Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Notes of anise and mint, with demure hints of fruit, yet this is a wine of texture, detail and drive, demanding time. Very powerful and expansive, with a stony, phenolic drag across a prodigiously long finish. Wonderful performance.
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Jasper Morris
The name of the vineyard is a version Pierreuses, referencing the huge blocks of stone underneath a reasonable marly topsoil. The 2022 displays a really complex nose, a bit of sun on the stones, the cailloux chauds of the amphitheatre in which Vincent Dauvissat’s holding sits. Then follows a massive development of fruit on the palate too. There is really a huge volume of fruit at the back, with a little iodine touch throughout. Makes one salivate!. Barrel Sample: 94-97
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
An example of purity and stony tension, Vincent Dauvissat’s 2022 Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses is the crowning achievement of an extraordinary portfolio. With an understated Chablisien character, it opens in the glass to reveal a marine bouquet of oyster shell and iodine mingling with lemon zest and white flowers. Refined and laden with incisive acids, an abundance of chalky structuring extract and with a persistent, searingly saline finish, it is more ethereal and elegant than Les Clos yet possesses all the prerequisites to age as gracefully—provided the cork holds. Rating: 97+
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Vinous
The 2022 Chablis Les Preuses Grand Cru seems to have closed down on the nose as it is wont to do. It is hanging a sign that says: Come back in a decade. The palate is magnificent though: intense, very delineated, subtle hints of nougat and lemongrass, that spiciness/pepperiness on the finish that nails it as a Les Preuses and a very sustained aftertaste. Rating: 96+
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.