Not Quite the Deal

As always, The Roaders like to test their guests with their form of ‘wine options’.  However, it’s not your tightly-run and regimented style where there are four of five pre-set questions, each with three possible options.  Instead, a glass of wine is thrust into your hand, and it is totally blind.  Then it begins “Let’s play options!”  The people served the wine are encouraged to talk, and The Roader gleans information on the thinking of the wine.  Then come the questions, which may have more than three options.  It’s a scary scenario where one must bare one’s vinous soul and do some free thinking and tasting.

The glass I got was quite pale straw in colour, with the classical smell and taste of flint and minerals.  Aha! European, and classical Chablis, I said.  It had considerable concentration and depth, but at the same time it was a bit weak.  Not quite the deal.  Not much oaking, so a producer more traditional.  It was the weakness of personality that was the problem.  It suggested it was a grand cru with its dimensions, but the dimensions weren’t filled.  Better than premier cru probably.  It was either a disappointing grand or an over-performing premier.  I went for the former, as I know The Roader to be a generous man who collected only the best.  How old?  Hardly any development, but no longer fresh.  These wines can age slowly, so I thought maybe a decade of age or so.  My words were along the line “it is something wanting to be pretty smart, but hasn’t developed as well as it should have”.  The Roader nodded, and liked what I had said.  It was a 2007 Billaud-Simon Chablis Grand Cru ‘Les Clos’.  A previous bottle from ‘Les Preuses’ tasted earlier was reported glorious.  He agreed it was not quite the deal here, and I felt pretty good.