One of the most exciting producers in France, our team loves the wines from Domaine Guffens-Heynen. Founded in 1980 by Belgian winemaker 'Jean-Marie Guffens' with a singular purpose - to break the shackles that stipulate that White Burgundy of Grand Cru Quality can ONLY be produced in the Cote de Beaune. The Guffens-Heynen wines are very different in style to others produced in the Maconnais – much more powerful, opulent and layered. Initially Jean-Marie started his estate as a Negociant house, buying fruit to make wines from all over Burgundy inluding Meursault & Chablis but he gave away this model to focus solely on a tiny villages of Macon Pierreclos that remains without a single 1er or Grand Cru climat. The jewel in his crown is the Tre di Chavigne site - vines planted on hard soils with a steep gradient that would even give a picker in the Mosel pause. The wines are now a darling of Michelin star restaurant wine lists for their consistency and affordability when compared to his rivals in the Cote de Beaune. We at World of Wine are not the only ones who believe this way about Guffens, Andrew Jefford publiished in The New France that “Before Guffens, no one knew that Mâcon Peirreclos or even Pouilly-Fuissé could rival Corton-Charlemagne or Bâtard Montrachet. Now they do.” William Kelley for the Wine Advocate had this to say "Domaine Guffens-Heynen is one of the great Domaines of Burgundy. Ample but incisive, concentrated but weightless, Guffen's wines represent the apotheosis of a grape and a place. To say they are equal to Puligny Montrachet or Meurault would be to do them a disservice, because they're all too frequently better." Allocations are unfortunately as little as 1 or 2 dozen across a raft of ever changing cuvee's but our advice is that if you see a Guffens-Heynen with the word 'Chavigne' on the label - buy first and thank us second.