For some it may come as a surprise that Burgundy’s enfant terrible—the winemaker behind one of the Mâconnais’ greatest Domaines—now makes wine in Bordeaux. And as you can read below, Jean-Marie Guffens has hit the ground running. His first vintage was in 2017 and yet he is already producing sweet wines to rival the most revered names of the Graves. Move over, Rover, and let Guffens take over. One of Barsac’s smallest properties, Château Closiot’s vines sit on the famed Clos Bonneau, an exceptional terroir where red earth dotted with pebbles rests on the Barsac plateau’s limestone base. The soils are relatively cool, imbuing Guffens’ wines with mineral steel and freshness to offset his late-picked fruit. Rather than use the morning mists, Guffens prefers harvesting under the first rays of the sun to obtain more concentrated botrytis. His team collects a meticulous selection of berries in a harvest that lasts up to eight weeks. Other idiosyncrasies include the use of small wooden basket presses to extract more phenolic power, whilst remarkably low levels of sulphites result in more expressive young wines than most Sauternes-Barsac. The baroque Cuvée Bonneau is mesmerising, yet in great vintages Guffens also crafts a best-of-the-best cuvée named after the Estate’s parcel of 100-year-old vines: Les Dames de Bonneau. This wine comes from a painstaking selection of pure, botrytised Semillon berries. It is one of the most memorable Barsacs we have tasted: a seemingly ageless wine of aromatic intensity, concentration and underlying energy. For sheer might and personality, it has few rivals. Rather like the winemaker behind it. Indeed, in only it’s sophomore release, the 2022 Les Dames was rated second in The Wine Advocate’s Sauternes-Barsac Report, right behind the wine that inspired Guffens to make Barsac in the first place—d’Yquem!