The Top Step of the Montrachet Staircase
The Montrachet slope is arranged like a staircase of grands crus, and Chevalier occupies its upper step. It is tiered between 265 and 290 metres in altitude, some fifteen to twenty metres above the Montrachet, which lies between 250 and 270 metres; lower still comes Bâtard-Montrachet, with Bienvenues and Criots at its extremities. This drop of a few dozen metres is enough to produce five distinct appellations on one and the same hillside.
Unlike the Montrachet and the Bâtard, which are cut in two by the communal boundary, Chevalier-Montrachet lies entirely within Puligny-Montrachet — like Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet, while Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet is, symmetrically, entirely within Chassagne. The cru faces east and south, the best orientation of the Côte de Beaune, and it is set against the bare relief of the Mont-Rachet that dominates the whole sector.
The Terroir: Thin Soils, Steep Gradient, Clayey Limestone
The soils of Chevalier are thin and stony, over a clayey limestone from the Jurassic, around 175 million years old. On the stratigraphic scale of the Puligny slope, the cru and the upper part of Les Folatières rest on the light grey marls of the Middle Bathonian, above the white oolith of the "calcaires de Chassagne" of the Lower Bathonian that carries the Montrachet, and beneath the compact dolomitic limestone of the Upper Bathonian that forms the spur of the Mont-Rachet.
Everything here comes down to leanness and gradient. The earth is shallow, water never stagnates, the vine roots into the stones and has only a very small water reserve at its disposal. Yields reflect this — around 40 hectolitres per hectare, appreciably below what the Montrachet produces — and the grapes reach ripeness slightly later, altitude and the coolness of the upper slope delaying the cycle. It is precisely that lag that shapes the style of the cru.
A Continental Climate, an Altitude That Makes the Difference
The climatic setting is that of the whole Côte: temperate with a slight continental tendency, cold winters, wet springs, hot and sometimes stormy summers. Chardonnay buds slightly earlier than pinot noir, which exposes it to spring frosts, but it reaches high sugar levels while retaining substantial acidity — the condition for a white that is both powerful and balanced.
What distinguishes Chevalier is the way altitude tempers that setting. Twenty metres higher, the nights are cooler, ripening a little slower, acidity better preserved. In warm vintages that is a decisive advantage: the heatwave of 2003, which started some harvests in mid-August a month early — an earliness unheard of since 1422 and 1865 — showed that the upper-slope crus withstood excessive heat better than those below.
The Style of the Wines: Tension Before Flesh
The robe is gold with mineral glints. The nose opens on spice, honey, dried fruits, fern and butter, but the dominant trait of Chevalier lies elsewhere: in a verticality, a saline directness that its neighbours at the foot of the slope do not have to the same degree. Where the Bâtard unfolds in breadth, Chevalier rises in height; where the Montrachet achieves synthesis, Chevalier chooses tension.
Vinification follows the Burgundian canon — hand harvesting, pressing, settling, fermentation between 18 and 24°C, malolactic in barrel or in tank, ageing on lees with bâtonnage. The wine demands time: young, it seems austere, almost closed; it needs ten to fifteen years, longer in the great vintages, to deliver its depth. It is served between 12 and 14°C with white fish in a sauce, lobster, crayfish or Bresse chicken.
The Chevalier, the Pucelles and the Bâtard: A Legend of Division
The origin of the names on this slope lies in a legend of inheritance, related by Marie-Hélène Landrieu-Lusigny in her study of the lieux-dits of the Burgundian vineyard. In the Middle Ages the lord of Puligny is said to have divided his lands among his children: to the eldest son, the "chevalier", gone on crusade; to his daughters, "les pucelles"; and to his illegitimate son, the "bâtard". Hence the three neighbouring climats of Chevalier-Montrachet, Les Pucelles — today a premier cru — and Bâtard-Montrachet.
The name Montrachet itself comes from "Mont Rachaz", attested in 1252: in Old French, "râche" designates what is bald, and the Mont-Rachet is the bare hill overlooking the slope. In 1921, a lawsuit brought by Julien Bouchard and eight owners of the Montrachet precisely established that the wines of Chevalier, like those of Bâtard, had always been sold under their own name and not under that of Montrachet: it is that judicial distinction that the appellation decrees confirmed, the INAO register dating recognition of the cru to the decree of 31 July 1937.
Les Demoiselles, a Name Within the Name
Like all Burgundian grands crus, Chevalier is divided among numerous owners, and an upper part of the cru bears a name of its own: Les Demoiselles. The appellation remains Chevalier-Montrachet, but usage has kept this lieu-dit on the labels of those who own rows there. The name pays tribute to Adèle and Julie Voillot, daughters of a Beaune general of the early nineteenth century, owners of the parcel and both of whom died unmarried.
The house of Louis Latour states that it acquired its 0.51 hectare in Les Demoiselles in 1913, from the widow of Léonce Bocquet — the very man who had undertaken the restoration of part of the château of the Clos de Vougeot. This kind of dated mention is worth more than a present-tense inventory: in a grand cru of seven and a half hectares, parcels change hands and tenancy agreements shift from one generation to the next.