2007 Chablis Saint Pierre

I asked Sebastien Dauvissat why he now calls his operation "Caves" rather than "Domaine," wondering whether he had started to supplement his production with purchased fruit. It turns out that he felt everyone uses "Domaine" and he just wanted to be different. Dauvissat also had his own take on the 2008 vintage in Chablis, describing the wines as very perfumed. "We haven't had floral aromas like this since 2003," he told me, adding that "our acidity is softened by the buffering extract provided by our older vines." Although he finds the 2008s "more agreeable today" than the 2007s, he considers the earlier set of wines to be more refreshing. Dauvissat did a more serious debourbage in 2008 due to a bit of rot, then had to warm the cellars to get the malos to finish in March due to the very cold winter. Dauvissat bottles at his own pace: with a couple of exceptions, the 2007s won't be finished until this July. And I noticed that he's currently offering '99 magnums to visitors to the estate-a good indication that he believes his wines evolve in bottle at a leisurely pace. I asked Dauvissat which vintages he's currently drinking at home and he mentioned the 1989 Preuses. "I don't drink young wines except in my work," he told me, before showing me two penetrating and stunningly fresh examples of his 1996 Vaillons, first from a regular bottle and then from a jeroboam.

Sebastien Dauvissat began harvesting on September 10 in 2007 and picked expeditiously in six days, as the sugars were mounting quickly. "We got good concentration in the ten days prior to harvest," he told me, "but it was not simply a gain in sugar resulting from the evaporation of water. And, better yet, there was no botrytis or surmaturite." Vintage 2007, he went on, resembles 2004 in the sense that both years suffered from a blockage of the normal ripening cycle due to extended periods of cloudy weather. But Dauvissat described the 2007s as "a combination of 2004 and 2005 in style, with very good balance and freshness." By the way, Dauvissat loves the 2006s, describing these wines as more minerally and more closed than the 2005s, and capable of longer aging.