Winemaker Notes
White gold hue with pale green glimmers. Elegant, fruity nose. The attack is direct and clean with mineral and citrus notes. The palate is well-balanced with the same aromatic profile as the nose. Long, lingering finish.
Pair with scallop salad, seafood platter, or cod in chorizo sauce.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very cool, flinty and herbal in the nose, this Chablis 1er Cru is a very cool customer that needs some time to reveal its true class. Very crystalline palate with wonderful precision. Very long and straight finish. Excellent aging potential.
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Decanter
Small parcel for Billaud-Simon. Quite rich, as expected, but doesn't have the finesse of Vaillons. From the climat of Vaupoulent and fermented in tank, from vines grown on thin, stony soils at the top of the hill. Retains finesse and is for relatively early drinking.
Barrel Sample: 92 -
Jasper Morris
The holding is located in Vaupulent, at the top of the slope. All in tank, not yet racked at all. Still quite closed with a steely centrepiece and a fine fresh finish with considerable length. Riper notes at the back though not exaggerated.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.