Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: I am always attracted to Les Vaillions as one of the premier crus in Chablis. The 2017 Samuel Billaud Vieilles Vignes qualifies as one of the best in my notebooks. TASTING NOTES: This wine is long, layered, and attractive. Its piquant aromas and flavors of bright apples and tart citrus is stunning. Pair it with linguine and clams. (Tasted: March 12, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons Vieilles Vignes derives from Le Vaillon itself, and this is a serious rendition, unfurling with aromas of fresh peach, white flowers, yellow orchard fruit, orange rind and fresh pastry. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, satiny and incisive, with an ample core of crisp, fragrant fruit and a saline 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.