2015 Chablis Village

Samuel Billaud told me lost about 50% of his crop, but more like 30% to 40% in his crus, in 2016, which he described as “a very difficult year.” To make up part of the shortfall, he bought some Bourgogne blanc juice from Yonne and Mâcon and blended them to make an entry-level bottling. Billaud began harvesting on September 27 and picked quickly in seven days as the botrytis was becoming more apparent. He told me that potential alcohol levels ranged from 12% to 12.7% and that he only chaptalized part of the village wine.

Billaud noted that the growing season of ’16 was less sunny than that of 2015, explaining that 2016 shows “a colder minerality—more like 2014 and 2012." In his very cold cellar, his grand crus were still finishing their malos so I will have to wait until next year to taste these wines. (For his part, Billaud is happy about the late malos as he finds more complexity in Chablis when the malos do not take place before the summer after the harvest, although this is rare in the region.) And I must note that I tasted the tank portion of each premier cru; 10% to 20% of each of these wines was still in barrel and not yet through malolactic fermentation. The wines I tasted had been racked about six weeks before my visit.

Billaud told me that in 2015 it was a simple matter to avoid picking hailed-on grapes because the leaves had been destroyed and it was easy to see the fruit. Potential alcohol levels had reached 12.5% by the middle of the harvest, but were as high as 13% at the end. He started harvesting on September 2, just after the hailstorm, and “had to pick quickly.” He added that some villages were carrying heavy crop loads, requiring him to wait for more ripeness, and that’s why it took until September 11 to finish.

Incidentally, Billaud is now bottling all but his grand crus with Diam corks.

Domaine Billaud-Simon began harvesting on September 5, quickly bringing in the hailed-on sections of Les Clos, Les Blanchots and Montée de Tonnerre. Estate manager/winemaker Olivier Bailly started in on the estate’s healthy grapes on the 7th, with potential alcohol levels in the 12.8% to 13.8% range, which he described as very high for Chablis. Acidity levels in 2015 are around 3.6 grams per liter, noted Bailly, with pHs around 3.4. He prefers 3.2. Under Faiveley ownership since 2014, Billaud-Simon purchased a sorting table prior to the 2015 harvest, which came in handy for the grapes affected by hail.

Bailly, who bears a passing resemblance to the actor Liev Schreiber (bearded version), normally does no more than two or three batonnages in order to minimize oxidation. He noted that he does not want to fatten the wines—a good thing as the 2015s are already plush enough. Bailly considers 2015 to be a relatively fragile vintage for drinking on the young side. “It’s an easy-to-drink vintage, with the impression of sweetness coming from the alcohol. The wines will be very good for restaurants but purists will prefer 2014, which is a great vintage for Chablis, like 2010.” Even though the 2015s are lower in acidity than the 2014s, Bailly finds that they offer “a sensation of acidity.” I was a bit underwhelmed.

Incidentally, under the direction of Faiveley's head enologist Jérôme Flous, who vinified the 2014s with former winemaker Julien Martin just before Bailly was hired, Billaud-Simon has cut back on the use of oak in the few cuvées that it has not historically made in stainless steel. As of 2014, the Vaudésir is made without any oak and the Blanchots less than previously.

Samuel Billaud moved his growing operation into a new winery in the center of Chablis in time to vinify the 2015s. (He actually purchased and renovated the winery of Stéphane Moreau-Naudet, who left to build a larger facility for his late-bottled wines.) In the new facility, Billaud only needs to pump his wines once, to prepare them for bottling; everything else is done by gravity.

Billaud’s production has grown, now that he has regained control of four hectares of his vines following the purchase of Domaine Billaud-Simon by Faiveley in 2014. He produced about 90,000 bottles of Chablis in 2014 and will be at around 110,000 in vintage 2015, including his new purchases of fruit from the grand crus Blanchots, Valmur and Bougros.

Billaud describes 2015 as “a very aromatic vintage, less minerally but more fruity than 2014.” The freshness, he explained, was due to the early harvest; while he admitted that the analytic acidity is not high (between 3.8 and 4.2 grams per liter, with pHs ranging widely, from 3.1 to as high as 3.6), he pointed out that the “taste of acidity” comes from the concentration of the wines. He had to deal with hail in Les Pargues, the bottom of Chapelot, Montée de Tonnerre, Les Clos and Blanchots and was forced to pick about five days earlier than he had originally planned, beginning on September 2. Still, he maintained, the ripeness was almost complete when the hail struck. But the rainiest areas that did not suffer from hail tended to make softer wines, he added. The yields in his premier cru vineyards averaged around 45 hectoliters per hectare, according to Billaud.

The 2015s were still on their lees, unracked, when I tasted with Billaud in early June, and most of the grand crus—the wines Billaud ages in barrels—were still in the middle of their secondary fermentations, as the temperature of his barrel cellar went down to about 50 this winter as he had not yet finished his thermo-regulation system in the floor. I will have to report on these wines next year. Incidentally, when I brought up the subject of bitterness on the finishes of some 2015s I had tasted in a few Chablis cellars, Billaud was not convinced that it was a constructive sign for the wines. “Bitterness can come from too-early picking in the hailed vineyards or from the addition of tartaric acidity,” he said.

Billaud describes 2014 as “a great, classic, mineral vintage with very good acidity and real tension. The wines are balanced for long aging.” He bottled the premier crus just before leaving his old cellar in La Chapelle Vaupelteigne but finished the grand crus in the new facility.