Aromas of buttered citrus fruit, iodine, crisp yellow apples and dried white flowers introduce the 2006 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, a full-bodied, deep and multidimensional wine with ripe but lively acids, chalky structuring extract and a concentrated core of fruit. This can be quite a ripe, exotic vintage in Chablis, but Guffens has produced a serious, muscular wine.

The Verget 2006 Chablis Les Clos is from 50-year-old vines, vinified half in barrique (a substantial portion new) and half in cement, but no part spent more than 8 months in wood. Fresh lemon and citrus zest, brine and savory crustacean reduction; flowers and white peach all vie for attention. Along with alluring richness of texture come a palpable sense of chalky extract, leading to a bright, savory and stony finish of impressive grip. This has promising potential and should keep well for at least a decade.Jean-Marie Guffens has gone back to vinifying Chablis at his facility in the Macon, immediately after pressing in Chablis (a residency required for appellation controlee) and a highly selective separation of the juice. Guffens was quite bullish on the 2006 vintage – although he characterizes it as “exotic” rather than “classic” – and could afford to be, after having sat out 2005, and given the early harvest in 2006. (It’s always harder, he points out, to get growers to collaborate in a vintage that demands risky restraint and late picking, as did 2007, when Guffens purchased fruit from only a single supplier and cru.) Even given early picking to retain acidity, says Guffens, the freshness and length that characterize the best of them would not have been possible save for two factors. Most important were the relatively low pH levels that characterized the 2006 fruit. But secondly, the levels of total acidity actually rose during fermentation (presumably a function of the production of succinic acid as a fermentative by-product, a phenomenon in many ripe Riesling vintages as well).Importer: A Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93