Chablis AOC is a dry white wine made with 100% Chardonnay in the Chablis region, one step above Petit Chablis AOC, but one and two steps below Chablis  Premier Cru AOC and Chablis Grand Cru AOC respectively.

Vineyard area & wine production: 2002 178,483hl (Guide Hachette des Vins 2004, p.448). | 2017 3,564ha (66% of the Chablis vineyard).

Terroir: The soil is said to consist of the fossilized remains of tiny ‘Kimmeridgean’ oyster shells formed 170 million years ago, and which were under water until 70-million years ago when the sea receded.

Wine style: Hugh Johnson, who is an ardent admirer of Chablis wrote the following in the foreword to Rosemary George MW’s The wines of Chablis and the Grand Auxerrois: “Chablis is not highly perfumed, highly concentrated, a massive mouthful, rich and golden, braced, stiffened or vanilla-flavoured with oak. It has neither the breadth of [Burgundy’s also 100% Chardonnay] Meursault nor the steely focus of [Germany’s] Moselle [Riesling]. It occupies what you might call the middle ground among all the world’s white wines, unextreme, unemphatic, poised so perfectly that you might think there is nothing to wonder at. That is its genius. It crosses a succulent grape [Chardonnay] with an austere soil to shimmering effect, an effect nobody, anywhere, has been able to reproduce. You can find a Meursault look-alike. And a Champagne look-very-alike. Chablis? Let me know if you even come close….Chablis is Chardonnay on sedimentary geology. That’s it.”

Wineries

Certified organic: Domaine Gérard Duplessis.

No certification: Domaine Droin.

Bibliography

Rosemary George MW, The wines of Chablis and the Grand Auxerrois (Segrave Foulkes, 2007)