2002 Chablis Les Preuses Grand Cru

As in recent years, I saved one of my favorite Chablis producers for last and was not disappointed.Vincent Dauvissat, a reliable judge of vintage quality, told me that 2003 was a small crop without much of an acid structure.Still, he noted, the wines will need to age in order to show their inherent minerality, and he was confident that they possess the material to reward patience.Grape sugars were in the high 12.5% to 13.2% range, according to Dauvissat, so no chaptalization was done.Dauvissat lightly acidified only the fruit he brought in during the first two days of the harvest (September 1 and 2), then stopped adding tartaric acidity to subsequent lots, with the exception of the first parcel of Les Clos.All the wines completed their malolactic fermentations.They had been racked once and were still on their fine lees at the beginning of June. (At this estate, the wines begin with very little in the way of bourbes or gross lees, since Dauvissat harvests by hand and then presses the fruit gently, without crushing the grapes.) Dauvissat noted that he may give the 2003s a fairly long elevage but that it was too early to know for certain. Dauvissat felt that his 2002s were not especially aromatic at the moment.Their early honeyed character was now disappearing, he explained, and the minerality will only come with bottle aging.But he fully expected these wines to be as strongly mineral as his outstanding 2000s.This traditionalist producer actually uses more new barriques than most of the Chablis estates I visit:normally about 15% for his premier crus and 20% for the grand crus.But the wines have more than enough stuffing to stand up to their elevage in barrels.(Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; the Dauvissat-Camus label is imported by Classic Wine Imports, Brookline, MA)

Vincent Dauvissat, whose 2000s display great richness and soil character, describes 2002 as a more concentrated "normal" crop, with even better ripeness than the earlier year. Grape sugars ranged from 12.2% to just over 13%, and the finished wines will be no more than 13% alcohol. Acid levels in 2002 are quite firm, and the cru bottlings, according to Dauvissat, will need five or six years of aging before they approach their peaks. Dauvissat's 2001s, not surprisingly, are among the best in the appellation. There are four types of rot, Dauvissat told me, and he kept grapes affected by three of them: pourriture noble passerillage actually shriveled skins rather than rot], and grapes with violet-colored skins. It was the dry rot, found mostly in vines at the bottom of hillside vineyards, that he eliminated. He then did a very gentle pressing of the grapes, ultimately keeping very little of the bourbes or gross lees. (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; the Dauvissat-Camus label is imported by Classic Wine Imports, Brookline, MA and Grape Expectations, Emeryville, CA)