Winemaker Notes
Pineapple, apricot, and preserved lemons on the nose. Notes of grapefruit pith and vanilla on the palate, framed by bright acidity. Palate staining and rich, and with wonderful length.
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
One of the wines of the vintage in 2018, this stunning white comes from four parcels within Chablis' most celebrated Grand Cru and is a very complete, self-assured expression of the terroir. Deftly oaked, with 20% new wood and the rest fermented and aged in stainless steel, it's a rich, saline, focused Chardonnay with jasmine and white pepper aromas, pithy, palate-cleansing acidity and layers of citrus, tangerine and aromatic spices. If only all 2018s were as refreshing and well balanced!
-
Jasper Morris
Clear pale yellow. The bouquet also seems a little exuberant, with some oak in the mix. Lemon acidity, not quite the breadth of flavour through the middle. Drooping at the end, perhaps because the oak is currently winning the battle with the fruit.
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.