Winemaker Notes
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.
While there is not really anything small about Petit Chablis, it does categorically represent a “mini” Chablis in the sense that the wines are more approachable when young and not intended for long age. Petit Chablis is a perfect introduction to the Chablis style of Chardonnay—bright, racy, tactile, flinty, complex. But Petit Chablis won’t put you over budget and they are notoriously wonderful food pairing wines. Raw fish, oysters, grilled prawns, or any fish for that matter, as well as egg-based dishes, goat and soft creamy cheese and savory puff pastry tartlets will partner graciously with the floral, citrus and mineral notes of a Petit Chablis.
The term Petit Chablis actually refers to the wines made from Chardonnay grown in vineyards right outside of the borders of the Grands Crus and Premiers Crus, but still within the Chablis wine-growing district. In thte Petit Chablis areas, Portlandien soil dominates, a clay limestone soil similar to the prized Kimmeridgian (where the Grands and Premiers Crus Chablis vineyards lie), but geologically younger.
Petit Chablis are generally made without the use of oak barrels.