2020 COMTESSE BERNARD DE CHERISEY MEURSAULT BLAGNY LA GENELOTTE PREMIER CRU

Great wines occasionally take me back to my time in classical music, and to earnest discussions about what makes a particular performance “great.” I’ve had similar conversations about wine, and the vocabulary sounds much the same: profundity, verve, intensity, charm, joy. Chérisey’s Genelotte is amazingly delicious and complex. For me, experiencing it is as sublime, contemplative, and joyous as Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler with the Vienna Philharmonic. That comparison may strike others as absurd, but that’s just the nature of it. Whether it’s music or wine, at some point words begin to fail, and all that remains is the mystery of why this particular thing makes your heart sing. —Dustin Soiseth, Kermit Lynch