Even if you compare today’s wine with other village-level Chablis, it is well-priced. But if you compare it with top Premier Cru bottlings—which it easily competes with, if not outperforms—you’re in deal-of-the-century territory.
I try to keep the hyperbole in check in these offers, but this wine from Domaine Barat really moved me. First off, the Barat family is as
Chablisienne as they come. Angèle and Ludovic Barat are the sixth generation of a family who’ve been faithful custodians of the world’s most transparent grape. Since 1795, they’ve painstakingly farmed 22 hectares of Chardonnay in the ancient Kimmeridgian marl of Chablis. And In a region where small oak barrels have quietly snuck into more and more cellars, the Barats have remained faithful to the law of steel. Considering their hands-on expertise and wingspan of Premier Cru terroir, the family keeps a low profile. Most their wines are sold in Europe, which may explain the unfamiliarity of this label and the “Is this a mistake?” price for this bottle. Their 2016 Chablis is impeccably fluent in place and grape; it is intensely aromatic and teeming with life and energy. Chardonnay lovers beware: This is addictive stuff, but there’s not a lot of it due to 2016’s roadblocks of severe frost and hail (which severely reduced yields yet concentrated the flavors in the grapes). Some growers lost half (or more) of their harvest in ’16, but the grapes that survived were sublime—this wine is a perfect testament, so stock up now before it disappears.
Winemaking is the polar opposite of cooking. In less than an hour, a chef can pick out pristine ingredients and spontaneously craft a memorable dish. In winemaking, ingredients and craft are buried in time, the final dish prevailing years later. Farmers since the late 18th century, the Barats launched their official wine label in the early 1970s. In 2000, their children, Angèle and Ludovic, joined the family business of Chardonnay. Angèle took over as winemaker in 2008, directing a kinder, less hurried interaction between grapes and science in the cellar. She brought in new, gentler grape presses and temperature-controlled tanks; created an environment where natural yeasts thrived; and lessened the movement of the wine, limiting lees stirring and racking. The vineyards, taken care of by Ludovic, are farmed without the use of herbicides and pesticides and nourished by organic fertilization. It’s impressive that this village-level Chablis comes from 40-plus year-old vines—no extra helping of younger vines to stretch quantity (especially notable in a trying vintage like 2016).
The heart of the Barat terroir is in Milly, directly west of the village of Chablis, where neighbors include Vincent Dampt and Daniel-Etienne Defaix. The vineyards face south, sandwiched between the Premier Crus of Côte Léchet and Vaillons, etched in Kimmeridgian and Portlandian marls that formed millions of years ago in the Jurassic era. There is no secret sauce in this Barat Chablis: It’s the delicious paradox of less is more, and in no other grape and region could less be so much more than Chardonnay and Chablis.
Bottled with slight fining but no filtration, the wine shines with platinum into blonde and faint green in the glass. The ripest berries are transported quickly to the cellar, where the juice settles for at least 12 hours before the wine ferments in steel with natural yeasts. All steel from beginning to end without lees stirring (but partial malolactic conversion), the wine’s aromas are a bundle of superlatives: the brightest lemon; the most flavorful yellow apple; the chalkiest stone; the freshest oyster; the sweetest salt; and the most delicate cream. The wine has a full and round texture with incredible depth of flavor on par with many Premier Crus. If enjoying now, decant for about 30 minutes before serving into Burgundy stems at about 50-55F (please do not serve too cold or the wine will seem shy and closed). This wine is a perfect candidate for aging so don’t hesitate to lay some of your bottles down: It has 5-10 years of beautiful evolution still ahead of it! For food, match the wine’s beauty in simplicity with cured salmon. The silky, creamy, citrus notes of the salmon folds into the Chablis like the soft middles of a
millefeuille. The only trick in this y recipe is finding a flawless, preferably wild, salmon fillet and time. Just like the Barat family, you’ll need patience to transform raw ingredients into something special. Cheers!
