St Vincent de Bourgogne Montagny 1er Cru Les Millières 2023

A peachy, floral Burgundy that quietly got everything right

I’ve been drinking a fair bit of Chardonnay recently, but this was a slightly different proposition. Montagny sits down in the Côte Chalonnaise and this particular bottle is a Premier Cru from Les Millières. I went into it hoping for some of that richer white Burgundy character rather than something lean or meh!

It didn’t take long to deliver!!

In the glass

Straight from the nose this was absolutely full of white flowers and peach. Not loads of citrus, not particularly mineral and certainly nothing sharp or green dominating proceedings. Just lovely ripe peach with this really noticeable floral character running through it.

It was probably slightly warmer than I’d ordinarily serve it thanks to the UK deciding to have a late September heatwave, but I actually think that helped show what was going on.

On the palate the peach continued, backed up by those same floral notes and a lovely sweet rounding to everything. Not actually sweet, but there was a softness and ripeness to the fruit that gave it that impression. It had enough acidity to keep everything fresh without the acidity becoming the main event.

That’s probably what I enjoyed most about it. Nothing felt like it was fighting for attention.

With the food

I paired it with garlic chicken and salad and this was one of those occasions where the pairing didn’t suddenly unlock another five tasting notes in the wine it pretty much just worked really well.

The peachy, floral character sat beautifully alongside the chicken, while the freshness of the wine worked with the salad and stopped everything becoming too rich. The garlic didn’t bully the wine either, which I wondered whether it might.

There wasn’t some massive transformation once the food arrived. The wine still tasted like the wine and the chicken still tasted like the chicken, but they were simply better together.

The only thing missing was goats cheese.

Halfway through eating it I really wished I’d had some on the plate. Something creamy with that salty, tangy edge alongside the salad would have been brilliant with the peach and white flowers in the Montagny. That feels like unfinished business for another bottle.

Overall

This wasn’t a wine that blew the doors off with huge flavours or made me sit there dissecting twenty different things going on in the glass.

It was much more understated than that.

Peach, white flowers, a lovely rounded feel in the mouth and enough freshness to hold everything together. With the garlic chicken it was a really harmonious pairing rather than a spectacular one, and I mean that as a compliment.

There are wines where you spend the entire glass analysing them and there are wines where, before you realise it, you’re halfway through the bottle because everything is just working. This was definitely more of the latter.

A really lovely introduction to Montagny Premier Cru and another reminder that white Burgundy doesn’t necessarily need a famous Côte de Beaune postcode to be seriously enjoyable.