Verget’s 2006 Chablis Mont de Milieu went from older barrels to concrete tank after six months, while remaining on its lees. Scented with over-ripe peach and pineapple, it offers an opulent palate but with juicy, spicy pink grapefruit citricity and exotic, decadent overtones. Yet, there is an equal and opposite pull in the direction of brine and chalk minerality, and for all of its up-front richness, this finishes with elegance, lift, and a metaphorical “coolness.” I suspect this will gain complexity in bottle and should be worth following for at least 4-6 years. Jean-Marie Guffens has gone back to vinifying Chablis at his facility in the Macon, immediately after pressing in Chablis (a residency required for appellation controlee) and a highly selective separation of the juice. Guffens was quite bullish on the 2006 vintage – although he characterizes it as “exotic” rather than “classic” – and could afford to be, after having sat out 2005, and given the early harvest in 2006. (It’s always harder, he points out, to get growers to collaborate in a vintage that demands risky restraint and late picking, as did 2007, when Guffens purchased fruit from only a single supplier and cru.) Even given early picking to retain acidity, says Guffens, the freshness and length that characterize the best of them would not have been possible save for two factors. Most important were the relatively low pH levels that characterized the 2006 fruit. But secondly, the levels of total acidity actually rose during fermentation (presumably a function of the production of succinic acid as a fermentative by-product, a phenomenon in many ripe Riesling vintages as well). Importer: A Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93