Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A small portion of the Les Clos vineyard once belonged to the charitable Hospices de Chablis. Today, this one acre is vinified apart from this producer's other Le Clos cuvée. This is a rich wine, hinting at wood aging with intense fruit and acidity. It has a rich texture, a great balance between acidity and the ripe white and citrus fruits. Drink this wine from 2022
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James Suckling
A more perfumed stony nose with acacia and dried yellow flowers, as well as a flinty edge. The palate has deeper fruit presence such as long peach curd. Flavors of lime butter roll out really smoothly. Majestic style here. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos Clos des Hospices dans Les Clos is richer and more dramatic than the regular Les Clos, revealing aromas of Meyer lemon, honeycomb, wheat toast, anise and subtle toasty new oak. On the palate, it's full-bodied, textural and gourmand, more obviously marked by recently used barrels. It's a fat, fleshy expression of Chablis that should drink well over the coming decade.
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Wine Spectator
A ripe version, revealing orange, grapefruit, peach and mineral aromas and flavors. The vibrant structure keeps this focused through the long, clean finish. Drink now through 2023.
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.