2010 Thomas Pico chablis pico

Speaking - as I have often in this report, most recently in connection with Pico's 2011 - of the potential that non-premier cru bottlings have to reveal real Chablis glory, what a pleasure it was to taste his 2010 Chablis alongside the Pattes Loup 2011s and infant 2012s! An intriguing range of maritime mineral and herbal allusions - salt, alkali, oyster shell, iodine, kelp - is folded into a salivary gland-milking mingling of fresh lemon juice and oyster liqueur, leading to a gloriously juicy, bell-clear and prolonged finish in which suggestions of nut oils add both richness and smoky piquancy. Latch onto some of this terrific value if you still can, and plan to follow it at least through 2016! As Pico points out, this wine demonstrates the outstanding and unfortunately largely unheralded potential of Courgis terroir - where Beauregard is one of only two sites classified as premier cru - for other notable testimonies to which, consider the wines of Alice and Oliver De Moor (especially their 2011s, extolled elsewhere in this report). As I briefly narrated in Issue 191, young Thomas Pico farms a share of his family's vines organically, supplementing with a small amount of contract fruit over which he keeps a close watch. The juice is pressed - with generous aeration and minimal sulfuring - at the family's Domaine Bois d'Yver facility in Courgis, but Pico's spacious barrel cellar has, since vintage 2009, been under his parent's house near the center of Chablis. The seventh Domaine Pattes Loup harvest did not commence until September 25, 2012, but since production is small, Pico is well-poised to exercise patience and to carefully strategize picking according to his exacting ideals. The premier crus as well as the last of several otherwise identical lots of generic Chablis are characteristically bottled in March after the second winter, and nothing is done to hurry along his wines- evolution, as witness the majority of barrels from 2012 that were still finishing alcoholic fermentation at the time of my June visit, thus permitting me to offer useful tasting notes on only two of them. Conditions in Pico's cellar are very cold, which, taken together with long elevage, permits slow settling and stabilization, the generic Chablis receiving minimal filtration and the premier crus none whatsoever, a rare occurrence in this region. A Thomas Calder Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29