2021 Louis Michel & Fils Chablis Premier Cru Montee de Tonnerre [D94][JG94][BH91-94][JM91-94][WA92]

Producer: Louis Michel & Fils  
Region: Chablis, Burgundy, France  
Varietal: Chardonnay  
Year: 2021 

Decanter, 94 Points 

"Louis Michel's Montée de Tonnerre comes from the south-west facing slopes of Chapelot. A more serious premier cru with extra density on the palate. Beautifully clean and fresh. This will need several years to blossom. Keep for another three to five years and then drink over the following decade. Delivers all that Montée de Tonnerre is renowned for." 

John Gilman, 94 Points 

"The 2021 Montée de Tonnerre from Guillaume Michel is also an outstanding wine in the making, but this is the most reserved of all the range of just-bottled premier crus and clearly will demand some cellaring before it starts to hit on all cylinders. With a bit of swirling, the wine offers up a complex nose of lemon, lime, green apple, beeswax, a complex base of limestone minerality, dried flowers and a topnote of citrus zest. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and rock solid at the core, with excellent cut and grip, fine focus and a very long, mineral-driven and well-balanced finish. There is a lovely touch of salinity to the expression of minerality here that reflects the low yields and the excellent potential inherent in the wine this year. 2026-2050+." 

Burghound, 91-94 Points 

"This is also exuberantly floral in character with its cool and more elegant aromas of citrus, oyster shell, spice and wet stone. The sleeker if perhaps not quite as dense medium weight flavors possess an even finer texture while flashing focused power on the balanced and sneaky long finish. Once again, better depth would help but this beauty seems to have excellent development potential. *Burghound Sweet Spot Outstanding!*" 

Jasper Morris, 91-94 Points 

"Pale lemon colour. I really like the bouquet here. It has punch and tension. This is very much more in place with a salinity that definitely shows a marine touch. There is fair body and length as well, a 2021 to look out for. Drink from 2025-2031." 

Wine Advocate, 92 Points 

"The 2021 Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre is one of the less reductive, more outgoing wines in the range, exhibiting expressive aromas of pear, peach and orange zest mingled with hints of white flowers and pastry cream. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and vibrant, with a delicately layered core of fruit and a saline finish, it's a strong effort. Guillaume Michel presides over this important 22-hectare estate, which has long been the reference for tank-fermented and -matured Chablis, a style that the Michel family did much to popularize in the 1980s. Intense and tensile wines are the calling card here, pure and unadorned in style and consistently high in quality. Indeed, as I've written before, I sometimes think that Louis Michel is the most underrated of Chablis's larger domaines. The big news at this address is a very welcome shift to Diam closures—with the exception of the Vaulorent that was bottled earlier for reasons explained in the accompanying notes—which should guarantee these wines' graceful evolution in bottle. For this first year, Michel retained his usual 30 parts per million of free sulfites at bottling, which lends the wines a somewhat reductive profile out of the gates; but it isn't overdone and I suspect that many readers, like me, will actually appreciate this quality. Those that don't may want to consider a brief decant." 

Alcohol: 13% 

*Price and availability in store may vary. Vintage date may differ from pictured.