Róisín Curley, Montagny 1er Cru 2019

This is a very special wine from a very special person. We've know Róisín for many years and have been wowed by her focus and vision in running this amazing project, and the quality of her wines.

Montagny is one of the southern Burgundy villages to which winemakers are flocking as it still represents that mythical balance of high quality with (fairly) reasonable prices. It's famed for having most of the vineyard area devoted to white wine production and most of that classified as 1er Cru.

Made from grapes grown in a single organic vineyard called "Les Jardins", this wine is complex, elegant, rich and perfectly balanced, with an array of developing flavours and textures. This is due to the lengthy aging that the wine received in 3rd use barrels and the very long elevage and slow fermentation that it required. As is the case with many of Róisín's wines, this is made in minuscule quantities, with only enough to fill two barrels.

Broadly speaking, Róisín gives her wines a very light fining and filtration in order to preserve the natural character of the grapes terroir as much as possible. Indeed, some of her wines are left completely unfiltered. For the winemaking itself, she uses concrete tanks or small vats for fermentation, but seldom made with new oak. In the vineyard at harvest, and in the winery, too, she does a massive amount of sorting of the grapes (called triage in the vineyard) which has sometimes reduced her potential output up to 50%, such is her determination for the best quality. The standards that she achieves has allowed her access to some of the best coopers and she now uses a mix of different barrel suppliers, buying more each of the last six harvests in which her wines have been made.

The grape suppliers for Róisín's wines are mostly all farming organically, as is the case for this wine, and the wine-making philosophy is very definitely hands-off and low-intervention, allowing for terroir and variety to shine. Regular trips to the region and long-term relationships with the growers allow for total control of the process, which again gives such scintillating quality. Certainly the reaction from the growers themselves is immensely positive and this has to be the highest form of praise one could wish to attain.

Róisín is not only a winemaker and micro-negotiant (which means that she buys the grapes rather than owning the vineyards), she is a full-time pharmacist in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, and she is a Master of Wine.

Her enthusiasm for wine led to her turning a hobby into this incredible alternate life with, via lengthy studies that led her to work in Chateau Latour (yes, the Chateau Latour), Chateau Grillet in the Rhone, Geisenheim in the Rhein and Montpelier. A forensic characteristic is certainly the thing that comes to mind, yet not at the expense of being a jolly good person.