Winemaker Notes
Patrick Piuze "Les Sechets" is beautifully built, with a dense, mineral-packed structure of acidity. Aromas are classic Chablis: fresh cut pear, lime, Meyer lemon blossom, and wet stones. This wine's core of rocky acidity promises a long life in the cellar for anyone with the patience to not enjoy it immediately with fresh oysters.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
True limestone with a really flinty, stony nose, this has a terrific sense of chalky, terroir-driven style. The depth on the palate has a very effortless feel, really gliding long and supple. Super wine. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis Premier Cru Sechet is one of the high points of the range once again, unwinding in the glass with a classic bouquet of lemon oil, lime, rock salt, crushed shells, mint and iodine. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, satiny but incisive, with a deep and tight-knit core, tangy acids and a mineral finish. Rating: 93+
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.