Winemaker Notes
Riper on the nose than either the Petit Chablis or the Chablis, it smells of butterscotch and perhaps some botrytis. On the palate, oily in texture with long flavors of peach and anise. The acids on the back end of the palate, and there is stony minerality and lemon on the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Chapelot. One of the paler colours, with a much more chiselled nose. Concentrated white fruit, saline, crunchy, amazing intensity here, has avoided the sunny side up quality. Exceptional length. This should make a great bottle. Drink from 2028-2035.
Barrel Sample: 92-94 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Michel’s 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Montmain, bottled in November 2024, derives from southeast-facing vines growing in clay-rich soils that tend to bring roundness. Wafting from the glass with aromas of acacia, green apple, lemon zest and honeysuckle, it’s medium-bodied, bright and lively, with good focus and immediate charm.
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.