Tasting Note: What a beauty! Lively, sophisticated, refined and complete. It was a stand out among the complete Bachelder range of 2023s that I tasted in December 2025. The nose is generous if not effusive with well- integrated pear, lemon, hazelnut, flint, toast and subtle herbs. It feels to be among the lighter more restrained examples but it is so confident, and flavours run so deep on a thread of minerality. Great acid structure and balance. Outstanding length. Grand cru stuff.

Backgrounder: It’s hard to get Thomas Bachelder to pick favourites from his range of single vineyard chardonnays released every November. But I think this the one! The annual Toussaints release of chardonnays and pinots from two vintages prior is one of the most fascinating and difficult tastings I do each year. There is so much nuanced, terroir-driven difference in each bottling because the winemaking is essentially the same in all. The Hill of Wingfield is one of three chardonnays he makes from the Wismer site, and it is the coolest, steepest and stoniest site set just below the tree line. The winemaking always seems to take a back seat to site here, but it is wild yeast fermented in long aged (about 18 months) in a range of older French oak barrels