2008 Chablis Vaillons

Fevre’s 2008 Chablis Vaillons – incorporating a bit of adjacent Chatains and assembled from seven different lots – smells effusively and invigoratingly of pink grapefruit, lime, white currant, and Persian melon, all of which follow in a palate display as luscious as it is bright and mineral. Suggestions of crustacean shell reduction lend a saliva-inducing savor while hints of citrus pip bitterness help supply piquant counterpoint to the generous ripeness and bright citricity of a memorably persistent finish. This should perform well for 6-8 years. The wine certainly illustrates Seguier’s contention that generally warmer and earlier-harvested premier crus were particularly favored in 2008. The 2008 collection fielded by Didier Seguier and his team maintains their recent streak of excellence, but in a reversal of vintage typicity, seems, if anything, more dominated by its acidity and minerality than the 2007s, and less effusive than many of its vintage. Between poor flowering and dehydration, the crop was down around 20% in 2008 even from that of its hail-trimmed predecessor. The wines as usual were racked from barrel after malo (which this year, meant in April); some were bottled during the summer but the grand crus and most of the premier crus were bottled last November and December. Several of the wines that I tasted (noted in the text, and of course labeled without the word “domaine”) incorporate purchased fruit, but beginning with this vintage, the Fevre team not only calls the shots but does the picking for all of the grapes that inform wines labeled with their name. Like Hugel in Alsace, Fevre has been impressed enough with the new generation of DIAM composite corks to adopt them for a majority of their bottlings, in fact with this vintage for everything save grand cru – so let’s hope their confidence is well-placed! It perhaps also bears repeating that in my opinion there isn’t a track record for aging yet that one can apply to Fevre’s last three collections, the quality having improved too much to extrapolate with any reliably from previous vintages, so please take my prognoses as intuitive hunches. Importer: Henriot, Inc, New York, NY; tel. (212) 605-6706