Domaine Julien Brocard Les 7 Lieux Petit Chablis Les Plantes 2023

The Petit Chablis Les Plantes belongs to Julien Brocard's Les 7 Lieux range, which highlights distinctive plots in the Chablis vineyards, in northern Burgundy. The vines, around thirty years old, are planted on the limestone plateaux overlooking the Serein valley. The semi-continental climate, with cold winters and temperate summers, favours slow ripening of the Chardonnay, which thus keeps lively acidity and bright fruit, in keeping with this freshness-driven appellation.

The vines are farmed biodynamically and work in the cellar follows the rhythm of the planetary cycle. After pneumatic pressing, alcoholic fermentation takes place without any commercial yeast. The wine is aged in stainless-steel tanks, to best preserve the typicity of the terroir, and malolactic fermentation is completed during ten months of ageing. This choice highlights the purity of the Chardonnay and the energy of its limestone terroir.

This wine reveals notes of lemon, lime, grapefruit, green apple, fresh almond, white flowers, white pepper and chalk. The bright yellow colour with green glints heralds a lemony nose that gives way to a core of fresh almond. The palate, lively and thirst-quenching, makes for an easy-drinking wine full of freshness, ending on a slightly peppery finish.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.