Prepped for bottling but still in tank when I last tasted it, the Fevre 2006 Chablis Mont de Milieu is from very old vines in a vineyard over which they have a long-term contract and considerable control, but not ownership. Chassagne-like red raspberry and red currant suggestions mingle with lemon, chicken stock, and sea breeze on the nose. Tartly berry-like, citrus zesty, but at the same time palpably dense and full of saline stock- or broth-like concentration, this finishes with invigoration and refreshment but also a thought-provoking intensity of carnal and mineral characteristics. Follow it beginning in 2-3 years, and for up to a dozen, and I predict you will be well-rewarded.
Didier Seguier has presided over a remarkable surge in quality at this address during the past decade in which Henriot has owned Fevre. The wines are now every bit as impressive as the estate’s vast and superbly-situated acreage, not to mention uncannily consistent in quality. Somehow, Fevre has acquired a reputation in some quarters simply for their widespread use of oak. In fact – just as at the region’s other top addresses, Dauvissat and Raveneau – the wood here is nearly always discreet, and Seguier is keen to finish the elevage on most of his wines in tank once he deems them to have spent long enough in barrel. Hand-harvesting and two sorting tables help insure quality of fruit, and Seguier’s insistence that botrytis was unproblematic for him in either 2006 or 2005 is ably supported by the gustatory evidence. Fermentation was relatively rapid, he relates, and the malo-lactic transformation not especially profound, due to the dominance of ripe, tartaric acid in the fruit. With one exception, the grand cru wines (all of which are vinified ca. 80% in barrel) had just been prepped for bottling (including cross-flow filtration) when I tasted them, but that did not prevent them from showing brilliantly.
Importer: Henriot, Inc, New York, NY; tel. (212) 605-6706
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