With the world aware of climate change and global warming,
one would think there would be a whole lot more worry about the
consequences. But it’s easier to bury
one’s head in the sand, or leave the action to the next generation, when it’s
quite likely too late to make an immediate difference. It’s only when there are clear and strong
signs that directly impact us that we want to take action. Surely with wine, the slight, but gradual increase
of growing temperatures in all the world’s vignobles show that the environment
is changing significantly. I believe you
can taste it in wines gown in what were regarded as ‘marginal’. Two wines tasted with Mr Magic were
demonstrative of climate change to me.
Firstly the 2013
Dauvissat Chablis. Once there was a
time, well only a short 15 years ago, when Chablis was steely, zingy and flinty
with the harder edge of minerality the calling card. Don’t get me wrong, this wine is sheer beauty
and purity. It is white stonefruits and
flint personified. Think of those sea
shells from aeons ago forming the limestone.
But nowadays, Chablis has a roundness and softness it never used to
have. There’s greater ripeness and richness
in the wines. And now the wines lack
that steely, cutting edge. Village wine
looks like premier cru. And premier cru
looks like grand cru. And grand cru
looks like Cote d’Or. Not entirely a bad
thing, but the goalposts are shifting.
Then the 2013 Clemens
Busch Pundericher Marienburg ‘Rothenpfad’ GG Riesling Trocken. The Mosel was the hotbed for crisp, light,
zippy, floral wines. It still is most of
the time and wine. But then people such
as Clemens Busch can make a warm and generous 12.5% spicy, earthy Riesling,
sure in the dry style. But where’s the
slatey minerality? There are minerals
for sure, but from a warmer earth and seemingly hotter site. You could be excused for thinking Rheinhessen
or more likely Rheinpfalz. This, too, like the Chablis was utterly delicious
and stunningly delicious. But it isn’t
the cool-climate shivering Mosel as we knew it 50 years ago. Again, no bad thing, but the world is
a-changing.
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