thinks 2010 is a great vintage and therefore he wanted to push the boundaries as far as possible by slowing down the maturation of the wines. He kept temperatures very low in the cellar to encourage slow, long malolactic fermentations and long elevage in barrel. Among the unusual practices Saouma adopted with the 2010s is stirring the lees a full year after the harvest. At the time of my visit, in July 2012, none of the 2010 whites had been bottled, the only estate in Burgundy I know of that had still not bottled their 2010s. The wines Le Moine 2010s are big, rich and powerful. In many cases, the 2010s appear to have structures that are in the realm of reds. A number of the wines also show slight elements of botrytis that will become more pronounced over time. In addition to these wines, I also tasted the 2010 Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot, which was too closed to properly evaluate. Importer: Vintus, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (919) 769-3000