Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
The Raveneaus have ten different parcels of Montée de Tonnerre, aged between 20 and 60 years' old and spread over a total of 3ha. Taut and pithy, with stony aromas and flavours that are almost Riesling-like, this is intensely stony, tangy and chiselled with mouth-watering acidity and hints of saffron and lime.
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James Suckling
The nose has a sheen of glossy praline and almost toffee with peach and lemon-brulée notes, as well as lemon curd and mangoes. The palate has a super smooth and attractively round feel with a succulent and super slinky, utterly seductive texture. So delicious it’s crazy!
Barrel Sample: 93-94
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre is performing well in bottle, mingling notes of crisp green apple and honeycomb with hints of oyster shell, orange oil and pastry cream. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and incisive, its ample core of fruit is girdled by bright acids, before concluding with a 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.