“Pataille is proof that major Burgundy can come from a minor address,” Jancis Robinson has written of the humble village of Marsannay. Sylvain Pataille’s father, a bus driver by trade, spent his free time helping in a friend’s vineyards, and an uncle owned an estate in Bordeaux that the family visited every summer. Even as a child, Sylvain knew he belonged among the vines. He started with a single hectare in 1999 and slowly built the domaine to 15, farming organically since 2008 with biodynamic methods and consulting as an oenologist across the region. Along the way he turned single-site aligoté into one of the most talked-about categories in Burgundy.

Les Méchalots is a small chardonnay parcel, three tenths of a hectare at the bottom of the Marsannay slope, where deeper alluvial soils gather. The lower, richer ground gives the wine a broad, open frame.

Pressed on a vertical press and fermented with indigenous yeasts, the wine is aged 12 to 18 months in used barrels with minimal sulfur at bottling. The 2023 leans into the vintage’s generosity, with yellow apple, white peach, and acacia rounded by a touch of hazelnut and a gentle saline lift. A chardonnay built for the summer table.