At last the Clos La Folie drought is over and we couldn’t be more excited! To the uninitiated, Rully, near the regional city of Chalon-sur-Soane and just three miles south of Chassagne-Montrachet as the Burgundian crow flies, has long been the source of some of the most over-achieving white values in all of Burgundy. The area has long been dominated by large negociants who have traditionally purchased the grapes from a score or more of small growers and truck the wine or grapes to their establishments further north. Historically, there have been only a very few pure domaines who grow and make all their own wine in Rully (roo-ee) proper. By far the oldest and most esteemed is the venerable Domaine La Folie. This small family-owned operation farms 13 hectares of vines in Rully’s best climates, including the entirety of the Premier Crus Clos Saint Jacques and Clos du Chaigne, by far the two most important vineyards in the appellation. Clos Saint Jacques, in fact, would be Rully’s sole Grand Cru if such a designation even existed. Planted in 1952, this postage stamp sized walled vineyard sits at the very top of the hill with only the wall blocking your view of Chassagne-Montrachet just on the other side. My relationship with this particular wine goes back clear to the early 1980s when my wife and I were still dating in Tokyo. One Aoyama restaurant, Le Poisson Rouge, was our go-to for staring into each other’s eyes and discovering the joys of Burgundy and French food together. It was there where we had our first Clos Saint Jacques (with Sole Meunier, if I remember correctly) and it became our favorite until we drank them out of it. It was many (many) years later when, after moving back to the United States and starting work at PRIMA when I discovered the wine again. It was every bit as good as I remembered, and I brought home a bottle and dug out the 1980 vintage label from a scrapbook to confirm our good luck. Even though a lot of Chardonnay has passed under the bridge in our 40 plus years together, Clos La Folie’s Clos Saint Jacques is still one of our very favorites and, since we started selling it at PRIMA, one of yours too. There’s been a bit of La Folie famine over the past few vintages. Hail, frost and a variety of other maladies have served to keep our allocations on the miniscule side in both the 2020 and 2021 vintages and the prices have done nothing but escalate. But those irritations notwithstanding, the Clos Saint Jacques is still one of the most savvy buys we ever have in white Burgundy. Here is all the severity of a top notch Rully Blanc covered with a lovely veneer of lemon curd-apricot fruit that hides its deep core of freshly-mined flint. Aged in a small percentage of new oak, you’d never know it to taste this ultra-fine, ultra-elegant white Burgundy. The wood fits in seamlessly, adding to the wine’s texture but not to its taste, leaving pure, ravishingly complex Chardonnay fruit and an armature of vibrant acidity to run the show. Richer on the palate but lighter on its feet, it’s a white Burgundy that can fool you into thinking it’s Chassagne, but a really pretty Chassagne. Good supply right now and I haven’t been able to write that for a while! Our highest recommendation!

By the way, we also have a few bottles of La Folies remarkable Marc de Bourgogne, the winery’s rare and special Eau de Vie. Not usually seen on this side of the pond, it’s a very elegant, quite beautifully rendered spirit; it’s a fantastic way to end an evening. It’s $79.99 for a 750 ml bottle.