2008 Chablis Grenouilles

Pale yellow. Full-blown aromas and flavors of apricot pit and hazelnut. Silky, lush and sweet but with good mid-palate energy to give shape to the wine. Not yet particularly complex but consistent from start to finish. This has very good fat for the vintage but without the outrageously high alcohol level that was often shown by this cuvee back in the late '80s and early '90s.

Bright yellow. Very ripe aromas of lemon oil, spicy oak and honey. Fat, rich and enveloping, with an almost confectionery ripeness leavened by sound acidity. Stuffed with fruit, but this vin de plaisir is more for lovers of chardonnay fruit than for fans of minerality. Finishes spicy and firm. Droin notes that this large-scaled wine has very healthy acidity near five grams and a pH of 3.15. This got 50% oak, one-third of which was new barrels.

Droin’s 2008 Chablis Grenouilles displays persistently juicy brightness and lip-smacking salinity reminiscent of the corresponding Montee de Tonnerre and contrasting with the slightly drying tendency that 50% barrel (the same as this year) seemed to have inflicted on the 2007. At the same time, the richness of ripe citrus and pit fruits reminds me of the corresponding Vaudesir. Brown spices, fruit pit bitterness, and a kiss of wet stone, contribute to the wine’s lusciously lingering finish. This should show well for at least the better part of a decade, but is neither typical of the leaner, more sharply-focused aspects one often associates with this site nor a wine that one wants to miss out on experiencing in its youth. ||”I think 2007 displays a bit more finesse than 2008 and might have the edge in ten or fifteen years,” suggests Benoit Droin’s, but adds that he doesn’t perceive his more generous 2008s – which he compares with 2002 – as less impressive today. Nor, in the least, do I: in fact, they represent the most exciting collection I have so-far tasted here; in my opinion a significant advance on Droin’s 2007s. I hope his estimated time frame proves accurate, but this is admittedly another of those Chablis addresses where – even putting aside one’s general concerns about premature oxidation – the rise in quality and the influence of a new generation are too recent to really be able to treat results from the 1990s as predictive of today’s wines’ evolution. Droin bottled all of his 2008s already in September. Unfortunately due to a schedule change that put us both under time pressure, I was able to taste only around 70% of the entire collection. Wine Advocate.October, 2010