Domaine Gérard Tremblay, Chablis 1er Cru 'Montmain'

This is exceptionally well-priced white Burgundy from one of the most famous Premier Cru vineyards in Chablis. It is hard to find many village-level Burgundies for this price, let alone one from a Premier Cru site. This is great stuff!

A structured, poised and generous wine that is fermented and aged in a combination of stainless steel tanks and oak barrels, this has a glorious tension between precision and depth, showing ripe green apple, flowers and spices that will continue to develop and grow in the coming years.

As with the Chablis that comes from Tremblay, the quality comes from two sources - vineyard and winery.

The wine is made from grapes grown in the famous Montmain vineyard, which is only one and a half hectares in size. The Tremblay family farm only a portion of this but are positioned near the top of the site, which gives extra sunshine, ripeness and protection against frost damage. The vines in the vineyard are almost all at least 40 years old, with again just adds complexity, weight and quality to the raw ingredients.

The wine is made very traditionally with manual harvesting and gentle pressing in the winery. A fifth of the wine ferments in oak, the rest in steel, before blending and then ageing again in the same proportions, on lees, to gain richness, concentration, structure and depth. 

The winery, now run by the 6th-Generation of the Tremblay family, has recently been converted to a gravity-fed winery that means a very gentle winemaking action, including slow and delicate extraction from skins, a slow fermentation and a longer period for lees ageing, with no electric pump-overs. All in all, designed to keep flavours as interesting as possible, with textures as vibrant as they can be.

The Domaine itself was, like so many in Chablis, part of a municipal agricultural offering, with cattle and other crops being farmed in order not to put all their eggs in one basket. I'm sure they kept hens too. One of the reasons for this was the prevalence of spring frosts, the nemesis of marginal winemaking climates. Though frosts are by no means a thing of the past (2016, 2017 and 2021 come immediately to mind with staggering losses suffered by the region), the advances in technology and vineyard knowledge has meant that some areas are much better able to deal with it when it comes at vital times in the growing cycle.

Domaine Gérard Tremblay now covers a total of 37 hectares, with 10 hectares of Premier and Grand Cru sites. Vincent Tremblay (Gérard's son) and his daughter Eleonore run the estate and are clearly taking it into the future in superb condition.