Like many growers in the villages of the Côte d'Or, Claudine Blain has the history and traditions of Burgundy in her veins: She is the daughter of Jacques and Josèphe Gagnard and the granddaughter of Edmond Delagrange and her family maintains the well-established Gagnard-Delagrange property. Claudine and her husband, Jean-Marc Blain, manage the Blain-Gagnard estate. Thirty-five percent of the estate's wine is sold to négociants. The rest of the white wine is put in Alliers oak (about one-third new) and bottled after 14-16 months in a cask. The red wines use the same percentage of new oak but age in a cask for 18 months before bottling. Blain believes in mixing wines from vines of different ages to capture the fruit of the younger vines as well as the richness of the older vines. Concentrated, low-yield wines in limited production. Essential burgundies for those who like rich but subtle wines.
Covering 11.86 ha, the Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru vineyard is located on the slope beneath Le Montrachet and spans the two communes (Chassagne and Puligny).
There is just enough reduction to reduce the expressiveness and blur a bit of the nuance to what are clearly ripe and floral-suffused aromas. The rich, delicious, and palate-coating large-scaled flavours possess impressive density while delivering excellent length on the compact and youthfully austere bitter lemon-inflected finish that is even firmer. Unlike the Criots that could reasonably be approached after 5-ish or so years, this is going to require between 12 and 15 years of patience if you wish to experience it at its peak.
Less open than the Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet, with very little to the aroma – just a touch spicy/oily and perhaps a little bit smoky/reductive. Deep and full in the mouth, rounded, rather gentle considering its youth but with a good balance on the finish between creamy texture and zippy acidity.