2008 Domaine William Fèvre Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru

($85) Pale yellow-green color. Manages to be both explosive and reduced on the nose, offering strong notes of lime peel, seashell, spices, mint oil, white flowers and smoky, flinty minerality. Extremely backward on the palate, showing hints of smoked ham and dusty stone. Less silky and tactile today than the C o te Bouguerots but this will ultimately be the more complex wine. The extraordinary palate-saturating finish is like chewing on rocks today.

Author: Stephen Tanzer

Issue: July/August 2010

Clean and focused, with apple, lemon, yellow plum and mineral notes riding a firm structure. This is balanced, with a chalk-like texture and a savory element on the finish. There's fine clarity and loads of power in reserve.

Author: Bruce Sanderson

Concentrated, fine and refined. Intensely mineral and dry. Fresh with a sort of peppery spice on the finish but it's more the texture than the flavour - tongue-tingling. Very long. (JH)

Author: Julia Harding MW

Smoky, fusil crushed chalk and fresh lemon in the nose of Fevre's 2008 Chablis Les Clos lead to a palate lusciously-brimming with fresh apricot, lemon, and grapefruit, suffused with chalk, white pepper, salt, iodine, green tea, and distilled herbal essences. Exhilarating and rejuvenating, this finishes with a tenacity, vivacity, and tactile presence hard to equal in the vintage. A gripping, ultra-mineral Les Clos, for all of its sheer fruit intensity, it makes no concessions to charm or winsomeness, particularly in its mineral-dominated finish, which some may consider austere. But few will be able to weather this cru's gutsy intensity unbent, or scour its residues from their gums and lips. I suspect it will be worth following for a good 15 years, but even more than any of the other wines in the 2008 Fevre collection, this should be given a few years in bottle before one gets serious about drinking more than an introductory bottle.

Author: David Schildknecht