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.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
A fullish lemon yellow colour. The bouquet is tight and lean, with some marine character. Some all-spice character to this, which doesn’t displease. A fine full concentration of fruit at optimum ripeness, a few youthful bitters, fine potential for the medium to long term.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre is another success this year, delivering inviting aromas of citrus zest, crisp green apple, white flowers and oyster shell. Medium to full-bodied, with good depth and tension, it's one of the more tightly wound, structured wines in the cellar.
Rating: 92+ -
Wine Enthusiast
A touch of reduction gives a welcome whiff of farmyard before pear juiciness takes over. That same generous, fresh fruitiness gets full rein on the palate of this wine. A midpalate texture of white citrus pith and chalk sets a counterpoint and lends structure. The finish is long and dry.
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.