Next month my wife and I will be spending some time in France and we are traveling from Lyon to Paris so we think we’ll break up the trip with an overnight in Chablis.
We are not super experienced with Chablis but the few bottles we have had, we have enjoyed and want to explore a little more so figured this was a good opportunity to dip our toes in the water. As a reference point, I’ve noted I liked some bottles by William Fevre & Louis Michel.
From just looking at google maps, it seems like some of the bigger domains have tasting rooms kind of in the middle of the town so it may be semi easy to hop between 2 tastings and Fevre and Michel seem like a 1 minute walk from each other.
We were thinking to drive up in the AM, drop our car at the hotel in Chablis, do a tasting, lunch then an afternoon tasting then a dinner somewhere local and leave early in the AM for Paris.
Anyone have any good recommendations in wineries and/or restaurants? For the wineries, we do not require a “vineyard visit” so if it’s in a tasting room in the town that is fine as long as the hosts are good, quality wines, etc. It would be nice if some of the wine is available in the States so I was thinking maybe 1 larger producer and 1 smaller producer, but I am open to suggestions.
Bumping my own thread- anyone know if Chablis just shuts down for January?
I have tried 4-5 chateaus via emails/online forms and for some it’s been over a week and no response. I wonder if they shut down for a bit given 1 of the 5 had an out of office message that they are closed until mid February so expect a delay but would return the message “soon”.
I am probably going to start calling on Monday to see if anyone picks up just seems odd no response and these are from some of the bigger ones like Fevre, Louis Michel and Billaud.
A lot of growers take vacation and do sales visits in January/February. I’ve never tried visiting then, but wouldn’t surprise me that a lot of things are closed, including restaurants and hotels.
That makes sense, thanks. The away message (think it was from Fevre) mentioned they were going to reopen like 3 days before we get there. We can alway pivot, it’s to break up a drive between Lyon and Paris, so we were going to stop in Chablis for a day to do some tastings/walking around. If we get closer and I get some more bad vibes on things being close we may find another stop or just add an extra day in Paris
I’ve done exactly this, on the reverse drive, so makes sense to me! There’s always Beaune, though that doesn’t get you as far along to Paris. I’d start with finding a hotel, then see if they can help with what’s open.
Meal at Au Fil du Zinc last fall was excellent - would absolutely go again. Wine list was also great - wonderful bottle of aged Raveneau at an excellent price.
Here is a second vote for Au Fil du Zinc. Also the restaurant at L’Hostellerie des Clos, while a bit more formal, has an amazing deep wine list when it comes to chablis. Finally there is a wine bar in the center of town called Chablis Wine Not that has a nice list.
Actually staying there, so dinner at the property is a strong consideration so thanks for sharing. My wife just has a limited diet for food so makes it tricky sometimes especially when abroad so I always need to look things up in advance.
Just a quick follow up - Feb is an odd time of year to visit Chablis as several restaurants were closed or had limited hours, and same goes with the wineries. That said, there was no rush/waits at the tasting rooms and walking around was very easy.
We did luck out and had 4 nice tastings at Louis Michel, LaRoche, Christian Moreau and William Fevre (we were the first tasting of '24 for Fevre to give you an idea, he opened the day we got there and we tasted at 5pm and no one else had shown up that day).
We stayed at L’Hostellerie des Clos and had a nice dinner there along with a bottle of affordable Raveneau Les Clos to top off the day. For lunch there were not many options open, and those that were had limited menus that did not really agree with my wife, so we got her something at some sports cafe/diner type place in the middle of the town - it was passable but nothing worth seeking out.
It is a nice town, very small and easily walkable. It was raining so we did not head out into the vineyards to have a walk around which is a shame.