2022 Laurent Tribut Chablis
WINEMAKER: Laurent Tribut
REGION: Burgundy, FR
VARIETY: Chardonnay
VITICULTURE: Organic
"The wines of Domaine Laurent Tribut offer immediate appeal with a rich texture and lovely lemony fruit notes, white spice and vibrant underlying minerality; yet are deeply concentrated with dense though not heavy structures, that age and develop into very complex wines. The Tribut Chablis share many stylistic similarities with their famous relatives but compared to Dauvissat they have a little extra generosity, especially when young. In a lot of ways, they share more in common with the classic White Burgundy appellations of the Côte de Beaune than Chablis. Old bottles never disappoint. Whilst Laurent is no longer in charge of the day-to-day, he is definitely still active in the domaine, ensuring that the production of the wines is a true family effort. We missed him on our visit in June this year but Adeline looked after us, offering us (as her father often does) a wine with a decade+ of age (a 2014 Cote de Lechet this time) yet still showing incredible youth, intensity and finesse: all testament to the longevity and great ageing potential of these classically chiselled Chablis." - Tim Stock, importer
When Laurent Tribut married Marie-Clotilde Dauvissat he joined one of Chablis’ most famous winemaking families. René Dauvissat, Marie’s father, gave the couple parcels of excellent sited Chablis AC & 1er Cru to establish Domaine Tribut (Dauvissat). The small Domaine now has 7 hectares of vineyards. The Chablis AC is predominantly situated on Kimmeridgian soils adjacent to the Dauvissat vineyards. Laurent, a humble and good-natured vigneron, preferred the vineyards to be farmed as naturally as possible with a minimum of treatments and organic philosophies and this remains the domaine philosophy today. Harvesting is always done by hand. In the early days Laurent made his wines at his in-laws, the Dauvissat cellars, so naturally his own wines have been strongly influenced by these legendary examples. The wines are fermented exclusively en cuve (in tank) and racked into barrel for ageing. Laurent typically only bought new oak if he needed to replace old barrels, some of which are 50 years old. With his retirement in 2019, the domaine is now in the capable and gifted hands of his three children: Solange (pictured below), Adeline and Gabriel, who each specialise in different aspects of the business.