Louis Michel Butteaux

If you've been paying any attention to the 2024 Chablis campaign, you already know the story: there is little to no wine from a number of our favorite producers. The vintage was painfully small, and it seems the better the producer, the shorter the supply.

I had been writing about this well before I left for France last March, and the rumblings were already there. Rain, frost, poor flowering, reduced yields, mildew, oidium, you name it, everything that could go wrong literally did. It pushed a number of vignerons to throw in the towel, as there was not enough fruit in some parcels to even bother picking. I knew it was going to be a short vintage. I just didn't realize it was going to be this short. With that in mind, I started back-filling at the end of last year and into the first part of 2026, buying up the best of what was still available in the market.

I had nearly forgotten about this parcel of 2022 and 2023 Louis Michel Butteaux Vieilles Vignes I had purchased, until I spotted it on one of the pallets from the most recent container.

Louis Michel is one of my go-to producers in Chablis, and for good reason. The domaine is a benchmark for what unoaked, terroir-driven Chablis can be, and they represent what is arguably the best value in premier cru Chablis.

Their Butteaux Vieilles Vignes has always been, to my mind, one of the insider wines in the cellar, one of those bottles where if you know, you know. What sets it apart from not only their regular Butteaux bottling but from every other producer's Butteaux is how singular this parcel really is. A single block planted in 1955, growing on a distinct bench of dense white clay that gives the wines a density and weight the surrounding vines simply cannot match.

Where the standard Butteaux bottling is precise and mineral, the Vieilles Vignes has real depth - full-bodied and layered, with the kind of palate-staining intensity that only comes from very old vines under genuine stress. The court-noué virus, which is a soil based nematode, reduces yields naturally, concentrating the fruit into small, dense berries with an almost uncommon depth of flavor. Couple that with the 70 year old vines and this is where the intensity of flavor comes from. Lime, green apple, chalky soil tones, a touch of anise, and a finish that makes your jaw ache. Everything I look for in Chablis!

Critics have been consistent in their acclaim. Neil Martin of Vinous has called it a wine of "off-the-charts textural intensity and pure power." Jasper Morris described it as having "an extra level of density" over the regular Butteaux, with impeccable length. It is, in short, everything that great Chablis can be.

Both the 2022 and 2023 are in stock now, and between the two of them you have a rare window into back-to-back vintages of one of the most distinctive premier crus in all of Chablis. Quantities are very limited. If either vintage speaks to you, I wouldn't wait.