Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

Chevalier-Montrachet is the highest of the five Grands Crus on the hill of Montrachet and belongs entirely to Puligny-Montrachet. It lies just above Montrachet, separated from it by a path, between 260 and 300 meters, on a slope steeper than those below and facing east and southeast. To the north it borders the Premiers Crus Le Cailleret and Les Demoiselles, to the southwest En Remilly, already in Chassagne.

The subsoil is heavily fragmented limestone of the Middle Jurassic, the “Chassagne stone”: lean, stony, free-draining soils of low fertility, with a small band of marl at the top. Generations of growers have cleared them of stones, piling them up in murgers and holding back the earth with dry-stone walls. In the eighteenth century some parts of the climat, still uncultivated, were planted with vines; by 1775 Courtépée already distinguished the true Montrachet from the Chevalier and the Bâtard. According to tradition, the name recalls the eldest son of a lord of Puligny.

A court ruling of 1921 admitted the name Chevalier-Montrachet; the Grand Cru appellation followed in 1937, and its boundaries were completed in 1939 with a few parcels of the neighboring Cailleret. The wine, golden yellow, combines body and finesse: hazelnut, honey, and floral notes over a marked minerality, with a certain nervous edge in youth and very long staying power. The available bottles, when there are any, appear further down.