The wine... Ripe citrus fruit flavors. This wine has great intensity. This wine as sharp as a knife, clean, precise, to be served with oysters to people you like becuase if there’s any ambivalence about your dining companions, the little wine-hoarder devil on your shoulder will wish this wine back out of their glasses and into the bottle. It is too good to be $25.99, yet it is. A happy weekend starts here.
 
The estate... Roland Lavantureaux has been making excellent Chablis since 1978. With no Premier or Grand Cru vineyards to distract him, Lavantureaux has brought care, attention, and precision to his basic Chablis and Petit Chablis. This approach leads to wines that are often greater (and always cheaper) than Chablis made from classified vineyards around his region. This estate has proven that exceptional terroir in Chablis exists outside of the spotlight as well, and that a motivated farmer can overachieve from “lesser” fields.  
 
The land... Chablis is an isolated northern outpost of Burgundy, disconnected with the famous Cote d’Or and other points south that produce wines in styles more commonly considered “Burgundy.” In the 19th century vineyards covered, uninterrupted, a vast region beginning just north of Chablis and ending far to the south in the Rhone. After phylloxera, much lesser land surrounding Chablis went fallow. But Chablis remained, if diminished in size. Kimeridgean and Portlandian limestone marls underpin and forge the character of the best Chablis. The wines here are unlike anywhere else, with lift, brightness, and substance.