The Wines of Chablis

Expanded Discussion

2007-04-03T09:03:00.000+02:00

I have been too lazy and/or too busy too update this recently, but I always have quite a bit to say about Chablis wine. That being said, I decided that I am going to try very hard to update this with more regular offerings. Additionally, now that I have succesfully moved myslef in to my new place, perhaps I can get back to the tasting notes and adding the rest of the images. The fact of the matter is that many posts on the internet's discussion boards incite me to respond at great length; rather than giving the appearance of trying to take over conversations, I keep my responses short and hopefully sweet. This site is probably a more appropriate place to wax on more extensively on the issues that surround the wines of Chablis.

Given that, please check back soon as I hope to post more extensive commentary on issues that I feel are important to gaining a full understanding of Chablis. I wholeheartedly welcome your comments and questions to these posts and would love to hear from you!

Vincent Dauvissat Comments on Terroir...

2007-01-03T05:35:00.000+01:00

The recent Kermit Lynch Newsletter contains intimate reflection and dissection on two of the finest terroirs in Chablis: les Preuses and les Clos. A highly recommended read for the lover of Chablis wine ...

Daniel-Etienne Defaix Comments on the Use of Oak

2006-12-13T04:42:00.000+01:00

A recent article from Agrisalon.com highlights Daniel-Etienne Defaix's opinion on the use of oak in Chablis (or rather, his abhorrence of the practice). I will try to translate the key passages and repost my comments here in a couple of days. In the mean time, if you do read French, visit the link here for a nice, quick read...

2006 Chablis from Christian Moreau Pere et Fils

2006-11-12T01:05:00.000+01:00

"Here is our first report after harvest 2006 that ended September 25th.We had a fast flowering period in the middle of June which lasted only 8days in most parcels and was the cause of some" coulure"and "millerandage".The end of June and the month of July was really hot and the vineyard suffered from such heat and the lack of water. But August was a rainy month and the vines recovered nicely from that period of dryness.The grapes analysis at the beginning of September showed that we could expect another early harvest. Our "sleepy" syndicate met only onSeptember15th to declare the"ban des vendanges" on that day. Many vine growers asked for derogation at the INAO. We finally started September 16th with our picking team for 9 days in the best possible weather. At the final stage of maturation, the natural alcohol level was between 11°9 and 13°2 for certain parcel, the acidity is way better than expected.In fact we have a well balanced juice which is so important for the life of a vine.At this moment October 8th we can already taste green fruit and see a good minerality. But time will tell what vintage we will have, one thing for sure it wont be bad !!! "

2006 Chablis from Domaine Bernard Defaix - A Very Succesful Harvest

2006-11-12T00:55:00.000+01:00

"After a terrible month of August, the good weather and the sun came back in September preparing a very good vintage. Thanks notably to lower rainfall in Chablis than in the rest of Burgundy, the sanitary state of the crop was perfect and the maturity rather early.
In Rully, we have began harvesting on Monday 18th of September with a team about fifteen pickers.The hail falled at mid-August unfortunaltely caused some damages. So we have invested in a sorting table which was very usefull to keep only the best grapes. On the whites, we have eliminated about 20% of the volume. For the reds, we have reached 40%. This reason comes from the maceration: because of the prolonged contact between the juice and the solids of the grapes, the quality of the crop you put in the tank must be perfect.For Chablis, the harvest began on Wednesday 20th of September with a perfect sanitary state, very good potential alcohol content and acidities closed to the ones we have had last year. So, very logically, the vintage 2006 should be directly in line with the 2005!"

2006 Chablis from the Union des Grands Crus de Chablis

2006-11-12T00:41:00.000+01:00

"Le débourrement s'est fait mi-avril, et il n'y a pas eu de gelées de printemps. La floraison était assez irrégulière et s'est déroulée du 9 au 17 juin. Les mois de juin et juillet était chauds et secs, suivi d'un mois d'août frais et pluvieux. Grâce à ce temps frais, l'état sanitaire du vignoble était excellent. Le beau temps est revenu début septembre, et le ban de vendanges était fixé au 16 septembre. le rendement de la récolte est moyen, voir faible, avec une acidité correcte et un degré naturel suffisant. Les premières dégustations annoncent des vins d'une grande pureté et une belle finesse aromatique. "

2006 Chablis from Romain Bouchard

2006-11-12T00:39:00.000+01:00

"Les vendanges 2006 du Domaine Pascal Bouchard ont débuté le samedi 16 septembre et se sont achevées le mercredi 27 septembre. La qualité est au rendez-vous avec des degrés naturels (alcool potentiel) compris entre 12 et 13%. Les rendements sont modérés: 32 hl/ha de moyenne dans les Chablis Grands Crus, 50 hl/ha dans les Premiers Crus, 58 hl/ha dans les Chablis et Petit Chablis. L'état sanitaire des raisins était excellent et nous n'avons pas constaté de pourriture. Cette année encore, une équipe d'une trentaine de vendangeurs (voir photo) a récolté nos Chablis Grands Crus, Chablis Premiers Crus et les vignes du Domaine de la Grande Chaume (Romain Bouchard)."

More 2006 Chablis from Drouhin

2006-11-12T00:34:00.000+01:00

"At Domaine Joseph Drouhin, picking was not as spread out in time: it took place in 15 days only as opposed to three weeks normally. At the Drouhin Domaine in Chablis, we started harvesting before the date of the ban (fixed for September 23rd) and, what’s even more unusual, before the whites of Côte d’Or! The grapes were excellent but beginning to get too concentrated in maturity. Hence the decision to pick right away in order to preserve and emphasize the fruit and freshness expected of Chablis."

"Whites:Quality is very good throughout, from Mâcon to Chablis. The balance between alcohol and acidity is satisfactory. Lurking in the background is a whole gamut of pretty aromas, slightly less intense than 2005. This shows good promise!"

Joseph Drouhin: Chablis Harvest Begins

2006-09-17T05:09:00.000+02:00

July has been extremely hot, August cool and rainy, and we thought both months would compensate to allow us to harvest around September 23rd. Actually, the humidity contained in the soil combined with the nice weather we enjoyed early September, favoured the maturity.We will begin harvesting next week, probably on Wednesday 20th. In Chablis, the ripening process has been fairly quick and we have already started picking in some early vineyards of low charge. To our knowledge, it is the first time that harvesting in our Chablis vineyards begins before in Côte d'Or. The main start will be on September 18th.

Winesofchablis.com Experimental Search Feature

2006-09-05T21:41:00.000+02:00

I added Google SiteSearch to the front page of the web site today. I'm not particularly thrilled about how it fits in to the site design at this time, but I want to give it a try before I do any significant redesigns. I like the way it works to some degree, but it only picks up pages that Google has spidered so far, a huge minus. Google has, as of today, crawled 71 pages on WinesOfChablis.com; there are at least twice that many tasting note pages alone. Nevertheless, it is a quick fix to the site's need be able to quickly find information on your favorite Chablis wines, vineyards and domaines.

Mysteries of the land - Epicure - Entertainment - theage.com.au

2006-08-24T16:36:00.000+02:00

Article discusses terroir from an Australian's standpoint and features Vega Sicilia (Spain) and William Fevre (Chablis).

Mysteries of the land - Epicure - Entertainment - theage.com.au: "Take Chablis. How does the taste of the soil, and not just the soil itself but a solidified mass of 160-million-year-old oyster fossils that holds the soil together, come to express itself so clearly in a glass of chardonnay?"

Frederic Gueguen / Domaine des Chenevieres releases l'Homme Mort

2006-08-07T17:45:00.000+02:00

In 2003, Frederic Gueguen, son-in-law of Jean-Marc Brocard, purchased Domaine des Chenevieres from the retiring Bernard Tremblay and began production out of Brocard's cellars. The vines are REALLY old, with a lot of them going back to the 1920's. Included were fairly small parcels in both la Fourchuame and l'Hommer Mort. Fourchaume is considered an appellation de commericalisation and wines from the climats l'Homme Mort, Fourchaume, Vaulorents, Vaupulents and Cote de Fontenay can all be called Fourchaume or bottled separately under their own name. The team at Brocard was wavering for a while on how they were going to handle it - whether they'd blend the l'Homme Mort and Fourchuame together and just bottle it as Fourchaume or two different wines - l'Homme Mort and Fourchaume.

Well, they just released Frederic Gueguen/Domaine des Chenvieres 2005 Chablis 1er Cru l'Homme Mort, so I guess the question has been settled. This is pretty much what I expected given the fact that they bottle along the lines of 15 different Chablis, A.C. bottlings as well at Brocard. This makes Domaine des Chenevieres one of only 4 producers to make l'Homme Mort: Chateu de Maligny (who owns by far the most), la Chablisienne and A & F Boudin are th others.

(Of course this probably won't stop merchants from erroneously selling Boudin's as the only l'Homme Mort made, something they have been doing for years despite the fact that it is completely fictitious. Not to mention that Boudin's comes from a parcel that is south-facing and in a warm valley, a fact that makes the wine's terroir completely different from the remaining 90% of the vineyard and hence, atypical for the vineyard.)

2006 Vintage Update from Maison Lamblin et fils

2006-08-04T03:31:00.000+02:00

Maison Lamblin et flis reports:

"If the 2006 vintage was slightly late in bud burst, this has been partially compensated for by a very rapid flowering, aided by the sudden arrival of exceptionally high temperatures in the middle of June. Since flowering, the progressive rise in temperatures has accelerated the rhythm and fruit set was observed in mid July. Thunderstorms at the end of the month have provided some refreshment, but we are still hoping for a more generous watering of the vines which are beginning to suffer slightly. The coming weeks will be decisive for the future development of the vines."

For more information on Maison Lamblin, visit www.lamblin.com.

2003 Chablis Vintage Report

2004-05-06T20:05:00.000+02:00

“Du jamais vu! Les vendanges vont débuter aujourd’hui dans l’Yonne…” said the Yonne Republicaine, the largest newspaper in Chablis’ department. The date was August 21st, and the satellite appellations surrounding Chablis (near the village of Joigny) were to begin the earliest harvest in, well, a very, very long time. Chablis started a few days later on August 25th, in what is surely one of the most talked about vintages in Chablis and all of France in recent memory.

Following the 2002 harvest, the temperatures through November and December were above normal and damp, a stark contrast to January. January was very dry and very cold in Chablis. By February and March, the signs of drought were already showing, and precipitation was 50% below normal. In March it warmed up, with temperatures exceeding the average by several degrees, reaching 22ºC (72ºF) on two occasions. The warmth of March put the lifecycle of the vine ahead of schedule, exposing the vines to the possibility of frost damage.

Sure enough, severe frosts hit from April 6th – April 13th. The temperatures dropped to -9ºC (16ºF) on eight consecutive nights, remaining below freezing until midday. The sub-freezing temperatures severely damaged the crop. The effects were particularly bad on April 11th as it was not only frigid, but the humidity was 90% as well – ideally suited to the development of frost. Had this level of moisture been in the air through the entire string of bitterly cold days, a majority of the harvest may have been lost. The scourge affected plateaus most severely, but there were losses throughout Chablis.

Then the heat came. Following the chilly weather in the first half of April, temperatures began to rise. May was dry, with about 1/3 less rainfall than is normal although some sporadic hail damaged a few plots. It was also warm, seeing above average temperatures overall including a reading of 27.7ºC (82ºF), a record high. Thereafter, for the most part not a single drop of rain fell until harvest!

Flowering finished during the first few days of June. Usually this means that the harvest will be 100 days later, which in this case would have put the harvest date in the third week of September, vying for the earliest harvest in the last half-century! In the end, these estimates were about three weeks too late!

June finished as it had started and July continued with much of the same – heat and dryness. Early August saw nine consecutive days of temperatures above 40ºC (104ºF) including a peak of 41.7ºC (107.6ºF), the highest temperature ever recorded in Chablis! At such extreme temperatures, the vines in some cases shut down, completely stopping growth as a form of self-preservation. This defensive process was common during 2003.

The ban des vendanges, or official start of the harvest was finally set for August 25th; in the end, the time from flowering until harvest was only 90 days, not the usual 100). Many of the Chablisienne vignerons were off on vacation in the south of France or elsewhere and returned in disbelief shortly after receiving word of the historic start of the vintage. In some cases this meant frantically bottling the wines of the previous vintage that were resting quietly in tanks, finishing just in time to head to the vineyards.

The effect that these levels of heat have on grapes is profound. Petit Chablis is largely located on the plateaus above Chablis, A.C., Chablis Premier Cru and Chablis Grand Cru. The surface horizon on these plateaus is typically white Portlandien limestone, for which Petit Chablis is noted. Sunlight reflects off the stones, warming the vines (not unlike Chateauneuf-du-Pape, where the galets roules do the same). This warmth is usually advantageous in the cool climate of Chablis: in 2003 it was not helpful. The reflected sunlight was so hot that it excessively dried if not outright scorched the grapes. In addition, as previously mentioned, the April frost hit plateaus hardest. These two factors together resulted in losses of perhaps 2/3 of Petit Chablis.

Chablis, A.C. is generally located on north-facing slopes. The early cold weather affected Chablis greatly as well, and there will be less than usual by quite a bit. Unavoidably, the heat created very, very dense grapes at best and grapes scarred by the sunlight at worst. Given their less-favorable aspect (Chablis, A.C. is usually on north-facing slopes) however, Chablis A.C. was facing away from the sun, making it slightly more apt to be successful in a vintage of such extreme heat.

Owing to superior water reserves (one of the many positives granted by Kimmeridgian clay), Chablis 1er Cru and Grand crus fared well. At the same time, it is a parcel by parcel situation where some grapes survived and others were dehydrated or burnt due to a variety of factors, most importantly, aspect.

Acidities were much lower than normal, which poses a problem to the winemaker. It is common practice throughout the world to manually add tartaric acid to wine to raise acidity levels in the wines. The near absurdity of considering this technique in Chablis cannot be understated; the bracing acidity normally found in the wines makes it unnecessary. In 2003 a handful of about five to at most ten domaines claimed to have not acidified the wines. Secretly the remaining houses refuted these assertions as ridiculous!

Benoit Droin of Domaine Jean-Paul et Benoit Droin is one who contests that he did not acidify. A young man, vinifying only his third vintage, one might wonder if he asked his father (Jean-Paul) for advice. “No, he asked me what I wanted to do, because he had never seen a vintage like this either!” Some point out that in another early vintage, 1947, the best wines, most all of which had been acidified, live on today. Answering this point, Benoit counters that vineyard practices and hence the quality of grapes today is higher than ever, and certainly quite a bit higher than in 1947.

At Domaine Christian Moreau Père et Fils, Fabien Moreau stood at the end of the press as the juice exited with a device to measure the pH of the wine. He basically tossed the sheets of tartaric acid into the tanks in disbelief as each batch was processed.

Another, less frequent response to the low acidity of the grapes was to halt malolactic fermentation. During malolactic (or secondary) fermentation, the edgier malic acidity in the wine is converted into lactic acidity which as a softer, “milky” texture. Halting malolactic fermentation by chilling the wine or adding sulphur keeps the malic acidity in tact, resulting in racier wines. This technique is somewhat common in the Côte d’Or, used most notably by Maison Louis Jadot, and throughout the world. The problem with using this method for 2003 Chablis was that not only was the Total Acidity of the wine low, but the malic acidity was extraordinarily low. Many nixed this approach because they figured what little malic acidity was present wouldn’t make much of a difference even if it stayed.

A final method was employed by Domaine William Fèvre. Here, régisseur Didier Séguier applied for special consideration from the powers that be to harvest early, thus preserving as much acidity in the wines as possible. On the other hand, Jean-Luc Fourrey of Milly, hoping for rain to plump up the dry grapes, held off until early September. HE commented that the acidities weren’t moving in his vines, so it was worth the risk. A bit of rain finally came, and on September 7th, he harvested.

Unlike rotten grapes, burnt grapes are usually sorted out by machines that are used to finding stems and other debris by their density. After sampling a few hundred wines in tank, it’s clear that there are no off-putting aromas and the fruit is clean. It will remain to be seen whether the Chablisienne, who are not accustomed to the practice of acidification will be able to manage it wisely. The best wines will be very, very good, though likely not as complex as the greatest Chablis owing to the shorter growing season. Some wines will inevitably taste artificial due to overuse of acidification. Some wines will also be blowsy. Overall, most of the wines should be delicious, and their concentrated fruit will help them age over the medium term.

One final note: water reserves are obviously important in an excessively hot vintage like 2003. Vines that reached the deepest found nourishment and continued growth at a regular albeit accelerated pace. The vines most able to do this are old vines. The older the vine, the deeper into the soil it reaches. Old vines will produce the best wines in 2003.

Hot wires boost grape expectation

2004-04-20T17:25:00.000+02:00

The Gaurdian offers its take on new vine heating systems using electric wires to combat frost developed with EDF, the French electricity board. The brief article does not name the two producers involved in the experiement. They are Domaine William Fèvre and Maison Bichot.

Full article (in English):

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Hot wires boost grape expectation

Union des Grands Crus de Chablis @ London Wine Trade Fair

2004-04-20T04:27:00.000+02:00

Members of the Union des Grands Crus de Chablis will be appearing at the London Wine Trade fair. The event takes place on May 18th, 2004 between 10 am - 4 pm. They will be pouring 2002 and 2003 Grand Cru Chablis in Waterfront Room #9.

For more information contact the Union des Grands Crus de Chablis.

More on Electric Cables in the Vineyards of Chablis

2004-04-20T03:48:00.000+02:00

Le Parisien gives further details on the Bichot/Fèvre experiments using electric cables to heat vineyards in Chablis.

Full article (in French):

Des vignes chauffées à l'électricité

Bichot & Fevre Use Electric Cables to Combat Frost

2004-04-20T02:50:00.000+02:00

The Yonne Republicaine reports that a new method of frost protection is being tried. It is a joint effort between Maison Bichot and Domaine William Fèvre. The article includes a description of the method and a brief interview with Didier Séguier, régisseur of Domaine William Fèvre.

Read the full article online (in French):

On en parle : les gelées dans les vignes