Louis Michel is my favourite Chablis producer. He does not make my favourite Chablis wine, but that is another story. He is my favourite producer partly because he totally eschews oak when he makes his wines – they are models of squeaky clean, racy purity.
He has a broad selection of vineyards in his portfolio, including an excellent collection of 60+ year old vines in a holding of Butteaux.
Chablis’ Premier Cru Butteaux is a sub-climat of the Montmains Premier Cru. Butteaux sits high up the hill in a more exposed location than the rest of the Montmains Premier Cru, resulting in the wines having more energy and drive.
Additionally, its geological profile of a thin layer of compact, heavy blue clay over the classic, fossil-rich Kimmeridgian limestone, adds to the tension in the wine. It gives both structural density and an austere mineral focus.
How will Louis Michel’s old vines express this tension in the ripe 2020 vintage?
Let us get popping and find out!
Chablis Premier Cru Butteaux Vieilles Vignes 2020, Louis Michel
As one should do with all serious Chardonnay, especially those that might be suffering from a little middle-aged awkwardness like a six-year-old fine Premier Cru Chablis, I decanted this. I took it out of the fridge 45 minutes prior to drinking and glugged it into a jug.
45 minutes later
What a glorious nose! Chablis par excellence. It has play-dough aromas, preserved lemon, flinty notes and a definite oyster shell character. It is plungingly deep and impressively involute.
Some might say it smells a little ripe, balls to that! I like a bit of charm as well as austerity and this has both in high-value spades. It is incredibly clean and pure with no wood to interfere with its pure Chablisiousness. I am totally right to love the wines of Louis Michel based on this nose.
The old vines character is shown by the huge complexity and real depth to it, even though it is obviously a Premier Cru; it does not toy with Grand Cru density as the Premier Cru Vaulorent does. It is Premier Cru elegance and sculpted minimiformity. Lovely stuff.
The palate is a light, subtle-bodied delight. Lovely, lovely lemon fruit, with a hint of honey and nuts mixed in. There is a penumbra of marine flavour swirled into it as well.
Whilst it is light on its feet, the old vines character gives it a depth that engrosses and absorbs one as one tastes. Lordy, lordy, this is a good one!
The acidity is excellent, bright, vivacious and sapid. It is enhanced by a seashell minerality that keep the whole structure energetic and alive.
What I really like, and this is something I like in all the best dry white wines, is a savoury character to the palate, almost an astringency, that I think comes from the cooler and more mineral Premier Cru site. Excellent.
This is clearly very enjoyable now, with a decent decant, but it more to give! More, I say! In one to three years this will blossom even further, becoming nuttier with more dimension in every flavour and aroma. Woe – this is my only bottle! But I do have six bottles of 2020s from other vineyards by Louis Michel – cheers, cheers!
A first-rate Premier Cru Chablis that confirms my view that Louis Michel is a top tier Chablis producer. People drink their wines too young and sniffily say they are a bit simple. Purest bullshit. Give them time and their complexity, poise and style will thrill the tits off you.
