Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
The vines at Butteaux are planted on clay, Kimmeridgian soil. Much more restrained on the nose, this needs time (and aeration) to coax out of the glass. Powerfully structured, this Butteaux will keep very well, given the density and concentration on show. A classic Chablis in character.
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Jasper Morris
Heavily frosted here on the upper slope where the snow was heavier. Mid lemon yellow. The nose shows some concentration but is a little bit abrupt. However, the fruit swells very attractively on the palate, with just a little youthful bitterness at the back to provide tension. Still, not quite the grip of the great vintages.
Barrel Score: 90-92 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Chablis 1er Cru Butteaux is one of the more ample and giving wines in the range, mingling aromas of pear, sweet citrus fruit and beeswax in a youthfully reductive bouquet, followed by a medium to full-bodied, satiny and enveloping palate.
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.