In June I told you about Benoît Ente, the younger brother of Meursault’s Arnaud Ente and the quietest great name in Puligny-Montrachet, and put four of his 2024s in front of you. Here is what is left of that allocation: 11 Aligoté, 15 Bourgogne Blanc, 8 Puligny village and 3 of the Premier Cru Clos de la Truffière. When they go, there is no second shipment.

• Only 37 Bottles Left Across Four Cuvées

A Personal Note

Dear Artisans,

Every couple of decades a name surfaces in the Côte de Beaune that ends up rewriting how the world thinks about white Burgundy. Coche-Dury did it. Anne-Claude Leflaive did it. Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey and Jean-Marc Roulot did it. Each of them, in their moment, was a producer whose releases circulated through a handful of restaurants and a small fraternity of importers before the rest of the world caught on. By the time the magazines arrived, the wines cost many times more and the waiting lists were years long.

In June I wrote that Benoît Ente is the next one, and that four of his 2024s had landed in our cellar. Three months later the allocation is down to thirty-seven bottles, and I would rather you had them than a broker.

The Vigneron

Benoît is the younger brother of Arnaud Ente of Meursault, whose wines now run from roughly eight hundred dollars a bottle for the village wine to over two thousand for the top cuvées, when you can find them at all. Benoît learned the vines on his aunt’s plots, struck out on his own in 1997 with less than four hectares, almost all of it in Puligny-Montrachet, and took over her parcels when she retired. Even now the whole domaine is six hectares in twenty-three parcels. Sotheby’s calls him “one of the Côte de Beaune’s most acclaimed stylists.”

The style is the family style: purity, precision and terroir expression ahead of weight. He picks early to keep the acidity alive, presses slowly, lets the fermentations start on their own, and ages the wines eighteen months in foudres, larger barrels and glass globes rather than new barriques. The product pages describe wines that strike a balance of power, fruit richness, bright acidity, extract, complexity, purity, and aging potential. Having tasted through the four, I would not change a word.

The 2024 Vintage

2024 was the hard year in Burgundy: April frost, May hail, half again the usual rain, and mildew all summer. Berry Bros. & Rudd reports that low-lying Chardonnay in Meursault and Chassagne and the Premiers Crus of Puligny-Montrachet yielded around half the norm. That is why our allocation was small to begin with, and why there will not be more.

What survived is exceptional. Allen Meadows of Burghound calls 2024 “the best white Burgundy vintage we have seen in a long time” and reaches for the word crystalline; Neal Martin writes of razor-sharp tension and delineation. Small crop, cool year, early picker: this is precisely the kind of vintage Benoît Ente’s style was built for.

What Is Left, And Which To Take

The Aligoté “Antichtone” is the discovery wine: old vines planted by Benoît’s grandfather in 1949 and 1953, plus a parcel he planted himself, at $84.99. The Bourgogne Blanc at $99.99 is the strategic buy, estate Chardonnay from parcels around Puligny and Meursault, from the same cellar as the village wine. The Puligny-Montrachet village at $249.99 is the house benchmark, five parcels of fifty-year-old vines, and Burghound calls it an Outstanding Top Value. And the Premier Cru Clos de la Truffière at $459.99 is the pinnacle: a walled monopole at the top of the Puligny hill, Burghound 93, and three bottles left.

If you want the education in one box, take one each of the Bourgogne, the village and the Truffière. If you want the one bottle that shows why the trade whispers about this address, it is the village Puligny at $249.99.

James Tran

Artisan Wine & Spirits

Why This Matters

The Discovery Wine · Last 11 Bottles

2024 Bourgogne Aligoté “Cuvée Antichtone.”

Old-vine Aligoté from vines planted in 1949 and 1953. The bottle sommeliers open first.

Domaine Benoît Ente Bourgogne Aligoté “Cuvée Antichtone” 2024

Bourgogne Aligoté · Côte de Beaune

Three parcels of Aligoté: two planted by Benoît’s grandfather in 1949 and 1953, a third planted by Benoît in 2002, all pruned cordon de Royat to keep yields down, then eighteen months in Austrian foudres with no fining or filtration. The name is the counter-Earth the ancient Greeks imagined to keep the world in balance, which tells you how seriously this domaine takes its humblest grape. In his hands it has nothing to do with the simple aperitif Aligoté is dismissed as: nervy, mineral and long, it is the wine the domaine uses to introduce itself.

The Strategic Buy · Last 15 Bottles

2024 Bourgogne Blanc.

Estate Chardonnay from around Puligny and Meursault, from the same hands and the same cellar as the village wine.

Domaine Benoît Ente Bourgogne Blanc 2024

Bourgogne Blanc · Côte de Beaune

Organic estate Chardonnay from clay-limestone parcels around Puligny-Montrachet and Meursault, hand-harvested early, slowly pressed, then fermented and aged twelve to eighteen months in neutral oak and steel. No fining, only a light filtration. The appellation says Bourgogne; the hands and the cellar are the ones that make the Puligny. This is the bottle to buy by the six.

The Benchmark · Last 8 Bottles

2024 Puligny-Montrachet.

Burghound 91, Outstanding Top Value. Five parcels, fifty-year-old vines.

Domaine Benoît Ente Puligny-Montrachet 2024

Puligny-Montrachet · Côte de Beaune

A blend of five parcels from the estate, with an average vine age of 50 years. This is the wine that most cleanly shows the house: chiselled minerality, lemon-pith cut and a long saline finish. Allen Meadows gave it 91 and his Outstanding Top Value flag, which he does not hand out to village Puligny very often.

The Pinnacle · Last 3 Bottles

2024 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru “Clos de la Truffière.”

Burghound 93. A walled monopole at the top of the Puligny hill. Three bottles.

Domaine Benoît Ente Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru “Clos de la Truffière” 2024

Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru · Monopole

Benoît’s signature: a monopole parcel, fully enclosed and sheltered, on shallow limestone at the top of the Puligny hill. Sotheby’s calls it “arguably his best cuvée” and says it “stuns with its textural finesse and polished power.” Hand-harvested, whole-cluster pressed, spontaneous fermentation, 18 months in French oak with roughly 20 to 30% new, minimal sulfur, no fining or filtration. Meadows calls it “extremely promising” and “packed with development potential”; give it until 2028 and it will repay you for twenty years.

The Bottom Line

Thirty-seven bottles of the next great name in Puligny, and then we wait for the 2025s.

The pattern is the one every collector who found Coche-Dury or Colin-Morey early will recognise: a tiny domaine, a sommelier network, a few hundred bottles imported, and then one day the magazines arrive. Benoît Ente is at that point now. The Bourgogne Blanc at $99.99 is the value, the village Puligny at $249.99 is the benchmark, and the Truffière at $459.99 is the one you will wish you had bought two of.

Take one of each and you have the whole education in a single box. Reply to this email or text 650-880-3553 and I will set it aside.

Cheers,

— James Tran

Artisan Wine & Spirits

Only 37 Bottles Left Across Four Cuvées

Artisan Wine & Spirits · 2495 Old Middlefield Way, Mountain View, CA 94043
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