{"product_id":"patrick-piuze-chablis-1er-cru-les-forets-2025","title":"Patrick Piuze Chablis 1er Cru Les Forets 2025","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Land\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMontmains is the great left-bank premier cru hill of Chablis, running southwest from the town toward Courgis, and it contains three named sub-climats: Montmains itself, Butteaux, and Les Forêts. Forêts sits on the Kimmeridgian marl that underpins every serious Chablis site, but the specific character of this parcel is its topsoil, an unusually even mix of chalk and clay rather than the clay dominance found further along the left bank. That balance is the whole story. Enough clay for weight and slow ripening, enough limestone for cut. Piuze's block borders Vincent Dauvissat's vines, which is about as good a piece of geographic evidence as exists in Chablis. Forêts is famously poor ground, and poor ground here reads as stone in the glass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Wine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChardonnay from a single parcel of vines over seventy years old, picked by hand. Fermentation is spontaneous and happens in used barrels, where the wine then rests ten months. Piuze buys his barrels only from high-acid vintages, on the theory that wood from a lean year carries less residual sweetness into the wine. Nothing new, ever. Malolactic completes naturally and bottling comes in late June or early July after a gentle clay filtration. The profile is savory before it is fruity: lemon oil, wet flint, oyster brine, crushed almond, old-vine density through the middle, and a finish that is salty and faintly bitter in the way good Chablis should be. 2025's two heatwaves concentrated the fruit while the early September weather shift preserved tension.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe People\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePatrick Piuze inherited nothing. He grew up in Quebec, spent his late teens and twenties working harvests in Australia, South Africa and Israel, ran a wine bar in Montreal, then went to France and started over. He made the Chablis at Olivier Leflaive for four years, spent a year at Verget, then three as winemaker at Jean-Marc Brocard. That is roughly eight years of making other people's Chablis before he made any of his own, and it explains how a man with no family vineyards had immediate access to good fruit when he founded his label in 2008. He now works with seventeen growers farming sustainably, hand-harvests everything with a crew of seventy, and bottles more than twenty cuvées.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFood Pairing\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForêts has the structure for real cooking. Turbot or halibut roasted on the bone with brown butter and capers. Chicken poached in its own broth with leeks and tarragon. A plate of raw fish, hamachi crudo with olive oil, sea salt and lemon, where the wine's saline edge does more than any sauce would. Or veal sweetbreads, if you are that kind of cook. Give it two or three years in the cellar if you can stand to wait. This is a wine that gets more interesting, not less.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Giuliana","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51247712305375,"sku":null,"price":82.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0439\/7436\/1248\/files\/P8220188.jpg?v=1787526007","url":"https:\/\/denverwinemerchant.com\/products\/patrick-piuze-chablis-1er-cru-les-forets-2025","provider":"Denver Wine Merchant","version":"1.0","type":"link"}