2010 Chablis Les Clos

Bright light yellow. Brilliant, slightly wild nose combines lemon, white pepper, minerals, white truffle and wild herbs, plus complicating hints of noble rot and passerillage . Wonderfully creamy and fine-grained, with a lovely hint of sweetness giving this wine a considerable pleasure quotient even now. This bracingly energetic yet somehow silky Clos saturates the entire palate and vibrates and sizzles on the slowly mounting whiplash of a finish, which leaves behind traces of resin and chlorophyll. There's still a noble bitterness here and a very tight kernel of fruit, but this outstanding Clos is closer to drinking than the previous vintages. Really tastes of the sea. Dauvissat told me that this wine tasted good virtually from the start; in fact, he was afraid that it was more a wine of ripeness than of terroir. Today it has it all, with more to come. ("a good 13% alcohol, richer than the 2012," according to Dauvissat; acidity between 4.3 and 4.5 grams per liter; 9/21 harvest; Dauvissat brought in his Clos prior to a rainy spell that made the later picks problematic; from what Dauvissat described as a small crop for grand cru in 2010--between 40 and 45 hectoliters per hectare)

Veins of saline minerality support expressive fruit in the 2010 Chablis Les Clos. White peaches, slate, smoke, crushed rocks and salt are all quite vivid in the glass. It is hard to resist the Clos today, as the fruit is so silky and delineated, yet at the same time it is quite clear the wine has the potential to evolve beautifully in bottle for many, many years. The 2010 is all about silkiness and precision. Today, it has a little less overt ripeness and weight next to the Preuses.