Tasted in Chablis with Lucie Depuydt, 24 January 2024.
Maison J. Moreau & Fils
La Croix St Joseph
15 Route d’Auxerre
89800 Chablis
Tel: +33 3 80 62 61 46
www.jmoreau-fils.com
Producer’s Instagram
More reports with J Moreau et Fils
Lucie on 2023:
“I was worried about pyrazines and so I waited to harvest – I didn’t want to make another vintage like 2011.”
Lucie on 2022:
“The volume is perfect – my only small regret is that we couldn’t have waited just a little longer to harvest in some cases – the malic acid was already pretty much burnt away. For me though, it’s a lovely vintage and I’d put it in my top three since I started in 2007 – 09 and 19 and this! We do a long elevage but just a little less long this year as we made so little in the 2021 vintage.”
The wines…
A beautifully constructed range of wines – a couple have some oak to consume before they would make it onto my table. All the same, here are also some wines worth a special search to find.
The Chablis sealed with the new version of Nomacorc:
Quite varietal but softer than my last St.Bris. Supple, delicious – super energy. That’s just a delicious, quite juicy wine – yes – bravo!
“It’s delicate to find the optimum timing to harvest the sauvignon – many like to do it later in St.Bris but I find that you lose a lot of the precurser chemicals.”
This cuvée has been since 2019.
Nice breadth and faintly herbed – still a shy nose. Hmm, this moves well, melting over the palate and offering just a flash of generosity. The finish is very high level for a ‘petit’ wine. Bravo!
2022 Chablis Gloire de Chablis
A little more open, here there’s extra width and a more apparent accent of salinity. Supple, silky but also with a nice – still considered – fluidity of flavour.
2022 Chablis
Organic again. A single parcel from La Chapelle Vaupelteigne – high, low and bottom parts harvested on different days.
More direct but still with a roundness. This has beautiful, inviting, moreish flavour. There’s a little extra kick of finishing minerality. More contemplative but absolutely delicious wine – Simply excellent – at least!
2022 Chablis 1er Montmains
Butteaux and Montmains mixed. The Butteaux very old vines with small, millerandage grapes – the Montmains more like 40-year-old vines. Organic again.
Rounder aromas, clearly rounded by some oak in this case. Nice entry, cool, with lovely clarity to the flavours but also clarity that allows the oak to present itself. Wait at least 3 years I think if you don’t want to taste that oak – drink directly if you love it – it’s a delicious wine already. I choose to wait!
2022 Chablis 1er Vaillons
Beugnons, Sechers and Minot in this…
A lovely width of riper but still fresh yellow citrus. Round, a little sweet, quite mouth-filling and slowly mouth-watering – another wine that’s a bit more contemplative but more delicious too, finishing with a faint chalky tannin.
2022 Chablis 1er Vaucoupins
‘A favourite, partly because people don’t know it so well, but I love the smoky minerality and it keeps for so long.’ On every steep soil on the Kimmerigian rock, plus a part on the hard limestone on the plateau at the top. All old vines in this – the 2 parcels with at least 60-years-old.
Less pwerful but at the same time wider and stony – that’s a lovely invitation. More vibrant, lovely juicy energy – fine texture but at the same time with a slowly growing intensity. Holding a really persistent finish.
Fine, fresh, forward, slightly creamy citrus fruit. Really fine scale, super texture even some fluidity here. The oak is realively present so wait if you don’t like that – 3-4 years. But the shape and panache of this wine is undeniably top!
2022 Chablis 1er Fourchaune
A mix of Fourchaume proper and Côte de Fonteneys.
Some breadth here and a small cushion to the ripe yellow citrus too – but not a bit exotic or golden-fruited. Hmm, there’s concentration here but with lovely balance, a small tannic texture but overall quite a silky wine. Holding a strong and persistent finish. Another delicious wine but less my favoured style.
Opposite Blanchots.
An attractively airy nose – not powerful today but this is very inviting. What scale! Such a mouth-filling wine but there’s fluidity to this flavour too so it’s never heavy. It eases, melts, over the palate and is just beautifully delicious. Extra depth of finishing flavour too, partly saline, completely excellent – potentially even a great wine with time – yes!
2022 Chablis Valmur
Practically 1 hectare and always harvested quite late for the best maturity – ‘It always takes a couple of years more in bottle to come around’
Another nose that’s not full power but still has plenty to say; wide, finely complex too. More citrus bitters, almost a little zesty – bringing a small grain to the texture – not overly generous but with fine intensity. That’s showing so little of what it’s going to deliver – I think will certainly be excellent grand cru!
2022 Chablis Clos
Mid-slope vines.
Today this nose is more vertical than the Valmur – slightly airy in the top notes, a little broader in the base but here is also a slightly creamy oak note. A little gas, accentuating with complexity and energy – and that’s quite some impressive complexity and energy. Only in the finish is the emergence, again, of some zesty citrus-bitters, with an accent of chalky finishing texture. Ooh, that’s so good – more overt energy than Valmur but Valmur has more concentration – who will win this race?