2024 Les Heritiers du Comte Lafon Macon Villages

Regular price $29.98

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Like the Côte d’Or, the Maconnais was blessed with near ideal conditions in 2023. Yields, for the first time in a while, were higher than normal and that provided ample counter weight to q warm growing season. The resulting wines evoke sensual fruit, lifted aromatics and crisp, tense, citrus-tinged acidity. It was the perfect vintage for a wine like this. What started out, back in 1999, as just a challenge to occupy the hyperactive attention of perhaps Burgundy’s most famous winemaker, Dominique Lafon’s Heretiers project has become almost an institution: an annual set of wines that routinely set the standard for quality in the Maconnaise. This year we, once again, chose the Macon-Villages from the dozen or so wines Lafon produces each vintage, as it was, for us, the best blend of character and value in the entire lineup. Coming from two separate but adjacent biodynamically-farmed parcels, one in Uchizy and the other in Chardonnay (yes, that’s the village of Chardonnay) planted on chalk and clay, the cuvee was kept on its lees in old 53-hectoliter casks for eight months before it was bottled late this spring. 2022 sees a return to normal yields in an area that has, over the past few years, been decimated by both frost and hail. Quality is top notch too…a terrific vintage in terms of both fruit and acidity. The acidities were very precise and the structures far more classically bent than those of the more voluminous but less racy 2020s. The wine is typically tight upon release with lemon crème brulee, geranium and grape sugar on the nose and its full palate usually needs a good amount of air to fully express itself. I actually like to decant this wine when I drink it within the first few years of its life. With time, however, the nose loses its reticence and becomes much fuller, much more expressive on the palate. It’s clearly now a benchmark for the appellation- a wine you’ll find in most every winemaker in Macon’s own cellar. Everyone wants to know what Lafon is up to! Drink it young with oysters, clams or other seafood dishes, or wait a year or two and enjoy its richness alongside those seared scallops in tarragon butter!

Shipping Policy

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Unless your delivery address is on the West Coast, we strongly discourage you from selecting “Ground Service” as your shipping method. During the winter and summer months, weather conditions (temperature) and longer delivery times can often result in the spoilage of your order. It doesn’t make sense to invest in fine wines and then take the chance of ruining them due environmental factors during transit (faster and safer delivery generally isn’t much more expensive). We don’t make an additional profit on accelerated delivery, but we frequently recommend faster shipping options to our customers outside the West Coast.
You must be 21 years of age to order or receive alcoholic beverages. Any shipments containing alcoholic beverages are sent with an “Adult Signature Required” sticker, and the common carrier that delivers our merchandise is required to ask and check for identification upon delivery. This means that an adult will have to be present at the time of delivery. Please consider shipping to an office address.
During periods of extreme weather, we attempt to ship wines at the beginning of each week in order to get shipments to you before the weekend. This is because we have no control over the temperature conditions at our freight carriers’ warehouses. The result may be that your shipment doesn’t go out the day that you place an order.
We ship by Fedex or Fedex Ground. Our prices include packaging materials. Insurance may be available for an additional charge.
Vintage Wine Merchants, Inc. will arrange for shipment on behalf of the buyer, to an address specified by the buyer, provided that Vintage Wine Merchants, Inc. in its sole judgment believes that such shipment will not subject Vintage Wine Merchants, Inc. to the risk of any sort of legal action or other harm. If a buyer lives in a state where the direct shipment of wine by Vintage Wine Merchants, Inc. violates the law, we suggest that the buyer provide an alternative address in another state or have their wine shipped to a third-party storage facility in a direct shipping-friendly state.
Various states impose limitations on the quantity of alcoholic beverages that may be purchased and brought into their jurisdiction by a purchaser from another state without requiring the purchaser, a seller or shipper to possess certain licenses or permits. Vintage Wine Merchants, Inc. does not, as a condition of sale, assume any obligation nor bear any responsibility whatsoever for applying or obtaining any permits or licenses. Therefore, we recommend that you investigate the possibility of such limitations, and determine the manner in which alcoholic beverages shall be brought into your state from California, so as to comply with all of your state’s requirements.
Wine shipping rules in the United States are controlled by the state you live in. We do not ship wine to the following states at this time: