2004 Jean et sebastien Dauvissat Chablis Vaillons - Deep golden color right out of the bottle…had me worried. Aromas of lemons, hay, mint, and hazlenut…still worried. Rich on the palate with lots of nutty notes, seemed very mature. Not a good bottle, premox???
so then we had to crack a
2006 Christian Moreau Chablis Vaillons - Light straw color? CHECK! Lemons, white flowers, seashells? CHECK! Deep minerality and focused acidity? YES YES YES delicious and very young. This is exactly what I was in the mood for today
I’m drinking the remainder of an open bottle of 07’ Fevre (Vallions)
I really enjoy Chardonnay in this form, open, acidic, great balance of fruit and terroir.
After trying most estates I believe that Fevre is my favorite.
Just to clarify this here, the “Dauvissat” Vaillons is not from the famous estate of Vincent Dauvissat. It is from his cousin Sebastien. I visited that estate once and found the wines and winemaking to be lacking and weird. They have some of the same vineyards, but other than the surname,t he two estates have almost nothing in common.
Stuart, have you tasted any recent vintages from Jean and Sebastian? I opened a bottle of 2004 Sechet recently which had good purity, classic Chablis actually. I have not come across that many bad bottles from this estate over the years.
No. Haven’t visited or tasted much. Had a '98 Preuses last year from them…thought it was good, but nowwhere near the level of the Vincent D. Preuses, which is my favorite wine in all of Chablis (had an amazing bottle of the 1990 earlier this week for a celebration). Jean is dead and Sebastien took over. Maybe things have improved. I was quite unimpressed with their wines when I visited; enough to not want to follow them. Lots of tropical, even bubble gum stuff going on in them then.
So, I really can’t opine on them now…just to clarify that they are not “Vincent Dauvissat”.
And if memory serves, in '04 the Vaillons vineyard was affected by hail, so I know a number of producers struggled to make decent wine from this site that year, as you had to do a strict sort to get rid of damaged fruit. That said, it seems like your description (especially the advanced color) is more symptomatic of pre-mox than anything else.
Yes, this was definitely not Vincent Dauvissat, I have that noted in my first post. This was my first experience with Jean et Sebastian and it wasn’t very favorable, though it seems like a premoxed bottle.
Thanks for the notes on the vintage Bob! I didn’t know about the ahil. I grabbed the bottle recently for pretty cheap so I figured I would give it a try, oh well. The Moreau made up for it.
