Winemaker Notes
A real elegance appears in this grand cru, with a typical spring blossom aromas and a delicate mineral finish. On the palate, it offers a silky mouthfeel supported by a lively, racy acidity. Blanchots is delicate, silky and shows its charm after five years in bottle and at peak after 10 to 12 years.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Laroche's 2017 Chablis Grand Cru Les Blanchots is showing well, unfurling in the glass with a pretty bouquet of almond paste, yellow orchard fruit, nectarine and mint. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, fleshy and layered, with good concentration and tension at the core, and a saline, delicately wood-inflected finish.
Rating: 93(+?)
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Wine & Spirits
Laroche owns 11 acres of Les Blanchots, the oldest vines planted 70 years ago. This 2017 buzzes with youthful concentration, its delicious freshness making an impression that lasts for minutes on the breath. With fresh flowers, wildflower honey and beeswax flavors, it’s tight, integrated and as ample and sweet as it is tough and persistent.
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.