Winemaker Notes
After being aired, this wine offers a perfect balance between mineral freshness and very ripe fruit. The palate is warm, mouthwatering and saline, with a spicy cinnamon finish. Serve between 53-57°F, it must be aired or decanted before tasting
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
This is a wine of power, energy and breadth, made from 3ha of vines in this fine right bank site just south of the grands crus. Like Michel’s village Chablis it’s still an infant, but you can sense its density and power quietly building like water behind a dam. Elemental, brooding notes reminiscent of plant sap and ground stone lurk in that resonant, aromatic inarticulacy, yet its mute force succeeds in seeming concentrated, close-grained and sheer in the mouth.
-
James Suckling
A very impressive and quite classical nose with grapefruit, lime peel, nectarine and dried flowers with a stony edge. The palate’s very neatly forged with a wealth of ripe white peaches. A very succulent, long and complete shape.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre offers up aromas of lemon oil, lime zest and honeycomb, framed by a subtle touch of reduction. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, pure and glossy, with more cut and tension than the Vaulorent, without quite matching the liveliness and energy of the Séchet.
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.