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Domaine Vincent Dauvissat

As in recent years, I saved one of my favorite Chablis producers for last and was not disappointed.Vincent Dauvissat, a reliable judge of vintage quality, told me that 2003 was a small crop without much of an acid structure.Still, he noted, the wines will need to age in order to show their inherent minerality, and he was confident that they possess the material to reward patience.Grape sugars were in the high 12.5% to 13.2% range, according to Dauvissat, so no chaptalization was done.Dauvissat lightly acidified only the fruit he brought in during the first two days of the harvest (September 1 and 2), then stopped adding tartaric acidity to subsequent lots, with the exception of the first parcel of Les Clos.All the wines completed their malolactic fermentations.They had been racked once and were still on their fine lees at the beginning of June. (At this estate, the wines begin with very little in the way of bourbes or gross lees, since Dauvissat harvests by hand and then presses the fruit gently, without crushing the grapes.) Dauvissat noted that he may give the 2003s a fairly long elevage but that it was too early to know for certain. Dauvissat felt that his 2002s were not especially aromatic at the moment.Their early honeyed character was now disappearing, he explained, and the minerality will only come with bottle aging.But he fully expected these wines to be as strongly mineral as his outstanding 2000s.This traditionalist producer actually uses more new barriques than most of the Chablis estates I visit:normally about 15% for his premier crus and 20% for the grand crus.But the wines have more than enough stuffing to stand up to their elevage in barrels.(Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; the Dauvissat-Camus label is imported by Classic Wine Imports, Brookline, MA)

From 2003 and 2002 Chablis (Jul 2004) by Stephen Tanzer

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2002 Chablis Les Clos

Release Price: $56

Color: White

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