Domaine Julien Cruchandeau Bouzeron Aligote Cuvee Massale

The Wine

In Burgundy, a land known for some of the world's best and priciest Chardonnay, Aligoté is "the other white grape", fated to live in the shadows of the Burgundy Royalty, the swanning Queen that is Chardonnay. I tasted this wine blind, when a colleague came up to me with a glass in hand and said "taste this!".  Hmmm, I said. Burgundy? Maybe Chablis? The wine had a zing to it that made me question such Chardonnay origins. 

And now I see why. This is Aligoté with a capital A, Bouzeron’s signature grape, rendered with precision and soul. Their ‘Cuvée Massale’ is sourced from old-vine selections planted en foule (using cuttings from a vineyard selected for quality), a nod to genetic diversity vs ordering vines from a nursery.

The wine opens with enticing aromas of lemon zest, green apple skin, and crushed oyster shell, with a whisper of white flowers and fennel pollen. On the palate, it pulses with a saline energy, offering citrus peel, chalky minerality, and subtle almond. The wine saw no oak, no winemaking tricks, just crystalline fruit and terroir in high fidelity. The finish lingers like sea breeze on limestone.

This is not your grandmother’s Aligoté—it’s Bouzeron’s quiet revolution: elegant, electric, and unapologetically terroir-driven.

The Winery

Julien Cruchandeau is a former jazz singer, so it's no surprise that his wines riff on tradition with syncopated rhythms and deep soulfulness. Bouzeron is part of the Côte Chalonnaise and is Burgundy’s only appellation dedicated to Aligoté. Based in Chaux, just north of Nuits-Saint-Georges, Julien is a micro-négociant with a hands-on approach and a knack for nurturing overlooked terroirs.

In the vineyard he practices organic farming and minimal intervention with a commitment to massale selection (explained above) to preserve genetic diversity and site expression. Julien's house style is "fresh, focused, and expressive", clean but never sterile, precise but never rigid. They hum with quiet intensity and, if you'll allow me just one more (strained?) musical reference, his wines sing in a minor key but with major resonance!