Winemaker Notes
The Chablis Premier Cru Vaillons are located in an immense valley and are ideally located on the hillside. The plots of Vaillons are at full maturity and produce a wine with aromas of white fruit that blend delicately with the minerality of the Chablis terroir. Very easy to drink in its youth, this premier cru can readily lend itself to a stay of a few years in the cellar of a connoisseur.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Vaillons 1er Cru is slightly paler than Gautherin's other cuvées. It foregoes the Vaillons' usual creaminess on the nose. This is a little more taut and stony at first, though after ten minutes, there are finely delineated hints of mascarpone and lemon verbena. The palate is fresh and vibrant, with lovely weight and texture. It's a little round, but there is sufficient acidity to keep this on its toes and the 2023 feels long on the finish. Warning: this will be difficult to resist.
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.