2008 Chablis Beauroy 1er Cru

After tasting the 2008s here, it was hard to avoid concluding that William Fevre is approaching the level of the two pillars of the appellation, Raveneau and Dauvissat, although we'll have to wait at least a few more years to see how the wines evolve in bottle. As in past years, William Fevre harvested on the early side in 2008, beginning on September 25. According to winemaker Didier Seguier, the grapes were concentrated by a north wind and came in with potential alcohol between 12% and 13%, requiring very little chaptalization. Acidity levels were roughly equal to those of the previous year and will be between 4.5 and 5 grams per liter in the finished wines, with pHs in the very low 2.95 to 3.0 range, but the wines give an impression of greater roundness than the comparatively brisk '07s. There's also a classic shrimp-shell, iodiney minerality in the 2008s that suggests that these wines will be classics. With just a couple of exceptions, I focused on the Fevre domain bottlings. The malos were late in 2008, and the top wines had been assembled and moved to tanks in April, where they were still resting on their lees. Seguier uses a certain percentage of barriques for his wines until the end of the malos, but very little of it new. The house brings in a lot of one- and two-year-old barrels from Bouchard (also owned by Henriot) and then uses them for as many as 10 to 12 years.