Joseph Colin Saint-Aubin 1er Cru OSA 'Oratorium Sancti Albini' 2021

OSA — Oratorium Sancti Albini, "the oratory of Saint-Aubin" in Latin — is one of the most distinctive small-production cuvées in the Joseph Colin range, born of necessity as much as ambition. Created in a vintage of very low yields, this limited-edition cuvée assembles three premier crus — Les Combes, Sur le Sentier du Clou and Sous la Roche Dumay — parcels too small individually to be bottled on their own, with most of the fruit coming from Sous Roche Dumay. Joseph is the son of Marc Colin and younger brother of Pierre-Yves Colin — having started working alongside his father from a young age, he knows the rocks and vines of this white Burgundy mecca like few others, with a hands-off approach in the cellar, fermenting with indigenous yeast and ageing in barrel on fine lees until bottling.

The result is a complex, elegant wine, with a purifying and active palate animated by a fine-spun energy of citrus accents, lifted by notes of liquorice and pepper. Pale lemon in colour, the nose is quite discreet, on the leaner and more tense end of the spectrum, with various citrus fruits including a touch of orange rind, and a medium-plus length. Its vibrant acidity and well-integrated oak provide a solid structure that will continue to evolve over time, rewarding those who choose to cellar it with added depth and complexity. A genuinely rare assemblage — a wine that exists only in the vintages that demand it, blending three of Saint-Aubin's finest fragments into something greater than any one of them could offer alone.