2023 Domaine Vincent Dauvissat 'Les Clos' Grand Cru Chablis

Along with François Raveneau — his father René's brother-in-law — Domaine René et Vincent Dauvissat is one of the two undisputed reference points for great Chablis.

The family has estate-bottled under its own name since 1931, when Robert Dauvissat became one of the appellation's first domaine-bottlers in an era ruled by bulk wine. René built the reputation; Vincent joined in 1976 and took over in 1989, and the fourth generation, Ghislain and Étiennette, joined in 2013. Across roughly eleven hectares spanning every Chablis tier, Vincent has farmed biodynamically since around 2002, quietly and without seeking certification.

The cellar work is famously traditional: hand-harvested fruit, whole-bunch pressing with no destemming, indigenous-yeast fermentation split between enameled steel and wood, and spontaneous malolactic.

The wines then age in 6-to-8-year-old oak barrels — never new — so the oak lends body and structure without imposing its own flavor. There's no lees stirring and no fining; only the winter cold settles the wine. It's a recipe designed to let Kimmeridgian terroir speak.

Les Clos is the grandest of Chablis's seven Grand Cru climats, and Dauvissat's bottling comes from old vines of fifty-plus years on the famous south-facing slope. If his Les Preuses is all ethereal lift, Les Clos is its broader, more assertive counterpart — Vincent himself calls the two "opposites."

The 2023 is full-bodied and multidimensional, layering ripe peach, almond paste and beeswax over wet stone, oyster shell and a saline, mineral core, with bright acidity and abundant extract framing a very long finish.

Powerful and youthfully austere, it's a wine built to be cellared, not rushed — the kind that rewards a decade of patience and ages for thirty years or more.