Chablis - Chardonnay PL (18)

Chardonnay | verschillende wijngaarden romdom Courgis | kalk terroir met fossielen (Kimmeriedgen) | vergist en gerijp op eikenhouten vaten | pure rijke stijl | diepe zuren | schakering aan smaken | veel spanning | kan geweldig goed rijpen 

Pattes Loup

Iemand die hard aan de weg is om een superster te worden, is Thomas Pico, werkzaam op zijn wijngoed in Courgis, wat bekend staat om zijn Kimmerdigen bodem. De wijnen die Thomas maakt worden sterk beïnvloed door zijn buren Oliver en Alice de Moor. Het is dus niet gek dat hij enorm sterke en goede wijnen maakt.

Review

The 2018 Chablis Village was regrettably the only bottle that I could include from Thomas Pico in this report - but what a great Chablis Village, possibly the best you will find. Displaying wonderful focus and precision on the nose, this is intense and mineral-driven. Captivating. The palate is poised and full of energy and tension, achieving Premier Cru quality, with fantastic salinity on the finish. Pico at his best. Bravo. 92/100 Neil Martin

The energetic Thomas Pico was born and raised in Courgis, the village where he lives and works, leaving only to study viticulture and oenology in Beaune. He returned in 2004, establishing Domaine Pattes Loup a year later with eight hectares of vines inherited from his family and soon won a richly deserved reputation as one of the brightest rising stars in Chablis’s firmament. Pattes Loup is something of an outlier in Courgis. Aside from the Pico family, the only other vignerons in the village to bottle their wines themselves are Thomas’s mentors Alice and Olivier de Moor: the others sell in bulk to négociants. And Thomas also stands out within Chablis more generally, thanks to his decision—following in the footsteps of the de Moors—to farm his vineyards organically and harvest by hand. Biodynamic certification, a challenge few dare to attempt in Chablis, came in 2009. His parcels stand out for their fluffy, tilled soil in a region where vineyards often resemble a sterile moonscape. Pico’s priority is to achieve moderate yields and full maturity. He picks rather later than most of his neighbors, judging the moment to harvest by flavor and appearance rather than laboratory analyses. Fermentation occurs in neutral wood, concrete and stainless steel, varying—like its duration—by cuvée and vintage. Confronted by the tiny crops of 2016 and 2017, Pico elected to retain some of his 2015s for a later bottling, keeping them on the lees in tank for longer, an experiment he had long wanted to make, and one that will help his cash flow. The "Mise Tardive" bottling of his Vente d'Ange cuvée has recently been bottled, and his 1er Cru Butteaux will follow in June. There isn't really anything like them in Chablis—imagine if the Mâconnais's Domaine Valette made wines here and you'll get a partial idea of what they're like—but they're undeniably delicious, indeed thrilling, in their alliance of texture and saline nuance. By contrast, his 2014s, which I have revisited from my own cellar, are cut from much more obviously classical cloth, with a profile that will appeal to followers of Domaine Raveneau. William Kelley