Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
The best wine in the Raveneau line up in 2018, as it often is, comes from their four parcels of the Grand Cru, all of which are picked together and located in the middle of the slope. Leesy, waxy and effortlessly complex, this has notes of green herbs and white flowers, lots of understated power, incredible minerality and palate length, and a savory, umami undertone.
-
James Suckling
There’s beautiful richness and symphonic completeness from the outset, a hallmark of this cru and a vineyard that has risen to the challenge in 2018. Oyster shell, citrus and stone fruit, together with flint, chalk and hints of pastry, all lead to a palate that has a super smooth, sleek and round feel. A late surge of flavor, then acidity, then minerals. It is all here! A blend of four different plots on the slope.
Barrel Sample: 95-96
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis Grand Cru Clos is superb, unwinding in the glass to reveal notions of citrus oil, white flowers and smoke mingled with hints of crisp stone fruit, pear and fresh bread. Full-bodied, layered and muscular, it's deep and nicely concentrated even in this abundant vintage, with lively acids and a long, saline 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.