2007 Domaine Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis Butteaux 1er Cru

From a centrally-located parcel in that relatively large cru, Brocard’s 2007 Chablis Butteaux offers musky, narcissus-like floral aromas along with lemon zest and Sauvignon-like suggestions of caraway and passion fruit. Alkaline and sweaty-saline notes on a faintly oily-textured but tart palate add interest but hardly diminish this wine’s aura of reduction and relative severity. The tenacious finish here certainly had me licking my lips, if also scratching my head a bit. It will certainly be worth revisiting in the course of 2010. Enologist Nadine Gublin (also of Domaine Jacques Prieur) is now heading the team here, although I can’t claim that any change in style was noticeable to me after only one vintage, a vintage that certainly inherently contributed to the less than forthcoming nature of many of these wines, as well as to greater irregularity in quality than those of 2006. I found myself less satisfied with this year’s grand cru bottlings as a group – after being puzzled by how several of the 2006s showed at a comparable stage, too – than I was with those of ostensibly lesser pedigree. A majority of the acreage controlled by Brocard is now being farmed biodynamically, and Julien Brocard suggests he may soon set some sort of record for surface area under such a regimen. Imported by: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400