{"product_id":"patrick-piuze-chablis-grand-cru-les-preuses-2025","title":"Patrick Piuze Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses 2025","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Land\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLes Preuses occupies the northwestern end of the grand cru hill, on the heights directly above Bougros, and it faces south and southwest, bathed in sun for most of the day and catching the last light late into a summer evening. Ten point eight hectares. The name traces to pierre, stone, and to the old Roman stony road that ran through here. Two things set it apart from its neighbors. The slope is gentle where much of the côte is steep, and the soil is unusually substantial rather than thin: dense, compact clay resting on a limestone slab, among the most structured of the seven grand crus. The Kimmeridgian marl beneath, laid down in a warm shallow sea more than 150 million years ago and packed with Exogyra virgula oyster fossils, is the same rock its neighbors sit on. What differs is how much of it there is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Wine\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eChardonnay, picked by hand, fermented with ambient yeast and aged ten months in used barrels. There is no new oak in this cellar at all, and the barrels are sourced from high-acid vintages so they lend texture without sweetness. Malolactic completes naturally and bottling comes in late June or early July after a gentle clay filtration. Preuses is the most tightly wound of the grand crus in youth. The appellation body calls it Chablis at its purest and concedes it is reserved in its early years, which is accurate. White flower, lemon confit, iodine and a slowly emerging smokiness, a long mineral finish rather than an immediately expansive middle. The two 2025 heatwaves and an August 18 harvest start, ahead of the usual September, gave small, thick-skinned berries with real concentration at moderate alcohol. Give it five years, and ten if you can.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe People\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePatrick Piuze was born in Quebec and did not come to wine through family or school. He left home at eighteen and worked vineyards in Australia, South Africa and Israel, then ran a wine bar in Montreal for a couple of years before deciding that selling wine was not the same as making it. He moved to France, made Chablis for Olivier Leflaive for four years, spent a year at Verget and three at Jean-Marc Brocard, then started his own house in 2008 with no vineyards and no capital in land. He still owns none. He buys from seventeen growers across roughly 25 hectares, all farmed sustainably, hand-harvests with a crew of seventy while most of Chablis picks by machine, and bottles more than twenty separate cuvées.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFood Pairing\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a wine to build a meal around, not to pour alongside a snack. Turbot roasted on the bone with brown butter. Lobster with drawn butter and nothing else. Chicken cooked under a brick with lemon and thyme. Or an aged Comté with walnut bread at the end of dinner, where the wine's salinity meets the crystallized crunch in the cheese. Serve it at cellar temperature rather than cold, and use real glasses. Open it for the reason you bought it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Giuliana","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51247711748319,"sku":null,"price":175.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0439\/7436\/1248\/files\/P8220193.jpg?v=1787526006","url":"https:\/\/denverwinemerchant.com\/products\/patrick-piuze-chablis-grand-cru-les-preuses-2025","provider":"Denver Wine Merchant","version":"1.0","type":"link"}