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As I had threatened, I made my triumphant landing at Burgundy. The realization of a two-year
quest, the point of this trip was not pleasure but rather the righting of the
great wrong of my debacle at the EU border in London's regional Chatwick Airport in 2017. My approach was full on Blitzkrieg.
There is no time to waver. There is no time to hesitate. The key is constant
motion and very tight schedules to maximize exposure to the areas I had
immersed myself in via wine textbooks over the last three years. My decades of
band touring have made trips like this possible. Very tight schedules with razor thin windows of “free”
time. Carefully plotted out daily
itineraries all focused out on the idea that this might be my only shot at ever
seeing this region of the world.
I could dive into some really technical wine crap here that
would bore the shit out of 98% of you reading this. I’m going to give you a break and not get into viticulture
methods, fermentation temperatures, percentages of new oak aging or anything
that assholes like me sometimes ask about in group tours of wineries that make
all the other people on the tour think “Why won’t this guy shut the fuck up?” Instead I will try to make this
interesting to ordinary human beings.
The initial strike on the Burgundy Blitzkrieg came in Chablis, a remote
northern village that not that many tourists trouble themselves to visit.
Chablis is a small village that sits on the edge of where it
was traditionally possible to ripen grapes. Climate change, which old
white guy Republicans with their heads in the sand are certain isn’t happening, has in fact made ripening
the Chardonnay a non-issue in the last ten years. By the way, if you want to know if climate change is a real
thing, ask a farmer. They don’t
care about politics. They just
respond to what their fields are doing.
Chablis used to struggle to ripen grapes and would pick in early
October. Now they pick in late
August. Fact.
Every textbook I had read made a point about how the best
vineyards are in a natural “sun bowl” of this curved hill on the banks of the
Serein River. The fabled Grand Cru
vineyards of Chablis have for hundreds of years produced the most sought after
wines from this region from this grand vista. Photographs would show the sweeping landscape arching up
from the banks of this mighty waterway.
Imagine my surprise when in reality this is a really big hill that is a
good half mile away from something we would probably call a “creek”. There are no paddle boats majestically
churning up and down the River Serein.
There were two leathery French guys smoking cigarettes trying to pull
what looked like either a 12 inch carp or maybe a white bass from the creek. They stared at me when I walked past
with a dumbfounded look on my face that must have said, “That’s it? That’s the fucking river everyone is so
concerned about?” I could have
jumped across part of it. I
definitely could have waded across the deepest part in shorts without worrying
about getting my shirt wet. Grand
Cru vineyards like Vaudesir and Blanchot are about the size of a big yard in a
Midwestern McMansion neighborhood.
Now I understand why some of those wines are so expensive. Supply is tiny.
Chablis is a word American cheap ass wine companies previously used to suggest their white wine is the same as this benchmark French
region. It wasn’t. It was whatever white grapes they
crammed into a vat. Chablis is
chardonnay from this particular area around this village. The traditional style of Chablis is a
nervous tension, sort of an electric citrus. It’s as if you can taste the
struggle against the climate combined with the chalky soils. An afternoon was
devoted to trying to discern the subtlest differences in vineyards across the
wide portfolios of William Fevre and Albert Bichot. It is like mixing a record
and trying to figure out if you should nudge the ride cymbal up or down in the
final mix. There are tiny subtleties that no normal person will ever notice or
attempt to notice. While Chablis aficionados will wax on about the differences
of the Le Clos and Bougros grand cru vineyards (spaced about 11 feet apart), 99.5% of
people will drink it and say “Mmmm... lemony!”.
All a normal human needs to know about Chablis wine is it is
broken down into four basic types. Petite Chablis is sort of shitty simple
citrus tasting wine that is made from grapes planted in mostly dodgy areas. I
wouldn’t buy it if I were you. It's cheap, like $12 a bottle but even then the
risk/reward ratio isn’t there. If it’s just called Chablis, this is reliably
pleasant citrus and mineral tasting wine that any rational person would want to
drink on a warm day of their patio.
These can be some of the best white wine deals in France. The next level up is the Premier Cru wine. There are 40 little patches of vines in
this classification, and they have more intensity of flavor than the regular
Chablis. They need a little time
to open up, so as a rule of thumb five years in the basement is a good
idea. The Grand Cru represents
about 2% of all Chablis and comes from the seven little vineyards on the banks
of the mighty Serein. These are
wines mostly for rich English/American/German guys and Asian tourists to pay
too much for so they can get “the best”.
When you taste these wines now, they don’t taste nearly as good as the
Premier Cru and regular Chablis as they are screwed down tight. They need a decade, two decades to
unwind slowly in the bottle. All
the grand cru I tasted in Chablis will probably outlive me. Almost all of these wines are probably
opened too soon by showoffs that don't know what they've got.
So what’s Chablis like? In the tasting room of Albert Bichot an impossibly cute
French girl was dismissively pouring the portfolio of wines and making no
pretense in giving a single fuck. As I was noting the more floral notes of the
Fourchame, she sniffed and said “of course”. It was as if EVERYONE knew
Fourchame vineyard wines have that quality. She could not have been any more
French. The women there have a
confidence that suggests not only are you stupid because you are a man, you are
even more stupid because you are an American man that doesn’t speak
French. I immediately wanted to
jettison out of my current life and move in with her as some sort of cuckolded
wine slave. I would spend my time devoted to attempting to please her every
sexual desire without any reciprocation. She would disdainfully look down at my
face buried between her legs as I sensuously paid tribute to her every crevice. I would cast my eyes up to her for a
look of bliss on her face and instead see her expressionlessly say “you make me
sick” as she sipped a premier cru Chablis. It would be a good life of high acid
wines and complete submission. Ah, what could have been...
The town of Chablis is very small and old. It’s at best described as a “sleepy”
town. There are “caves”, or places
to taste Chablis, from producers all over the little town. There are two things to do in
Chablis. 1. Drink Chablis. 2. Eat. (I highly
recommend Hostellerie del Clos, which has the cheese cart that sets the
standard for all cheese carts. I
almost wept.) By six pm the town
feels deserted. I’ll bet that when
France won the World Cup the extent of the excitement was when Claude the Town
Drunk yelled “oui!” to himself at the mostly empty small café in the center of town when the
clock ticked down to zero. It was
impossible to find a place to get an espresso at 8am. I wouldn’t bet on getting a great slice of pizza. This is the exact opposite of Las
Vegas. This is the kind of place
an older English couple travels to on vacation and falls in love with the
romance of the beautifully decaying buildings and slow pace of life. They buy a small place in town with the
dream of a quiet country life.
Then about two weeks in, bored out of their skulls, the husband announces,
“Honey? Pack the shit. We’re getting the fuck out of
here.” It remains an excellent one-night
visit destination however and the wines are fucking killer.
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