Bill Nanson : Chablis 2022
Olivier Bailly on the frost of 2022: “We have a nice volume despite the frost that started the season. My first vintage of converting to organic farming certification. I have a very good feeling for this vintage, it seems complete and also gave us more than 50 hl/ha – apart from the worry about frost, psychologically it was an easy season in the vines too. Our Petit Chablis and Chablis were bottled before the harvest and we finished our bottlings with the grand crus in December.”
2022 Petit Chablis sur Les Clos Two parcels from the flat land on the top of the hill above the grand crus of Les Clos and Valmur — totalling 1.33 hectares and assembled. Ooh! — Fresh but also there’s a super-inviting core of fruit aroma. Incisive — silky with a little generosity. Then the spine of the wine becomes visible with a little salinity and then a fine finishing intensity — compact and delicious today — long… Top!
2022 Chablis An assembly of many parcels (left and right bank vines) including some purchased must to augment the domaine’s right-bank vines — but a little over 4 hectares worth. Mainly tank elevage with just a few barrels. 12 months elevage — Tête d’Or has longer elevage with more barrel elevage. Fuller with a more complex fresh citrus nose — super-inviting again. Large in scale with a small softening of the edges — less incisive — but broad and complex — delicious wine. The generosity of the PC is evident here too. More stony finishing and more complex and broad finishing too. I’d keep it 2 years to add a bit more focus but this is already excellent and should improve.
2022 Chablis Tête d’Or Parcel selections — ‘a skeleton of parcels that are always used and always better and the rest are selected from some other areas depending on the vintage to make the best cuvée’ — a little wood including some new large-format barrels — 500 and 600-litres. Bottled at the same time as the grand crus — in December. A more panoramic width of aroma — less volume. Here is a more incisive, fluid, wonderfully proportioned wine. Clearly great as the mineral-dominated flavour melts over the palate. Really broad finishing, with subtle complexity, almost gone but the holding, holding. Bravo — this is exquisite!!
2022 Chablis Grand Cru “Les Preuses” All tank elevage. The first wine where the oak is clear in the aromas — but a wine of cushion and fine aromatic citrus too. Supple, mobile — almost a little fluidity breaking up the concentration. Yes, a little wood influence from the middle to finishing flavours too. It’s not the wine with the brightest shine star today despite a great, slightly tannic textured finish. Give it 5 years to see the real wine.
2022 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos This is the first vintage incorporating the young, 2018 replanted, vines and a couple of barrel purchases too. Here there are aromas going in many directions — some of barrel, some of flowers, others of minerals or citrus — you might say complete — though I’ll be waiting for the barrel to fade! Modestly supple but with a width of cool fruit. Just a couple of mm of cushion to these flavours. Then a small grain of tannin before the wine fades, very slowly into the distance — no fireworks in the finish today, just a faint barrel note — but less overt barrel than in the Preuses. Another wine to wait for to decide whether it’s ‘only’ excellent or maybe better…
