Pouilly Fuisse Premier Jus des Hauts de Vignes, Domaine Guffens-Heynen 2022

The 2022 Pouilly-Fuissé Premier Jus des Hauts de Vignes includes all the first press juice (with the lower pH and highest acidity) from Guffens's high-altitude holdings, including Les Croux and the final vintage of the domaine's sharecropping in La Roche, two superior sites which were both sadly hailed this year. Offering up aromas of orange zest, pear, white currants and peach mingled with white flowers, fresh pastry and youthful reduction, it's full-bodied, fleshy and concentrated, with racy acids and lots of chalky structuring extract, concluding with a long, penetrating finish.

This tiny (roughly 3,000 bottle) production wine is on course to be truly great from bottle. Managing to harness the density and power of the vintage with matching acidity, it has focus and flair, and is above all absolutley delicious. Pale lemon-gold in colour, the nose already has such a rich, heady bouquet of wild flowers, sweet peach blossom, white currants and mirabelle plum. There is an almost honeyed note, too, together with hints of baking spice and match stick reduction. The same array of flavours show on the palate, which is full bodied and glossy in fruit, yet piercing in its acidity. There is a pithy grip to this wine, a marvel to be so succulent yet almost tannic at the same time. Waves of fruit, spice and zest acidity keep coming, with the barrel subsumed by such a weight of fruit and giving only hints of spice at this stage. Outstanding. Drink from 2028.

In 2022 this cuvee includes all the fruit from les Croux, La Roche, Les Petits Croux and Les Crays. Ther are only 10 barrels so production will be approximately 3000 bottles