Château Peybonhomme-Les-Tours Blaye-Côtes de Bordeaux Le Blanc Bonhomme 2021

Biodynamic. This delicious and racy white comprises 45% Sémillon, 45% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Colombard, drawn from a two-hectare, biodynamic vineyard close to the banks of the Gironde River. Guillaume Hubert's grounded, vineyard-focused approach results in a vibrant, unworked and racy white whose crunchy freshness and juicy texture reflect its limestone soils more transparently than anything we have come to expect of white Bordeaux.

The grapes are handpicked, manually sorted and undergo a 24-hour carbonic period before being pressed into a mixture of concrete vats and oak barrels. Here the wines complete their fermentation, carried out by indigenous yeasts only. In other words, it's a mould-breaking white Bordeaux, and just to be sure no one misses the point, the family releases it in a Burgundy-shaped bottle. Vibrating with the year’s stony freshness, it's a crunchy, racy white with mouth-watering lemon pith, fresh herbs and white floral notes, closing with silky grace and gentle phenolic bite. If you have a stereotype of old-school white Bordeaux in your mind, this earth-to-glass prototype is the wine to change your mind, as it did ours. Incidentally the wine’s name, Bonhomme, has the same root as bonhomie, French for exuberant friendliness. Fitting, really.