Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A brilliant wine in the making, Dauvissat's 2022 Chablis 1er Cru La Forest unfurls in the glass with youthfully reductive scents of citrus oil, crisp stone fruit, white flowers, oyster shell and subtle hints of orange blossom. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and incisive, with superb depth at the core and an electric finish, this cuvée has navigated the vintage's extremes with ease.
Barrel Sample: 93-96 -
Jasper Morris
The barrels are in the grand cru part of the cellar for once. Clear pure pale lemon colour. The bouquet is classic but not yet very developed. Everything is entirely there but less demonstrative. The structure of this wine is so impressive, pure white ripe apple, but stretches so far back on the palate, before a slightly more saline finish. Barrel Sample: 92-94
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James Suckling
More volume and concentration without the pucker and rockiness typical of the Montee de Tonnerre. This is a real crowd pleaser. A confluence of stone and orchard fruit on the palate. It shows old-vine power from a warmer site. While this is an ersatz grand cru for many, this doesn't quite deliver the clarity of some of its siblings.
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.