The 2024 Pouilly-Fuissé Le Haut de la Roche is another of the high points in the range this year, offering up aromas of white flowers, crisp orchard fruit and freshly baked bread, followed by a medium- to full-bodied, satiny and racy palate with chalky depth and a saline finish. It's another success for this consistently excellent cuvée.
When the "Sur la Roche" vineyard was awarded Premier Cru status, vines at the top of the Roche de Vergisson were excluded because of their elevation; a decision that Jean-Marie Guffens finds absurd, particularly bearing in mind global warming and the public's thirst for fresher wines with lower alcohol. The resulting wine is lower-priced and a little more mineral that the Roche itself, despite being picked afterwards. Matured in oak with 25% new barrels. Only 300 cases made in 2024. Pale lemon in colour with a lightly spicy and smoky nose led by polished, slate-like cool fruit. Fine boned on the palate, this is a tensile, vibrant wine that has quite a solar quality to its fruit, yet remains cool, linear, focused and tangy. A pristine, cool, vibrant wine of real personality, this is saline and moreish on the finish.
Julian Desplans (wine maker and right-hand man of Jean-Marie Guffens) says that the 2024 Verget wines have both minerality and power. Picked from September 10th to 28th. They are reminiscent of the 2010 and 2014 vintages.
