2000 Chablis Beauroy 1er Cru

In terms of vineyard holdings, William Fevre is as choice a property as there is in Chablis, with 46 hectares of vines, including 15 in grand crus. Prior to being purchased by the Joseph Henriot family in 1998, the Fevre estate produced grossly oaky wines that were occasionally satisfying as chardonnay in the ripe years, but banal as Chablis. Bernard Hervet, who directs the Bouchard operation in Beaune (also owned by Henriot), also directs here; the talented Didier Seguier, who previously spent several years with Bouchard winemaker Philippe Prost, was installed as winemaker.All of the crus, and 80% of the village parcels, are harvested by hand, with the pickers using small 15-kilo cases to avoid breaking the grapes. The estate owns a high percentage of old vines, and yields are among the lowest in the region. There are two sorting tables in the winery, and whole clusters go directly to the press by gravity. The result is clearer juice and purer aromas, according to Hervet. Unlike practice at most wineries in the region, the Fevre wines are not fined during the settling of the must, which takes 12 to 24 hours, with the juice chilled to 10o to 12oC. The grand crus are aged almost entirely in barriques the premier crus half in oak and half in cuve and the village wines about 10% to 15% in wood. But the percentage of new barrels used is no higher than 5%, and was even a bit lower than that in 2001. No batonnage is done. Stirring the lees would kill the minerality of the wines," explains Seguier. The 2001s had already been racked and assembled in stainless steel tanks by the time of my visit. Even the finished grand crus will be in the 12.5% to 12.7% range, about a half-degree lower in alcohol than usual. But chaptalization was kept to a minimum in 2001, to conform to the character of the vintage. Hervet describes the 2000 William Fevre wines as very ripe but pure, with strong acidity and pronounced minerality; with special permission, the estate began the harvest five days before the ban de vendange The grand crus were bottled last December, the premier crus between July and September of '01. Fevre also makes a series of negociant bottlings, nearly 95% of which came from purchased grapes in '99 and '00. But all the wines I sampled in early June were domain bottlings, except for the Mont de Milieu. Clicquot, Inc., New York, NY)