Bourgogne Blanc “Bigotes”, Domaine de Chassorney

Les bigotes
by Jacques Brel

Elles vieillissent à petits pas
De petits chiens en petits chats
Les bigotes
Elles vieillissent d’autant plus vite
Qu’elles confondent l’amour et l’eau bénite
Comme toutes les bigotes

Elles processionnent à petits pas
De bénitier en bénitier
Les bigotes
Et patati et patata
Mes oreilles commencent à siffler
Les bigotes

You’ve got to love the label on this wine. Two women seem to be gossiping on a road at the top of the hill. You can see the bell tower and church steeple in the valley below. It seems that they have just come from church.  The shorter of the two, who wears glasses, has her hand partially cupped over her mouth as if vouchsafing some particularly choice morsel of information, whilst the taller woman, in a pink hat and pearls, has a shocked expression on her face. This cartoon of the Jacques Brel song, Les Bigotes, the hypocrites, spits vitriol at the “church ladies”. You wouldn’t spit the wine out though.

Frédéric Cossard’s Bourgogne Blanc doesn’t pull any punches with its incisively pure fruit. The tears of limestone are converted into a tight-corseted, ascetic white. There’s nothing spare in this wine, the palate is virtually sliced with a lemony (or liminy) snickersnee of acidity and the merest flicker of vanilla and toasted nut highlights rather than contrasts the edginess of the wine. Yes, perhaps, this wine is a Bigote, a young Puligny masquerading as a Bourgogne Blanc.