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One bottle of a highly rated and rare 1er cru Chablis from an outstanding producer.
A tasting note from Cellartracker:
“9/4/2012 - Mrbuzz Likes this wine: 96 Points. S.F....La Paulee style! (S.F. Ca.): Killer! What a great bottle..aging perfectly....fresh lemon/lime, sea salt air, chalk dust, honey florals...pure and clean, great verve....exactly what I like in aged Chablis.”
93 points Wine Spectator:
“For fans of ultraminerally Chablis. This full-bodied beauty reveals almost nothing on the nose except a sense of class and anticipation, but does strut its stuff on the midpalate, activating its mineral, ripe fruit, slightly spicy notes, really turning on the power on the vibrant, long and smoky finish slightly spicy notes.” (August 1998)
91-93 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate:
“Dauvissat's Chablis Forest reveals austere smoke and flint scents, fabulous structure, immense concentration, a full body, and mouth-watering flint, cardamon, anise (almost licorice!), and spices in its flavor profile. Super!” (February 1998)
92 points Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar:
“Reticent aromas of lemon, vanilla, smoke and oyster shell. Penetrating, lemony fruit is leanish but ripe, its density partly hidden by strong, harmonious acidity. Shows a stony, saline character and superb depth of flavor. This very long, firm wine opened beautifully with aeration to show a seamless, layered texture.” (October1998)
René & Vincent Dauvissat are famous for their coveted Les Clos and Les Preuses wines. Many regard La Forest as a near-equal, regularly achieving grand cru levels of expressiveness, depth and complexity.
Dauvissat produces three other 1er crus—Sechet, Vaillons and Montmains. But La Forest arguably combines a rounder, more honeyed texture with deeper aromas and flavours. This gives the wine a weight and complexity typically found only in the best grand crus. There is also a pronounced forest floor characteristic with an aniseed nuance that comes with age, an expression of the great La Forest terroir.
These qualities come from a high percentage of old vines (a 40-year average); a perfect southern exposure; and a classic Kimmeridgian soil that is—like the great grand cru Les Clos—mostly clay. Such soils are cool—cooler, for example, than La Forest’s rival, Montée de Tonnerre—and retain less heat. They are sensitive to frost in the spring, and the fruit ripens more slowly.
Vincent Dauvissat started helping his father René in 1976 and has gradually taken control of viticulture and winemaking. His goal is to harvest healthy grapes that are fully ripe and concentrated which, he declares, can only be achieved consistently by hard work in the vineyard. His passion for wine enables him to put this work ethic into practice with real vigour - close pruning the vines (40 years old on average) during the growing season to restrict yields, hand harvesting at vintage time and ruthlessly discarding any rotten or split grapes.
The wines are vinified and aged in a mixture of steel vats and 6- to 8-year-old wooden barrels. The wood is old and therefore doesn’t stamp oak flavour onto the wines but does give them an extra depth of flavour and density of body, while still retaining their unique identities. These are intensely terroir-driven, mineral wines of such concentration that they take longer than most to reach their best, though they are worth the wait. While Vincent farms all of his family vineyards—and makes all of the wines—different family members own some vines. Thus, some of his wines appear under the “Dauvissat-Camus” label. As noted by both Steve Tanzer and Burghound, the cuvées are identical to those appearing under the R. & V. Dauvissat label.
This wine is not currently available on retail in the UK. Winesearcher states “Rene et Vincent Dauvissat-Camus La Forest 1996 was last available in June 2019, with an average price of £95.”
The bottle on sale is from a parcel of wines originally from Tanners, and is the one shown in the photographs. The level is good, and the label and capsule are in decent condition.
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