Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos once again asserts itself as the most powerful and commanding wine in Michel’s portfolio this year. It unfurls from the glass with a deep bouquet of lemon confit, apricot and Mirabelle plum, interwoven with notes of freshly baked bread and beeswax. Full-bodied, layered and fleshy yet controlled, it displays considerable reserves of structuring extract that lend energy to its muscular, vinous core. Uniting amplitude with incisiveness, it culminates in a long, persistent finish. Rating: 94+
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Les Clos Grand Cru comes from a single parcel towards the Valmur side that was vinified in a new smaller tank as mildew had reduced quantity. The nose is very harmonious and poised, perhaps even more complex than the 2022. The palate is well balanced with a fine bead of acidity, taut and fresh with a powerful orange rind and spicy finish. It just needs more sustain and it will require a long élevage to create a sense of harmony. It will get there though.
Barrel Sample: 92-94
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.