Tasted in Chablis with Valérie Beaufumé, 23 January 2019.
Domaine Beaufumé
5 rue des Vignes
89800 Lignorelles
Tel: +33 3 86 47 56 32
Valérie on 2018:
“I’m profiting from the extra volume to make many small tests and will now commercialise some Petit Chablis that was sold in volume before. When I saw the quality of the juice we pressed and the volume too I thought to myself – ‘Wow! Magnifique.’ Fermentations went really well, I normally use a neutral yeast and all the fermentations with that went really well, but those I tried without the yeast needed a couple of weeks extra – but only that – all was done without incident and racked in mid-November. I decided to cold stabilize as there was a relatively high level of protein in this vintage.”
Valérie on 2017:
“2017 brought the frost. We are quite morcellated in terms of parcels so not everything was affected in the same way – we still don’t have as much volume as in 2016, as it wasn’t really frosted here in 2016. That vintage saw plenty of mildew unfortunately, but essentially gave us a correct harvest volume. So 2017 was a little more than half a harvest, but with superb wines.”
Valérie is slowly developing the bottling here and with fine new buildings for bottling and labeling – step by step, all is falling into place. She will present these wines at the next Grands Jours, but will already be selling through a network of cavistes net-cetera.
The wines…
What initially attracted me to these wines seems, I’m happy to say, to be the theme every year; floral, fresh, elegant but classic…
2018 Petit Chablis
Bottling in another month, these vines from Chemin de Chablis just out of the village in front of the domaine.
Bright, wide – with an attractive citrus. Some gas. But here’s a wine of freshness and good drive. Ripe citrus but with a cushioned base to the texture and proper minerality. Lots of finishing flavour and long too. More ‘Chablis’ than some 2018s I’ve tasted.
2018 Chablis
From Les Crais on the plateau of Lignorelles here. Also bottling in another month.
More volume and freshness here. A little gas again. More mouth-watering, more mineral, finer – lovely open and elegant despite the vintage. Delicious again, a more discrete finish than the PC but certainly equally persistent.
2017 Chablis
Quickly tasted last year from tank – here’s the bottled version done in September – it had over one year in tank.
Hmm – here’s a floral nose. A wine that’s got great direction, freshness, a growing width and energy is here too – a little mix of lemon and lime fruit. Small vibrations of finishing energy here. Wide, shimmering, elegant. Not a power wine, but completely delicious and an anecdote of citrus skin in the finish. Excellent!
