Winemaker Notes
The favorite parcel of a late friend of Didier Picq's, Vauclaire was once part of the Chablis AOC blend and consistently expressed itself in a way that ultimately merited its own bottling. Lemon-y aromatics with a lovely mineral core and beautiful balance. An exciting new addition to the Picq range.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Will make a small bottling apart. Slightly paler in colour. Very crystalline. Plenty of fresh yellow fruit on the attack, smoother and broader across the palate, and then a slightly sterner finish with a bit of spice. Coriander? Drink from 2026-2031. Tasted Jul 2024.
Barrel Sample: 88-90 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Picq’s 2023 Chablis Vauclaire offers a sun-kissed bouquet of peach, pear and dried white flowers. On the palate, it is medium- to full-bodied, ample and textural, built around a fleshy core of fruit and tangy acids, concluding in a long, precise finish. Planted in 1985, this cuvée hails from the opposite side of En Vaudécorse and presents as the slightly richer of the two in 2023.
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.