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
The higher part of the Blanchot grand cru gets more sunshine, but this isn't a powerful wine as you might expect. It's elegant and restrained, with seashore aromas of kelp and rock pools, and a bracing, stony finish.
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James Suckling
A plot right at the top of the hill with plenty of morning sun. Wet stony aromas with waxy grapefruit pith and savory almond notes. The palate has a very succulent, fleshy and juicy core. Lithe and strong. There’s immense power here. A wine for longer aging. Try from 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chablis Grand Cru Blanchot is showing brilliantly, delivering a complex bouquet of honeysuckle, smoke, mandarin and wheat toast. On the palate, it's full-bodied, layered and satiny-textured, with striking concentration, lively acids and a pure, precise finish. From the domaine's oldest parcel—planted in 1936—this is a powerful, ineffably complete Blanchot that will be well worth following for three decades.
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.