William Fèvre Les Preuses Chablis Grand Cru 2019

The 2019 Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses bursts from the glass with scents of orange oil, warm bread, crisp stone fruits, and oyster shell. Medium to full-bodied, elegantly textural and enveloping, yields of only 23 hectoliters per hectare mean that it's immensely concentrated, with racy acids and a long, pungently intense finish. I left my tasting with Didier Séguier wondering if the 2019s might be the best vintage I've ever tasted at Domaine William Fèvre. At this address, the vintage's low yields have translated to wines of remarkable concentration, but Séguier has also achieved levels of cut and tension that are rare in contemporary Chablis. My only reservation (if one can call it that) is that these are serious, structured wines that are tightly wound and introverted after their recent bottling, a tendency no doubt amplified by their DIAM closures; therefore, many are surely destined to be drunk too young. But readers who purchase Fèvre's top 2019s and forget them for more than a decade are going to be richly rewarded, of that I'm confident. Aside from the quality of the 2019 vintage, the other big news here is that Fèvre is converting to organic farming, an ambitious and admirable project for this 78-hectare Domaine. (WK)

(8/2021)