Les divers crus du Chablis

« Chablis has become one of the best known of French white wines — outside of France. Unfortunately some of its notoriety arises because its name has been freely borrowed the world over to describe any dry white wine. »
That's what the Larousse Encyclopedia of Wine (English edition) says.

    

« There are four appellations in Chablis. In descending order, they are Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Chablis, and Petit Chablis. The Grands and Premiers Crus are specific vineyards... Village or AOC Chablis covers much of the appellation,
while Petit Chablis is little used at present. »
(Larousse again.)

    

« When new, [Chablis wine] has the immediate appeal of youthful fruitiness, with a firm backbone of acidity... Although Chablis is appealing in its youth, it is much more rewarding with a few years' bottle-age: at least five for a Premier Cru,
and ten or more for a more substantial Grand Cru. »
(Larousse again.)

    

The French noun cru is a hard one to translate into English. The word derives from the past participle of the French verb croître (which is crû), meaning "to grow, grown". Sometimes it seems to mean something like terroir (soil+climate), or vineyard, or vintage, and other times it becomes a synonym for "wine". Un grand cru is a great wine (or a great vintage), and un premier cru is a fine wine. Les mystères de la langue française...

Chablis — better than ever?

One reason we wanted to go to Burgundy in 2014 was that we wanted to go back to the wine town called Chablis. Here in the Saint-Aignan area, Walt had been buying a few bottles of white wine from a winery in Chablis every year at an event where winemakers from all around France bring their wines to a local winery and do tastings as well as sell bottles of the wines they make. We thought it would be fun to go see what the winery in Chablis was like.

We had been to Chablis several times before, as early as 1993 — we were on our way to Provence from Paris back then and had a picnic lunch in Chablis — and as recently as October 2011, when we had a really nice lunch in a restaurant in Chablis. Only white wines are made in Chablis. The grape grown there is Chardonnay, whereas the white wines of Touraine, Sancerre, and Pouilly-sur-Loire are made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

In his World Atlas of Wine, Hugh Johnson writes: "...Chablis is one of the great inimitable originals. Chardonnay responds to its cold terroir of limestone clay with flavours that no-one can reproduce in easier (or any other) winegrowing conditions." Chablis is in northern Burgundy, only 100 miles from Paris, and the climate there is harsh. Springtime frosts and freezes are frequent.

Johnson adds that Chablis wine is "hard but not harsh, reminiscent of stones and minerals, but at the same time of green hay; when it is young it actually looks green... Grand Cru Chablis tastes important, strong, almost immortal. And indeed it does last a remarkably long time; a strange and delicious sort of sour taste enters into it when it reaches about ten years of age, and its golden-green eye flashes meaningfully." How's that for hyperboly? Johnson says that in France only Sancerre wine compares to Chablis. I think I'd add Pouilly Fumé to that list.

We did find the winery, and bought a carton (six bottles) of Chablis from different vineyard parcels to see if we could detect different flavors and styles. Johnson says that Chablis has experienced a great renaissance over the past 50 years, after seeing its vineyards dwindle to less than a thousand acres over the first half of the 20th century. Critics and experts say quality has declined as production has increased, but Johnson concludes that "on balance Chablis is as good as ever — and maybe better."

 

Môlay, pop. 92

I've been googling around this morning to see if I might find any information about the history of the village of Môlay.
It's in the Yonne département of Burgundy, and we stayed there for three nights in 2014. There seems to be absolutely no historical information about the village. It was a nice quiet place to stay and a good place for walks with the dog. Chablis, Tonnerre, and Noyers-sur-Serein are nearby. The architecture of Môlay is pretty austere or even severe, I'd say.

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I read on a couple of web sites that there are about 75 logements (housing units) in Môlay and more than a third of them are résidences secondaires (vacation or weekend houses). I found one house for sale in the village right now.
It's a two-story, three-bedroom house with about 800 sq. ft. of living space and no yard or garden.
It's available for 40,000 euros (about 50,000 USD).

Le gîte à Môlay

In October 2014 — seven years ago already — Walt and I rented a gîte rural in Burgundy for a short stay. It had to be a place where we could stay with our dog Callie. The one we found was in a village called Môlay, which is just 20 minutes from towns like Chablis, Tonnerre, and Noyers-sur-Serein that we wanted to see. It was less than an hour's drive from other places we thought we might get a chance to visit, including Auxerre, Montbard, Semur-en-Auxois, and Époisses.

   

In the photo on the left above you can see the little barn that was our gîte for three nights. It was a tiny apartment but it was well furnished and organized, with a full bathroom, a modern kitchen, TV, wireless internet, and a sleeping loft. If I remember correctly, we took with us a big pot of beef Burgundy to have for our evening meals. We had a picnic lunch some days, and some days we went to restaurants for lunch. The dog was well behaved. The weather cooperated, mostly. The photo on the right above shows the gîte-owners' house, which included a couple of B'n'B rooms that they also rented to tourists.

   

Above you can see the gîte entrance, with Callie the collie waiting for me to stop taking pictures and let her in. On the right is a composite image that I stitched together using two photos I took inside the apartment. Our stuff was kind of everywhere. The stairs led up to the sleeping loft, which had a very low ceiling but was comfortable. If you want to see what the rest of the gîte looked like, click or touch this link to a post Walt did about the gîte soon after we stayed there. Below is a photo of the village (pop. about 100), which is built around its church.