2008 Domaine William Fèvre Chablis Valmur Grand Cru

Pronouncedly citric and briny, Fevre’s 2008 Chablis Valmur is like an ocean wave suffused with chalk and fresh lime, dramatic in its mineral depth and uncanny in its alliance of density and silken texture with vivacity and levitating buoyancy. There is a dominance of mineral elements that some may find austere, but even many of those same tasters will recognize in this wine a measure of how far Chardonnay – like Pinot – can depart from fruit and vegetable reference points and enter an almost ineffable oceanic and geological realm. I suspect this has the potential for well more than a decade’s worth of intrigue. The 2008 collection fielded by Didier Seguier and his team maintains their recent streak of excellence, but in a reversal of vintage typicity, seems, if anything, more dominated by its acidity and minerality than the 2007s, and less effusive than many of its vintage. Between poor flowering and dehydration, the crop was down around 20% in 2008 even from that of its hail-trimmed predecessor. The wines as usual were racked from barrel after malo (which this year, meant in April); some were bottled during the summer but the grand crus and most of the premier crus were bottled last November and December. Several of the wines that I tasted (noted in the text, and of course labeled without the word “domaine”) incorporate purchased fruit, but beginning with this vintage, the Fevre team not only calls the shots but does the picking for all of the grapes that inform wines labeled with their name. Like Hugel in Alsace, Fevre has been impressed enough with the new generation of DIAM composite corks to adopt them for a majority of their bottlings, in fact with this vintage for everything save grand cru – so let’s hope their confidence is well-placed! It perhaps also bears repeating that in my opinion there isn’t a track record for aging yet that one can apply to Fevre’s last three collections, the quality having improved too much to extrapolate with any reliably from previous vintages, so please take my prognoses as intuitive hunches. Importer: Henriot, Inc, New York, NY; tel. (212) 605-6706

Aged 12-15 months on fine lees in oak. It’s so hard to describe a wine like this because it doesn’t really have a lot of flavour but it’s full of energy, focused, persistent, clean cut and so refreshing, and has great length. Sucking stones. (JH)

(domain wine) Pale, green-tinged yellow. Brisk, high-pitched aromas of lime, powdered stone and quinine. Densely packed and silky but still youthfully taut, with terrific energy and inner-mouth lift to its citrus, mineral and fresh herb flavors. This impressively broad yet weightless wine finishes with palate-staining length and grip. A great Chablis grand cru in the making.