2006 Chablis Vaillons

The Fevre 2006 Chablis Vaillons possesses bright fresh lime and ripe nectarine fruit, as well as deep suggestions of chicken and fish stock. There is a certain firmness of texture, and an overt impression of chalkiness along with the aforementioned carnal and piscine elements inform the finish. This as yet rather restrained but already fascinatingly delicious wine should blossom in bottle, and can be counted on to demonstrate over the next 4-6 years the sorts of peculiar Chablis virtues that can make one scratch one’s head in wonder that it comes from grapes. Didier Seguier has presided over a remarkable surge in quality at this address during the past decade in which Henriot has owned Fevre. The wines are now every bit as impressive as the estate’s vast and superbly-situated acreage, not to mention uncannily consistent in quality. Somehow, Fevre has acquired a reputation in some quarters simply for their widespread use of oak. In fact – just as at the region’s other top addresses, Dauvissat and Raveneau – the wood here is nearly always discreet, and Seguier is keen to finish the elevage on most of his wines in tank once he deems them to have spent long enough in barrel. Hand-harvesting and two sorting tables help insure quality of fruit, and Seguier’s insistence that botrytis was unproblematic for him in either 2006 or 2005 is ably supported by the gustatory evidence. Fermentation was relatively rapid, he relates, and the malo-lactic transformation not especially profound, due to the dominance of ripe, tartaric acid in the fruit. With one exception, the grand cru wines (all of which are vinified ca. 80% in barrel) had just been prepped for bottling (including cross-flow filtration) when I tasted them, but that did not prevent them from showing brilliantly. Importer: Henriot, Inc, New York, NY; tel. (212) 605-6706