Winemaker Notes
Exhibiting the most mineral nose so far, with straw, wet stones and pine tree aromas. On the palate, a combination of rum butter and lemon; a little less fat than the other premier cru wines, more stony, mineraly and earthy with a bit of stone-ground wheat on the finish.
Vegan-friendly
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Pale colour with some concentration. This has stayed entirely in white fruit but with more flesh than usual, though still a mineral backbone and a little salinity.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Informed by deep soils, Michel’s 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons is one of the more fleshy, charming wines. Soaring from the glass with a bouquet of yellow fruit, pastries and clear honey, it’s full-bodied and lively, with tangy structuring acids a long, saline finish. As always, it offers immediate appeal, though under Diam closure, it shall age well.
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.