2012 Chablis Les Clos

The 2012 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos has a tightly wound chalky bouquet with fine mineralite coming through, although it does not quite have the pizzazz of the 2013 at this early stage. The palate is clean, harmonious and fresh with good acidity, and hints of tangerine and grapefruit appear on the finish, which remains tight and linear at the moment, but should unfurl wonderfully with continued bottle age. My last, but certainly not least, visit in Chablis was to Domaine Servin where I was greeted by Australian-born winemaker, Marc Cameron. I must confess, it was strange meeting an Antipodean in the heart of Chablis country, but Marc has been a resident here for 15 years. It was the usual slippery slope. Having started out selling wine and then learning how to make it, Marc finally purchased his own vines that he presently runs alongside his daily duties at Servin (see Cameron). The domaine owns around 35 hectares of vine with a healthy percentage of massal selection, which Marc opined engenders the varied character of wines. He prefers a fuller style of Chablis with longer vinifications and later bottling. I decided to focus on the now-bottled 2012s here rather than the nascent 2013s, which I will review later this year, although I have included a small selection of bottled crus here – not that there will be much to go around since quantities of 2013 were reduced by 40%. “Something that I have never seen before (in 2013) was that the berries went from being under-ripe to overripe within just four or five days. It had been a late flowering and the fruit was fragile the whole year. We commenced the harvest on October 1. The quality is surprising in 2013, and I think this is because the rot was soft rather than dry. Some alcohol reached 13 degrees. The acidity is not so sharp and this is not a green vintage, even if people were pretty scared. We did a lot of debourbage and used enzymes to clean the juice at the start (of fermentation) and that shows up in vintages like 2013.” Imported by Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800

(no new barrels were used for this wine in 2012): Pale yellow. Reticent aromas of fresh apricot, soft citrus fruits, spearmint and spicy oak. Supple, suave and quite dry, with ripe acidity nicely framing the intense flavors of lemon, lime and crushed stone. Lovely sucrosite here for a wine with less than one gram per liter of residual sugar. The whiplash of a finish repeats the crushed stone quality. This weighs in at a modest 12.35% alcohol.

The 2012 Chablis Les Clos is a little bit more aromatically nuanced, understated and layered than the Bougros. An elegant, refined wine, the 2012 just needs time to absorb its oak, but it is without question highly promising. Lemon, white flowers, crushed rocks and spices are all woven into the subtle, gracious finish. I can't wait to taste this again next year. There is a lot of potential in this very young Clos.