Standing in for our regular wine writer, Nick heads off to get to grips with some different expressions of this remarkable wine.
As Douglas explains, to the less knowledgeable among us like me, Chablis comes from the northernmost wine district of the Burgundy region a place rich in land made up largely of crushed seashells and while it’s made from the Chardonnay grape is is far less fruity than its cousins; less Sid James perhaps and more Alex James? In fact, its steely, flinty flavour is its trademark and for me, something of a Chablis drinking nouveau, its chief attraction.
That said, you’d not want to ban this from your house as you would the little brother. It has the sinewiness of its relatives but a touch of fruit and at around £11 it’s affordable too. Obviously a good choice to accompany fish.
it was set off by Scandinavian-inspired canapés from Martina and Magdelena of Nordish including miniature Norwegian fishcakes and remoulade and curled cucumber filled with crab and avocado salad. Nordish are based in London’s’East Village’, which I have never heard of although perhaps they mean, sigh, East London. It takes a village, apparently.
Everyone seemed busy pulling enormous, and no doubt enormously expensive, dSLRs from their bags, presumably because their websites require 300 dpi 20MB files. Our needs are a little less demanding, so I waved my iPhone in a desultory way at the food feeling a little left out. Big lenses always make me feel inferior.
A rather feisty young lady had been batch cooking pork chops for some time and these were duly brought to table. It seemed clear to me that mine at least was undercooked, but I felt the risk of food poisoning was less than that which could be involved in trying to tell her so.
With this dish came Julien Brocard’s Chablis, La Boissonneuse that had been, we were told, part fermented in oak foudres. This wine comes from a biodynamic vineyard in Chablis. What is bio dynamism? Well it’s like organic on steroids (sic) and most of it seems common sense although the phases of the moon stuff, as well as burying cow horns in the fields at the equinox, seems a little less defensible and more like Whicker Man territory.
Still it’s obviously better than spraying chemicals all over le shop and the wine was delicious, although it could have benefitted from more cow horn, as I sagely remarked to no one in particular.
A massive plate of cheeses from France and UK were matched with a large ice-bucket full of more Chablis (chableaux?) from big name Premier Cru and Grand Cru sites. These sites get more sun and have a higher amount of limestone marl soil and are smaller in number and so larger in price tag.
Waggling my fingers happily like Wallace, oooh I do like a bit of cheese, I ate large amounts of each and really liked them all, which was as well what with Brexit and all I didn’t want to cause any more offence by trying to send all the French cheeses home.
The wines were Domaine William Fevre, Vaulorent, Premier Cru 2012, Jean Paul et Benoit Valmur Grand Cru 2012, Clotilde Davenne Les Preuses Grand Cru 2008 and Domaine Laroche Les Blanchots Grand Cru 2007.
Did one go better or worse with each cheese? It would have been nice to have done a proper sit down, sober, comparison but quite frankly by this time law and order had largely broken down and Douglas’ sage words were falling rather on deaf ears. I’m sure I saw someone swigging Premier Cru from the bottle at one point although thinking about it perhaps I was just looking at my own reflection in the picture frames.
Unfortunately, the cool winter that helps make Chablis what it is have has been more than usually cruel than cool this year and so the yield will be very low. That will manifest itself perhaps as a shortage in a few years’ time, so stock up now.
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