2023 Domaine Benoît Cantin Irancy "La Grande Côte"

This is a red wine that transports you to your favorite bistro in Dijon or Paris. One with paper on the tables, wooden chairs, and mirrors on the walls, sipping a glass while awaiting your steak au poivre and a tangle of frites. It's immediately charming and totally irresistible. If you've ever wondered where Burgundy keeps its secrets, drive fifteen minutes south of Chablis and you'll find Irancy, a south-facing amphitheater of Kimmeridgian limestone with fewer than 200 hectares of vines and fewer than fifty growers, every one of them making red wine on soils the rest of the world associates with oysters and Chablis. The climate has done Irancy a favor the Côte d'Or might envy: the amphitheater now ripens Pinot comfortably most years, slopes once written off as too cool are being planted, and the village sailed through the 2016 and 2021 frosts that gutted the rest of Burgundy, so the wines have gone from lean and angular to genuinely delicious without losing their chalky northern minerality. The Cantins have been farming here for generations, and Benoît, who bottled his first solo vintage in 1994 with his father Bernard still at his side, works 16 hectares spread across ten of the village's lieux-dits. "La Grande Côte" is sourced from a steep slope that tumbles toward the Yonne River and faces south-southwest so the Pinot soaks up every hour of northern sun, making this cuvée is the fullest and most structured Irancy in Benoit's range. In 2023, vibrant and pure-fruited aromatics leap out of the glass, immediately calling you for a second sniff. Wild fresh berries and fresh violets on the palate all coil around a chalky, beautifully fresh core. Who knew Red Burgundy under $30 could be this compelling?