Louis Michel Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru 2016
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James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Decanter
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Grand Cru Les Clos may seem austere and virile at first. But it is actually very expressive on the palate, with dominant mineral aromas, complemented by white pepper and nutmeg notes. Serve between 53-57°F, it must be aired or decanted before tasting.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A single parcel in the mid slope facing southwest. This delivers an array of lemon and lime citrus with sweet perfumed fruits, apricots and sweet, fragrant melon. The palate’s very stony, minerally and savory. A salty feel to the finish. A super long and mineral finish that holds very fresh.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of lemon oil, mandarin, honeycomb, iodine and leesy reduction introduce the 2016 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, a full-bodied, multidimensional wine with excellent energy, concentration and chewy extract. It's the deepest and most reserved of all the wines in the cellar, and it will demand a few years of bottle age.
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Decanter
The Clos is excellent this year, opening in the glass with aromas of confit citrus, Meyer lemon, wet stones and a smoky framing of light reduction. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, concentrated and powerful - the most powerful of Michel’s grand cru bottlings - with intense, chalky minerality, superb depth, tensile acids and a long, vibrant finish.
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Robert
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The Michel family has been cultivating their passion for tradition and the Chablis terroir since 1850. In the mid-20th century, the family stopped making wine in wooden barrels in favor of stainless steel tanks to create clean, pure, and precise Chablis without adding artificial woody flavors. Through this philosophy, combined with limited yields inspired by organic wine-growing techniques, the Domaine has developed a worldwide reputation for fine winemaking in stainless steel tanks. A firmly-rooted sense of excellence is passed down from generation to generation. Louis Michel & Fils has always been a family business and is managed today by Guillaume Gicqueau-Michel."
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.