Winemaker Notes
Mixed aromas of toasted hazelnuts, white fruit, sweet spice notes and mild tobacco. A delectable Premier Cru that creates a warm sensation in the
mouth.
Serve between 53-57°F, it must be aired or decanted before tasting
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very flinty nose with attractive yellow and white-peach aromas and a lemon and grapefruit edge, too. The palate has a very sleek and composed feel with such seamless and focused style. Very linear, plush and smoothly ripe. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Michel's 2017 Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons is performing very well from bottle, offering up a classy bouquet of crisp white peach, orange zest, spring flowers, fresh pastry and oyster shells. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, ample and broad, with tangy underlying acids, good concentration and tension at the core, and a long, saline finish. This is likely to prove one of the more immediate premiers crus in the range this year, as is often the case.
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.