The Chablis Montee De Tonnerre has smoke, steel and rock aromas as well as a beautifully complex, expressive, ample, muscular, and broad flavor profile filled with stones, lemon zests and toast. Anticipated maturity: 2003-2008. The rating, with the range of scores in parentheses, indicates the wine was tasted from cask, not bottle. Bernard Raveneau feels that the 1996s he and his brother Jean-Marie crafted will require ten years of cellaring before being approachable because of their tightly wound, high acid structures. His father, Francois Raveneau, has reportedly compared them to his '69s. I have not tasted any 1969 Domaine Raveneau bottlings so I cannot comment on the comparison, but found his remark interesting because most other vignerons I met in Chablis and the Cote d'Or were unable to recall a similar vintage (the only exception to this being Dauvissat's father who reportedly compared the 1996 vintage to 1949). This estate's cellars, like those of Rene & Vincent Dauvissat, resemble the cellars of the Cote d'Or. Why? Instead of the massive foudres and stainless steel cuves found in other Chablis cellars, the Raveneaus and Dauvissats use oak barrels to ferment and age their wines. The Raveneaus lived up to their reputation with the 1996 vintage, crafting stunningly complex, beautifully ripe, highly delineated, crystalline and exceedingly long wines. Readers who wish to taste benchmark Chablis are advised to locate some of these gems (they will be bottled in April and early May). Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel (510) 524-1524.

Palish golden-yellow. Very sexy scents of lemon, truffle and slatey minerality; one can smell the wine's acidity on the nose. Densely packed, penetrating and weightless, displaying an almost painful quality to its flavors of lemon zest and crushed-stone minerality. This distinctly salty, tactile wine finishes a bit angular owing to its strong acidity. I also picked up a faint hint of white chocolate on the back end. Isabelle made it clear that her family isn't wild for the balance of this wine. A second bottle, tasted in May from my own cellar. Brassy yellow color. Perfumed aromas of red berries and orange zest, plus a whiff of white chocolate. Enters the mouth with bracing acidity, then conveys a slightly exotic quality to its flavors of red fruits, pear skin, peach pit and beeswax; reminded me a bit of Savennières. Still has fruit but the spiky acidity will always be dominant--and increasingly so as the fruit eventually fades. (Isabelle Raveneau described this wine as "very small, very acidic from the start")

Tasting note: Distinct notes of truffle, sous bois and that interesting older Chablis vegetal note lead to crisp, racy and moderately aged middle weight flavors underpinned by firm acidity and fine length. Like many '96s in Chablis, this is quite particular but there is no oxidation but it would be fair to say that the aromas are hardly youthful. I would drink up now and over the next three years as it's hard to see this doing anything other than declining.