Winemaker Notes
Lavantureux’s old-vine Chablis evokes the bright sunlight, bracing wind, and energizing spray of the sea. It is fresh, vibrant, and minerally, with aromas of tangerine and Meyer lemon and a bright acidity to complement its lushness.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The concentration is impressive here with sliced lemon, green apple and electric acidity. Full, linear and tight. Perfect at the end.
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Wine Enthusiast
In this wine, chalky mineral tones extend a smoky, salty veil on crisp yellow plum and grapefruit flavors. Medium bodied but plump in fruit, this invigorating Chardonnay drinks nicely young but should maintain peak through 2027.
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Decanter
Cool, crisp and classic Chablis with the drive from flinty, steely underpinnings and bright, zesty lemon fruit acidity, balancing the ripe, succulent and juicy apple fruit on the palate. Maturation in old oak casks has added extra complexity with no discernible oak flavour. A fine AOP Chablis.
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Jasper Morris
60 plus years. Similar colour but a softer fleshier fruit on the nose: more flesh but then more tension as well, everything up a gear with very clean fresh apple infiltrating the aromatics at the very finish. Intensity without being heavy weight.
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.