Written: February 2023

This report is made up of producers who were happy to show their 2020 wines in bottle after the 2021s in tank or barrel, one or two who prefer only to show the wines once they are bottled, and those where for one reason or another I missed out on tasting the 2020s the previous year – Domaine Bessin-Tremblay, Jean-Marc and Julien Brocard, Clotilde Davenne, Lilian Duplessis and Domaine des Malandes. I also visited for the first time Laurent & Marie-Noëlle Ternynck’s Domaines des Marroniers and Mauperthuis.

Some detail on the growing season and the style of the wines can be found in the introduction to my initial report on Chablis 2020 – see here. There is no reason to change those views in any significant way. This is a lovely vintage for Chablis, showing much less than expected the undoubted heat of the growing season. That is much less true, alas, of the wines from other Auxerrois appellations made with pinot noir. One minor fly in the ointment is where a few wines, almost all at Petit Chablis or Chablis level, show pyrazines, a sort of green grilled note, that I think comes from blocked maturity on thin dry soils, usually on the plateaux above the valley. I note that I refer to this 18 times in a report of 280 wines. For many people this will not be a problem, though others may dislike any presence of pyrazines.

A separate report follows on a few of my favourite producers in what we slightly inaccurately call the Grand Auxerrois – at least inaccurate if we include, as I shall, Vézelay and the appellations around Tonnerre.