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
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Jasper Morris
Made from the usual three sectors, at a yield of 15-20 hl/ha, with 20% barrel. A slightly paler colour with discreet bouquet. Excellent tension, a pure white apple and fresh pear fruit, really precise here while maintaining complexity, really very persistent. Beautifully mineral finish, really very fine. Drink from 2025-2032.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Vinous
The 2021 Chablis Mont de Milieu 1er Cru is matured 80% in stainless steel and 20% in barrels for 12 months whereupon it is blended and raised for another six months. This has one of the more austere and backward bouquets from Billaud this year - one for hardcore Chablis-lovers. The palate is well balanced with a fine bead of acidity, austere and linear, very saline - a serious Chablis that should only be consumed with a large plate of seafood. Barrel Sample: 92-94?
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Cropped at a meager 15 hectoliters per hectare, the 2021 Chablis 1er Cru Mont de Milieu delivers aromas of sweet citrus oil, white flowers and oyster shells, followed by a medium to full-bodied, satiny and seamless palate with good concentration and an electric spine of acidity.Rating: 92+
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.