Patrick Piuze Vaillons Les Minots Chablis 1er Cru 2017

Patrick Piuze- a Montreal native- took the region by storm when he arrived over a decade ago. 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.

As for technique, he is a maverick. While 90% of Chablis is machine-harvested, he harvests everything by hand, a paramount factor in the quality of his wines. While most cellars use a pneumatic press, 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 EIGHT different villages-level wines, each giving a distinctive expression of terroir.