The vineyards
Chablis vineyards extend over twenty villages and 11 614.2 acres. This terroir is the result of a delimitation of the INAO (National Institute for the French Appellations) which defines four different appellations:
- Petit Chablis over 1 71.89 acres harvested mainly on the plateaux.
- Chablis over 7724.66 acres on the slopes.
- Chablis Premier Cru over 1882.98 acres on the slopes facing south-west or south-east.
- Chablis Grand Cru over 249.581 acres, harvested in the Chablis village, right blank of the river "Serein". Most of the slopes face south-west.
The sub-soil gives to Chablis wines a unique character. Its origin goes back to the formation of Paris basin. During the Mesozoic era, the sea abbs and flows accumulated different types of sediment in a small hollow which extended and became a large sedimentary basin. The superposition of the different geological strata formed an alternated structure "in pile of plates". The different geological phases are :
- Kimmeridgian (from – 146 to – 141 millions years) with alternate marls and marly limestone. It corresponds to the appellations of Chablis, Chablis Premier Cru and Chablis Grand Cru.
- Portlandian (from – 141 to -135 millions years) is the terroir of Petit Chablis appellation.
Chablis wines reflect the terroirs they come from. It gives them their extraordinary mineral touch, as well as a remarkable aromatic fineness and a perfect limpidity.
Chablis has a continental climate. The four seasons are very different: hard winters, springs with frost, hot summers and autumns bringing ideal conditions to mature the grapes perfectly.
