Winemaker Notes
This 1er Cru Les Vaillons is sourced from a 3 hectare plot within Vaillons. Vaillons is derived from the term ‘vallon’, meaning ‘small valley’. The vineyard’s exposure is south/southwest with kimmeridgian (clay and limestone) soils.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
This wine is crisp, mineral and tight. Citrus, pears and crisp apple fruits give a wonderful lifted character. Acidity and a steely edge add to this classic Chablis character with freshness and a crisp aftertaste. Drink from 2019.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Chablis 1Er Cru Vaillons has a clean, precise, chalky bouquet with hints of shucked oyster shells coming through with time. The palate is well balanced with a fine bead of acidity. I appreciate the precision and mineralité here, a touch of flint lending edginess and tension all the way through to the finish. This is a really superb effort from Billaud-Simon.
-
Wine Spectator
Apple, pear and lanolin notes mark this open white. Picks up a slight chalky sensation on the finish. Delivers intensity and length, with a lingering lemony aftertaste. Drink now through 2021. 378 cases imported.
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.