Winemaker Notes
The most sublime and the most celebrated estate of Chablis, the wines of Domaine Raveneau are a rare find. Domaine Francois Raveneau uses purely artisanal methods to produce Chablis' most powerful wines. The domaine is an icon not only for Chablis lovers, but for those who crave transparency in their wine.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
You’d expect one of the world's best white wine producers to produce a brilliant basic Chablis, and you'd be right. From two parcels next to the Forêts premier cru, it has sappy elegance and a yeasty undertone.
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James Suckling
Very exuberant peaches and citrus with very elemental citrus notes, too. There’s more energy than 2016. Good power and a very attractive fleshy texture. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of crisp white peach and green apples mingling with notes of oyster shell, white flowers and almond paste introduce Raveneau's 2017 Chablis Villages, a medium to full-bodied, ample and elegantly satiny wine with a lively spine of acidity, good depth and dimension, and a long, stony and very delicately wood-inflected finish. This is the finest rendition of this cuvée to date, and while it will reward some bottle age, it should offer a broad drinking window.
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.