It had been a few vintages since I last drank a bottle of Marc Plouzeau’s Rive Gauche bottling of Chinon. His newly released 2023 version is outstanding, coming in at an even thirteen percent octane and offering up a complex and an utterly classical bouquet of cassis, dark berries, tree bark, gravelly soil tones, cigar smoke and a hint of menthol in the upper register. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, focused and classy, with a lovely core of black fruit, excellent soil signature, ripe, moderate tannins and impeccable balance on the long, complex and precise finish. Marc makes this bottling for early appeal and it is certainly delicious right out of the blocks, but it has the depth and underlying structure to also age very nicely for fifteen or twenty years. Fine juice!