Winemaker Notes
Beautiful pale white gold color with soft green highlights, the Chablis Montee de Tonnerre Premier Cru has a frank and deep nose. It expresses subtle notes of blond caramels, white flowers and butter. The palate is intense and subtle. It is distinguished by a harmony between richness, power of the fruit and delicate oak.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Half has been made in a concrete egg and half in 500 litre wood. Not racked, but the sample is representative. A little troubled and lots of gas still. Mid lemon yellow. The bouquet suggests some concentration of fruit. There is a softer succulence, a ripe flesh on the palate, that is one typical facet of Montée de Tonnerre, then a long generous finish. Barrel Sample: (91-94)
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Vinous
The 2022 Chablis Montée de Tonnerre 1er Cru has an open and expressive bouquet with crushed stone percolating through the lime and green apple scents. There's good vitality here. The palate is well-balanced with some wood contact, perhaps denuding some Chablis typicité, and it comes through strongly on the finish.
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.