OSKAR

2021 was a brutal year for yields in Burgundy — a spring frost hit hard, and Vincent Dancer found himself with barely enough juice from any single vineyard to justify bottling it alone. So instead of four half-empty barrels, he combined the harvest from four of his best plots into one wine: Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru, Meursault 1er Cru Perrières, and two Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Crus, La Romanée and Tête du Clos.

Blending across four different appellations like that isn't allowed under Burgundy's AOC rules, no matter how good the pedigree of each individual plot. The wine loses the right to call itself Grand Cru, Premier Cru, or even Bourgogne at all, and is declassified all the way down to Vin de France — the broadest, least prestigious category in French wine law.

Named OSKAR, it's a genuine oddity: a wine built from four of the most sought-after white-wine sites on the Côte de Beaune, wearing the same humble label as a basic table wine. What's in the bottle tells a very different story than what's printed on it.