Winemaker Notes
From 75 year old vines on Kimmeridgian limestone and clay soil. Butteaux is a sub-climate of 1er Cru Montmains. A chalky soil mixed with clay gives this left bank 1er Cru richness.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Beautifully ripe and glossy peaches and apricots with hints of brulée on the nose and palate. This is open now and there’s a very late, sleek line of mineral, saline character that arrives super late at the finish. It’s all here. Pay attention to the late line of minerals on the finish. Drink now or wait ten or more years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Notes of green apple, lime, oyster shell and iodine introduce Piuze's 2018 Chablis 1er Cru Butteaux, a medium to full-bodied, ample and attractively layered wine that's concentrated, cool and controlled, with tangy acids and a saline finish. This cuvée derives from a parcel of 75-year-old vines in clay-rich soils that have weathered the warm vintage conditions very well. Rating: 92+
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.