Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
The Coteau de Fontenay is a very steep site with a westerly exposition, and it has produced a very classic wine in 2016, transcending the vintage’s vagaries. Aromas of citrus zest, oyster shell and white flowers introduce a cool, glossy wine with a lovely line of acidity, good depth and serious grip on the finish.
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Wine & Spirits
This grows on a steep, west-facing hillside in a valley that funnels winds from the north, a site bordering the premier cru Vaulorent. The flavors are super chalky and fresh, with notes of ginger and a salinity that might focus your attention on what to eat with it…maybe salmon, its skin crisped on the grill. The intense calcareous flavors have the crunch of a Pink Lady apple, suggesting that if you wait to open it for three or four years, you’ll have something even more appetite inducing.
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Wine Spectator
This white has a rich texture that wraps around a spine of acidity, playing nicely off the peach, apple and lemon flavors. Finishes long and vibrant. Drink now through 2021.
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.