2013 Petit Chablis

Like every estate, in 2013 Servin had to deal with a vintage in which acidities moved from too high to potentially too low within a very short time frame. Yields were down dramatically, about 40% across the board, although some sites, Montée de Tonnerre in particular, were hit even harder. According to Mark Cameron, Servin's estate manager, one of the keys of dealing with the vintage was taking only the best parts of the press, where the juice was the clearest, and discarding more of the lower parts of the tanks. Cameron adds that in his opinion, the left bank was more consistent than the right bank, where over ripeness was an issue in. My impression is that the 2013s at Servin are built for near and medium term drinking. The 2012s have pretty much confirmed my very positive impressions from last year.

Francois Servin picked during the first 13 days of October, bringing in very ripe grapes and adding some acidity to certain tanks. "It has turned out to be a soft vintage, a bit fragile," he told me in early June. "We didn't have dry rot but there was more noble rot than usual and we did more decanting of the must." Servin harvests all of his grand crus by hand, and about half of his premier cru vines that way. But he maintained that picking by machine brought less rot, as the vines are given a shake before the machine passes through them and the withered grapes fall off the vines. Machine picking also brings fewer underripe grapes, as they are tougher to pull off the vines. And of course picking by machine is faster, which could have provided a significant advantage as rot was spreading rapidly.Commercial director Marc Cameron described the estate's 2012s as having the structure of the 2010s but with more richness. Acidity levels in the finished '12s are in the healthy 4.3 to 4.4 grams-per-liter range.