Winemaker Notes
The Vaillons is an assemblage of 5 separate "climats" (Epinottes, Roncières, Séchet, Chatains and Beugnons). It is a very classical wine with notes of white flowers and sea air. A very sunny exposure and its valley sheltered from the north winds bring quite early maturity that allows it to be enjoyed from its earliest years. It does not have the habitual austerity of young Chablis wines.
Over time, the wine loses its floral aspect in flavor of tertiary aromas of menthol and oyster shell. It can be matched with all types of sea produce but also with regional cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This delicious wine boasts initial exotic notes of pomelo and melon and opens up to suggest acacia blossom and cream. The texture is creamy and rich, but the wine is not lacking freshness; the extract carries the wine to a lovely lingering finish. The grapes are from 4.82ha spread over five lieux-dits – Vaillons, Séchet, Beugnons, Roncières and Epinottes – lightly crushed and fermented in tank and in cask (25%). The warm microclimates and thin soils here deliver some of the ripest fruit on the left bank.
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Jasper Morris
25% wood. The first grapes to be picked. Good bright colour with a light green tint. Confit de citron, some white fruited flesh, no great acidity, but nuanced and pleasing. Softer finish than a classic Vaillons but very classy.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons bursts with aromas of white flowers and peach, followed by a medium to full-bodied, satiny and suave palate that's pure, seamless and charming.
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.