2019 | Domaine Vincent Dauvissat | Chablis les Preuses

An overtly floral nose speaks of white orchard fruit, iodine, shellfish and cool citrus wisps. As is virtually always the case with this wine, the medium-bodied flavors possess a sophisticated and wonderfully refined texture that carries over to the powerful yet elegant finale where a hint of warmth gradually appears.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: The 2019 Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses is brilliant, unwinding in the glass with notes of oyster shell, orange blossom, iodine, wet stones and freshly baked bread. Full-bodied, deep and tightly wound, with racy acids, chalky structuring extract and an incredibly intense, pungently saline finish, this is a magical young wine from Dauvissat. Technically retired but very much a continuing presence at his eponymous domaine, Vincent Dauvissat—who forsook a career as a shepherd to become one of France's most celebrated vignerons—couldn't disguise his satisfaction as we tasted his recently bottled 2019 portfolio. After some discussion, we settled on the 1989 vintage ("but tighter and more incisive") as a possible analogy for 2019's hyper-concentrated, ripe, but all the while classically Chablisien style. In any case, they're some of the wines of the vintage and are well worth seeking out. Readers will remember that farming here is organic but without certification. The harvest is by hand, and the wines ferment in tank before racking to barrel with the lees (Raveneau's Chablis, by contrast, are racked to barrel more or less without their lees), spending a second winter in wood before bottling. A first bottling, destined for the American market, sees a light filtration; a second bottling—some of which is sealed with wax, some of which sees a foil capsule and some of which is sold under the Dauvissat-Camus label—will come out a little later in the year, and doesn't.

• Vinous: The 2019 Chablis Les Preuses Grand Cru comes from a single-hectare parcel located on different levels of the slope. It has a very complex bouquet of orange zest, crushed stone and light pithy aromas. The palate is energetic and tensile, with impressive amplitude, and fans out gloriously toward the finish while keeping a tight rein. Saline notes linger in the mouth long afterward.

Producer Information

Vincent Dauvissat is one of the most prestigious producers from the Chablis region of northern Burgundy. It is family-owned and -operated and has been selling wine under the family name since 1931. In 1976 Vincent began helping his father René Dauvissat and he has since taken over. The wines can be bottled as Vincent Dauvissat or Domaine Dauvissat-Camus – the latter denoting wider family holdings farmed and made by Dauvissat. Chablis in general is known for its steely, crisp wines made from Chardonnay. The soil of the best sites is Kimmeridgian, a mineral-rich clay with significant lime content formed by a high density of marine fossils. Vincent Dauvissat has sections in two Grand Cru vineyards: Les Clos and Les Preuses. Additionally, Dauvissat boasts four premier cru sites: Séchet, Vaillons, Montmains, and the acclaimed La Forêt (labeled by Dauvissat as "La Forest"), the quality of which can approach that of the grand crus in good vintages. Dauvissat also produces a Villages Chablis and a Petit Chablis. However, the small size of Dauvissat's basic Chablis holding (on the opposite side of the valley to the La Forêt vineyard) and its correspondingly small production means it can be the hardest of the wines to find. The fruit is naturally farmed and hand-harvested. No destemming is done (the wines are all whole bunch pressed) and malolactic fermentation occurs spontaneously. Winter temperatures cause the tartrates to precipitate out of the wine and beyond this, the wines are unfined. Unconventionally for Chablis, Dauvissat forgoes bâtonnage (regular lees stirring). Vincent Dauvissat is also one of the few Chablis producers to use oak barrels during élevage (the wines' maturation in cellar), though the barrels used are 6-8 years old. The belief is that the oak is essential in developing the body and structure of the wine, but old barrels are used so that the flavor characteristics are unaffected.

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