The 2013 Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses had just finished its malo 15 days earlier and had seen some SO2 . The nose is difficult to discern at the moment, although the palate has that key spiciness coming through with hints of mango and stone fruit on the weighty finish.
Visiting Patrick Piuze for the first time at his winery in Chablis ville, not that far from Francois Raveneau, was something that I eagerly anticipated after the praise heaped upon him by David Schildknecht. Indeed, I found much to admire here: one of the region's most active and dynamic micro-negociants that debuted as recently as 2008. Quebec-born Piuze is a coiled-spring of energy and opinions, a principled winemaker who knows exactly what he would like to achieve without pushing too hard. I detected a burning streak of independence about the winemaker. Before tasting through his 2013s he told me about dropping out of college to pursue his passion for wine, backpacking around the world, before finally leaving Montreal for Burgundy in 2000 where he worked at Olivier Leflaive. One has the sense of someone searching for, and eventually finding, his calling. I can empathize with that. Leflaive's portfolio introduced him to Chablis and he was soon starting his tenure as cellar-master at Jean-Marc Brocard. But that independent mind-set continued to burn and perhaps inevitably, he assembled enough friends and contacts to supply him with quality fruit from the region's most desirable vineyards to form his own enterprise. He maintains that youthful rebellious nature; neatly circumventing the appellation-s rules about eschewing premier cru vineyard designations with his "Terroir de?" series that are all worth hunting down. "I pressed a little longer in 2013, since I did not want to risk breaking the cake," he told me as we settled into his underground cellar that stretches underneath the road via a tunnel. "I reverted back to my Vaslin press in 2012 vintage because we did not have enough dry extract in the wine. The 2012 growing season was as good as it gets. There was a slow maturation of berries that gave us very healthy grapes without much disease pressure. We began the harvest on September 20 under good conditions and the cold night preserved high acidity levels. In 2013, I harvested over 8 days instead of the usual 14, finishing on October 5. People probably think it was the rain that was the biggest risk during the harvest, but actually it was the high night temperatures that seemed to keep the rot going. And so, in my opinion, it was actually the Thursday that was the most damaging day. I have undertaken a shorter elevage in order to keep the freshness and the alcohol levels are very moderate, the highest alcohol coming in at 12.3 degrees."
Imported by Aliane Wines, La Jolla, CA; tel. (858) 361-4529; David Bowler Wine, New York, NY; tel. (212) 807-1680; Martine-s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400
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