2001 Chablis Beauroy 1er Cru

Thanks to the direction of Bernard Hervet and the winemaking talents of Didier Seguier, the Henriot family has not just taken William Fevre to new heights since purchasing this estate in 1998; it has also revitalized the entire Chablis appellation. Today's Fevre wines rank with those of Raveneau and Vincent Dauvissat among the best of the region, and on my latest trip numerous growers commented on the positive example being set by the Fevre team's labor-intensive work in the vines. Indeed, controlled yields is one of the keys to the high quality of recent vintages at William Fevre. Even in 2002, yields ranged from an extremely low 30 hectoliters per hectare to no higher than 50. All of the domain holdings are harvested by hand, except for a portion of the village vines. Although Seguier uses a high percentage of barrels to vinify and age the wines, he uses virtually no new barrels (director Hervet noted that just 25 of 1,000 barrels were new for the 2002 vintage). The team particularly likes one-year-old barriques shipped up from Bouchard in Beaune, a company also owned by Henriot. Hervet believes that the 2002 and 2000 vintages in Chablis offer roughly similar levels of quality, but adds that the 2002s possess slightly more fruit and acidity, as well as a bit more depth for aging. (Seguier noted that the Fevre 2000s benefitted from the estate's high percentage of millerande grapes, which kept the overall crop load to a reasonable level in that copious year.) In 2002, said Hervet, too many people harvested too late and made heavy wines. Fevre applied for special dispensation to harvest prior to the ban de vendange actually starting five days earlier, and brought in fruit with excellent levels of acidity. Hervet noted that Seguier and his team have the unique advantage each year of learning from the Bouchard harvest in Burgundy, which generally takes place a week earlier than the Chablis harvest. Seguier thus has more data for determining how best to handle the fruit, how to carry out the debourbage how much sulfur to use, and so on.In my notes last year, I suggested that the William Fevre 2001s would be among the most successful wines of that difficult year. In fact, these wines are even better than I predicted. The house brought an army of harvesters into the vines early and picked virtually all their vineyards in six days. According to Hervet, William Fevre is the only producer in the region with two triage tables, and in 2001 the team threw out a substantial percentage of fruit to eliminate the berries affected by dry rot. The finished wines are remarkably pale in color and aromatically pure for the vintage; the best of them are outstanding by any measure and should age slowly and gracefully in bottle.

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)