2024 Domaine Thomas Labille, Petit Chablis AOC, White Burgundy, France.
The latest Petit Chablis from Domaine Thomas Labille, from the tiny crop of 2024, is a beautifully pure and vibrant effort with a pale greenish/gold and straw hue in the glass with fine aromatics, loads of crushed wet chalk and crisp steeliness, showing a bright citrus start along with tart apple, pear and white peach fruits. This lemony Petit Chablis adds some clove spice, lime blossom and a hint of not sweet honeycomb notes and is wonderfully vivid and bright in character and delicious to drink now. Still pretty new to me, Labille, as it is noted by their US importer Massanois has some 35 hectares in the Petit Chablis, with its more clay based soils, Chablis and Chablis 1er Cru appellations, with most of those being hillside parcels set on the more classic limestone soils, perfect for making some authentic terroir driven efforts, as this one shows. These Labille wines have been lovely and I really like this Petit Chablis, it shows a nice tension, fresh detail and subtle textural depth and feel, with the touch of oak in the wine’s elevage making it very appealing and it certainly will play well with food too, I highly recommend checking these wines out.
As mentioned in my prior reviews, the Thomas Labille estate, founded in the later part of the 1980s, which was all new to me last year, crafts some delicious Chablis and Petit Chablis wines, and is known for their crisp purity, mineral character, and vibrant crisp acidity. The domaine, fast becoming a favorite, joining Savary, Christophe and Costal for quality and value, I understand, practices all sustainable and organic farming on their collection of small parcels. The focus is on wines that express the distinctive Chablis terroir, and particularly its chalky Kimmeridgian soil, and that reflects in the wines, resulting in a minerally, citrus-driven and, non overly oaky, but partially barrel fermented style. For the Labille Chablis, the winery typically does a whole cluster press and a short settlement period before the wine is racked to barrel for spontaneous fermentation, after which the wine continues to mature in the used barrels for between 15 to 18 months with very little disruption of the lees, depending on the vintage, with this Petit Chablis seeing just between 6-10 in the wood, to preserve fresh transparency. I again, enjoyed this Petit Chablis a lot and while an easy find, it will be one I look for for some causal Summer time meals with friends.
($28 Est.) 91 Points, grapelive