2013 Chablis Les Vaillons 1er Cru

Long-Dépaquit’s new cuverie , with its stainless steel tanks sized to its various plots of vines, now allows the winemaking team to press whole clusters and begin with cleaner juice, an improvement over the heavier bourbes (the gross lees) and pieces of fruit and stems that resulted from the old destemmer. Estate manager Matthieu Mangenot described 2014 as a “soft growing season in which a cool July and August resulted in less consumption of acidity. No sorting of the grapes was necessary but it was difficult to press them owing to the hard skins." Potential alcohol levels were in the low 12% range and most of the wines were chaptalized about half a degree. Acidity levels were sound but there was a lot of tartaric precipitation and so the finished wines are not normally tart. Yields were about 53 hectoliters per hectare in the estate’s village parcels, 50 in its premier crus and just 30 in the grand crus. At the time of my visit, the crus were aging partly in oak and partly in cuves.

Mangenot described 2013 as a very rich vintage, with 12.5% natural alcohol, thanks to very long maturation of the vines. The team started picking on October 1 and finished in just six or seven days, vs. a normal ten.

Like a number of his colleagues in Chablis, estate manager Matthieu Mangenot noted the very narrow window for harvesting ripe, reasonably healthy fruit in 2013. "We picked during the first ten days of October," he told me, "as the maturity came very late, and the grapes quickly changed color following the rains on October 5 and 6." Potential alcohol levels were sound (typically between 12.2% and 13%, although the Moutonne was 13.8%), and Mangenot described the young '13s as "in the category of 2012 and 2010, with a good combination of acidity and richness." July and August were hot but a cooling-down at the end of August protected the acidity, unlike in 2009, when acidity levels plunged during the same period. Grape sugars were actually slightly lower here in 2012 than in '13--in the 12% to 12.5% range--and the wines were lightly chaptalized. But Mangenot reported that the earlier vintage brought "the best fruit I've vinified to date, with no sorting needed." His first harvest here was 2007. Also recommended: 2013 Chablis (85-86).