Bernard Van Berg Les Gouttes Blanc 2015 750ml

Bernard Van Berg – Meursault, France

From the same hand and the same hillside — Les Gouttes, the lieu-dit above the RN974 in southern Meursault, Aligoté planted in 1985. Bernard Van Berg, the celebrated Belgian photographer turned vigneron, farmed these two hectares like a garden: organic, plowed by horse, wild yeasts, minimal sulfur, and his motto on every label — "Le Vin Le Plus Simplement".

He bottled this cuvée in vanishingly small quantities: recent vintages counted just 279 bottles, each numbered by hand. Intense and tightly knit — hazelnut from the barrel, saline minerality bordering on iodine, and a finish once described as staying "as if you still had the wine in your mouth". The same critic called it possibly the finest Aligoté he had ever tasted.

In 2018 Van Berg retired and passed these very vines to Tino Kuban, whose Les Jardins Vivants wines now rank among the hardest allocations in all of Burgundy. The estate under Van Berg's name no longer exists — this is the master's own bottling.