Winemaker Notes
With 20% of the wine aged in oak, this wine has richer tones and complexity. Riper notes of tropical fruit and ginger spice are balanced by a hint of smoke. It pairs well with smoked oysters or pan-fried scallops.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Produced from Billaud's own grapes, 80% in tank with 20% matured in barrels for a year, before a further year in tank after blending. Very stony soils with old vines and low-yields around 35hl/ha. A denser hue than some. Crisp acidity, lovely texture of apple and a touch of stone fruit with plenty of acidity and pronounced salinity to finish.
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Jasper Morris
Bottled in May after 18 months. Clear pale colour with a little light lime touch. This stands back, suggesting that it really needs to be kept. Samuel Billaud has moved to DIAM 30 with that in mind. Exceptional density, based around the dry extract, a little lick of oak, this has barely begun to touch its full potential.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chablis Mont de Milieu 1er Cru has a pretty, tightly-wound bouquet, with touches of grilled walnut and hazelnut– perhaps earthier than other cuvées. The palate is very well balanced with a fine bead of acidity, fresh and saline, harmonious with touches of praline toward the 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.