Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted blind at the Burgundy 2011 horizontal tasting in Beaune. The Chablis Grand Cru Valmur 2011 is a little flatter on the nose than Moreau-Naudet' '11 on the nose, with lime cordial and tangerine scents that do not quite have the tension or complexity one expects of a grand cru. The palate is well balanced with crisp citrus peel, apricot and white peach notes, a fine thread of acidity and a refined and generous finish that compensates for the aromatics. Returning after a few minutes, the nose is finally beginning to add more complexity with a shellfish tincture, though it does not quite do justice to the quality of the palate.
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Wine & Spirits
A substantial Chablis, this layers scents of pressed flowers over chalk and coarse white limestone. The intensity of acidity is balanced by a touch of richness, the wine hinting at sweet fruit after a day of air. Clean and a little warm in the end, this will grow grand with age.
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Wine Spectator
A touch of spicy oak meshes with the lime, floral, apple and mineral aromas and flavors in this racy white. Lanolin and clove notes accent the lingering finish. Drink now through 2020.
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.