Cuvée Marianne is the Bersans’ parcel-selection line, and this Aligoté comes from fifty-year-old vines facing south-southeast on Kimmeridgian clay-limestone. The old vines give naturally concentrated fruit, pressed gently in the pneumatic press and fermented, as always in this cellar, with indigenous yeasts only and without added enzymes. The wine then spends twelve months in oak barrels, none of them new: a patient élevage that adds breadth and texture without any obvious oak flavour. It emerges round and generous, with notes of hazelnut and white flowers, the variety’s freshness still running underneath.