Posted earlier today on robertparker.com
France, Burgundy: Chablis 2019 and Beyond
“On the one hand, the Chablis that we knew is becoming less familiar. But on the other, perhaps we are learning more about its true potential.”
Some really great reviews here with the usual suspects (Rav 18 and 20s!, Dauvissat etc)
Also interested/curious if anyone has any experience with Jean-Claude Bessin wines as they received some very high praise in this vintage.
WK - thanks so much for a beautiful write up on the 2019 Chablis vintage and more.
I found 2019 a particularly interesting vintage to review in Chablis. One tries to approach a vintage without a priori, but I confess that, having not been an immense fan of the 2015 Chablis vintage—with some exceptions—I was a bit skeptical about the 2019s. However, it appears that acids concentrated along with sugars at the end of the season, and the 2019 Chablis vintage is simultaneously atypically concentrated but very incisive and structured, and also aromatically quite classically Chablisien. So it’s interesting. For example, tasting the top Fèvre bottlings, which were mostly below 25 hl/ha (which would be low in the Côte de Nuits), I found the wines incredibly impressive: unusually intense and tightly wound, but very clearly defined by site. Of course, farming well, harvesting by hand, and working intelligently in the winery help, and in 2019 the bifurcation between the good and the less-than-good is arguably more pronounced than usual. But given that there has been talk of Chablis “loosing its typicity” in warmer years, it was reassuring to see that ripe grapes and low yields can indeed deliver greatness in Chablis, as elsewhere. And it will be fascinating to see where they go with time. Vincent Dauvissat and I discussed the year, and settled on a more chiseled version of 1989: and I venture that anyone who has drunk the Dauvissat 1989s will find their heart racing on reading those words!
Thanks, William. Very reassuring for someone like me who was horribly disappointed with 2018. BTW, I hope you told Vincent D. that he had better start using diam corks. I just poured 2007 and 2008 Dauvissat Les Clos down the drain.
Chiselled, squint inducing Chablis is less of a phenomenon these days, and whilst I can see that '15s do not tick the ‘classic Chablis’ box I have found the '15 Fevres in particular to have turned into pretty tasty drinks and are still quite fresh.
In 2019, it was a combination of frost, poor flowering, and drought that did it.
In 2019, bunches weighed give or take 60 grams, whereas in 2018 they were >100g. That is even more important than yield per hectare in explaining the character of the wines.
Very interesting observation here and above , William. Appreciate your combo of technical/scientific insight into the causes and effects, paired with your detailed and more than occasionally poetic descriptions of tasting the wines. Cheers.
That leads to my question. What is the difference between the Rene et Vincent bottling vs. the Vincent Dauvissat bottling. I had heard in the past they were the same wines just with a different label?
René Dauvissat is Vincent’s father and ran the Domaine until 1989, when Vincent took over. For a while, the wines were labelled René & Vincent Dauvissat, but today they are just Domaine Vincent Dauvissat.
What you’re thinking of, perhaps, is the Dauvissat-Camus label, which is indeed a different label containing the same wine as the non-US Vincent Dauvissat label. The Vincent Dauvissat for the US imported by Vineyard Brands is bottled a bit earlier, with a filtration.
Same wines. I think the distinction may be brand name vs. legal name. On Vincent Dauvissat’s IG site, it is titled “Domaine Vincent Dauvissat (Rene et Vincent Dauvissat EARL).” The former is what is on the labels; I believe the latter might be the legal name of the company.
It depends on the wine. The Fèvre top bottlings, for example, are all under DIAM, with classic levels of free sulfur, and they’re immensely concentrated and tightly wound, with racy acids and a lot of structure, so if anything I feel my drinking windows there are a bit conservative. Other wines, made in a more front-loaded style, have shorter, more imminent drinking windows, so I’ve assigned suggested dates accordingly. I try to avoid the temptation to write e.g. 2025-2035 for everything, and give a window that reflects my best guess. Equally, in the case of domaines that have premox issues, the drinking window reflects what the wine should do. This is obviously a difficult issue to know how to handle, given the bottle-by-bottle nature of the problem…
Will continue to add 2019s to the cellar. Cheers.![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
