Gilbert Picq Chablis Dessus La Carriere 2019
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Robert
Parker
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The name translates as "over the quarry," for the two parcels that are reserved for this wine grow above an old quarry in a bed of pure Kimmeridgian limestone, essentially one mammoth roche mère, or mother rock. Both parcels were planted in the 1970s, one with a clone, the other with a sélection massale, and the two cover just under five acres of ground. The layer of top soil is so thin here that there is a dead zone where nothing grows in the center of the parcels. These two parcels are always the first to be harvested by the Picqs, and the last to be bottled.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Chablis Dessus la Carrière opens in the glass with notions of citrus zest, white flowers, crisp orchard fruit and beeswax. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and chiseled, with lively acids and a long, saline finish, it's concentrated and structured to age.
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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.