Appellation: Chablis 1er Cru
Grapes: Chardonnay
Size: 75cl
 
Patrick Piuze- a Montreal native- took the region by storm when he arrived in 2000. He worked for Leflaive, Jean-Marc Brocard and Jean-Marie Guffens before starting his own label in 2008, and has very quickly come to be counted among the legendary names of the region. The guy is hella-good fun to hang out with... and while that may sound like an irrelevant detail, it is not: Piuze works with purchased fruit, and his great relationships with the growers of Chablis have allowed him access to choice parcels in all of the great sites.
While 90% of Chablis is machine-harvested, Patrick harvests everything by hand, a paramount factor in the quality of his wines. Most cellars use a pneumatic press but he uses a vertical one because he likes the initial blast of oxygen for the wines in hopes of preventing pre-mox later, a way of thinking also espoused by Jean-Marc Roulot. While most vintners make one blended cuvée from mixed sites for their villages wine, Patrick obsessively crafts no fewer than 8 different villages-level wines, each giving a distinctive expression of terroir.
The Chablis "Terroir'' wines are fermented and aged mostly in old stainless steel tanks that are not temperature controlled. Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines are fermented and aged in used barrels for ten months. The barrels are always from high-acid years to enhance not only an exchange of oak to the wine but also of the wine to the barrel.