Climat En Carementrant 2021 has a light, flowery nose with plenty of fresh apple and lemon fruit. It is energetic and vibrant, very Pouilly-Fuissé in character.
However, if you sniff a bit more carefully, you can find deeper levels of complexity and style that mark this out as quite a special, superior wine. Indeed, if you noticed these characteristics on your first sniff I think you could be excused for thinking this was an elegant Côte-de-Beaune white.
It does not have the weight to be from there, in truth, it is highly refined and dances up your nostrils as the most lithe of pole-dancers would pull themselves up.
There is butter here as well, not so much a slathering but more a smattering. This is slightly surprising to find in a Maconnais wine, but this wine is a bit of a mashup.
You see, there is a great tension on the nose between ripe and bold flavours and elegant, prettier aromas.
Imagine, if you will, me wearing Y-fronts. Obviously, they are packed full of masculine pleasure-potential, but the taut elastic of the Y-fronts keeps everything held in place with very little bulging or sagging.
The Climat En Carementrant 2021 is only 12.5%, so that explains some of the taut, precise characteristics. Moreover, as you will have seen from the side label, this Climat is entirely planted on limestone. This will give energy and focus to the wine.
The palate is a wondrous kaleidoscope of complex, intertwined flavours. The Climat En Carementrant 2021 just tastes of so many different things.
The Climat En Carementrant 2021 has fresh flowers, grassiness, lovely ripe lemon, fresh Granny Smith apple and a hint of grapefruit zesty fruit, a profound stoniness – freshly chipped limestone, great – although far from excessive – acidity that keeps the whole thing vivacious and infused with life and drive, a hint of butter, some waxiness. You see there is a lot going on!
All of these flavours are very prominent and deep, but the palate is never weighty or heavy. That tension between ripe, abundant flavours and minimalist restraint that was present on the nose of the Climat En Carementrant 2021 is in action <em>bigly</em>* on the palate. My Y-fronts elastic has a lot to hold in, but it looks perfectly presentable.
The finish is enormously long, with a huge swirl of those complex flavours leaving glisks of deliciousness on the palate for a long time after being swallowed. It is really restrained but, my, what a lot is going on here.
To summarise this is a brilliant small-scale beauty that toys with ideas of scale which are all held in place by the taut, minimalist frame of the wine. I have a second bottle, and it will undoubtedly mature, but this is so enjoyable I think I will open my next bottle in the near future.