Community Tasting Note

• Waynescoting Likes this wine: 91 points

  June 28, 2013 - I'm not 100% sure I've correctly identified this wine because the label, an image of which I'll upload, looks different from one that another reviewer uploaded. Also, I'm an inexperienced taster.
  
  I greatly enjoyed this wine that--based on earlier reviews--I'm drinking late. It was a pale yellow and relatively full-feeling compared to most whites I've had, dry but it didn't seem excessively so, buttery with some earthiness, even a tiny bit of spice perhaps. It's the best white-wine experience I've had in quite some time, and I thought I disliked Chardonnay! Any feedback from other tasters as to why this Chardonnay experience seemed so categorically superior would be appreciated. The answer may be, perhaps, that I've mostly been exposed in the past to American Chardonnays (and probably on the mid-to-low-end of the price scale).

  2,448 views

3 Comments

• pjaines commented:

  10/28/14, 10:00 AM - Interesting note - you'll find that Chablis is much leaner and more mineral than a lot of the US Chardonnays, which feel very heavy and over oaked and buttery to the European palate.
  Good Chablis (in my opinion anyway) should have a very taut and lean mineral base - the Grand Cru chabis do have more depth of fruit but never that flabby, softer feel of some other Chardonnays. Good luck with discovering more - I love Chablis and think it is one of the great bargains when it comes to white wines.

• flyinburrito commented:

  3/20/15, 6:50 AM - I'm glad you had such a great experience. A lot of folks think it's posh to be an ABC person (anything but chardonnay) but most of them never had white Burgundy. Chablis is chardonnay in it's purest form. The grape can easily be masked which is why many winemakers either take a very hands off approach or, on the complete other end of the spectrum, dress it up as much as possible to appeal to a certain market. I visited Chablis and can tell you that it's all about the soil there; lots of broken up limestone with fossilized marine life deposits...during a tasting at William Fevre, the woman pouring for us showed us a rock that was taken from the vineyards and polished and you can actually see the deposits...makes for a very interesting minerally wine. Now that you've discovered Chablis, which certainly still is the best bargain in Burgundy, make your way further south and try the whites from Beaune, Meursault, Chassagne, and Puligny. There's oak there but it's almost always much more integrated and seamless and the wines are first and foremost about elegance and finesse. Enjoy!

• pjaines commented:

  3/20/15, 8:43 AM - Yes, those soils and rocks are pretty special down there in Chablis - a great Chablis should really show that mineral spine.

Add a Comment