Chablis, anyone? - Featuring Domaine de L'Enclos and more!

It could be the warm weather, maybe it's just the fact that one of our favorite Chablis just landed! Either way, in celebration of mineral-driven Chardonnay in general and the Domaine de L'Enclos Chablis specifically, here's a little offering after a bit of a dry spell in the city. While we do have a small amount of Premier and Grand Cru expressions from L'Enclos, along with some Chablis from new-to-the-US Clément Lavallée, and the quietly-doing-their-thing Jean Goulley et Fils, our highlight is the 2022 village Chablis from L'Enclos. One of our favorite Chablis vintage after vintage, this a wine that is still remarkably well priced ($31.99!) for how sheerly precise and spot-on it is, truly a value and if you couldn't hear this coming, it's worth getting a case! As is generally the case with Chablis, supplies are limited.

Domaine de L'Enclos

We personally look forward to tasting with the Romaind and Damian Bouchard each year in France, not only for the opportunity to sample wines from some of Chablis' finest sites side by side, but also because the brothers themselves are always glowing and ready to describe the exposition and soils of each parcel and how that influences the final wines. We have learned a lot from them, and also been blown away by their lineup every year!

In their own words: "We perpetuate with gratitude the know-how of our ancestors Amand and Cléophas Tremblay, our grandparents Gabrielle and André Tremblay and our parents Joëlle and Pascal Bouchard, who have planted, cultivated and finally passed on these vineyards for nearly a hundred years. Our desire: To express each of these terroirs with simple, respectful and unpretentious practices, both in the vineyard and in the cellar." - Romain and Damian Bouchard

Romain and Damian made wine for years at their family estate, Domaine Pascal Bouchard, then sold the family name and winery midway through the previous decade and retained just shy of thirty hectares of prime vineyard land to create Domaine de L'Enclos. They established a new winery in an old château in the middle of town and promptly set about getting organic certification for the estate.

"Domaine de l'Enclos is 29 hectares of organically farmed vines (Ecocert certification) on the 4 levels of the Chablis designation and notably on some of the most beautiful terroirs of the vineyards.

Most of our work is done in the vineyards. We are 19 people all year round (the triple during the harvest) to take the greatest care of our vineyard to extract the best from it : respectful Poussard pruning, organic fertilizers, disbudding, careful trellising, leaf removal, manual harvesting on all our vintages. We attach great importance to the life of our soils which we maintain by shallow plowing and plantings in the rows. To preventively protect our vines from diseases, we only use products of natural origin, copper, sulfur and plant preparations. The domaine is fully certified in organic agriculture. We vinify in our new gravity-fed cellar. The grapes are harvested at full maturity (no chaptalization), sorted on a vibrating table, pneumatically pressed and the juice flows by gravity into stainless steel tanks installed in an underground cellar where the temperatures are controlled. The vinification is done without any input, no sulfur, with indigenous yeasts. The maturation of our wines in tanks and barrels can last up to 18 months on the lees. The wines are neither fined nor cold treated. Only a light filtration and a moderate addition of sulphur (SO2) is done before bottling. 

In summary: living soils, healthy and ripe grapes, simple and natural practices, few interventions, monitoring and patience.

Domaine Clément Lavallée

Clément Lavallée is not new to Chablis, as his family has been making wine in the region for some time, but his wines (and estate) are new to us!

After spending several years working at domaines throughout France, first in Burgundy, including at Armand Heitz, then in Beaujolais, Bordeaux, and the Rhone Valley (not to mention Australia too!), Clément returned to Chablis and started his own project after spending a year at his family's estate in 2018. With only 1.6 hectares, he bottled his first vintage in 2019, and has since expanded to around 5 hectares total.

Clément's parcels are mostly in Chablis, with some in Cotes d’Auxerre, and Saint-Bris as well (though we only have his Chablis on offer today). Influenced by his experiences with farming and winemaking, he did away with chemicals and pesticides in his vineyards, and is in process of obtaining organic certification. In the cellar, fermentations are natural, and sulfur use is minimal. Aging for the Chablis and Chablis 45 is in stainless steel.

Domaine Jean Goulley et Fils

The wines of Domaine Jean Goulley et Fils are much like their extremely charming and low budget 90s website, sans artifice!

Organic since 1991, with roots in Chablis for generations, Jean and his son Philippe, who currently runs the domaine, have been quietly producing honest wines from some noteworthy parcels (sorry no crus from Goulley today!), along with a really impressive and textbook village Chablis and Petit Chablis.

We are featuring their Petit Chablis today because we just love a great bottle of Chardonnay for under $30, especially when it says Chablis on the bottle!