Jean-Claude Bessin "Valmur" Chablis Grand Cru, 2012

The deep, pure and youthful nose offers up a very complex mélange of apple, pear, grapefruit, kaleidoscopic minerality, beeswax, orange zest and a topnote of spring flowers. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, pure and absolutely singing, with stunning mid-palate depth, laser-like focus, brisk acids and magical length and grip on the mineral bath of a finish. There is so much still to unfold here in terms of secondary layers of complexity, but the structure is not forbidding and I suspect there will be several bottles of this wine that fall to infanticide within the first few years after its release. This is a monumental bottle of Valmur!

The Bessin vineyards are farmed organically according to the precepts of lutte raisonée.  At harvest, the grapes are manually picked and sorted during a narrow 10-day window, then pneumatically pressed, slowly and gently. The must is then racked into thermo-regulated enameled tanks for fermentation over indigenous yeasts. The wines undergo a lengthy élevage on fine lees, 15-18 months, with a maximum of 10% new oak. If necessary in a vintage, light kieselguhr fining and filtration may be used.