Peter Sultan

9.3

What a gentle surprise- my homeboy had been hanging onto this for a while. Great aromatics. All that raspberry & garrique just erupting out of the glass. Not as grippy or tannic as expected, which says more about my lack of experience with ‘Papes. Just found it elegant & generous, if not a bit shy. Very accesible. — a month ago

with Owen

Michael Phillips

9.2

Mature but should be good for a few more years. Good fruit and balance — 2 days ago

Matthew Davis

8.9

Chocolate and red fruit, plummy. A little subtle cedar or oak. Lingers but not long. — 20 days ago

with Rivka and Navin

Neil Valenzuela

9.2

Medium ruby color. Aromas of plum, blackberry, pepper and dried herbs. Very nicely structured, loads of black and blue fruit and nice acidity.

🥇 94 Points - James Suckling
🥇 93 Points - Jeb Dunnuck — a month ago

Randall Brater

9.0

Mushrooms and bramble on the nose. Attacks the palate with inky mushrooms and cherry with a secondary acidity. Missing a third dimension, but still satisfying. — 21 days ago

Byron Hewett

9.2

This is a beautiful wine. No oak, just pure seamless Chardonnay fruit. Amazing wine for the price. Excellent vintage. — a month ago

Laith A

9.2

Nicely mature wine.. raisiny funkiness present, iodine, sweet cherries, incense.. delicious! — a month ago

Willem Booij

9.1

Slightly more acidity and a bit more shy then the previous bottle Esperance. But also a great second label. — 17 hours ago

Sonia Ross

9.2

May dinner. French/Julia Child- inspired. Drank with pan-broiled steak, stuffed mushroom, garlic mash & asparagus. Perfect. — 5 hours ago

Will Stanley

9.5

My first time trying a wine from Daniel-Etinne Defaix, a Chablis winemaker known for releasing some of his wines very late to the market (this 2006 is on release now, a full sixteen years after the vintage).

How it looks: A flash of green through the amber hue already drops this into Chablis for the blind taster.

How it smells: seduction in a glass, everything you want from Chardonnay with age. From primary to tertiary, every aroma sits in perfect balance with the others in the glass. There’s bitter lemon, burnt butter, vanilla, peach and that delightful hint of honey that Chardonnay shows with age.

How it sips: lean, intense and complex on the palate, with great tension and acidity, and a fantastic sense of water on rock. Surprisingly, this showed better on the second night - by some margin, too. It fully opened up on the palate, with tremendous width and shocking drinkability.

Ultimately, this is an incredibly pure expression of Chardonnay from the Vaillons climat without much intrusion of oak. And heck, this has acidity for days - so I’d love to try it again in ten years, for fun.

Enjoyed with lemon sole on the second night, which I must say provided great emotion. — a month ago