France · Loire · Upper Loire · Sancerre White · Still · wine-wine · 1359125
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| Vintage | Packing | Offers | Bids | Market price | WA rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2017 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 2996.76 | |
| 2017 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 1498.38 | |
| 2019 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2020 | 12 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 4994.16 | |
| 2020 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | 2497.08 | |
| 2021 | 6 x 75cl | 0 | 0 | ||
| 2022 | 6 x 75cl | 1 | 0 |
Rating: 94 –94
A mouthwatering style that's starting to settle into the bottle, shaking off its primary excitedness. The 2019 Sancerre Chambrates is very satisfying, lick-your-lips stuff. It provides a seamless texture, delicate nectarine and citrus-like fruit flavors and, crucially, harmony.
Rating: 92 –92
This 2020 Sancerre Chambrates is a ripe and succulent style with floral notes and pure apple and pear fruit flavors. Alcohol warmth (14.5%) detracts from the overall impression and clips the finish; although, the serving temperature was a little higher than ideal when tasted in the Vacheron's cellar.
Rating: 93 –94
The 2020 Sancerre Chambrates is a clean and pure wine with excellent focus. It's already open, offering richness and roundness. The clay-based soil provides appealing palate breadth while the finest of textures coats the mouth. Mouthwatering acidity combines with appealing pear and apple flavors on the precise finish.
Rating: 94 –94
Delicate and elegant, with ripe, bright fruit aromas and earthy as well as orange notes on the intense but refined nose, the 2019 Sancerre Chambrates is a tight, intense and tensioned wine whose vitality, finesse and elegance combined with a dense fruit core and sustainable mineral grip reminds me of dry limestone Riesling crus from Alsace, Pfalz or the hilly lands of the Wonnegau in Rheinhessen, Germany. This is a beautiful vin de terroir. Highly stimulating and with lingering salinity, this is a Sancerre ready to be served now and over this decade. The grapes were picked between September 12th and October 4th. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 93 –93
From an average of 19-year-old vines on jurassic limestone (Oxfordiens) and picked between September 5 and 26, the 2018 Sancerre Chambrates opens with a clear, refined and aromatic nose with ripe pear and delicate flint stone notes. Round, refined and elegant on the palate, this is a rich and full-bodied but perfectly balanced Chambrates with very fine tannins and lingering salinity. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 93 –93
From a plateau on limestone covered by red clay soils, Vacheron's 2017 Sancerre Chambrates is discreet in its still yeasty but elegant and refined bouquet that is vegetal and stony rather than fruity but will open up with aeration. Silky, round and elegant on the first contact with the tongue, this is a full-bodied, intense, textural and complex Sancerre with a dense fruit core and a yeasty layer that adds mouthfeel. However, the wine remains clearly defined, mineral and crisp, with a firm and salty-crispy finish. This is another classic, and it has a rather coolish character. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 92 –92
The 2016 Sancerre Chambrates exhibits a deep, dense, tight, fresh and spicy-mineral bouquet with citrus-fruit aromas (mandarins, lemons), flint stones and white currant notes. Very elegant on the first attack, this full-bodied, intense, tightly woven and persistent Sancerre is remarkably fine and balanced, revealing lots of power, tannic grip and serious astringency on the aftertaste. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 95 –95
The 2015 Sancerre Chambrates opens coolish, flinty and deep, with substantial minerality on the nose that displays a dense and substantial bouquet with salty notes of crushed stones intermixed with passion fruit, Tasmania pepper and peach aromas. Rich and round yet pure and salty on the vital and mineral palate, this is a superb 2015 because it bears the warmth of the vintage as well as the coolness of the terroir. It is wide and complex, with fine grip and long mineral tension with this rich and intense fruit. A superb 2015. Tasted in February 2021.
Rating: 90 –91
The Vacheron 2011 Sancerre Chambrates introduces a refreshment, clarity, and mineral dimension in the forms of salt, iodine, and chalk that its two ostensibly lesser siblings from the present collection could not muster. As such, there is also a greater sense of vivacity. And no wonder: this was picked at the start of harvest, 2011, meaning in the first days of September. Luscious honeydew is threaded with fresh lime; then sets up seriously engaging and active interplay with the wine’s mineral dimensions in a long buoyant and refreshing finish. This will probably hold well for several years but I would hate to miss out on the pleasure of its company soon after bottling, in other words: as near as possible to the way it showed in April. I wrote extensively in Issue 190 about recent developments at their domaine, and this year the dynamic duo of young cousins Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron filled my ear and my tasting glass with so many tales of new plantings, projects, and bottlings; insights into terroir and technique; and well-considered evolutions in approach, that I can only manage to touch on a few of these in the introductory lines and tasting notes which follow. Suffice it to say for keeping in view the big picture, that the nexus of human talent and vinous quality that is Domaine Vacheron keeps increasing in brightness and intensity (although one can’t help noting that the prices keep pace), while approaches in the vineyards become increasingly meticulous and labor-intensive, and those in the cellar emphasize – always in an experimental spirit – gentler fermentative extraction for Pinot and larger-sized, increasingly neutral barrels for both reds and whites. In particular, the use of upright wooden fermentors for aging Sauvignon as well – an approach only begun (as I described in issue 190) with certain wines of the 2009 vintage – has been greatly extended. Filtration has been virtually eliminated – entirely so for vintage 2010 – a development made possible, say the Vacherons, by the greater insights and watchfulness they now bring to bear on white wine elevage, which in any event has long been unusually leisurely at this address. Predictably placing great emphasis on what they take to be the fruits of prolonged biodynamic cultivation, the Vacherons point out that the grapes they began harvesting on September 24, 2010 were ripe and their acidity majority tartaric, observations that are certainly corroborated in the glass. Their claim to have largely avoided and otherwise sorted out any less than perfect fruit in 2011 – when they began harvesting three full weeks earlier than in 2010 – is similarly backed up by the gustatory evidence. The past two years have, as Jean-Laurent Vacheron notes, been characterized by “harvesting the Sauvignons a bit earlier, for freshness, and risking leaving the Pinots to ripen further and be picked last. With Pinot,” he adds, “we don’t pick apart any bunches on the sorting table; if there’s any rot the whole bunch gets eliminated,” a rigor that – when combined with later, riper picking – dovetails with their enhanced retention of whole berries and with gentler extraction, approaches that have taken to a new level of refinement (and, I suspect, of harmonious aging potential) what were already widely considered the best of their appellation – and if you don’t believe me, just compare the Vacherons’ 2010 reds with those of almost any other grower’s from that challenging Pinot vintage! (My notes on the nature of individual sites as well as on elevage were generally taken in connection with tasting the 2010s, so look for them incorporated into the applicable 2010 vintage tasting notes.) A Jon-David Headrick Selection (various importers), Asheville, NC; tel. (828) 252 8245; also, a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93
Rating: 92 –92
The Vacheron 2010 Sancerre Chambrates represents the inaugural bottling dedicated to nearly 20 year old vines (largely the estate’s own selection massale) on a plateau above the rockier, thinner-soiled Paradis. “This is a bit different on account of being raised 60% in barrique, but the rest in wooden upright,” relates Jean-Dominique Vacheron, which I find amusing given that only a couple of years ago, that description would have closely fit “the usual” regimen of elevage chez Vacheron! Imagine the briny, complex liquor of oysters mingled with nut oils, shrimp shell reduction, lime and grapefruit. Tart yellow plum and piquant plum pit emerge as one works this around in the mouth, and the finish is vibrant and compulsively saliva- and next-sip inducing. I suspect that this wine will intrigue, provoke, and delight for a decade. I wrote extensively in Issue 190 about recent developments at their domaine, and this year the dynamic duo of young cousins Jean-Laurent and Jean-Dominique Vacheron filled my ear and my tasting glass with so many tales of new plantings, projects, and bottlings; insights into terroir and technique; and well-considered evolutions in approach, that I can only manage to touch on a few of these in the introductory lines and tasting notes which follow. Suffice it to say for keeping in view the big picture, that the nexus of human talent and vinous quality that is Domaine Vacheron keeps increasing in brightness and intensity (although one can’t help noting that the prices keep pace), while approaches in the vineyards become increasingly meticulous and labor-intensive, and those in the cellar emphasize – always in an experimental spirit – gentler fermentative extraction for Pinot and larger-sized, increasingly neutral barrels for both reds and whites. In particular, the use of upright wooden fermentors for aging Sauvignon as well – an approach only begun (as I described in issue 190) with certain wines of the 2009 vintage – has been greatly extended. Filtration has been virtually eliminated – entirely so for vintage 2010 – a development made possible, say the Vacherons, by the greater insights and watchfulness they now bring to bear on white wine elevage, which in any event has long been unusually leisurely at this address. Predictably placing great emphasis on what they take to be the fruits of prolonged biodynamic cultivation, the Vacherons point out that the grapes they began harvesting on September 24, 2010 were ripe and their acidity majority tartaric, observations that are certainly corroborated in the glass. Their claim to have largely avoided and otherwise sorted out any less than perfect fruit in 2011 – when they began harvesting three full weeks earlier than in 2010 – is similarly backed up by the gustatory evidence. The past two years have, as Jean-Laurent Vacheron notes, been characterized by “harvesting the Sauvignons a bit earlier, for freshness, and risking leaving the Pinots to ripen further and be picked last. With Pinot,” he adds, “we don’t pick apart any bunches on the sorting table; if there’s any rot the whole bunch gets eliminated,” a rigor that – when combined with later, riper picking – dovetails with their enhanced retention of whole berries and with gentler extraction, approaches that have taken to a new level of refinement (and, I suspect, of harmonious aging potential) what were already widely considered the best of their appellation – and if you don’t believe me, just compare the Vacherons’ 2010 reds with those of almost any other grower’s from that challenging Pinot vintage! (My notes on the nature of individual sites as well as on elevage were generally taken in connection with tasting the 2010s, so look for them incorporated into the applicable 2010 vintage tasting notes.) A Jon-David Headrick Selection (various importers), Asheville, NC; tel. (828) 252 8245; also, a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93
Rating: 95 –95
A spectacular white, sharp, stony, textural and laser-focused. On the nose it shows lemon sorbet, wild herbs, stones, cedar and flint. Medium-bodied yet it has so much volume, with a vertical dimension on the palate. Minerally and austere in the good sense. Terroir-driven and textural, with a succulent mid-palate. Precise, agile and bright, with a lingering finish. Drink or hold.