Winemaker Notes
This is a very aromatic, generous, and delicate wine with flavors of fruits and white flowers while maintaining a nice minerality. It is a perfect pairing for fish, shellfish, poultry, and all white meats.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Pale lemon colour. Not so intense on the nose, but it certainly is on the palate. On the one hand with a very pure stony backbone, on the other the oak (30%) is quite present at the finish, arguably a fraction too much to suit the character of Vaillons. There is undeniable persistence, though, as the fruit keeps on coming back, and the oak will surely fade into the background.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chablis Vaillon 1er Cru has a more mineral driven bouquet than the Village. Satsuma and citrus fruit are quite lively and vigorous in the glass. The palate is fresh with a fine bead of acidity, slightly honeyed in texture but with a seductive lemongrass/spicy note that extends the finish.
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Wine Spectator
Melon and yellow plum flavors are the main themes in this accessible white, which is backed by juicy acidity, with an underlying sense of mineral and quinine elements. Long finish. Drink now through 2028. 125 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.