The 2013 Meursault les Charmes 1er Cru has a lifted pear-drop bouquet accompanied by fresh pear and lychee scents. The palate is a little shrill on the entry, with pointed acidity, very citric at the moment and needing a little more substance toward the bitter lemon-tinged finish. If this can gain more fatness by the end of its maturation then it may merit a higher evaluation.

This is the first wine to display any appreciable amount of wood and even here it is quite subtle and easily allows the very Meursault nose of hazelnut, orchard fruit and soft floral scents to have center stage. There is a lovely freshness and vivacity to the cool and restrained middle weight flavors that exhibit plenty of minerality onto the clean, dry, balanced and solidly persistent finish. In a word, lovely.

Strong reduction completely flattens the underlying fruit. There is an attractive sense of vivacity to the seductively textured medium-bodied flavors that brim with dry extract that buffers the tension-filled and citrus-inflected acid spine on the moderately complex and persistent finish. This is certainly pretty but it doesn't presently have the depth of a classic Charmes and it's not clear that it will develop, though if it does my predicted range maybe overly conservative.