Winemaker Notes
This hot climate, predominantly made of clays, produces a full-bodied powerful wine, with amazing fruit flavors.
Pairs perfectly with scallops, lobster, fine fish, white meat, cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
60% has been made in tank and 40% in barrel. I am very happy with this nose. The sunshine and volume of the vintage looks like it suits Valmur. An excellent volume of white fruit and flesh, a dusting of ripe citrus zest, a structure more typical of Cote d’Or, the oak fully integrated and proper persistence.
Barrel Sample: 92-96
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Valmur Grand Cru is finishing its final blend in the tank for bottling next spring. This has more spiciness compared to the Blanchot, hints of stem ginger emerge with time. The palate is tensile on the entry, quite rich but fresh, waxy in terms of texture towards the pithy finish. This is promising.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Wine Spectator
Shaded by oak spice, this broad white evokes lemon, apple, honeysuckle and salty mineral, all delineated by lively acidity. Fades briefly before returning with echoes of fruit and flowers on the finish.
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.