Winemaker Notes
Chardonnay from 75 year old vines on Kimmeridgian limestone and clay soil. Butteaux is a sub-climate of Premier Cru Montmains. A chalky soil mixed with clay gives this left bank richness.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Mid lemon, with a striking nose that already makes one salivate, fresh chalky fruit. Vivacious, very light citrus touch, excellent energy at the back and the finish completes what the bouquet promised.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Patrick Piuze's 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Butteaux is another success this year. More complete than Montmains, it’s a flamboyant wine, soaring from the glass with a bouquet of iodine, elderflower, peach and tangerine zest. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied and layered, with great cut, tangy acidity and a long, saline finish. More powerful and fleshier than Séchet, it delivers no less enjoyment. It’s well worth seeking out. Rating: 93+
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Wine Spectator
Generous in texture and weight, with peach, apple, lemon and mineral flavors framed by a vanilla accent, this white shows its presence. Firms up on the finish, where a tactile sensation lifts the finish.
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.