2003 Alex Gambal Chassagne-Montrachet Clos St. Jean

Alex Gambal is a domaine in Beaune founded in 1997 by Alex Gambal, an American. Gambal was helping run his family’s parking lot enterprise in Washington D.C. in the 1990s when he and his wife first visited France and became entranced with Burgundy and Pinot Noir. In 1993 he spent a year as an apprentice to a Beaune wine broker and in 1998 he made his first Burgundy from purchased pressed juice. In 2003 Gambal bought vineyards and now uses his own grapes to make very limited quantities of Grand Cru, Premier Cru and Bourgogne Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Gambal’s wines have routinely earned compliments from reviewers including Robert M. Parker Jr., who notes that Gambal is “producing increasingly good wines.”

Chassagne-Montrachet is the appellation that covers the communes of Chassagne-Montrachet and Remigny, and it is the southern-most of the Côte d’Or’s three great white wine appellations of Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet. With 1,200 acres of vineyards, it is one of the largest appellations in the region, and more than half the vineyard acreage is Grand Cru or Premier Cru. The three famous Grand Crus are Le Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet and Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet. There are also 16 main Premiers Crus, most of them considered very high quality, and village wines. One fact rarely noted is that historically the appellation produced more red than white wine. In the late 1990s the ratio of white to red wines changed, however, as more vineyards were converted from Pinot Noir to Chardonnay, a logical decision given the acclaim of the appellation’s whites. There are still intriguing red wines produced. Clive Coates wrote that the appellation’s white wines generally are “full and firm, more akin to Puligny than to the softer, rounder wines of Meursault.”

This white variety originated in Burgundy, but is now grown around the world. Its flexibility to thrive in many regions translates to wide flavor profile in the market. Chardonnay is commonly used in making Champagne and sparkling wines.