2020 Chablis Montmains 1er Cru

I had to walk through a building site upon entering Duplessis. They are expanding their barrel cellar with a new ground-floor tasting room, which should be finished by the end of this year. Lilian Duplessis is the fifth generation of one of the oldest winemaking families in Chablis, currently farming 9.8 hectares of vines that have been certified organic since 2013. “It was hot and sunny in 2020. We picked around August 24, and it took about a week, a combination of hand-picking, mainly on the Right Bank, and machine-harvesting for the rest,” Duplessis told me on my brief visit (he was busy out in the vineyard). “For example, Montmains is picked by machine. The wines were quite heavy [at the beginning of their barrel maturation] and now they are becoming more classic, with alcohol levels of 12.5° to 12.8°. We will add a bit of SO2 at racking and just before bottling.” The 2020s from barrel are promising, particularly the Montée de Tonnerre and Montmains, which somehow echoed Thomas Pico at Pattes-Loup in style. I have to admit that at the Burgfest tasting, the Duplessis wines could be a little perplexing, not least when I compare them to my own notes out of barrel, which suggest that they might enter a dumb phase after bottling and require longer to settle.