Aligoté

Aligoté is Burgundy's "other" white grape — the lean, high-acid foil to its famous sibling Chardonnay. An early-ripening Vitis vinifera variety, it makes light-bodied, dry, mostly unoaked whites built on bright lemon, green apple and a chalky, mineral cut, usually drunk young and fresh. For decades it was the everyday white of the region, planted on the cooler, higher and less prized sites, and it is best known beyond the wine world as the traditional base for the Kir, mixed with a splash of crème de cassis. At its serious best, from the cru village of Bouzeron in the Côte Chalonnaise, it can be a wine of real tension and length — taut, saline and quietly distinguished.