A single-vineyard Chablis bottled to his own specification, unfined and unfiltered, made for one country and sold by one importer. 48 bottles — the last of the 2023 — land here Friday.

Villy, Chablis · Unfined & Unfiltered · No New Oak · Arrives Friday 9/11

A Personal Note

Dear Artisans,

Kermit Lynch has imported the Cult Domaine Raveneau for roughly four decades. Raveneau is the most celebrated and most expensive address in Chablis, the benchmark every other grower is measured against. When a man already sells that, he has no particular reason to go looking for another Chablis.

He went looking anyway, and this is what came back.

The Grower He Could Not Walk Away From

Romain Collet farms in a family that has been in Chablis since 1792, the year the first French Republic was declared. He took the reins young, made his first vintage at twenty-one, and set about pulling the estate toward natural yeast fermentations and organic and biodynamic work in the vineyard.

Kermit tasted with him out of barrel. That tasting turned into a partnership: a custom cuvee, vinified and bottled to Kermit’s specification, sold in no country but this one.

The Label in the Family Archive

In 2018 Romain was going through the domaine’s old papers and found the original label his great-grandfather designed when he founded the estate. The great-grandfather’s name was Henri Costal.

Romain suggested they revive it. From the 2017 vintage on, every bottle of this collaboration has carried that century-old label and that name.

Weight and Cut

The fruit comes from Les Truffieres, a single site in the commune of Villy, north of the town of Chablis. The name means roughly “where the truffles grow,” which is what used to happen there.

Everything is fermented and raised ten months in stainless steel, then given three months in 600-litre demi-muids. Those casks are large and well used, so they let the wine breathe and settle without handing it any toasted-oak flavour or extra tannin. At Kermit’s insistence it is neither fined nor filtered.

What that produces is a Chablis that does two things at once. There is real flesh and orchard fruit in the middle, more generosity than the northern end of the appellation usually gives you, and then a line of acidity runs straight through it and cleans everything up. Weight and cut, in the same mouthful.

Why It Is Not Labelled Premier Cru

Fair question, and the answer is a map rather than a verdict. Chablis premier cru status belongs to vineyards inside eleven named communes. Villy has never been one of them. A vine in Villy could produce the finest Chardonnay in Burgundy and the label would still read Chablis, full stop — the line was drawn around villages, not around this parcel.

So the classification tells you which commune a wine comes from. It does not tell you what is in the glass. What tells you that: Kermit Lynch, who sells Raveneau, chose to bottle this one site on its own instead of blending it away. Sommeliers at three-Michelin-star SingleThread poured it by the glass. And it carries a weight through the middle that you usually have to go south into the classified vineyards to find.

Forty-Eight Bottles

These are the last 48 bottles of the 2023 available to us, secured from Kermit Lynch, and they arrive on Friday, September 11th. When they are gone the vintage is finished.

James Tran

Owner · Artisan Wine & Spirits

Why This Matters

The Wine · 48 Bottles

2023 Henri Costal “Les Truffières” Chablis

Fleshy in the middle, sliced clean down the centre by acidity.

2023 Henri Costal “Les Truffières”

Chablis A.O.C. · 100% Chardonnay · Villy, Burgundy

Pale lemon in the glass, and the nose leads with stone rather than fruit — chalk, toasted almond, lemon pith, white flowers, green apple. The palate carries far more flesh than the northern end of Chablis usually gives you, orchard fruit filling out the middle, and then the acidity arrives and cuts a clean line straight through it. Integrated, never tart. Textbook Chablis with the volume turned up. Pour it with oysters and anything raw, or push it toward grilled halibut and let the weight do the work.

Also In The Cellar

Five More Chablis We Stand Behind

Sorted low to high, from a village bottling at the Costal’s price to one of the two greatest names in the appellation.

The Monastery Cuvee

2023 Domaine Laroche Chablis “Saint Martin”

Chablis A.O.C. · DM 92 · WE 91

Laroche still ages wine inside the Obédiencerie, the ninth-century monastery in the middle of Chablis, and Saint Martin is the cuvee that carries its name. Classical, clean-lined village Chablis at the same price as the Costal.

Elsewhere: $40.00

$36.99

• 14 bottles

Four Critics, All Ninety Plus

2023 Domaine William Fevre Chablis “Domaine”

Chablis A.O.C. · JM 92 · JG 90 · WA 90 · BH 90

Fevre holds one of the largest grand cru portfolios in Chablis, and this is the estate-fruit bottling from the bottom of that pyramid. Four separate critics put it at ninety or better, which almost never happens at this level.

Elsewhere: $50.00

$39.99

• 10 bottles

Old Vines · Five Bottles

2024 Alain Gautheron Chablis Vieilles Vignes

Chablis A.O.C. · JM 92 · JS 91

The old-vine selection from a family domaine in Fleys, east of Chablis. More concentration and a longer finish than the straight cuvee, and Jasper Morris rates it a point above most village bottlings in the vintage.

Elsewhere: $45.00

$39.99

• 5 bottles

The Grower’s Grower

2024 Domaine Moreau-Naudet Chablis

Chablis A.O.C. · Six Bottles

A small Chablis estate with a long-standing following among people who drink a lot of Chablis. Low yields, long lees ageing, and a house style built on texture rather than sharpness. Six bottles is what we were given.

Elsewhere: $62.99

$57.99

• 6 bottles

The Other Name at the Top

2023 Domaine Vincent Dauvissat Chablis

Chablis A.O.C. · DM 93 · WA 92 · JM 91

This email opened with Raveneau. Dauvissat is the other half of that sentence — the two addresses every serious Chablis conversation eventually arrives at. This is the village wine, which is the only one most of us will ever get to drink.

Elsewhere: $125.00

$105.97

• 6 bottles

The Bottom Line

A Chablis the man who sells Raveneau had built to his own specification — $36.99.

Single vineyard, unfined, unfiltered, no new oak, and sold nowhere outside this country. That is a strange amount of specificity for a wine at this price, and it is the reason it drinks the way it does.

We have 48 bottles arriving Friday and no more of the 2023 after them. If Chablis is your house white, buy accordingly.

Cheers,

— James Tran

Owner · Artisan Wine & Spirits · Mountain View

48 bottles · arrives Friday, September 11th

Artisan Wine & Spirits · 2495 Old Middlefield Way, Mountain View, CA 94043
Questions? Chat Live · sales@artisan.wine · 650-917-8080