Representing close to four acres in six parcels of vines including a section in Forets, Drouhin Vaudon’s 2011 Chablis Montmains delivers a generously juicy dose of fresh lime infused with green tea and chalk. Saline and alkaline notes lend a bracing and mouthwatering maritime aura, while musky rose radish along with citrus pip serve for a strikingly invigorating finishing tactile impingement in a wine of otherwise fine-grained texture. This should serve for genuine excitation in even jaded palates over the next half dozen years.
The still delightfully rustic, old-fashioned, very discreetly-marked Moulin de Vaudon in Chichee that Robert Drouhin purchased in the 1960s as an act of faith in Chablis’s revival, and the vineyards he assembled scattered throughout that region, have been the under the eye of Loire-born Regisseur Denis Mery since 1990, while Frederic Drouhin nowadays sees to vinification. Mery emphasizes how lucky he is to have had his earliest training with the Gambier family in Bourgueil “because they were pre-chemical and I learned the ancient methods and vine treatments from them.” Today the Drouhin estate’s vines are biodynamically farmed and hand-manicured by a full-time crew of 24 – the grand crus and the Vaudesir with horse – and Mery was proud to show me his meticulously-kept viticultural records as well as the Drouhin Vaudon old vine holdings in Les Clos, which visitors will find a strikingly contrast to those of their immediate neighbors. As evidence of Mery’s creative, old-is-young-again anachronism, he has even planted a tiny stand near his home in Milly en echalas – i.e. trained to solo poles in the manner still familiar from Cote Rotie or the Mosel. Mery doesn’t deny that 2012 – when he began picking already the 19th of September – posed special challenges to biodynamic growers; and the results here – occasionally hinting at the botrytis to which he testified – are mixed. Finished alcohols are in the 13.5% range, a tad higher than at many properties, and the vivacity and cut so familiar from 2012 tend not to be prominent. The 2011s here are much more expressive up to the level of grand cru, at which point I perceive barrel interference discussed in my tasting notes on those wines.
Importer: Dreyfus-Ashby & Co., New York, NY; tel. (212) 818 0770
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