Jean et Sébastien Dauvissat’s Vaillons Premier Cru “Vielles Vignes” cuvée is one of our favorite “secret” wines. We’ve featured this extremely limited and delicious Chablis every vintage since we started this company, and with each successive year, demand grows considerably.
Of all Dauvissat’s releases, this is the wine that drinks the furthest above its price tag. Insert this bottle into a blind tasting of $100-per-bottle Chablis Grand Crus and it doesn’t just hold its own—it makes a compelling case that Premier Cru Vaillons’ limestone soils are capable of producing some of the most expressive and deeply mineral wines in the region. So, if you seek Grand Cru depth and elegance at a Premier Cru price, this is the Chablis for you. The only drawback with this extraordinary wine is that it’s no longer being produced. The same ancient vines that account for the “Vielles Vignes” title were recently pulled up and replanted. This perfectly mature, broad-shouldered 2009 bottling is a fitting send-off to such a limited and special wine.
Sébastien Dauvissat’s family has been farming the same small collection of parcels near the hamlet of Chichée since the 1800s. This small, one-man-show produces between two and three thousand cases each year in the modest cellar underneath Sébastien’s house. As with all top sites in Chablis, Kimmeridgian limestone is the dominant soil type here—but there is also some clay and gravel contributing a unique character to the wines. Despite the domaine’s modest size, the family has holdings in some outstanding crus: “Les Sechets” Premier Cru, “Montmains” Premier Cru, “Les Preuses” Grand Cru, and “Vaillons” Premier Cru. The old-vine section of this parcel topped 70 years of age, and in the best vintages—this 2009 being an obvious “drink now” example—it produces near perfect wines. Juice for this cuvée is pressed directly into barrel for fermentation and then racked into a mix of old and new barriques for extended aging before bottling and release.