Chablis Valmur, Domaine François Raveneau 2010

Here too there is an obvious reserve to the less floral but highly refined green fruit, citrus, mineral reduction and oyster shell aromas. The broad-scaled yet refined flavors are rich and generous yet retain a fine sense of underlying detail before culminating in a gorgeously intense, pure and driving finish that displays magnificent persistent as well as plenty of the typical Valmur austerity. In a word, brilliant.

The Raveneau 2010 Chablis Valmur displays chalk dust and fusil notes, pit and pip piquancy, as well as strong underlying extract, in all of which respects it resembles the 2010 Montee de Tonnerre I tasted alongside. But what a site-driven divergence there is from that starting point! Here we experience the finesse of alluring aromatic adjuncts - lemongrass, iris, gentian and wintergreen - as well as mouthwatering suggestions of shrimp shell reduction and oyster liqueur; and the finish is both strikingly buoyant for its vintage and downright reverberative in an interactive manor especially familiar from this estate's Les Clos. Look for excitement through 2030.