Domaine Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet Grand Cru 2023

Updated August 21, 2026.

About This Wine

The 2023 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru is a profoundly refined expression of Chardonnay from one of Burgundy’s most exalted slopes, combining the generosity of the 2023 vintage with the cool, mineral architecture that distinguishes Chevalier from the broader, more muscular Bâtard-Montrachet below it. Aromatically restrained in its youth, it gradually reveals white flowers, crisp orchard fruit, lemon oil, wet limestone, hazelnut and a subtle trace of honey, while the palate possesses remarkable concentration without heaviness—silken through the middle, yet driven by incisive acidity and a long, chalky, almost saline finish. Critics have repeatedly emphasized its tension and ageworthiness, with William Kelley awarding 97 points and describing the wine as particularly pure and racy. 

An arcane detail helps explain the wine’s singular personality: Domaine Leflaive controls roughly two hectares of Chevalier-Montrachet spread across multiple parcels, including vines planted in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980, and the domaine has historically avoided wholesale replanting, replacing individual dead vines instead. The upper reaches of Chevalier become markedly steeper and the soils progressively thinner and richer in limestone, while its slightly greater altitude makes the site cooler than Montrachet immediately below—conditions that help account for the wine’s characteristic precision, austerity and mineral persistence. The result in 2023 is less about overt opulence than controlled power: a Grand Cru of extraordinary detail and latent complexity that should evolve for decades, gradually exchanging its youthful citrus, white fruit and crushed-stone character for the layered tertiary complexity for which mature Leflaive is renowned.

Score

Wine Advocate, 97 Points.