Winemaker Notes
"With 20% of the wine seeing some oak aging, this wine has some richer tones and complexity. Riper notes of tropical fruit and ginger spice are balanced by a hint of smoke. Pair with smoked oysters or pan-fried scallops."
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
Samuel Billaud combines grapes from three parcels in the low, middle and high parts of the Premier Cru to make this mostly old vine cuvée, which sees 20% wood ageing. Rich, dense and showing the power of the terroir in a sunny vintage like 2018, it has enough minerality, iodine-like perfume and salinity for balance. Effortlessly complex.
-
Jasper Morris
Mid lemon yellow. Very perfumed, a little fresh yellow plum, but balanced and with charm. Definitely some saline character to the finish. An elegant classy structured Mont de Milieu.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Chablis 1er Cru Mont de Milieu is also performing very well, unwinding in the glass with scents of citrus oil, spring blossom, crisp green orchard fruit and grapefruit. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and incisive, it's nicely concentrated, with a tightly wound core, racy acids and a long, beautifully defined finish. This has turned out beautifully.
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.