Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
There is just the lightest touch of toast in this full-bodied wine. The fruit, structured and dense, is forward and ripe at the same time. Spice and crisply fresh acidity give a lift to the concentration of the wine which finished with ripe apricot and vanilla flavors. Drink from 2019.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Chablis Grand Cru Vaudésir comes from 0.5 hectare and for the first time ever it is aged entirely in used barrel for 10 months before being transferred into tank for another eight months. I severely underscored this last year. It offers superb definition on the nose: citrus lemon, cold-granite scents, reserved but beautifully focused. The palate is clean and precise, hints of lime and orange zest on the entry, a slight chalkiness to the texture and segues into a lively saline finish that lingers long in the mouth. Wow – what a lovely Vaudésir this has blossomed into!
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.