2002 Chablis Valmur Grand Cru

This wine was tasted over dinner at restaurant Daniel in New York City.

Like 1999 but with better maturity of flavors," is the way Bernard Raveneau describes his family domain's crop of wines in 2003.The fruit was very ripe and no chaptalization was done; natural alcohol levels are in the 12.5% to 13% range.Yields averaged a very low 35 hectoliters per hectare, with the crop level held down by heat, not frost.In fact, Raveneau maintained that there was virtually no loss due to frost.The family does not have vines low on hillsides (they do not own any village parcels), but, according to Raveneau, there were no real problems even in their unprotected hillside sites.The estate's 2002s have turned out extremely well, particularly the grand crus.Bernard Raveneau described 2002 as "an ideal vintage, one we'd like to be able to make every year.The wines have great balancing acids and no dissonance.They're not at all over the top."IWC readers will recall that Raveneau prefers the estate's almost miraculously precise, minerally 2001s to the suppler but less intense 2000s, which he believes to have suffered from a bit of dilution due to rainfall prior to the harvest.

Although I've enjoyed numerous wines from this estate since the early '80s, I've often liked the wines in spite of their pronounced barrique element. Benoit Droin took over vinification from his father in 1999 and immediately went to work at eliminating the oak excesses of the past. Two thousand was a vintage of transition here; as readers will recall, some of these wines struck me as too oaky last year. With the difficult 2001 vintage, Droin did a better job figuring out how to attack each cru, wood-wise. In 2002, he has made his best set of wines to date. In essence, Droin makes three types of wines. He vinifies and ages some entirely in cuve to highlight their minerality. In others, he uses a bit of barrique to give what would otherwise be very austere wines a slight sweetness. I want to round off their edges and make them more accessible, less strict, but without introducing aromas and flavors of oak," he explained. In a couple of instances, Droin uses only one-, two-, and three-year-old barrels. A few of his grand crus are made largely in barriques Perhaps the most important, and smartest, decision here was to get rid of all barrels after they've been used four times (they were previously used five, six or even seven times). These barrels don't add anything noble," Droin notes. Just caramel and pommade exaggerated perfume character that does not come from the variety or the soil] notes." The young 2002s showed impressively in early June. Droin loves the fruit of the 2002s but finds the wines less minerally than the 2000s. But I suspect the new set of wines will turn out better thanks to the evolution of technique here. Droin started picking his grapes, with special permission, four days before the official harvest start to avoid losing acidity. All of the 2002s had been assembled prior to my visit and were in stainless steel tanks.

Bernard Raveneau described 2002 as an ideal vintage, richer and more concentrated than 2000, with no need for chaptalization and sound acidity in the 4 to 4.5 grams-per-liter range. The wines, according to Raveneau, have more of the typical minerality of Chablis than the 2000s, a vintage in which some rain just before the harvest resulted in an element of dilution. Raveneau also clearly prefers the family's 2001s to its 2000s, and my tastings of the finished 2001s confirm that these are extremely impressive, even if they are in a different register of aromas and flavors. Raveneau told me he doesn't mind a bit of noble rot in his wines, noting that it gives them a honeyed quality and a more glyceral texture. There's no doubt that a vintage like 2001 is in a different style," he concluded, comparing this vintage to 1994.