Vincent Dauvissat Chabis Les Clos 2018

Aromas of pear, green apple and citrus oil mingling with hints of fresh bread and oyster shell introduce Dauvissat’s 2018 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, a full-bodied, layered wine that’s ample and elegantly muscular, girdled by bright acids and revealing more overt structure than Les Preuses at this stage. Concluding with a long, chalky finish, even in the demonstrative 2018 vintage, this will merit a bit of patience. Technically retired but very much a continuing presence at his eponymous domaine, Vincent Dauvissat—who forsook a career as a shepherd to become one of France’s most celebrated vignerons—couldn’t disguise his satisfaction as we tasted his recently bottled 2019 portfolio. After some discussion, we settled on the 1989 vintage (“but tighter and more incisive”) as a possible analogy for 2019’s hyper-concentrated, ripe, but all the while classically Chablisien style. In any case, they’re some of the wines of the vintage and are well worth seeking out. Readers will remember that farming here is organic but without certification. The harvest is by hand, and the wines ferment in tank before racking to barrel with the lees (Raveneau’s Chablis, by contrast, are racked to barrel more or less without their lees), spending a second winter in wood before bottling. A first bottling, destined for the American market, sees a light filtration; a second bottling—some of which is sealed with wax, some of which sees a foil capsule and some of which is sold under