Winemaker Notes
Less mineral on the nose, but riper. Candied juicy fruit, thick in texture with some mandarin orange character. Some pink grapefruit, too. Super refreshing, the finish is like a glass of sweetened lemonade with stones.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Chablis is simply superb and about as fine an example of the appellation as it's possible to find. Offering up aromas of white currants, citrus oil, spring flowers and oyster shell, it's medium to full-bodied, satiny and layered, with superb concentration and cut, concluding with a long and lingering finish. Dauvissat explained that most of the vines that produce this cuvée face his holdings in La Fôret.
-
Decanter
Made from Vincent Dauvissat's vines located above Les Clos, on Portlandian limestone soils, this wine has good focus and minerality with some of the savoury complexity that's the domaine's hallmark.
-
Wine Spectator
Attractive aromas and flavors of melon, apple and earth give way to briny, minerally elements as this white firms up on the finish. Shows subtle length, with a green apple edge to the acidity. Drink now through 2025.
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.