What I'm Excited About This Week: Chablis and a Little Treat!
This week, Alex Pross, K&L’s buyer of Burgundy, Germany, Alsace, Austria and a touch of Rhône Valley wines, took us on a little tour of white Burgundies, including a specific focus on some of our best Chablis producers—and gosh it was just delicious all the way through. The best part of tasting a lot of the same grape over and over again, is you start to get a better feel for the nuances of the grape. You grow more sensitive to the levels of oak in the wines, and you get a better feel for what the winemaker is imparting onto the wines compared to what was brought there by the terroir. It's just so cool, you get to basically just geek out the whole time.
I always find myself enthralled by Chablis. It's so densely mineral and yet delicately fruited; a really intoxicating mix that tends to impart the delicate and ethereal nuances that define a truly luxurious experience to me. This week we had a lot of wines by one of my favorite Chablis producers, Domaine Seguinot Bordet. All of the wines were not just outstanding in their quality, but listed at pretty fantastic price points across the board. The quality per dollar is absolutely top notch. These are such an amazing wines for the transition for summer to fall, because, while it's going to be quenching and refreshing during the summer, it's also a great pairing for slightly heartier dishes as we work our way towards winter. The 2023 Château de la Charrière Bourgogne Blanc $17.99 is absolutely too great of a deal to not recommend as well. It's got amazing structure and character for something under $18—it's certified-bonkers good pricing and has already been added into my white wine rotation for the summer.
2023 Domaine Seguinot Bordet Chablis $24.99 What a wonderful time to be alive—we have a ton of amazing Chablis right now. This was such a pretty and exciting wine, especially when you factor in the price. The fruit on the nose is absolutely lush and fairly ripe, not quite tropical but leaning heavily into orchard fruit. While there's some apple and pear fruit that you would expect, there's also ripe white peach and not a lot of lemon, just a little hint of some zest followed by some minerality. The palate brings in the pithy lemon, but also more apple and some white flowers, with some really nice but not crazy acidity. After all the fruit there's a touch of saline minerality that is really delicious and pointing towards a more mineral finish as well. This is top notch Chablis at a mid-notch price and well worth your attention.
2023 Domaine Séguinot Bordet Chablis Vieilles Vignes $29.99 Sometimes, it's a little bonkers to think about some aspects of wine production. To think that we get this from one of the most renowned wine regions in the world, from old vines that are over 60 (maybe 75?) years old, and yet we can buy this for just $30. How does it taste? Oh yeah. The nose is rich, clean, and deep. There's nothing off, there's only just a hint of oak somewhere in the background, which is a good place for it to be. The entire nose is a study in elegance and nuance, with a myriad of subtle notes. The standouts are a delightful apple note, but it's both red and green, and a hint of pithy lemon, and then a delightful saline minerality. This has a depth that's alluring, the promise of the palate already showing in the nose. Texturally, the mouthfeel is nice and round, no sharp edges with more oak showing up than on the nose. The fruit is lush and pretty, lots of green apple, that pithy lemon, and a strong saline and slightly chalky finish with a good but slightly restrained level of acidity. This is classic and lovely and everything right about Chablis, cannot recommend this highly enough.
2023 Domaine Séguinot-Bordet Chablis 1er Cru "Fourchaume" $44.99 I enjoy when we have a tasting that's all white wines. There's something more revealing about a white wine—they are a bit more open about their faults and, heck, I appreciate their honesty. This is a wine that finds itself lacking any faults whatsoever. The nose is lovely and elegant, with all the seduction of your favorite perfume. There's ripe apple, just the very barest sliver of white peach, white flowers, and a little bit of candied lemon peel in the very back. The palate is fairly soft and round, with the fruit from the nose expressing itself on the palate. There's a spiraling sort of depth there that ends at the bottom with that expected and delightful saline and mineral finish. This is the kind of wine you really want to take your time with, and optimally you'd drink this over an entire afternoon with some sort of nice and simple nosh. Absolutely recommended.
2023 Domaine Séguinot-Bordet Chablis 1er Cru "Vaillons" $44.99 Another absolutely lovely Chablis. Spoiler alert: this is very good and I will be saying nice things about it in the words to follow. The nose is so lovely, very slightly tropical, with a bit of dried pineapple, white peach, perfectly ripe pear, and something flinty in the far back. The palate is more classic, with ripe apple and pear, slightly pithy candied lemon. There's fantastic minerality on the finish, which flashes between a healthy but mouthwatering acidity and the minerality going back and forth with each other on the finish. This is such a nice bottle of Premier Cru Chablis, and another worthy bottle for your Summer White Wine Rotation. My advice is to pick up a few and age at least one of them a few years, you'll be surprised at what you find with a well-aged Chablis.
2023 Château de la Charrière Bourgogne Blanc $17.99 Maybe I should start a "Sub $20 Club" for the top wines that we currently have that are under $20 each. There's definitely a little touch of oak here, but it's light and balanced with the fruit—that classic apple-pear and lemon combination. The palate is delightful, it feels luxurious despite the price. There's a kind of gravitas to it that you don't often get at this price point. The fruit continued its classic streak, with apple and lemon being the stars of the palate, and then the oak coming in behind and giving it a less mineral and more very slightly toasty finish backed by just a little touch of citrus. We carry wines from this producer every year, and each year they just seem to get better and better. What a crazy good deal for this.
What's the little treat? I just recently re-tasted the 2019 K&L Discovery Series Bordeaux, Pauillac $29.99 and, wow, it's really in a great place right now. It’s feeling fully settled down from the long trip from Bordeaux to us here on the West Coast. It's really a fantastic bottle of $30 red wine in general, and for it to be a pedigreed Bordeaux is just the right kind of insane. I really think people who haven't given it a shot yet absolutely should, because this is just the start of our exciting K&L Discovery Series adventure.
2019 K&L Discovery Series Bordeaux, Pauillac $29.99 A lovely nose immediately when I pull the cork. There's a really pretty bramble-cherry note right on the front, with a little touch of cocoa following and then something alluring and floral. Deeper into the nose there's a touch of developing tertiary, with a little bit of worn saddle leather, a hint of something mushroomy, and then a lingering oak spice. The palate is medium-plus in weight with just enough tannin to encourage you to think about laying it down for a few years, but soft enough not to demand it. There's a nice dusty blackberry and cherry, more cocoa than the nose, and then a firm hit of barrel spice towards the end. The finish is lingering and enjoyable with fruit, acid, and barrel oak mixing back and forth—and the only one winning is me. This is so drinkable and accessible, and this wine deserves to be had with a nicely marbled ribeye and a fat potato. If you don't do that kind of thing, a mushroom stroganoff would be amazing with this as well, preferably on top of a fat potato. I love how we're bringing in these wines at cut-rate deals compared to the producers’ prices. You can tell that this is a wine that the buyer really saw something worthwhile in.
- Aaron Hughes, K&L Redwood City Tasting Bar Manager
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