 Chardonnay is grown in every wine-growing country in the world, where it easily adapts to the environment and is subject to an endless array of stylistic interpretations. In Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, you’ll find textural and rich Meursault while in Corton-Charlemagne, Chardonnay displays power and the taste of raw hazelnuts. In the New World, Chardonnay is often tropical, ripe, and sweet with oak. In Northern Italy the Alpine influence is reflected as a clean, linear style. Despite the individuality of these respective regions, one can always identify the varietal’s familiar weight, lemony freshness and mineral backbone.
However, there is a place where Chardonnay does not behave nor taste like Chardonnay. In Chablis, the fruit takes on the qualities of the land in a deeply profound way that seems to have very little to do with the "varietal" characteristics of Chardonnay. In Chablis, Chardonnay becomes more of a transmitter of land and soil.
The unique soil of Chablis called Kimmeridgian produces wine with flavor descriptors like marrow bone and pulverized gypsum, dampened hay and chamomile, cereal grains and apple blossoms. The wines are dense with mineral and delicate with nuance. Chablis flavors have yet to replicated anywhere on earth and there doesn’t seem to be another Chardonnay vineyard on the planet that comes anywhere close.
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