Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Coming from what is often seen as the grandest of the Grand Cru, this is a powerful and rich wine. Steel and minerality go with dense ripe citrus and apple fruits that are touched with wood spice. The wine is a gorgeous mix of fruit and structure. Drink from 2018. Cellar Selection.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos is the domaine’s largest production: just under 3 hectares that start at the bottom of the hill and go all the way up to forest at the top. It is harvested three times: bottom, middle and top, subsequently fermented separately and then blended together. It is much more closed on the nose compared to the other grand crus from Christian Moreau, tight-lipped and refusing to come out and play despite rigorous coaxing. Tant pis! The palate is fresh and more active than the aromatics, with touches of lemon curd and dried apricot, nicely judged acidity, and a compact finish. Drink 2016-2026.
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Wine Spectator
Finely delineated, with lemon, green plum and flinty flavors etched into a tightly coiled profile. Brisk and tangy on the finish, presenting a lingering aftertaste of citrus and stone. Best from 2016 through 2024.
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.