Chablis

Chablis is the uniquely steely, dry, age-worthy white wine of the most northern vineyards of Burgundy made like all fine Burgundy white wine of Chardonnay. Sadly, in the New World particularly in North America where producing a wine an austere as Chablis is all but impossible, the name Chablis has been borrowed for a generic wine of uncertain provenance and no specific grape variety thats only resemblance to Chablis is that they share a color. The Chablis appellation was created in 1938 and comprises four ranks: petit Chablis, Chablis, Chablis premier cru, Chablis grand cru. The best vineyard sites are are on the southwest facing slopes of the valley of the Serein, the small river that flows through the town of Chablis to join the Yonne. Chablis is quite separate from the rest of the Cote d’Or by the hills of the morvan so the Beaune is over 100 kilometers to the south.

The Grand Crus

There are just 104 hectare of grand cru Chablis vineyards in a continuous slope facing southwest directly overlooking the town itself. If you’re looking at the slope from Chablis the grand crus from left to right: Bougros, Preuses, Vaudesir, Grenouilles, Valmur, Les Clos, and Blanchots. Bougros is the most northwesterly section of the Chablis grand cru this area makes typically a full bodied nearly rustic wine they doesn’t have the intensity of minerality of the rest of the grand crus. Les Preuses lies on the northwestern flank of the grand cru that faces mainly due south and produces a wine that is ripe and succulent without the intensity of steeliness of Les Clos. Vaudesir lies high up the slope in a south facing amphitheater, Vaudesir is regarded as one of the best grand crus, this is because at its best the wine show subtle floral notes and is slightly more feminine than Valmur and Les Clos. Les Grenouilles forms a triangle at the base of the slope bordered by Valmur on the east and Vaudesir to the north and west, much of the cru is controlled by the cooperative and is marketed under the name Chateau de Grenouilles, this is a exotic and nutty wine vinified in new oak; it is exotic and nutty, with size and muscle. Valmur lies northwest of Les Clos above Grenouilles and only a small part reaches down to the main road this is a firm and full bodied wine that is a properly steely, that is austere in its youth and needs bottle aging to reach its maturity. Les Clos is the largest of the grand crus covering an area of 27.6 hectares it faces south and the soil is rocky and well drained, the wine is firm, austere, racy, mineral, full and long lasting, combining depth intensity and great elegance it requires time to mature and develop. Blanchots is the most southeastern of the the grand crus and the slope faces the southeast, the wine is delicate, floral, and matures earlier than Les Clos or Valmur.

Premier Crus

At the beginning of the 21st century there were about 40 approved place names for the premier crus of Chablis, most of those place names do not appear on bottles of Chablis because the INAO allows for the use of umbrella names, so a lesser known premier cru vineyard can use its more famous neighbor’s name on its bottle. The list of major premier cru vineyards: Mont de Milieu, Montee de Tonnerre, Fourchaume, Vaillons, Montemains, Cote de Lechet, Beauroy, Vauligneau, Vaudevey, Vaucoupin, Vosgros, Les Fourneaux, Cote de Vaubarousse, Berdoit, Chaume de Talvat, Cote de Jouan, Les Beauregards. The issues surrounding the official expansion of AOC Chablis start to come into focus with the premier cru wine, since there has been additions to the class, proponents of the additions state that they were planted slopes before the phylloxera crisis and that their terroir closely resembles that of the long established premier crus. Opponents stress the differences in soil and and terroir between the vineyards the prime example being the difference between kimmeridgian soil and portlandian soil, kimmeridgian soil being older and with less sand then portlandian, which some associate the kimmeridgian with a higher level of finesse.

Chablis

Not surprisingly the largest increase in area to Chablis since 1978 when the AOC began to expand has been in plain Chablis there were an addition of 2100 hectares of vineyard between 1978 and 2004. Here in plain chablis we begin to see another one of the great controversies of chablis begin to take shape the use of mechanical harvesters, the machines started to arrive in chablis in the early 1980s and by the 1990s it was estimated that 95% of the harvest was done by machine. Thankfully the grand crus are too steep to use machines. The classification is allowed an absolute maximum of 70 hectoliters a hectare but in practice yield tends to come out in the low sixties. Mechanical harvesting makes it difficult to perform a triage on the grapes before vinification so unripe and damaged grapes can end up in the must lowering overall quality. Though there are still many good wines produced in Chablis and Petit Chablis they tend to be made for early drinking.

Petit Chablis

This is an interesting grade in Chablis because for a while after the decision to expand the Chablis AOC in 1978 the Petit Chablis classification continued to shrink, down to a nadir of 113 hectares in 1981 when many observers thought that the whole classification was going to be subsumed into Chablis. Petit Chablis has grown from that low point to over 700 hectares. Part of the problem with the Petit Chablis and all the new vineyard additions to Chablis is that the vines are all very young with average ages in some of the vineyards under 25 years of age and in their youthful exuberance the young vines don’t produce yet enough intensity of flavor to really make good chablis combined with the tendency to overproduce grapes you can end up with many examples of thin Chablis that don’t produce a typical example of the wine.

Overview

There are a lot of problems with this wine, but that isn’t to say there are not a lot of wonderful examples of Chablis as well. Most of the problems have to do with commodity wine and not the potential of these vineyard sites and the producers, it is just very hard to make great wine when even the grand crus are producing high fifties hectoliters a hectare, compared with production in the mid forties in the cote de beaune from their grand cru sites. Again you’re not going to get the subtleness and steeliness out of a Chardonnay from Meursault you will get a great white wine but it isn’t going to be remotely similar. Another reason for this is the arms length distance the negociants ha ve to Chablis, most of whom are running their business out of Beaune, 120 kilometers away from the village of Chablis. All this isn’t to say that many producers don’t make excellent Chablis. Domaine Raveneau is one of the top producers of chablis and it is because of the care they take to produce every bottle, harvested by hand with many decisions made on a vintage by vintage basis without excessive production they make serious age worthy bottle of wine. Maison Jadot makes over 100,000 bottles of Chablis a year and the generic wines are aged in stainless steel vats while the premier and grand crus are fermented and at least partially aged in wooden casks, indigenous yeasts are used and malolactic fermentations are blocked. There are other producers of note and new ones are starting as well there is great potential in these vineyards only some of which has been realized by some of the players.