The De Moor’s 2008 Chablis La Rosette once again makes a strong case for treating as premier cru this site that adjoins the diminutive, itself little-known premier cru Beauregards. Enticingly juicy and saliva-inducing, bright and penetrating, it offers striking high-toned maraschino and lemon oil aromas; saturates the palate with fresh lemon, salt, chalk, chicken stock, and nut oils; and finishes with piquant, faintly ashen persistence, but with its bitter and sharp elements of fruit pit, toasted nut, and lemon zest buffered by sheer extract and integrated into an irresistibly refreshing whole. This almost literally takes your breath away. It should be exciting to follow over the next 6-8 years, if not longer. The high acids and sheer concentration of Alice and Olivier De Moor’s 2008 raw material came close to getting the better of a couple of their wines, making for a collection qualitatively more heterogeneous than usual, but culminating in the best Chablis I can recall from this address (which I have been visiting off and on for more than 15 years).Importer: Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334-8191

The second of two pickings for De Moor’s 2007 Chablis La Rosette – from an especially rocky, fossil-rich Kimmeridgian site adjacent to the premier cru Beauregards – was not until October 1. Perhaps in part because of the relatively spare, bright character inherent in this vintage, the small amount of newer barrels employed here shows up as an aromatic overlay of resin and lanolin. Yellow plum and lemon are laced with cyanic bitterness, and a musky, animal note adds a sense of mystery. This lacks the low-notes or richness of the Bel Air, as well as that wine’s dynamism. Perhaps more time is needed for its parts to integrate, and I hesitate to speculate meantime on its longer-term evolution. Beginning their harvest in mid-September, the De Moors made two passes on nearly every parcel to adapt to irregular ripening that was a legacy of hail. The upshot was thus another labor-intensive and low-yielding vintage, but there the similarities with 2006 end, as the character of the De Moor 2007s is strikingly different; and they are more consistently excellent.Importer: Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334-8191

From fossil-rich Kimmeridgian soil, and primarily vinified and assembled – by the time I tasted it – from older barrels (like the rest of the DeMoor range) but with a few new feuillettes or barriques thrown in, the 2006 Chablis Rosette displays an alluring and unusual hint of blueberry along with a clear depth of citrus, pit fruits, and hard-to-pin-down mineral essences. While quite ripe and full, it never lets up on sheer refreshment. Toasted nuts, fruit pits, citrus zest and chalk all pungently mark the long, luscious finish of this excellent candidate for at least 4-6 years’ bottle age.With only a 35 hectoliter per hectare average yield, and given batches of high-alcohol Saint Bris and Chablis stuck with more than merely awkward residual sugar (as of last winter), one could hardly call 2006 a commercially successful year for the De Moors. But their best wines from this vintage are nonetheless admirable.Importer: Vintage 59, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 966-9812