Farr Vintners has been importing the wines of Jean-Marie Guffens for more than 30 years now. Our enthusiasm for the wines – both from his negociant arm Verget and Domaine Guffens-Heynen – is stronger than ever and we count Jean-Marie as a good friend. He is also nothing short of a genius winemaker, if something of a maverick.
Praise for Jean-Marie is by no means a new phenomenon though the Domaine Guffens-Heynen wines have received phenomenal ratings in the Wine Advocate over the past couple of years and have now - some would say finally - achieved real cult status. William Kelley writes of Jean-Marie: “Guffens produces some of the most exciting wines in all of Burgundy; whites which unite tension, texture and amplitude in rare harmony”.
Further critical review of the wines and the domaine is more or less unanimous:
“His wines can easily withstand comparison with the finest white burgundies.” … “the wines of Guffens-Heynen (not a name that trips easily off an Anglophone tongue, admittedly) have for years been giving top-quality Côte d’Or white burgundy a run for their money. I have been given Guffens wine in their teens or more blind alongside Meursaults and Pulignys of the same age and preferred the former”. Jancis Robinson MW
“Domaine Guffens-Heynen is one of the great domaines of Burgundy. Ample but incisive, concentrated but weightless, Guffens’s wines represent the apotheosis of a grape and a place. To say they are the equal of the wines of Puligny-Montrachet or Meursault would be to do them a disservice, because they’re all too frequently better.” William Kelley
“This tiny domaine is one the world’s pinnacles for Chardonnay. We do not know of another winemaker capable of consistently extracting so much eloquence from the most noble of fruit and packing so much minerality from the limestone terroir in to the one wine!” Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve, The World’s Greatest Wines
"Guffens’ mastery of technique is complete, but he is not a technical winemaker: it is his aesthetic, not his methods, which indelibly marks his wines. Forty years ago, no one would have imagined that the Mâconnais could produce wines which approach so nearly the apotheosis of Chardonnay, and as Guffens enters his seventh decade, he believes he’s doing the best work of his career. It’s time for the world to rediscover him." William Kelley
“He has the magic touch that you cannot learn from a book. The one constant throughout [Guffens' career] has been the quality of his wines. However much you might disagree with his views or smart at his opinions, you cannot argue when you take that first sip.” Neal Martin, Vinous
"Guffens-Heynen is the private estate of Jean-Marie Guffens (of Maison Verget fame) and his wife. Whereas at Verget, Guffens strives to fashion the finest wines he can from purchased grapes and must (unfermented juice), often resorting to tricks and technology, at Guffens-Heynen only the most simple and natural processes are employed. The results can be awe-inspiring." Robert Parker
In short: these are wines that are the pinnacle of their appellation, wines that will knock many a premier or grand cru white from the Côte d'Or sideways.
