Who has the patience to keep their wine unreleased for more than a decade? Daniel-Etienne Defaix. This Chablis is such an interesting wine too - on the one hand, it's taut, still lean and stony, paying homage to the famously and tight wines that Chablis is famous for. Yet the decade of ageing has given this more weight and width, introducing peach and white nectarine juiciness to contrast the stern, minerally crisp backbone. What a ride!

Daniel-Etienne Defaix has to rate among Chablis' more interesting characters. With a winemaking lineage that spends some fourteen generations, Daniel-Etienne was effectively pre-determined to be a winemaker. And with some 28 hectares of prime Chablis vineyards to his name, he has the holdings to always be a contender. Yet this isn't your usual French estate. Famously, Daniel-Etienne releases most of his wines only at maturity - that is, circa fifteen years later than anyone else. His typically flinty, waxy and wildly complex Chardonnay wines are made slowly, with long, cold fermentations, and then kept in tank for decades, all with minimal additions of any kind. The results, when they finally come out, are mindblowing - wildly fresh, slightly tangy, and incredibly minerally and fine. Abstract? Maybe, but these unoaked, fascinating Chablis wines are some of the most charismatic wines you'll try.