Samuel Billaud
Les Fourneaux Premier Cru
Chablis
2019

The producer

Samuel Billaud was winemaker at Billaud Simon, his family estate, since 1985, but then left in 2009 to set up his own. Initially he made wine from purchased grapes, but then soon after managed to acquire some of his original vineyard holdings from the family estate, including Les Clos and Vaudesir. The vineyards are farmed organically, and fruit is picked early to preserve energy. Fermentation is with wild yeast and is followed by 18 months on lees which contributes flavour complexity and texture while retaining freshness.

Billaud is touted as Chablis’ rising star and is highly rated by the world’s leading wine critics, who compares him to Chablis luminaries such as Dauvissat and Raveneau. The style is tight, mineral, and focused, yet with great density and creamy leesy weight.

The wine

Samuel Billaud has holdings in Les Clos grand cru – widely recognised as the finest of Chablis’ vineyards. Billaud wild yeast ferments, and then lets the wine rest for 18 months on the lees which brings flavour complexity and texture while retaining freshness.  Les Clos tends to make intense and full-bodied wines, and in the hands of Simon Billaud with his taut and mineral precision, the vineyard expression reaches delicious new heights.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.