2014 Chablis Vaillons 1er Cru

At their best, the Verget wines from the Mâconnais can offer terrific value in Chardonnay, and 2014 was a classic vintage for these wines. Jean-Marie Guffens, who has often struggled to find—and to keep—sources of high-quality fruit on the Côte de Beaune and in Chablis, has a much wider palette of choices in the Mâconnais, which is his home base (he and his wife Maine Heynen own Domaine Guffens-Heynen, one of the elite small estates in the southern Mâconnais). And this Belgian veteran of the Mâconnais knows where the stones are buried.

Verget winemaker Julien Desplans described 2014 as “a very good year, a bit like 2010 but with more acidity and density. Two thousand ten was a touch exotic, but not 2014. The acidity of 2014 was actually at the level of 2008, which was a less ripe year.” Many of the 2014 fermentations lingered until Christmas, with most of the malos finishing before sugars did.

Two thousand thirteen, on the other hand, was a much trickier vintage. “We started on September 30, picking everything at the domain [i.e., Guffens-Heynen] as well as whatever Verget fruit was ripe in the southern Mâconnais," said Desplans. "But at a certain point we had to stop picking even before the rains because some of the fruit was still only around 11% potential alcohol. After that, the grapes passed quickly from underripe to rotten: by the Monday after the weekend of rain, the fruit was ruined. But the early-picked grapes made good light wines with sound acidity and about 12.5% alcohol; they may suffer from a lack of density but they didn’t have rot yet. The small yields saved the vintage because they allowed us to pick a lot of fruit with correct maturity.” All of the '13s are best suited for relatively early drinking, Desplans added, noting that he carried out relatively short cuvaisons and did not stir the lees.