Chablis

This is a Chablis. A rather wonderful Chablis. This rather wonderful Chablis would pair well with rather wonderful oysters, as good oysters marry well with good Chablis. Simply serve your oysters with a citrus wedge. Rather than going the boring route and slicing up lemons, try dousing your oysters in calamansi and finishing with a good draught of this Chablis.

Situation: Carefully selected grapes grown on cool hillside vineyard plots.Clay-limestone marls from the Kimmeridgian peppered with small comma-shaped limestone oysters (known as ‘Ostrea Virgula’) mea- suring just a few millimetres. This unique soil type gives the wines their original characters and distinctive minerality. The nighttime temperatures are cool owing to the northern position of the vineyards which helps to preserve the grapes’ acidity.

The wine is then aged on its fine lees with stirring (bâtonnage) carried out during the first two months of ageing to create even greater complexity. Frequent tastings help to ensure the optimum development of the wine’s organoleptic qualities before the final blending stage.

The grape juice is settled with precision before being fermented primarily in stainless steel vats with careful monitoring of the temperature and fermentation kinetics. A small proportion of the musts are fermented in oak barrels.

A joint Venture between cousins – President of French wine group Badet Clément, Laurent Delaunay, has teamed up with his winemaker cousin, Dominique Gruhier, to launch a contemporary and international Chablis wine brand – Grand Calcaire to “shake up Chablis”. The two cousins are both from the fifth generation of the Delaunay family, a renowned family of Burgundy negociants and producers in the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune who have played an important role in the region since 1893. The wines are made after the pair selected what they believe to be the best plots, often shaded north-facing plots as well as the misty slopes with Kimmeridgian clay limestone marl soil.