Cool Wine Place #2: Chablis, France (life long learning about wine, begin here)
Larry Leigon's Secret Life of Wine Newsletter #211
Flagstone Door in Chablis, France
Photo by Denis LORAIN on Unsplash
HOW TO HAVE MORE FUN AND LEARN COOL THINGS ABOUT WINE
A step by step guide to life long learning about Wine
Begin Here
©Larry Leigon, September 2024, all rights reserved
Please send your comments or questions to me at larry@larryleigon.com. The more I hear from you, the better I can write about what you really want to know.
FUN AND LIFELONG LEARNING ABOUT WINE AND STUFF
Learning about wine is often made way more complicated and arcane than it needs to be. Everything is taught in pieces but no one relates the pieces to each other or a through line—
It’s like writing a dictionary and then throwing all the pages on the floor then putting them back together in the order you pick them up.
The pieces are right, but not helpful.
BEGIN HERE THIS WEEK
The Fun, Cool and Learning Part
Why start learning here? And why white? What if i like red wine?
Because this is the most famous wine in the world and the benchmark for all other white wines. Chablis is a unique taste, exceptionally pure Chardonnay, and it is something you can compare to everything else you taste.
Many white wines don’t taste like this at all, but what they do taste like, is something in comparison to Chablis.
OK. Quick obvious note but I have to say it because I didn’t know it when I started out. Gallo Chablis is one of the highest selling wines in the world. It comes in a jug. It has absolutely nothing to do with real French Chablis. Nothing. Nada.
I’m OK with not knowing that or anything else. Not knowing is not stupid, it’s not knowing. Too many people in he wine business think they know too much. We could all stand a little more not-knowing in our life.
COOL PLACES IN WINE
Cool Place #2 Chablis, France
The three things to know about Chablis
Chablis
Famous people from Chablis—as far as I can tell absolutely no one famous ever came from Chablis. That alone should recommend it. It was however part of the Duchy of Burgundy so maybe you could find a leftover Duke nearby.
Travel: A great place for a wine vacation. Historic little villages, the Serein river, mountains, castles, blackberry bushes,Kir Royale (Champagne and Blackberry liqueur).
“YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS!”
—© Larry Leigon, 2024, all rights reserved
Here are three things you need to know about Chablis:
1- Taste —The taste profile of Chablis is based on multiple vineyards lying within seven Grand Cru designations along the river. The unique soil ( see below) gives it a taste usually described as “flinty” or inexplicably “Steely gun barrel”. I have no idea who’s going around licking their gun barrels but it does illustrate one of the problems I have with wine critics.
2-Soil—The soil in Chablis makes it special. It’s over 180 million years old in th best regions and includes fossilized oysters among other strange things. Chalk and Limestone.
3-Winemaking—Chablis is notable because it doesn’t use barrels for fermenting or aging. This makes it the purest expression of Chardonnay in the world. There are a few American wineries that use this technique, but very few. Our chardonnay is much higher in alcohol, and so has a different taste. And we don’t have the soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chablis_wine
See? Like I told you, “You Need to Know This!” . To be a better wine taster, see if you can find a bottle or two and taste them for yourself. Or better yet. wine by the glass. Or look at a map, maps are very helpful.
I gave you two links below to where you can buy the wines. Or try your local restaurant’s by the glass list.
Check it out:
Note: Chablis can be expensive. If you can’t afford the Grand Crus, the Petit Crus or plain “Chablis” will deliver the basics of Chablis, just not the totally unique qualities that make it so expensive these days. If you can find a Grand Cru or Premier Cru by the glass in a restaurant, that’s the best for price/value. In passing, nothing tastes like a Grand Cru but a Grand Cru.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chablis_wine
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/chablis/1/usa
https://www.wine.com/search/chablis/
Wine and the Poetry iof Love n Chablis
Poetry is the closest art to wine, and after that music, which is poetry with a tune.
Chablis is a part of Burgundy, France, one of the richest and most culturally complex areas in Europe. I can’t even begin to summarize the depth of culture that was born here, but I feel compelled to encourage you to seek out "Courtly Love” in Burgundy (including Chablis) during the Middle Ages.
Wandering troubadours made up love songs spontaneously in the Burgundy courts and what started out as a literary gimmick became a major social movement. Courtly Love was an attempt among the nobility to experience a “pure” love, like the Biblical Agape, that was untainted with sex.
It was for instance, the love of a knight for a lady—the wife of another knight. It really didn’t work out that well for reasons I suspect are obvious, but it produced some classic love songs and literature. The King Arthur tales among them.
Check it out:
My friend the poet, Dale Biron, closes his poetry podcasts with “Take care of yourself. And if you can, take care of somebody else too.”
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dale+Biron
Dale makes poetry accessible and useful to your every day life. It can be really quite powerful. And you’ll hear some poems you never heard before. Check it out.
That most excellent saying came originally from Steven Dubner at the Freakonomics podcast. Seems like a good thing to say to people, especially strangers in today’s world of division and hate.
Feel free to use it over a glass of wine.
WHAT I’M DOING AND WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU
I spent 50 years in the wine business. Seems like too long doesn’t it?
But I have learned a couple of things about wine along the way. I’d like you to know as much as you have interest in knowing.
NEW GUIDE
I am writing a new guide on how to learn about wine your whole life. Hence the title for this issue.
Not just a class or a tasting. You’ll get all the information but this time, I’ve put the dictionary pages back in the order the way they started out.
This issue is a small piece of a part of it. This format doesn’t allow for more detail. But it’s something for you to react to.
This coming guide aims to be useful not just for the weekend, but for the rsst of your life. As you grow in experience and knowledge, it can grow with you. Along the way, I will point out choices you have about learning wine that you probably never knew you had and open up experiences you would have missed out on.
Places to go. Sights to see. Wines to try out. People to know. Recipes from wine country.
I’ll be giving you recommendations from 50 years of experience for what to do next, whatever level of tasting you are now. And you will help guide me by your comments and questions, beginning with this issue.
YOUTUBE
Before it’s a book, the guide will be short videos on YouTube where you can comment and ask questions and guide me to what you want to know. If there is interest, we can start a Facebook group with both free and paid sessions to start to talk with each other right now about what you most want to talk about.
Until the English got hold of it back in the 18th century, wine was fun. That would be for most of world history. Maybe it should be again.
If you can taste food you can taste wine. And if you’re already good at both, let’s make you better and see if you can help others to get better too.
Let’s take the embarrassment and intimidation out of wine, and open up the wonder and the magic of connecting with each other. It’s great to hear how other people react and how what they think compares to what you think.
Larry Leigon