Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Vaudécorse is much more expressive than the Vauclaire at the moment, a mixture of white and yellow fruit with a touch of flintiness underneath. The palate is quite attacking on the entry, tensile and focused. It gradually builds toward a cohesive and satisfying finish. This has similar potential to the excellent 2022.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Jasper Morris
Lemon with a touch of lime in the colour. The most elegant of the three to date on the nose. A fine limewash across the palate with the stones to follow. Still shows in an elegant fashion. There is easily enough depth of fruit here and no honeysuckle. Ripe lemon zest instead. Barrel sample: 89-91
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Chablis En Vaudécorse, sourced from a one-hectare west-facing site planted in 1980, has turned out very well, offering aromas of lemon oil, crisp pear and orange peel mingled with notes of freshly baked bread. On the palate, it is medium- to full-bodied, bright and incisive, with ample chalky structuring extract and greater tension than either of the communal Chablis bottlings, before culminating in a persistent and saline finish.
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.