Winemaker Notes
The Grand Cru Grenouilles reveals springtime notes of fields, white-fleshed fruit and kiwi. The perfect harmony between aromatic complexity and minerality.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
The vines here are aged between 50-80 years and are planted on deep brown clay soil, interspersed with pebbles. A lovely example of Grenouilles, fermented and matured in stainless steel tanks only with some lees contact. Precise, focused, and already very expressive, with direct acidity but lots of purity.
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Jasper Morris
Mid yellow in color. First picked and already full bodied and spicy. Cannot mistake Grenouilles. The structure keeps the wine tight and it is strongly saline at the finish, alongside correctly ripe yellow plum fruit. Good length, and plenty of character. Barrel Sample: (92-94)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Only 10 meters separate Grenouilles from Vaudésir, yet the wines are worlds apart. The 2022 Chablis Grand Cru Grenouilles derives from a 0.5-hectare south-facing site at the top of the hill, with more pebbles in the soil. One of the most highly aromatic wines of the Louis Michel portfolio this year, it’s soaring from the glass with a bouquet of peach, beeswax and clear honey, with mildly musky aromatics that give the wine a certain exotic flair. On the palate, it's full-bodied, rich and enveloping, with a textural attack and a long, expressive 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.