Domaine Orion Chablis 2022

Alcohol: 12.5%

Grape(s): 100% Chardonnay

Localization: Chablis, Burgundy, France

Tasting Notes: Léa (Schaller) ferments the fruit on its indigenous yeast and ages it in stainless to preserve its native zing and nice lemony, citrus edge. The wine has a pristine clarity of its fruit, which marries Chablis’ native petrichor-mineral with some beautiful richness and panache.

The Domain: These are succulent wines made by the intrepid Léa Schaller, who traded a Parisien career in the music business for life in the countryside in 2019. For generations her family sold the grapes from its 10 hectares around the village of Préhy to the Chablisienne co-op, but that path was too constricted for Léa. She threw herself headlong into a viticultural and winemaking degree, built a small winery just down the road from Préhy's iconic church, and put the farming on a much more progressive viticultural path. Each year, she has steadily brought more of her production under her own roof. She named her domaine after a Metallica song. And she designed labels to match the tattoo on her forearm, which is an homage to the fact that in old German the Schaller name referred to the village bell-ringer who rang in the close of the day and the coming of owls.