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Pure
Chablis
Wine Spectator
April 2000
" Bernard
Billaud says he left Chablis to come to understand it better.
When 18, he left for Paris to study fine arts, but he has
never lost contact with his roots. Billaud left Chablis
in 1962, and it was only 30 years later that his conception
of Chablis became reality on the family Estate founded
in 1815.
" It was only when I contemplated Chablis from the
outside that I best achieved its understanding" says
Billaud now aged 55. "The estate made good wine
beforehand, but it lacked class, it was not sufficiently
ethereal and delicate. It was also my father's wish to
improve the quality, but he did not have the technology. I
finally decided to start afresh in 1991 with my nephew
Samuel, a young member of the profession. In the French
capital, Billaud was in contact with rather more
sophisticated cultural trends than in his native Chablis in
the provinces. He made his career in communications
consultancy, but his true passions were painting, sculpting
and playing jazz.
On
refining his taste, Billaud asserted his critical approach
and compared wines with Art. And he felt that Domaine
BILLAUD-SIMON could produce better wines. The Estate bears
the name of Bernard's father, Jean Billaud and of his
grandfather on his mother's side, Jules Simon. Around 1965,
Billaud suggested to his father and brother André that the
two names should be combined to sign the wines BILLAUD-SIMON.
Early in the eighties Billaud suggested to his father (who
made the vines)and his brother André (who looked after the
wines) that they should do away with the old 650-litre vats
and casks (called demi-muids) which made the wines heavy
with no control over vinification temperatures, says Billaud,
who has now taken the Estate in hand with his young nephew
Samuel now aged 28. But the greatest difficulty facing Billaud concemed the
outdated, parallelepiped tanks in enal-nelled steel which
were impossible to cool. |
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The
grape juice, often too hot during fermentation, burnt the
delicate aromas. The purpose was to produce a genuine
Chablis, elegant, pure, a first class Chardonnay such as
Billaud had in mind. The wines do not come into contact with
wood, with the exception of the two vatfuls made from old
wines 40 to 50 years of age - a Premier
Cru Mont de Milieu and
a Grand Cru Les
Blanchots. All
the BILLAUD-SIMON wines are glue clarified and slightly
filtered to reach greater refinement. Billaud likes his
grapes to be mature, giving the wines a rich structure.
The current trend is more for woody, demonstrative
Chardonnays, but BILLAUD- SIMON has
no difficulty converting us to his genuine, original style.
The Domaine produces approximately 132 000 bottles per year
on 20 hectares of first-choice vineyards. The Domaine
produces Petit
Chablis,
Chablis,
five wines from the 4 Premiers Crus (including
Les
Vaillons and
Montée
de
Tonnerre) and
four wines
from the Grands Crus ( including Vaudésir, les
Preuses and
les Clos).
The vibrant Chardonnays
produced by BILLAUD-SIMON
may be a challenge to taste when
young. But as soon as they take on the years, they become
wines of remarkable maturity on their elegant structure. The
92 magnum of les Preuses Grand Cru which I tasted had
astonishing purity, balance and freshness. Understanding
BILLAUD-SIMON
wines requires effort, but so it is for the
most refined aspects of our culture, as Billaud himself
round out".
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