Chablis 2016 & 2015: Quality Over Quantity

BY STEPHEN TANZER | AUGUST 8, 2017

If you’re the sort of Chablis purist who believes that this traditionally cool northerly expression of Chardonnay must be painful to be good, you may have trouble working up much enthusiasm for the 2016s and 2015s. The 2016 growing season was a violent one, with frost, rain, hail, mildew and even grillure (i.e., grapes burned by sun) conspiring to cut Chablis production by 50% or more at many estates. The very warm, sun-drenched summer of 2015 produced grapes with often exaggerated potential alcohol and very low levels of malic acidity, with a hailstorm just before the harvest providing an additional challenge in several of the region’s top sites.

View of the Premier Cru Fourchaume

But if you pass on these two vintages, you’ll miss a lot of very good wines: ‘16s that are turning out to be more energetic than most producers would have predicted at harvest-time and extract-rich ‘15s with uncommon body and depth of fruit. Neither set of wines is forbidding in its youth, and both are likely to provide relatively early pleasure. Today the 2016s appear to be more transparent to their terroirs but the best ‘15s may surprise us with their vineyard specificity after they’ve had a chance to burn off some of their considerable baby fat.

The Succession of Calamitous Events that Was 2016