The 2014 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru La Romanée has a clean, precise, Puligny-like bouquet with touches of wet limestone coming through. The palate is taut and crisp with sour lemon, very citrus-like with hints of almond and hazelnut on the finish. This is the kind of Chassagne that you fall in love with.

The 2013 Chassagne Montrachet La Romanée 1er Cru has an almost Puligny-like apple-blossom bouquet that is very direct and Zen-like. The palate is crisp and fresh with a citric line of acidity, gradually building in the mouth, but zoning in on the citric tense finish. This Chassagne-Montrachet is tensile, brisk and it is as fresh as a daisy!

The 2012 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru La Romanée has a very harmonious bouquet with citrus peel, mineral and fumé scents that have wonderful lift. The palate is ripe and tense on the entry and then fans out with orange zest, citrus peel and minerals that retain great linearity. One of Mounir's best Chassagnes this year.

The 2011 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru La Romanee has a refined bouquet with fine delineation: hints of citrus peel, dried apricot and smoked walnut. The palate is fresh and vibrant with crisp tannins, lively peach-tinged fruit and a beautifully defined creamy finish. Lovely. 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

One of the most compelling wines in this line-up; the 2010 Chassagne-Montrachet Romanee is rich, sensual and enveloping from the very first taste. Orange, vanillin, smoke and honey saturate the palate. The Romanee is a decidedly voluptuous, oily wine endowed with tons of textural depth and sheer richness. It is a great example of one of the 2010s here that is very close to a red wine in terms of its structure. A hint of botrytis adds complexity on the finish. I imagine the Romanee will need a few years to drop some of its baby fat. Fasten your seatbelts; this is a thrilling wine! Anticipated maturity: 2015+. 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