2019 Chablis Les Preuses Grand Cru

Vying with Raveneau as the best Chablis in town, Vincent Dauvissat’s wines are always fascinating to taste from barrel, although this year there was no blind bottle cracked open to completely fool me at the end. We focused on the 2019s in barrel at his cellar in Chablis on the same road as Patrick Piuze. “I started the picking on 12 September,” he told me. “There was half the volume of the 2018 and the wines show more concentration and tension.” This was borne out by his gestating wines that are incredibly consistent from cuvée to cuvée, his Vaillons, Montée de Tonnerre and Forêts different but occupying the same level of quality. Stylistically I do find similarities with Raveneau, which is unsurprising given similar élevages, though maybe without quite the same degree of roundness. The two Grand Crus are immense wines, Les Clos displaying unerring linearity that contradicts the warmth of the growing season, pipped by a stunning Les Preuses - Dauvissat at its zenith. Vincent Dauvissat opened three of 2018s that are in bottle and as I expected, there is clearly differences in terms of the lesser nervosité and terroir expression, even though the aromatics on the Les Preuses is wonderful.