Discreet but not invisible wood sets off notes of grapefruit, iodine and algae. The rich but refined middle weight flavors are less powerful than those of the Vaudésir but notably more elegant while delivering a fine bead of minerality on the impeccably well-balanced and persistent finale. This seems almost light compared to either the Vaudésir or the Les Clos yet it is so much more refined. A beautiful wine of finesse and understatement. 92-94 points
As I reported last year, life was about to materially change in a good way for Samuel Billaud thanks to the partial sale of Domaine Billaud-Simon (see herein) to Domaine Faiveley. Now I can report that the sale has in fact occurred and the specific divisions have been apportioned. For his part Samuel Billaud received just about 4 ha that are composed by pieces of Les Clos, Vaudésir, Montée de Tonnerre, Mont de Milieu and Séchet and then parcels of villages level vineyards that include Les Pargues, Chapelot and Petit Chablis "Sur Les Clos". Moreover he received these in time for the 2014 harvest even though as he stresses he didn't receive them in time to cultivate the vines the way he will in the future. As to the 2014 vintage, Billaud describes it as "a very good year that was exceptionally clean so I could take my time picking, in fact I picked from the 15th of September to the 1st of October. Remember I now run a very small domaine so the ideal harvest conditions allowed me to pick each parcel at its optimum ripeness level so that's always a big plus. It wasn't necessarily a big vintage but given that we had virtually no sorting losses so gross yields turned out to be extremely close to the net yields. In any event we realized better volumes than we did in 2013. In terms of style, 2014 is a cool rather than solar vintage and it would be reasonable to draw parallels with years like 2000, 2002, 2008, 2010 or 2012."
