Simon Field | Modest gold color, luminous tints, pewter; discrete peaty aromatics, agrume, dried grass at dusk; the palate is soft, feminine, refined, and composed; salty notes more subdued than sometimes, citric fruit rarefied and finely integrated within the ensemble, homogenous without being amorphous, very complete, bejewelled, albeit in a minor key. | 89

Andrew Jefford | Pale to mid-straw-gold. Fresh, bready, rich, and charming, with great harmony and seamlessness: the northern hemisphere upper- latitude countryside in late summer, dry grasses, stubble fields, warm end-of-season hedgerows, chamomile, that kind of thing. A glowing yeastiness, too. But as seems typical of Château- Chalon, this is expressed in an unflamboyant, almost understated manner, very calmly, very serenely, very harmoniously. A treat to sniff and to explore. On the palate, the wine is fresh, vivid, lively, with little glycerous fullness; more gothic and vertical, with bright though well-rounded lemon-and-apple acidity. It is concentrated, deep, and penetrating, but I have the sense that the allusive engine here has barely engaged and that the wine in fact needs considerably longer to get up and motor, partly due to the structural significance of its masterful acidity. This is a provisional score, which could well rise with time and further development. | 95

Roy Richards | Deep gold. Yeasty, some barley sugar, opens up nicely in the glass: porcini mushroom. High acid and more banal on the palate than the nose would suggest. | 87