2010 Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru

This recent charity dinner at Saison was easily the finest meal I have had there and also one of my best dinners of 2018, period. The evening came together as a charity lot that was auctioned off at the most recent La Festa del Barolo to benefit children’s oncology at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Saison donated dinner and I contributed the wines from my cellar. It was a spectacular night of food, wine and conversation, all for a great cause.

My visit with Bernard Raveneau was one of the highlights of my trip to Chablis earlier this summer. At their best, Raveneau's wines are contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful. I never miss a chance to drink them whenever I can. The 2011 harvest started on September 5th and lasted 6 days. Hail was an issue in some spots, most notable Les Clos and Montée de Tonnerre, where yields were down 25%. Raveneau adds that a measure of minerality is missing because of the late rains in the season. Raveneau thinks the 2010s have more character than the 2011s. The irregular flowering was most severe on the right bank (Clos and Mont de Tonnerre in particular), while the left bank, which was a week later to flower moved through the flowering with only a 10-15% reduction in yields, modest within the context of the vintage. Raveneau told me the 2010s were very austere at the outset. He thought they might stay that way, instead the wines softened considerably after the malos, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The 2010s were bottled end of May 2012, quite late by Chablis standards. As for the wines, they are pretty stratospheric. There is a sense of utter life and vividness in the 2010s that makes them utterly irresistible.

Bernard Raveneau provides unusual perspective with regards to the 2010s. While most of his colleagues talk about a vintage with high acidity, Raveneau points out that the 2010s are actually low in acidity relative to the wines Chablis produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Yields in 2010 were 20% lower than in 2009. The vineyards on the right bank were affected by the irregular flowering, while the vineyards on the left bank were hit by hail in July. August was warm until the end of the month, when rain became a bit of an issue. Raveneau began harvesting the 2010s on September 22, while the 2009s were brought in beginning on September 14. The 2009s were bottled two weeks before my visit. These are two thrilling collections from one of the village's uncontested superstars.

Bernard Raveneau, a candid judge of vintages, described 2010 as between 2008 and 2007 in style. "Our 2008s are much richer, with acidity levels similar to 2010," he explained. "The earlier vintage brought slow maturity under cool conditions, without rot." Grape sugars in 2010 were in the 12% to 12.5% range, and the wines were chaptalized about a half degree. No bottled wines will be over 13%, promised Raveneau. The 2009s here are less dense and structured than 2008 or 2010, said Raveneau. They had just been bottled prior to my visit, and Raveneau was reluctant to show them. It's entirely possible that they are better than my scores suggest. Incidentally, Raveneau pointed out that a number of the 2010s finished with close to two grams per liter of residual sugar (a bit higher than the 2009s), as the sugar fermentations were trickier to finish in '10. This was also true for a number of white wine producers on the Cote d''Or.