This week I had the wine on the left ($139) during MW blind tasting practice. It was truly terrible. The 75% new oak tasted like adjunct and the wine was stale and characterless. Every person in the tasting pegged it at under $20. I immediately went and bought the wine on the right ($39) to make sure it wasn’t me and it wasn’t the vintage. The Vocoret was gorgeous and fresh.
This morning I got an email from a fine wine retailer in Brisbane who has recently experienced issues with Trescases corks (owned by Amorim and noted with a capital T on the cork) - not cork taint just lack of freshness and a staleness to the wines…The Lavantureux was sealed with a Trescases. I’m now wondering if this is a producer issue or a cork issue. I do not have enough experience with this producer to know.
@ Sam Cole-Johnson - welcome to WB. I really enjoy and look forward to your reviews and writings on jancisrobison.com. Great to have you here and hope to see additional postings!
I’ve tried the 2020 Vielle Vignes several times and it was drinking nicely - good acidity and balance, and I expect it will gain some complexity over the next couple of years.
Agreed re Vocoret Vielle Vignes - the 2021 is also lovely and fresh and I expect will improve in the next five years. I wish I could say the same about the Lavantureux…
@SamCole-Johnson Lavantureux has never been my favorite producer, but they generally are quite nice. 75% new oak would surprise me as well - they are generally 20% new, remainder is a mix of older barrel and tank. Super weird, just sounds like an off bottle in this case! I’ll throw it in one of our mocks down here!
I’ve had a few botttles of their basic 2019 Chablis purchased over the last year or so. 1 corked bottle four were quite good, medium body with freshness and some typicity. Good value by current Ontario standards for Chablis, $38.
(Drouhin Vaudon Chablis is $46, Samuel Billaud Grands Terroirs is $55 for example).
I also have a couple of bottles of the 2019 Fourchaume in the cellar but wasn’t planning on opening yet. May pop one sooner than later in light of this thread.
Absolutely! That’s a lot of new oak on that! Their personal website tells a different story (80% new to 3 year old). Now I need to get it to see if it’s going to confuse me with some Puligny!
Would one reasonably be expect a 2.5 year old Grand Cru Chablis to be showing its true form at this point? It’s not a loaded question, I simply don’t have experience there.
I suspect what you have going on here is, on the one hand, a challenging vintage, plus a barrel program that can be quite impactful. I think it’s 75% oak rather than 75% new oak (unless something has changed since I last checked in on the domaine), but IIRC the barrels are from Chassin, which especially with higher toasts can impart a sort of exotic fruit + nutmeg character that a botrytis-heavy vintage really doesn’t need.
