Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This delightful yellow-green wine boasts a complex aroma with hints of nectarine, kiwi and a salty mineral edge. Billaud explains that the high proportion of active calcium in the soil delivers a rich level of extract, but the texture is lively with crisp acidity. The grapes are from three parcels totalling 0.60ha; the oldest are 85 years old. Billaud uses the same techniques here as for his grands crus: 80% tank, 20% 500L barrels; 18 months' total maturation. This is a profound wine that will last at least 20 years.
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Jasper Morris
Their own three plots at the Chablis end of the vineyard, with old vines in two of the plots. The yield was only 45 hl/ha here even in 2023. Pale lemon colour. A very stylish complete nose, with its extra touches of white fruit and flesh. Excellent salinity behind, a real mineral crunch.
Barrel Sample: 91-94
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Chablis 1er Cru Mont de Milieu is a tensile, incisive wine that opens in the glass with notes of orange peel, beeswax and gooseberry mingled with oyster juice. Medium- to full-bodied, it is taut and precise, with a tightly coiled core and a mouthwatering, saline-tinged finish.
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Vinous
The 2023 Chablis Mont de Milieu 1er Cru underwent partial wood aging and was bottled in May 2025. This sports a clever, subtle reduction on the nose that releases energy into the aromatics. The palate is well defined with gentle grip and more depth than the Les Fourneaux. This is a little flinty in style, with quite the persistent finish. The 2023 has great potential.
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.