Winemaker Notes
An incredibly complex and delicious Chardonnay that easily holds its weight against the great masters in Puligny, Meursault and Corton-Charlemagne. Muscular yet refined and finessed, it greets the nose with a hedonistic bouquet of lush citrus, tart green apples, white flowers, fresh herbs and delicate yet pronounced saline minerals, all supported by just the slightest hint of toast. Laser-precise on the palate with zippy acidity and immaculate detail.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Pale colour with a fresh green tint. A fine reserved and classic nose, extremely promising. A little barrel toast but it hardly intrudes on the concentration of fruit. More saline than sometimes, and still awkwardly youthful, but all the necessary components are there.
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Wine Spectator
A rich, almost opulent style, this white delivers melon, apple, lemon cake and lanolin aromas and flavors backed by a lively structure. Ends with lingering notes of seashore and stone, along with a tactile sensation. Best from 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.