2024 Domaine Henri Costal, Chablis Premier Cru “Vaillons” White Burgundy, France.
Again, like the last vintage, Costal has made a beauty from Vaillons, one of my favorite Premier Crus in Chablis, maybe second to Montée de Tonnerre, showing off chalky terroir and a surprising depth of fruit with green apple, Bosc pear, tart peach, quince and a core of lime citrus. This flinty, but not too reductive wine has quite a full palate, but remains steely, bright in acidity and mineral intense throughout adding crushed oyster shell, a hint of honey, delicate white flowers and verbena, along with some leesy hazelnut notes. Made by Gilles and Romain Collet, these Costal wines have a lot of talent behind them and some awesome cru parcels of Chardonnay vines, all grown with organic methods on the legendary Kimmeridgian limestone soils, provide the substance, as seen here in this fabulous Vaillons. The Vaillons was fermented with native yeasts in stainless steel and then the wine goes through malolactic fermentation and aging in a combination of stainless tank, neutral barrel 228L barriques, and used 600L demi-muid barrels, all helping promote transparency and terroir transmission. We’ve all heard about the troubles happening in Chablis with hyper climate events, results of global warming, and this vintage saw one of the lowest yields across Burgundy, with hail and frost playing hugely damaging roles in the region, but these brave vignerons have still managed to put out some excellent stuff, as seen here.
As mentioned before, Domaine Henri Costal is a small estate, and a collaboration project between famous Chablis producer Domaine Jean Collet and Kermit Lynch, which I first tasted back in 2016, with their 2014 version of this Vaillons bottling, burst on the scene with the famous Collet and Raveneau families consulting, the Domaine Costal Chablis, originally founded in 1932, had a lot of talent going into the wines, and of course the savvy of Kermit Lynch, as an importer, behind the project put it over the top! Kermit adds that in 2018, owner Romain Collet was digging through his family’s archives and found the original label that his great-grandfather, Henri Costal designed and used when he founded the domaine, which is now used again.This label, now under Domaine Henri Costal, delivers exceptional quality and pure terroir driven offerings, especially for the price, these are wines to search out. As explained by Kermit Lynch, this project began with a simple barrel tasting with Kermit and led to a custom label, custom vinification, and bottling process exclusively for his American market. The end result of this first tasting was a terroir-driven Chablis from a single vineyard site called Truffières which sung a siren’s song and was a huge hit with those in the know and now the Henri Costal label offers a thrilling lineup of Chablis, including the mentioned basic Chablis Les Truffières, along with Premier Cru bottlings like Mont de Milieu, Butteaux, Montée de Tonnerre, again as mentioned above, my usual favorite, and this Vaillons, which I recommend.
($52 Est.) 94 Points, grapelive