Free-Flowing Thought

When we play the Wine Options game, we’ve found it the best policy to not think too far ahead and let the questions provide the clues.  Usually, if you think ahead, you go way down the wrong track.  The successive questions get you back on the right line if you stray.  So it should have been with two Chardonnays that came our way at the Bassinet Babes’ party.  However we got away with the free-flowing thought process, a method that normally takes us up the garden path.

Served blind the 2011 Vincent Girardin Saint-Aubin 1er ‘Les Perrieres’ was pale, light and tight, if not a bit delicate.  The varietal of Chardonnay was obvious, and its classical smells and tastes spoke of white burgundy.  That’s good so far.  Probably not Chablis, as it just lacked that cutting zing and flinty piquancy, but with climate change, most Chablis don’t have these traits anyway, now.  And not quite up-front enough to be Cote Chalonnaise or Macon.  Much too refined for that far south.  So Cote d’Or it must be.  Definitely not Meursault, as it wasn’t nutty and rounded, and a bit slight and undefined to be Puligny or Chassagne.  Or could it be?  You tend to forget about the little tucked away appendage of Saint-Aubin which is like a junior Puligny – which is what it was!  And the Vincent Girardin interpretation and style was right down the line.

Then came the 2013 Au Bon Climat ‘Los Alamos Vineyard’ Santa Barbara Chardonnay.  Chardonnay fruit has a distinctive smell and taste, with the New World more obviously fruity, with citrus, stonefruit and tropical fruit.  This had all those, but also a thread of nuttiness and restraint, which spoke Old World.  Then it must be in-between – the Americas.  Not too familiar with South American Chardonnay, it was a ‘logical’ choice to go North America, and California.  We surprised ourselves with this correct deduction.  A little bit of market knowledge can be helpful, and one of the better players represented here is Au Bon Climat, made in a style inspired by white burgundy, which is what this seemed.  Experience helps too, and we had just had the 2013 Au Bon Climat Santa Barbara Chardonnay two nights before.  This night’s wine was a supercharged version with a little more fruit sweetness and richness.  More creaminess and layers of nuttiness from lees.  A touch more flinty complexity.  Free-flowing thought suggested a ‘single vineyard’ bottling. Correct again.

SWMBO and I were seen as ‘experts’ that evening.  But we think we were just plain lucky.