2018 Domaine Laurent Tribut Chablis

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. 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, prefers the vineyards to be farmed as naturally as possible with a minimum of treatments and organic philosophies. Harvesting is always done by hand. The wines are fermented exclusively en cuve (in tank) and racked into barrel for aging. Laurent typically only buys new oak if he needs to replace old barrels, some of which are 50 years old. With his retirement in 2019 Laurent’s children Solonge, Adeline and Gabriel have now taken the helm, each specialising in different aspects of the business.

The Tribut Chablis share many stylistic similarities with their famous relatives. The wines 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. Compared to Dauvissat they have a little extra generosity. In a lot of ways, they share more in common with the classic White Burgundy appellations of the Côte de Beaune than Chablis.

Other Reviews....
A fresh and notably ripe nose still manages to convey reasonably good typicity on the mix of white and yellow orchard fruit scents. The rich and attractively textured medium weight flavors possess good punch and persistence where a note of salinity helps to add a sense of lift.
88-91 points
Allen Meadows - Burghound

The Tribut family's 2018 Chablis Village was showing well, displaying attractive aromas of citrus fruit, white flowers and toasted almonds. On the palate, it's medium-bodied, with good structuring extract and lively acids, concluding with a chalky finish. It had only been racked to barrel a month before I tasted it, so it's early days to make a definitive pronouncement, but it would appear to be one of the vintage's success stories.
89-91 points
William Kelley - Wine Advocate (Aug 2019)