Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Chardonnay
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Lemon in colour with a light green reflection. The Chevalier is clearly stricter than the two Bâtards. Chiselled, firm, not yet flamboyant, pure white fruit as ever, a little lime at the finish mixed into the flesh – indeed rather broader at the finish. Barrel Sample: (93-97)
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Vinous
The 2021 Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru has a complex bouquet with citrus fruit, crushed stone, touches of lanolin and light flinty scents. Glorious mineralité and tension here. The palate is supremely well balanced with a killer line of acidity. This has a symmetry and sense of panache all of its own, intense yet conveying tenderness through to the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The most ethereal as well as the most elegant of Leflaive's whites is the 2021 Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru, a deep, full-bodied wine redolent of white flowers, sweet citrus oil, bread dough, iodine, fresh mint and wet stones. Satiny, layered and incisive, with lovely depth and purity, it's taut and electric, concluding with a long, chalky finish.
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Wine Spectator
Opulent and smoky, this white evokes butterscotch, apricot, peach, citronella and hazelnut cream flavors. Balanced, turning delineated and intense on the tangy finish. Shows superb length.
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.
A source of some of the finest, juicy, silky and elegantly floral Chardonnay in the Côte de Beaune, Puligny-Montrachet lies just to the north of Chassagne-Montrachet, a village with which it shares two of its Grands Crus vineyards: Le Montrachet itself and Bâtard-Montrachet. Its other two, which it owns in their entirety, are Chevalier-Montrachet and Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet. And still, some of the finest white Burgundy wines come from the prized Premiers Crus vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet. To name a few, Les Pucelles, Le Clavoillon, Les Perrières, Les Referts and Les Combettes, as well as the rest, lie northeast and up slope from the Grands Crus.
Farther to the southeast are village level whites and the hamlet of Blagny where Pinot Noir grows best and has achieved Premier Cru status.