Tasted in Chablis with Vincent Dauvissat, pictured with daughter Etienette and co-worker Mathieu, 09 January 2023.
Domaine Vincent Dauvissat
8 rue Emile Zola
89800 Chablis
Tel: +33 3 86 46 11 58
More reports with Domaine Vincent Dauvissat
Vincent on 2022:
“2022 very happy; not high acidity, rather somewhere between 2018 and 2020. Nature was incredibly kind to us this year because the weather warmed directly after the 2022 frosts and the opposing buds were not frosted – a miracle but I’ll take it! We did a soft fast press as there was lots of porritire but that did the job – the wines are not marked by the rot apart from a little more colour – we even had a bit of VCI from this vintage.”
Vincent on 2021:
“We managed 10-15 hl/ha in our Petit Chablis – more than I could have hoped for in the first days of the frosts – it was 25 hl/ha overall for the domaine in 2021 – so that’s between a quarter and a third of our normal volume. Maturities were very good – all over 12° and some over 13°. Because the 2022 fermentations were really fast – all done before the end of the year – I took the chance to make some 2021 bottlings at the end of the year. For the remaining cuvées, we will start tomorrow!”
The wines…
Exquisite!
Some 21s were bottled, others they will start bottling the next day, so these latter wines I tasted from tank:
Not a large nose but a welcoming one, slightly round. Oof – so sinuous, silky and even a little generous. A beautiful finishing wave of flavour – great finishing – what a PC!
2021 Chablis
A little more depth and mineral width in this depth too. Incisive, pure, beautifully structured again with a mm of richness to the silky texture – more direct and mineral in this finish – simply super wine.
Extra breadth here in the middle too not just the bass-notes like the last – slowly some floral accents too. Wow, mineral, clean, gorgeous structure. Just enough depth of texture to avoid austerity but this is still a chiselled sappy wine. Yes!
2021 Chablis 1er Vaillons
‘Obtained these vines in 1979, it was a fatter wine and not really in the style of the house at that time – I didn’t think that it was a wine for ageing at the start – but I was wrong!’ The vines are in Chatains & Beugnons, ‘They never been separated to compare the two as the component parts are a little too small. Normally we start our harvest here but it was the last after the frost of 21.’
More floral – the first with open top notes – there’s some more herby, fine cooking herb, complexity in this nose too. Extra mouth-filling volume. Incisive still, clarity of slightly golden citrus flavour and again a faint cushion with beautiful texture.
Practically the most complete nose yet – broad, lots of air, floral, volume and an almost smoky minerality. The most mineral and saline – wide-screen flavour here – ultra-impressive. A haunting, not a large, finish. Bravo!
All the following tasted from tank:
The 9th vintage – ‘a very small plot.’
Mineral but compact – pure but holding its cards to its chest. Ouch that’s good. Ultra mineral and mouth-watering the energy almost hidden by a small suggestion of generosity but here is wine cut from rock – just a nose short of brilliant today – and I think we can be pretty sure that that will come!!
Another compact yet pure nose. Extra in all dimensions but what a fabulously mouth-watering, intense, mineral wine – you just have to swallow it and then refill your glass. Ouch-good – bravo!
Normally from 7 different parcels ‘makes the chance to bring a nice synthesis of the vineyard.’
Not fully open but the most accessible aromatics of these in tank. Volume and energy – clarity for sure. A rounder wine – fine middle impact – not necessarily better than Preuses but certainly very different, perhaps a little more complex yet less intense than the invigorating Preuses. Not better, just different – I’d take the Preuses myself, today…
And for the road:
Blind: Fresh, lightly with the complexity of age – not a very old one – but still with plenty of maturity and almost a little floral too. (Vaillons?) Beautifully incisive, the flavours are floral too and with a touch of richness – that sounds like a 2021! Between 2000 and 2008 – correct! The rest don’t know. It’s Les Clos 2002 – “A classic vintage, and I can see a little of the frangipane that comes with age in Les Clos,” says Vincent.