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
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Jasper Morris
Fuller yellow here with more robust oaking. Plenty of tension, good minerals saline but essentially a very typical Clos more on the plumper side and showing the limestone less at the moment. The oak is present at the finish but does not interfere, except that you need to wait longer for this. Drink from 2029-2037.
Barrel Sample: 91-94 -
Decanter
The exquisite grand cru Les Clos from Pinson is a wine of elegance and restraint, with a pale lemon-yellow colour that belies the intensity of the ripe nectarine and lemon-peel aromas with a suggestion of hawthorn flowers and spice. The texture is silky and plump, but the balance between the acidity and extract is still in perfect harmony. The grapes come from four parcels totalling 2.75ha; the grapes are picked by hand and gently pressed before fermentation in tank (90%) and cask (new, 10%). The wine is ageing at present in used casks. Certified Haute Valeur.
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru has a perfumed nose with more complexity, delineation and mineralité than its peers. The palate is crisp and fresh with orange zest and light peachy notes, but it retains ample tension and gains a little weight on the well-composed, spicy finish. Give this a couple of years in bottle. Tasted blind at the BIVB tasting in Chablis.
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.