Winemaker Notes
Grand Cru Les Clos may seem austere and virile at first. But it is actually very expressive on the palate, with dominant mineral aromas, complemented by white pepper and nutmeg notes.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos has turned out nicely, unfurling in the glass with aromas of ripe citrus fruits, confit lemons, pear and orange blossom. It is full-bodied, elegantly muscular and textural, with fine depth at the core, ripe but succulent acids and a long, penetrating finish. This is the broadest-shouldered, most powerful wine in the Louis Michel portfolio.
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Jasper Morris
Pale lemon in colour. The bouquet is freshly poised and stylish, then becomes a little richer, with a slight tarte tatin effect. Youthful bitterness behind, plenty going on here but backward and hard to read.
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.