Domaine Orion, situated in Préhy, a small village in the south west corner of the appellation of Chablis, was founded as recently as 2019, by Léa Schaller. Léa is the 3rd generation of producers in her family, and with just her third harvest, her bright crisp mineral Chablis that bursts with green apple fruit and delectable saline notes, sings of both the present and the future.

After leaving university in Strasbourg, Léa worked in the music business in Paris, before returning home to Préhy to help run the family vineyards. However, she soon decided to abort the family’s business of selling their grapes to La Chablisienne, the much respected local co-op, and go alone. So she returned to school to obtain a degree in viticulture and winemaking, and built a new winery, naming it Orion, after a song by Metallica, her favourite band.

Domaine Orion farms 10 hectares of vines, with 6.6 of those remaining contracted to the co-op, leaving 3.4 hectares for her own Orion label. In her first 2019 vintage, she produced 1,000 bottles, and by 2023, 20,000, so her domaine is very much a coming force and the approach is very much low intervention. Herbicides were disposed of in 2022, with other treatments minimised, and her wine ferments spontaneously in stainless steel, where it remains, until light fining and filtering before bottling.