2014 Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru

The Moreaus attacked their hail-hit parcels in Clos, Blanchots and their village plots in Les Pargues beginning on Thursday, September 3. The grapes in Les Clos, noted Fabien Moreau, were already at 12.5% potential alcohol and were only picked about three days earlier than they had originally planned. But after picking on the 4th as well, they stopped until the following Wednesday, as the maturity of some of their other vineyards had been slowed by hydric stress in late August. Still, noted Christian Moreau, 2015 was a very good growing season that brought ripe, healthy grapes; only a single parcel in Vaillons was chaptalized. Acidity levels in the post-malo wines are 3.5 to 4.0 grams per liter, compared to 4.0 to 4.5 in the 2014s. The Moreaus expect to bottle their 2015 a bit earlier than usual, with the main bottling taking place in January.

The 2014 growing season also brought some hydric stress in the very dry weeks leading up to the harvest, and the Moreaus noted that the moderate rainfall that occurred in the middle of the harvest helped both to jumpstart maturity and to bring down the high natural acidity in the grapes. (They had brought in their Vaudésir, Blanchots and Vaillons Guy Moreau before the rains.) Crop levels in 2014 averaged a moderate 39 hectoliters per hectare, lower than those of 2015.

Fabien Moreau has taken these wines to ever-higher levels of precision in recent years by fine-tuning harvest dates, oak regimes and bottling times. The Moreaus started harvesting on September 15 in 2014, then decided that the early fruit was too high in acidity and not sufficiently ripe. They stopped for several days and then restarted on the 22nd following rain the previous day. This is an excellent vintage here, with the wines combining richness and firm structures for graceful development in bottle. The Moreaus also outperformed in 2013; although they started harvesting earlier than most of their neighbors (September 30), strict sorting of rotten grapes was essential. And as the botrytis was wet rather than dry, they benefited from harvesting by hand. This estate was certified as organic by Ecocert as of the 2013 vintage.