Marie Helene Baylac Popular Books

Marie Helene Baylac Biography & Facts

Chablis (pronounced [ʃabli]) is the northernmost Appellation d'origine contrôlée of the Burgundy region in France. Its cool climate produces wines with more acidity and less fruitiness than Chardonnay vines grown in warmer ones. These often have a "flinty" note, sometimes described as "goût de pierre à fusil" ("tasting of gunflint"), and sometimes as "steely". The Chablis AOC is required to use Chardonnay grapes solely. The grapevines around the town of Chablis make a dry white wine renowned for the purity of its aroma and taste. In comparison with the white wines from the rest of Burgundy, Chablis wine has typically much less influence of oak. The amount of barrel maturation, if any, is a stylistic choice which varies widely among Chablis producers. Many Grand Cru and Premier Cru wines receive some maturation in oak barrels, but typically the time in barrel and the proportion of new barrels is much smaller than for white wines of Côte de Beaune. Wines not vinified in barrel will instead be vinified in stainless steel. Location Chablis lies about sixteen kilometres (10 mi) east of Auxerre in the Yonne department, situated roughly halfway between the Côte d'Or and Paris. Of France's wine-growing areas, only Champagne, Lorraine, Alsace and parts of Grand Auxerrois have a more northerly location. Chablis is closer to the southern Aube district of Champagne than the rest of Burgundy. The region comprises 15 by 9 kilometres (9+1⁄2 mi × 5+1⁄2 mi) across 25 communes located along the Serein river. The soil is Kimmeridge Clay with outcrops of the same chalk layer that extends from Sancerre up to the White Cliffs of Dover, giving a name to the paleontologists' Cretaceous period. The Grands Crus, the best vineyards in the area, all lie on a single, small slope, facing southwest and located just north of the town of Chablis. History During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church, particularly Cistercian monks, became a major influence in establishing the economic and commercial interest of viticulture for the region. Pontigny Abbey was founded in 1114, and the monks planted vines along the Serein. Anséric de Montréal gave a vineyard at Chablis to the Abbey in 1186. In 1245 the chronicler Salimbene di Adam described a Chablis wine. Chardonnay is believed to have first been planted in Chablis by the Cistercians of Pontigny Abbey in the 12th century, and from there spread south to the rest of the Burgundy region. The Chablis area became part of the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century. There are records in the mid-15th century of Chablis wine being shipped to Flanders and Picardy. But in February 1568 the town was besieged by the Huguenots, who burned part of it. The Seine river, easily accessible via the nearby Yonne river, gave the Chablis wine producers a near monopoly on the lucrative Parisian market. In the 17th century, the English discovered the wine and began importing large volumes. By the 19th century there were nearly 40,000 hectares (98,840 acres) of vines planted in Chablis with vineyards stretching from the town of Chablis to Joigny and Sens along the Yonne. Some Champagne producers used Chablis as a basis for a sparkling cuvée. With the French Revolution, the monastic vineyards became biens nationaux, and were auctioned off. The new owners were mostly local, and the political upheaval saw small farmers involved as part-time vignerons. The English market continued to prosper. The 19th-century Russian novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy mentions "classic Chablis" as a commonplace choice of wine. The end of the 19th century was a difficult time for the Chablis growers. Firstly, with new railway systems linking all parts of the country with Paris, there was inexpensive wine from regions in the Midi that undercut Chablis. The vineyards were affected by oidium from 1886, and then phylloxera from 1887. Effective replacement of vinestocks to counter phylloxera took some 15 years. Many Chablis producers gave up winemaking, the acreage in the region steadily declining throughout much of the early 20th century. By the 1950s there were only 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of vines planted in Chablis. The 20th century did bring about a renewed commitment to quality production and ushered in technological advances that would allow viticulture to be more profitable and reliable in this cool northern climate. In 1938, the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine created the Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) region for Chablis that mandated the grape variety (Chardonnay) and acceptable winemaking and viticultural practices within delineated boundaries. One of the objectives of the AOC establishment was to protect the name "Chablis", which by this time was already being inappropriately used to refer to just about any white wine made from any number of white grape varieties all across the world. In the early 1960s, technological advances in vineyard frost protection minimized some of the risk and financial cost associated with variable vintages and climate of Chablis. The worldwide "Chardonnay-boom" of the mid-late 20th century, opened up prosperous worldwide markets to Chablis and vineyard plantings saw a period of steady increase. By 2004, vineyard plantings in Chablis reached a little over 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres). Climate and geography Located in northeast France, the Chablis region is considered the northernmost extension of the Burgundy wine region but it is separated from the Côte d'Or by the Morvan hills, with the main Burgundian winemaking town of Beaune located more than 100 km (62 mi) away. This makes the region of Chablis relatively isolated from other winemaking regions with the southern vineyards of the Champagne in the Aube department being the closest winemaking neighbor. The Chablis wine region has much in common with Champagne province, when it comes to climate. It has a semi-continental climate without maritime influence. The peak summer growing season can be hot; and wintertime can be long, cold and harsh, with frosty conditions lasting to early May. Years that experience too much rain and low temperature tend to produce wines excessively high in acidity and fruit that is too lean to support it. Vintages that are exceedingly warm tend to produce fat, flabby wines that are too low in acidity. Frost can be countered by heaters, and aspersion by sprinklers to form an ice layer. The exceptionally poor 1972 Chablis suffered frost at vintage time. The region of Chablis lies on the eastern edge of the Paris Basin. The region's oldest soil dates back to the Upper Jurassic age, over 180 million years ago and includes a vineyard soil type that is calcareous, and known as Kimmeridge Clay. All of the Chablis Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards are planted on this primarily Kimmeridgean soil, which imparts a distinctively mineral, flinty note to the wines. Other areas, particularly most of the Petit Chablis vineyards, are planted on slightly younger Portlandia.... Discover the Marie Helene Baylac popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Marie Helene Baylac books.