2016 Chablis Les Clos
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Tasting notes
The 2016 Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru has attractive flint and smoky scents on the nose, very classic and traditional in style but conveying a sense of energy and focused. The palate is well balanced with a fine bead of acidity, a more understated Les Clos than its peers but demonstrating more precise and just more Chablis-like characteristics. This is a well crafted Les Clos that will repay cellaring. Tasted blind at the BIVB Chablis tasting.
Critic scores
Average Score
William Kelley, Wine Advocate
Neal Martin
More reviews and scores
The 2016 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos is the most reserved wine in the range, unfurling slowly with aromas of citrus zest, spring flowers and iodine that I'd expect to show more generosity with a few years' bottle age, while retaining its classic outlines. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, deep and foursquare, with a concentrated, tight-knit profile and a tense, stony finish.
(aging in what Olivier Bailly described as 15-hectoliter stainless steel barrels; he noted that he was lucky to have purchased some small cuves for the 2016 harvest): Bright light-medium yellow. Knockout nose combines aromas of fresh apricot, musky ginger, crushed rock and scallop shell; no shortage of lift here! Very concentrated, dense, masculine wine with a touch of sweetness swallowed up by saline minerality (the acidity here is 4.4 grams per liter). Finishes powerful, tactile and very long, almost austere in spite of its hint of sweetness but not particularly phenolic. This is much less delicate than the Valmur and Vaudésir yet still wonderfully fine-grained and silky. The yield here was just 10 hectoliters per hectare due to frost, said Bailly, adding that this site hadn't frosted for decades.
The 2016 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos is the most reserved wine in the range, unfurling slowly with aromas of citrus zest, spring flowers and iodine that I'd expect to show more generosity with a few years' bottle age, while retaining its classic outlines. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, deep and foursquare, with a concentrated, tight-knit profile and a tense, stony finish. Aug 2018, www.robertparker.com