I hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk - Kevin K Tang
(ai sketch)
I set out to answer a simple question: how do my four affordable white Burgundies from this year (HK$228 to $345) taste right now, and are they good value? I focused on everyday Burgundy—two Bourgogne Blancs from leading Côte d'Or producers and two Chablis, including a BBR bottling—tasted side by side.
1. Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 (HK$240, 12.5% abv)
2. Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 (HK$345, 13% abv)
3. Louis Jadot Chablis 2023 (HK$290, 12.5% abv)
4. Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR label, no foil) (HK$228, 12.5% abv)
Why I Chose These Wines (and Why Now)
I chose these four bottles as they’re strong options for their price. My goal: help you decide which is the safest buy and which offers a distinctive character. Focus on what matters most to you: fruitiness, classic style, or complexity. In my notes below, I highlight wines that excel in each area so you can confidently match your priorities to the right bottle.
Rather than simply saying, “These are nice wines,” my focus is on providing precise information so you know exactly what you’re getting. This allows you to spend on the wine that fits your preferences—be it balance, classic style, fruitiness, or a unique quality. All my opinions are based on recent tastings. I find that old notes and scores are often confusing, as sellers sometimes rely on early tastings or vague reputations instead of describing how the wines taste now. Meanwhile, prices may increase over time without an obvious reason.
For these reasons, I taste, compare, and explain each wine, helping you choose with confidence and avoid unnecessary guesswork.
Tasting Notes
I took careful, up-to-date tasting notes so my buying choices are grounded in real experience, not just price or reputation. Here’s what I found after assessing the wines side by side:
For fruitiness, the Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 stands out with bright orchard fruit and citrus freshness. It’s the most appealing if you like a fresh, young style. Olivier Leflaive Les Sétilles 2020 has a more layered fruit profile, with ripe apple and gentle honey notes that reflect its extra time in the bottle.
For typical style, both Chablis wines—the Louis Jadot 2023 and Sébastien Dampt 2022 (BBR/No Foil)—are excellent, showing the classic green apple, chalk, and mineral character that define the area. The Latour is a good example of Bourgogne Blanc, while the Leflaive is especially genuine and polished for its type.
Intensity, or strength of flavor, is highest in the Latour and Jadot wines, both showing a lively core. Leflaive is a bit more reserved but offers more complexity, with smooth layers of fruit, floral, and gentle oak notes. Dampt’s BBR bottle is moderate in both strength and complexity, but its clarity and structure stand out. Leflaive leads in complexity with its mix of honey, citrus, and mineral notes. The Chablis wines are less complex but shine in purity and definition, while Latour balances moderate complexity with fresh appeal.
All four wines are well balanced: Latour is fresh and well-judged, Leflaive is harmonious, Jadot is lively and focused, and Dampt is straightforward and precise. Each wine shows a strong mix of qualities in 2024.
**Looking Ahead to 2026**
Looking to 2026, each wine is likely to evolve in character. Latour may become softer and lose some fruit, while Leflaive should develop even better balance. Jadot is expected to show more subtlety, and Dampt’s clear style may gain gentle complexity. Leflaive is set to remain the benchmark for completeness.
Using the 4-point ranking system (1 point for the wine that leads in each parameter, 0 for others, with ties allowed), the results are as follows:
- Fruitiness: Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 (1 point)
- Typicity: Louis Jadot Chablis 2023 and Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR/No Foil) (1 point each)
- Intensity: Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 and Louis Jadot Chablis 2023 (1 point each)
- Complexity: Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 (1 point)
- Balance: Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 (1 point)
This results in:
- Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023: 2 points (fruitiness, intensity)
- Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020: 2 points (complexity, balance)
- Louis Jadot Chablis 2023: 2 points (typicity, intensity)
- Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR/No Foil): 1 point (typicity)
With this scoring method, Latour, Leflaive, and Jadot all tie for the top spot, while the BBR Chablis is just behind for its strong classic style. This approach is fair since all these wines cost between HK$228 and $345, which I still consider affordable. It shows that standout qualities matter as much as overall consistency, and that you can find good quality and value in more affordable bottles.
**Safest Recommendation**
Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 is the safest pick because it’s complete and balanced, and it will continue to improve with time in the bottle.
| Wine | Fruitiness | Typicity | Intensity | Complexity | Balance |
|------|------------|----------|-----------|------------|---------|
| Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 | High | Good | Medium+ | Moderate | Fresh, well-judged |
| Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 | Medium+ | Very Good | Medium | High | Harmonious |
| Louis Jadot Chablis 2023 | Medium | Excellent | Medium+ | Moderate | Vibrant, focused |
| Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR/No Foil) | Medium | Excellent | Medium | Moderate+ | Linear, precise |
**Notes:**
- "Fruitiness" reflects aromatic/palate fruit character on tasting today.
- "Typicity" measures how well the wine represents its appellation and style.
- "Intensity" is the concentration and impact of aroma/flavour.
- "Complexity" is the range and layering of aromas and flavours.
- "Balance" describes the integration of these elements.
1. Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023
A fresh, instantly appealing scent of citrus blossom and white peach opens this wine, with hints of hazelnut and soft yeast notes beneath. On the palate, the wine is clear and lively, with bright acidity highlighting juicy orchard fruit. It has good tension and a lightly creamy finish, showing careful ageing. This 2023 has more energy and purity than the rounder 2022, and should be enjoyed young for its clarity and freshness. (Tasted 2024)
2. Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020
This starts with a refined, expressive smell of ripe apple, white blossom, and soft toasted almond. The taste is smooth and polished, with a bit of honeyed richness over bright citrus and mineral freshness. Time in the bottle has blended the oak and softened the edges, creating a sense of balance and calm. Compared to the 2018, which had more obvious citrus and oak, the 2020 is more subtle and complete. (Tasted 2024)
3. Louis Jadot Chablis 2023
A bright pale straw colour in the glass, this 2023 Chablis offers a lively mix of lime zest, green apple, and crushed stone. The taste is bright and salty, with lively acidity and a nicely clear mineral finish. This version is more generous and expressive than the leaner 2021, but it still keeps Chablis' typical tension and sharpness. (Tasted 2024)
4. Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR label, no foil)
A very pale colour shows a wine of purity and control. The smell is clear and focused: green apple, chalk dust, and a light floral note. The taste is tight and straightforward, with sharp acidity supporting a strong, lasting mineral backbone. The missing foil capsule doesn’t matter; this BBR bottle is precise and full of character, doing better than the more lively but less clear 2020. A strong example of the year and proof of good quality. (Tasted 2024)
Findings and Buying Guide
The safest choice is Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc Les Sétilles 2020 for its balance and completeness, with potential to improve. If you favour classic Chablis, choose Louis Jadot Chablis 2023 for extra richness or Sébastien Dampt Chablis 2022 (BBR) for sharper focus.
For fresh fruit flavours, Louis Latour Bourgogne Blanc 2023 is the pick for those who want youthful appeal. Let your preference—safety, classic style, or fruitiness—guide your purchase among these good-value wines.
I hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk -
(ai photo)
This article is anchored in a tasting conducted in April 2025 under controlled conditions by the Dublin Club of Amateur Master of Wine (DCAMW). Those notes form the primary basis for all current assessments of the wines. Estate drinking windows, earlier critical scores, and community tasting notes are cited where relevant, but where they diverge from the 2025 tasting, the glass takes precedence.
PART ONE: THE COMMON GROUND
Each of these four wines comes from an estate whose reputation rests entirely on red wine. La Tour Carnet is a 4th Growth Médoc, Latour-Martillac and Château Olivier are Crus Classés de Graves, and Château Lagrange is a 3rd Growth Saint-Julien. Their whites are extracurricular — made because the terroir and tradition allow it. That marginal status is, paradoxically, part of their appeal.
All four are dry white Bordeaux blends built on Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, with Les Arums adding Sauvignon Gris for extra aromatic texture and two of the four — La Tour Carnet and Château Olivier — including a small proportion of Muscadelle, the third classical white Bordeaux variety, prized for its floral, musky aromatic contribution. All four have seen oak — barrel fermentation, barrel ageing, or both. Oak contact is not merely stylistic: it adds phenolic structure that white wines otherwise lack, acting alongside acidity as the preservative that makes serious white Bordeaux age. Sémillon is the longevity engine — richer, waxy, and slower to evolve than Sauvignon Blanc, it is what gives these wines their medium- to long-term potential. Sauvignon Blanc provides the acidity and the aromatic lift; Sémillon provides the weight and the years.
This complexity is not accidental, and it is not simple. Serious white Bordeaux demands the same attentiveness as white Burgundy — the same sensitivity to vintage variation, the same respect for terroir, the same understanding that storage is not a passive act but an active one. A bottle of Latour-Martillac or Château Olivier from a great year, kept well, is as intellectually demanding and as rewarding as a village Meursault or a Puligny-Montrachet. The difference is that white Bordeaux has never quite received the same recognition. These four wines make the case that it should.
The appellation divide matters. Latour-Martillac and Château Olivier carry Pessac-Léognan on the label — Bordeaux’s home of great dry whites, where gravelly soils give wines their characteristic minerality. La Tour Carnet and Les Arums both grow their white grapes on their own estates — Haut-Médoc and Saint-Julien respectively — but AOC rules force both to sell under the generic Bordeaux Blanc label. Same logic, different postcodes.
PART TWO: THE PARTICULARS — AND THE AGE QUESTION
LA TOUR CARNET BLANC 2017 | ABV 13%
Sold as Bordeaux Blanc — Haut-Médoc rules don’t permit white wine — this 2017 is an unusually even-handed blend: Sauvignon Blanc (33%), Sémillon (33%), Sauvignon Gris (29%), Muscadelle (5%). No single variety dominates, which gives the wine its particular character: no one element shouts.
An April 2025 tasting finds it pale yellow with greenish hues — a restrained nose, toasty and passionfruit-driven, with lifted saline notes on the dry palate. The fruit is intact. The wine has not evolved dramatically, but it has not declined either. At eight years old, it is holding its ground honestly.
LATOUR-MARTILLAC BLANC 2017 | ABV 13.5%
The blend is 60% Sauvignon Blanc, 40% Sémillon — a high Sémillon proportion that should be this wine’s longevity advantage. The Sémillon vines include the Gratte-cap parcel, planted in 1884, among the oldest in Bordeaux. Old vines, low yields, concentrated fruit: the architecture for ageing is there.
The estate’s own drinking window is 9 to 17 years post-vintage — which puts the 2017 only just inside its range. An April 2025 tasting finds nettles and passionfruit on the nose, a touch-tart palate with peapod mid-palate notes, toasty oak in the acidity. Austere, but not declining. Community notes diverge sharply — some bottles appear tired, others fresh — which tells you everything about storage. The wine is at a fragile juncture, and the cellar it has lived in will determine the verdict.
CHÂTEAU OLIVIER BLANC 2014 | ABV 13%
The 2014 vintage was exceptional for white Bordeaux — and Château Olivier made the most of it. The blend is 78% Sauvignon Blanc, 20% Sémillon, 2% Muscadelle — the most Sauvignon-dominant of the four, which raises the longevity question. But 2014 gave the acidity to answer it.
Neal Martin gave it 92 points at release: mineral citrus, a killer line of acidity, marine-influenced finish. The April 2025 tasting confirms it is still delivering: gunflint, passionfruit, vivid salinity, cedar integrated, fresh acidity, lasting mineral finish. Eleven years on, it is the most alive of the three older wines.
Community notes split, as they do for all wines at this age: some find it past its best, others find complexity and 3–4 years of life remaining. The divergence is storage, not wine. In a good cellar, this bottle is still very much alive.
LES ARUMS DE LAGRANGE 2021 | ABV 13%
The youngest and most secure of the four. The 2021 blend is 62% Sauvignon Blanc, 27% Sémillon, 11% Sauvignon Gris — the Sauvignon Gris adding a textural, faintly spicy dimension that neither pure Sauvignon Blanc nor Sémillon provides alone. Six months in half-new oak gives it suppleness without weight.
Confit citrus, nectarine, pastry cream, white flowers on the nose; a chalky, medium-bodied palate with lively acidity and a creamy finish. It is in its prime, drinking well from now to approximately 2032. No anxiety required.
PART THREE: THE TASTING COMPARED — FRUIT, COMPLEXITY, AND THE AGE QUESTION
The appellation divide — stated in Part One — is the key to reading these wines comparatively. Pessac-Léognan’s gravelly terroir gives Latour-Martillac and Olivier a mineral signature the Bordeaux Blancs, however well made, are not structurally positioned to replicate. That is not a judgement on ambition; it is a fact of soil.
Château Olivier Blanc 2014 leads on every measure that matters. The fruit has not merely survived eleven years — it has deepened into something the wine was not at release: mineral smoke and stone fruit alongside vivid salinity and perfectly integrated cedar. It is the most complex, the most intense, and the most diverse of the four. Among those who have tasted it in good conditions, it is consistently the most admired.
La Tour Carnet Blanc 2017 holds its ground honestly. The four-variety blend gives it a breadth of flavour a simpler assemblage would not, and the wine may yet reward another two or three years of patience.
Latour-Martillac Blanc 2017 is the most difficult verdict. The architecture of ageing is present — 40% Sémillon, old vines, Pessac-Léognan gravel — but the 2025 note does not suggest a wine gathering itself for a second act. The estate’s window nominally extends to 2034, but windows are drawn by estates, not by tasting notes. Those who still hold it should drink sooner rather than later.
Les Arums de Lagrange 2021 is simply in its element. As a Bordeaux Blanc from Saint-Julien Gunzian gravel — not Pessac-Léognan — it does not chase minerality but instead offers something different: aromatic generosity, textural complexity from the Sauvignon Gris, and a creamy, oak-supported finish. It is the most immediately pleasurable of the four, and the most universally enjoyed. Its drinking window extends to 2032 — no urgency, but no reason to wait either.
To summarise: Château Olivier Blanc 2014 leads in complexity, intensity, and flavour diversity. La Tour Carnet Blanc 2017 exceeds its classification. Latour-Martillac Blanc 2017 has likely reached its ceiling — drink now, in the best conditions you can manage. Les Arums de Lagrange 2021 wins on pleasure and accessibility.
These are not footnotes to their estates’ red wines — nor are they footnotes to Burgundy. White Bordeaux at this level is as demanding, as storage-sensitive, and as capable of genuine complexity as the whites that command far greater attention and far higher prices on the other side of France. They are expressions of what Bordeaux’s most storied terroirs can do when the winemaker turns, just once, to face the other direction.
A NOTE ON SERVING
No ceremony required. Serve between 10 and 12°C — cool enough to preserve acidity and aromatic precision, warm enough to let the mineral and oak complexity breathe. Use a proper white Burgundy bowl, thin-walled, with enough volume for the aromas to gather. Do not decant. These wines have found their equilibrium in bottle; the glass is the right place to let them open, gradually, as you drink. The first pour and the last, twenty minutes apart, will often be two different wines.
hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk -
The Bordeaux and London trade has never been particularly interested in building Cru Bourgeois as brands. These wines are bought, moved, and replaced — vintage after vintage — serving as interim cash flow while merchants wait for the return on their Classified Growth investments. The Cru Classés absorb the budgets, the attention, and the ambition. The Cru Bourgeois absorbs the remainder. The result is structural: average trade prices below €3 a bottle, €6 on shelf, with even Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnels clearing at around €12. Not the prices of wines with brand equity. The prices of commodities.
And yet this is precisely the environment in which Greysac thrives. A wine that needs no promotion, no score, no cellar time — one that persuades at first pour — is exactly what a clearing trade keeps reaching for. Where other Cru Bourgeois are damaged by being treated as commodities, Greysac is built for it. Its accessibility is not a concession. It is a structural advantage.
I have been selling five of the northern Médoc’s Cru Bourgeois for twenty years — Greysac, Rollan de By, Patache d’Aux, La Tour de By, and Tour Haut-Caussan — across vintages 2002, 2005, 2009, 2015, and now 2019. The question that experience forces is simple: which of the five sustains consistency inside a trade structurally indifferent to all of them? The answer, each time, is Greysac. Not because it escapes the system. But because its style is precisely what the system, despite itself, keeps selling.
The northern Médoc — the old Bas-Médoc, north of St-Estèphe toward the Gironde’s mouth — is cooler, windier, and flatter than the famous communes to its south. The great gravel banks thin here, giving way to clay and limestone shaped by the estuary, while the Atlantic forest shields the vines from the ocean’s cold breath. The maritime influence remains regardless — in the freshness, the mineral edge, the restraint that no winemaker can manufacture. All five wines grow from this same difficult land. What separates them is what each does with it.
Rollan de By bends the terroir toward richness — deep oak, concentration, blue fruit. It announces itself. Patache d’Aux lets the Cabernet lead: structured, austere, asking for time the market rarely gives. La Tour de By is consistent and broadly fruity, a wine of the appellation rather than of a place. Tour Haut-Caussan, long admired by Robert Parker, is the north’s most muscular expression — dense, serious, impressive in the way that force always is. Each has its virtues. Each also has a vulnerability when the trade is indifferent and prices are falling.
Greysac has a different signature: dark in colour, fruity on the palate, toast and leather in the background — and that cool green thread in the nose that I mean entirely as a compliment. Liquorice, moss, a whisper of earth lifted by the estuary air. It is not the most northern in style — it is something more interesting: the wine that most fully translates this terroir into pleasure. Where the others amplify, resist, smooth, or overpower — Greysac absorbs and returns. It reveals rather than announces. It persuades rather than commands.
The 2019 makes this case with quiet authority. The nose opens immediately — dark fruit, cedar, graphite, and that cool thread of dried herbs, mint, and liquorice that no amount of oak can manufacture and no amount of neglect can obscure. It arrives already giving. At 14% ABV, it sits at the upper edge of what this terroir typically yields — and yet the body remains medium, the finish clean and measured, never heavy. There is no heat, no excess. On the palate it is supple and precise — generous without being soft, structured without being austere. These are not incidental qualities. They are the reason a clearing trade keeps reaching for this wine year after year. It sells itself — which, in the economics of the Cru Bourgeois, is the only reliable form of survival.
Greysac survives not by transcending the trade’s indifference, but by being exactly what a cleared, underpriced, under-promoted Cru Bourgeois needs to be: honest, aromatic, complete, and accessible from the moment it is poured. The château describes its vineyard as one of the most northerly Médocs on the peninsula, at the confluence of the estuary and the Atlantic Ocean — and that position is written into every glass. Three advantages the others do not share simultaneously: the scale of nearly 45,000 cases to absorb price pressure, the consumer pull of being the leading Médoc over $20 in the United States since 2015, and a style that sells on pleasure rather than promise. In a trade that treats this category as a commodity, that quiet consistency is not a modest virtue. It is a durable one.
Technical Notes: The 2019 has been scored 91 points by Neal Martin (Vinous), 90 points by both Georgina Hindle (Decanter) and Jeb Dunnuck, with a Wine-Searcher aggregate of 89/100. ABV: 14%. Total production at Château Greysac averages around 45,000 cases per year, though a vintage-specific figure for 2019 is best confirmed with the importer. The Wine-Searcher average retail price for the 2019 is USD $32 ex-tax — approximately HK$249 per bottle, or HK$2,988 a case before local duties and margin. On shelf in Hong Kong, expect HK$320–380. We are offering it at HK$230 per bottle — below the global average and below the landed cost of comparable vintages. For a Cru Bourgeois Supérieur from one of Bordeaux’s finest recent vintages, scoring 90–91 points across major critics, that is precisely the kind of pricing that makes the value argument self-evident — and makes the trade’s indifference to building this category all the more difficult to justify.
