Winemaker Notes
Bougros, a Grand Cru with abundant sun exposure and a high proportion of clay, distinguishes itself with lavish richness, offering decadent, limestone-tinged fruit while retaining classic Chablisien typicity.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Pale lemon in colour. A powerful well-muscled nose with a touch of pyrazine – more of a faint reduction really. This absolutely shows its grand cru weight, and there is a little citrus but it is on the bulky side, though balanced. Barrel sample: 91-94
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Bougros Grand Cru has a very small reduction on the nose, but there is clearly complex fruit beneath that. This has plenty of mineralité and energy. The palate is fresh and vibrant, with crisp acidity and lovely poise. It shows up as one of two other Bougros that were tasted blind at the BIVB. It is very persistent on the finish and should age with style. The 2023 is superb. Tasted blind at the BIVB offices in Chablis.
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.