2014 Chablis Butteaux Vieilles Vignes 1er Cru

Guillaume Gicqueau-Michel told me that the September 1 hail affected 90% of the estate, sparing only Vaudésir, Grenouilles and Petit Chablis , but adding that in Clos the only impact was on the leaves. He was planning to start harvesting around September 6 but quickly reorganized to begin on September 3. “The unaffected estates came to help us with their harvesting machines,” he told me, and within the first two and a half days, half of the estate’s fruit had been pressed. (Michel picks its grand crus, Butteaux Vieilles Vignes, Séchets and Vaulorent by hand.) “We did 13 three-hour presses on the first day,” he added. “If the hail had come two weeks earlier [i.e., before the grapes had achieved adequate ripeness], I’d have no wine to show you.” All of the 2015s had been racked and sulfated after a bentonite fining the week before my visit, which made tasting them a challenge.

The ‘15s have considerably lower acidity than the 2014s—typically between 3.5 and 3.7 grams per liter, vs. 4.3 to 4.7—“but they feel fresher than that and show some tension,” said Gicqueau-Michel. Before the hail we were worrying about high alcohol levels but the hail and rain storm reduced potential alcohol by about one degree. “At the beginning, the Montée de Tonnerre and Forêts came in at 11.7%; they would have been at 13% without the hail,” he went on. “By day three of the harvest, sugars were more like 12.2% or 12.3% and they went higher after that, with the Vaudésir picked late, at 12.6%. He did not keep the lees in 2015 because he felt that the wines were already fat enough. And the natural-yeast fermentations went on for three or four months, which he said was “like a natural batonnage.”

Guillaume Gicqueau-Michel was not the only Chablis winemaker who told me that the fruit in 2014 took a while to reach phenolic maturity. July and August brought a lot of rain (about 250 millimeters, according to Gicqueau-Michel) and there were mildew pressures late in the season; considerable millerandage also slowed down the ripening. The estate started harvesting on September 17, but the ripeness was uneven and some of the grapes were still hard despite their analytic maturity. In fact, the team stopped for three days in the middle of the harvest to wait for the skins to get riper, and eventually finished on October 1. Potential alcohol levels averaged about 12.3% and most of the wines were lightly chaptalized. The fermentations were long and Gicqueau-Michel did not keep much in the way of lees after a débourbage lasting 18 to 24 hours.

Two thousand thirteen brought the smallest estate-wide production on record here: 38 hectoliters per hectare. “It’s not a classic vintage but it’s a good one,” said Gicqueau-Michel, adding that the grapes were very ripe and that there was almost no chaptalization. The estate started harvesting on October 2 and went very quickly. Following 37 millimeters of rain on October 5, they rented a second picking machine and finished in three days flat. “Otherwise it would have been a disaster,” said Gicqueau-Michel, who advises drinking the 2013s early “while waiting for your 2012s and 2010s.”

Incidentally, this estate began using DIAM corks for its 2013 premier crus. But they selected the DIAM 5s, which are less dense than the 10s and are guaranteed for a shorter life span, because the Louis Michel wines typically start a bit reductive and austere.