Winemaker Notes
Riper on the nose than either the Petit Chablis or the Chablis, this Chablis Montmain Premier Cru 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
-
Jasper Morris
Mid lemon yellow. Here the fruit is already a little more prominent, with apples on the palate and a little cooked lemon. The stones are properly apparent, in this middleweight Montmains with a fine dry finish. Drink from 2025-2030.
Barrel Sample: 90-93 -
Decanter
A Montmains which is very smooth and elegant, and drinking beautifully already. A pristine example, this classy wine will undoubtedly age very well but it is hard not to enjoy now. Guillaume Michel describes his plot as being 'in the heart of Montmains Montmains'. The soil here is characterised by cool, fresh, brown clay.
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.