"The Il Poggione 2015 Brunello di Montalcino shows a darker and more concentrated appearance than many of its peers. The wine is beautifully abundant and fragrant in the most exuberant and expressive manner. You will recognize aromas of moist soil, tobacco and smoke. Candied cherry hovers over the entire bouquet. Fruit is sourced from older vines (all over 25 years old). Il Poggione occupies a special spot within the Montalcino appellation, and the area always produces slightly more concentrated and powerful wines. I find that to be particularly true in this gorgeous 2015 vintage. I am also very attracted to that almost dusty note of crushed mineral that rides long on the full-bodied finish. Il Poggione's Brunello is also distinguished by firm, youthful tannin that need a few more years to unwind. Luckily, there are quite a few bottles to go around, with some 200,000 made."

97 Points, Monica Larner, The Wine Advocate End of January 2020

Wine of the Week at Jancisrobinson.com

"The Domaine de la Grosse Pierre 2018 Chiroubles is ready for drinking now if you want to enjoy its pure, juicy primary cherry and blackberry fruit but you could also keep it for a few years while the tannins, which are already fine, become even more silky. While this fresh ripe fruit is to the fore, the wine finishes with a more savoury, slightly darker flavour, adding another dimension.

The vineyards, mostly in Chiroubles, one of Beaujolais' 10 named crus or top subregions, are organic or in the process of conversion and all her wines are made using whole bunches and semi-carbonic maceration, with no added yeast, no added sulphur dioxide apart from a little at bottling, and extremely gentle extraction. The wines are aged 8–11 months in concrete tanks, with only the Grille-Midi subject to a very light oak influence. They show real purity, a sensitive touch and freshness, with fruit that has benefited from the ripeness of 2018, yet they are far from simple – just the sort of wines I would be extremely happy to find in a wine bar or restaurant, or on my table at home. As I wrote in my note on her Fleurie: wines 'for those who appreciate subtlety rather than mass’.

She studied business, worked in a wine bar in Dublin and then as a sommelier at Pierre Orsi restaurant in Lyon until 2013. After vintages in New Zealand and Chile, the siren call of Beaujolais and Gamay proved too strong and she came back to the region to study in Beaune before making the first wine under her own name – Domaine Pauline Passot, Grille-Midi 2016 Chiroubles – from less than 1 ha (2.5 acres) of vines that belonged to her grandfather.

In 2018 she took over winemaking at the family estate, Domaine de la Grosse Pierre in Chiroubles. Total production is now around 40,000 bottles a year and the straight Chiroubles is her biggest cuvée (20,000 bottles).”  Julia Harding MW