2022 Chablis Les Butteaux 1er Cru

Eleni and Edouard Vocoret might be considered the hippest winemakers in Chablis at the moment. That’s neither here nor there. What is important is the quality of the wines that continue to find an ever-larger, appreciative audience. Thankfully, there are new cuvées in the pipeline as they take over some choice parcels from Edouard Vocoret’s family. As we taste through the barrels, we discuss some of the differences between the cuvées. “We have an explanation about the way the Boucheran wines are evolving because two-thirds are on the yellow marl soils, while Les Pargues is on white-grey marl. We talked to geologists who said the yellow marl is more oxidized, which is why the Boucheran can be more intense aromatically compared to Les Pargues, that tends to be austere. The 2022 season started with the spring frost. We lost two-thirds on the Left Bank and one-third on the Right Bank, but the yield was around 32hL/ha. It was a juicy year, so the yields were higher than we anticipated. Normally, we have 160 barrels, but we only have 80 this year.” These are often very nuanced Chablis, whose virtues are not immediately apparent. I often find you have to sit with them and watch them unfold in the glass. Their Bas de Chapelot is a knockout this vintage, incidentally, a vineyard where the Vocorets are trialing tressage (literally ‘braiding’ the vines together to obviate hedging à la Lalou Bize-Leroy, Charles Lachaux and others) so far, finding that it ripens from earlier and enhances aromas.