The Pinson Family are one of the longest established families in Chablis with records showing them as having been in Chablis since 1640. There is even a Rue Pinson in the village where an earlier generation of three Pinson brothers used to live! The family first started selling its wine in 1880. In 2004 they created a new and state of the art winery, expanding the capacity of it’s stock holding, installing a new press house, and also restoring two of its cellars for wines requiring long barrel aging.

Everything is hand-harvested, with sorting of the grapes taking place both in the vineyard and at the winery. Fermentation is mostly in stainless steel using selected yeasts, then the wines are transferred to barrel for the maturation process. The barrels for Grand Cru Les Clos are one to two years old, and for all of their premiers crus three to six years old. The straight Chablis stays in stainless steel.

The Wine Tasting

We arrived at Domaine Pinson, as agreed at 10.30am, and met Corinne Pinson the wife of Laurent, and John Abbot who is the owner of The Abbots Elm and part time Chablis resident. John and I had become friends via Twitter and this was the second tasting he had arranged for me, each being concerned with the Chablis Grand Cru, Les Clos. I must admit that this was the first time for a few years that I had visited a winemaker for a wine tasting where they didn’t speak any English, so we were lucky to have John with us as he speaks French fluently.

As usual we moved through the Pinson grades of Petit Chablis, Chablis, some Premier Crus, and finally the Grand Cru Les Clos. The two lower grades were from 2017 and the two top grades were the 2016 vintage. These were all wines of a VERY high quality, crisp, clean tasting, all in the classic Chablis style and once again I especially liked the Chablis Premier Cru, Fourchaume. I’m really unsure why I am constantly drawn to this climat/plot as this is the fourth winemaker I have bought this particular wine from over the years, including the Cave Cooperative La Chablisienne who first introduced me to it about 10 years ago. My daughter preferred the Chablis Premier Cru Mont de Milieu and we each bought half a dozen of our choices, plus a “few” (!) of the Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos for myself too. Overall, a grand tasting! We’ll be back!