Winemaker Notes
This wine opens with aromas of pink grapefruit on the nose. The palate offers a complex progression, beginning with mid-palate flavors of herbs, wet stone, and lime, supported by a strong mineral character and finishing dry.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Planted 1950s/1960s. Slightly yellower in colour. A broad nose not yet showing the detail. Quite a powerful core of fruit, more floral than usual, a useful citrus underlay, with fine persistence. Fine long finish. Barrel Sample: 90-93
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Vaillons Vieilles Vignes 1er Cru comes from 60-year-old vines and is aged in stainless steel on the lees. It has a lovely nose with citrus fruit, hints of white mushroom and a light almond scent. Fine delineation. The palate is vibrant and fresh, quite steely like the Montmains. Yet, this develops a tad more complexity and grip on the finish. Lovely.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The bottled 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Les Vaillons Vieilles Vignes offers an expressive bouquet of orange peel, apricot and beeswax, followed by a full-bodied, saline palate that is crisp and driven by tangy acidity. Charming yet controlled, it deftly reconciles the site’s demonstrative character with the tensile restraint imparted by maturation in stainless steel. Rating: 92+
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
The source of the most racy, light and tactile, yet uniquely complex Chardonnay, Chablis, while considered part of Burgundy, actually reaches far past the most northern stretch of the Côte d’Or proper. Its vineyards cover hillsides surrounding the small village of Chablis about 100 miles north of Dijon, making it actually closer to Champagne than to Burgundy. Champagne and Chablis have a unique soil type in common called Kimmeridgian, which isn’t found anywhere else in the world except southern England. A 180 million year-old geologic formation of decomposed clay and limestone, containing tiny fossilized oyster shells, spans from the Dorset village of Kimmeridge in southern England all the way down through Champagne, and to the soils of Chablis. This soil type produces wines full of structure, austerity, minerality, salinity and finesse.
Chablis Grands Crus vineyards are all located at ideal elevations and exposition on the acclaimed Kimmeridgian soil, an ancient clay-limestone soil that lends intensity and finesse to its wines. The vineyards outside of Grands Crus are Premiers Crus, and outlying from those is Petit Chablis. Chablis Grand Cru, as well as most Premier Cru Chablis, can age for many years.