2014 Chablis Montée de Tonnerre 1er Cru

I have been to NoMad many times, but most of the times to host Vinous events in one of the private rooms. I was really looking forward to this dinner in the main dining room as a brief distraction during what has become a very rough time around the world.

One of my favourite “tweets” of the year is when I can type: “It’s Raven’eau clock”. Given its worldwide renown, it is a discrete domaine that you could easily walk past if you do not spot the signage above your head. As usual I met with Isabelle Raveneau, who is always one of the most refreshingly candid winemakers in town. She takes the responsibility of managing Chablis’ most famous address seriously, but her down-to-earth sensibility and wry humour means that she keeps everything in proportion. The only matter that she finds irksome, rightly so in my opinion, is the astronomical prices the domaine’s wines fetch on the secondary market. She escorted me through the 2016s in bottle and 2017s out of barrel, the former having been bottled a week prior to my ringing their doorbell.

“Like everyone, we had frost damage in 2017. It lasted about a week. Temperatures were low, and the humidity made it worse. If it is just one or two nights then it doesn’t do too much damage. It was problematic in the Grand Crus and in Montée de Tonnerre, basically everything on the Right Bank – different areas to 2016. For example, in 2017 Valmur was badly damaged, but in 2016, not at all. The 2016 was more like a winter frost and 2017 more like a spring frost. We installed candles in Les Clos and apart from that we just prayed. We don’t have any vineyard with spray protection. Except in Les Clos nobody is protecting with candles – you need to have enough people doing that [for it to be effective]. The Left Bank was normal in terms of yield and damage. We picked early, starting on Tuesday 5 September and finished the following Monday, over seven days, normal for our domaine. In 2017 we have lost around one-third whereas in 2016 we lost around half the crop.”

“In 2016 we had high mildew pressure with some botrytis. It was complicated. The 2017 is a small yield but the growing season was smooth: rain when we needed some and then sunshine. The only bad thing was the spring frost. Even the flowering went well for parcels not damaged by the frost, the fermentation nice and easy. There was more heat in the cellar, so the malolactic fermentation finished before Christmas, which is not always the case.

Like Isabelle, I find more enjoyment locked inside those gestating 2017s than in 2016. That is not to say that 2016 is not without its gems, for example a brilliant La Fôret and a scintillating Montée de Tonnerre. Yet the 2017s appear to have greater vivacity and tension, perhaps more terroir expression with killer offerings from (again) Montée de Tonnerre and Vaillons, a stunning Blanchots and a Les Clos that will vie for wine of the vintage.

Bernard Raveneau’s daughter Isabelle, who went to winemaking school in Beaune after spending a decade on the commercial/marketing side of wine, has been responsible for making the family’s wines since 2010 and Bernard has technically retired as of the beginning of this year. Isabelle told me that the estate took a direct hit from the pre-harvest hailstorm in 2015, making just one-third to one-half their normal volume in Vaillons, Clos, Blanchots and Montée de Tonnerre. The family began picking the affected parcels on September 3, she told me, adding that although acidity levels were low, based on sugar levels the grapes were almost ready to harvest, and everything except their village parcels was picked at 13% potential alcohol or higher. The harvest was finished in eight days. None of the Raveneau 2015s were chaptalized or acidified. The wines finished their alcoholic and malolactic fermentations quickly—before Christmas—but Isabelle noted that a few wines were allowed to keep some of their malic acidity.

The Raveneaus are normally in the middle of bottling when I visit at the beginning of June, but the 2014s had all been finished in mid-May. Isabelle Raveneau told me that the superb 2014s “are a lot like the 2010s, with great drinkability.” Both vintages, she went on, are richer and deeper than the 2008s. (Incidentally, my notes on the 2014s represent my first tasting of these wines in finished form; last year, I accidentally applied precise scores to these wines rather than projected ranges.)

The Raveneaus bottled their 2013s a bit earlier than usual, in early April of this year, "because the wines needed it," said Bernard Raveneau, who does not believe that 2013 will be a vintage for long aging. Although he noted that the estate's Butteaux, Montmain, Montée de Tonnerre and Valmur were harvested before the weekend of rain in early October, and that the Blanchots and Clos came in on the first morning of the rain, he did a longer-than-usual débourbage and also fined the must. I had the feeling that I like these wines more than Bernard does; they are certainly ripe enough, with potential alcohol levels ranging from 12.9% to 13.5%. Grape sugars were actually a tad lower in 2014, but the wines' aromatics are clearly more complex than those of the '13s.