Domaine Julien Brocard Les 7 Lieux Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre 2023

Montée de Tonnerre is one of the most renowned premiers crus of Chablis, located on the right bank of the Serein, directly in line with the grands crus. Julien Brocard offers an expression of it in his Les 7 Lieux range, devoted to the family's distinctive terroirs. The vines, around thirty years old, are planted on the Kimmeridgian terroir, Jurassic marls and limestones rich in fossilised oysters. The semi-continental climate ensures slow ripening, the key to freshness and mineral tension.

The vines are farmed biodynamically and work in the cellar follows the rhythm of the planetary cycle. The grapes are pressed in a pneumatic press, then ferment without any commercial yeast, with native yeasts. The wine is aged in large oak vats (foudres), and malolactic fermentation is completed during just over a year of ageing. This large vessel gives the wine density and structure without masking the purity of the terroir.

This wine reveals notes of white peach, lemon, orange peel, green pepper, ginger, white flowers, oyster shell and gunflint. The pale yellow colour with green glints heralds a nose of white peach and citrus with a spicy core. The palate, dense and structured, offers fine resistance, carried by citrus and minerality, before a saline, persistent 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.