Albert Bichot Domaine Long-Depaquit Chablis Grand Cru "Moutonne" Monopole

La Moutonne exists in a bureaucratic paradox: a 2.35-hectare site straddling two recognised Grand Cru lieux-dits — Vaudésir and Preuses — that was deliberately excluded from the 1938 Grand Cru classification, leaving Domaine Long-Depaquit to market it as a quasi-monopole outside the official hierarchy while the wine itself performs at the apex of Chablis. Domaine Long-Depaquit, the ~65-hectare Chablis estate within the Albert Bichot portfolio, sits on Kimmeridgian limestone-clay soils — the ancient Jurassic seabed that defines Chablis' most mineral expressions — and La Moutonne's position spanning two Grand Cru slopes concentrates both the chalky tension of Preuses and the broader, more textured energy of Vaudésir into a single wine. At Grand Cru level, Long-Depaquit ferments in used oak barrels with aging running 11–16 months, a regime calibrated to amplify Kimmeridgian character rather than impose wood. The house's non-interventionist philosophy — gravity racking throughout, vinification at the Chablis estate rather than centralised in Beaune — keeps the wine structurally honest. What no peer replicates: the monopole status across two Grand Cru classifications simultaneously, a legal anomaly that has no parallel in Burgundy. The cool, frost-pressured 2021 vintage delivered precisely the conditions La Moutonne rewards: high natural acidity, linear minerality, and compressed fruit that will integrate over 8–15 years from harvest.