Chablis and home

I always forget where Chablis is. In my head it is north-east of Burgundy, closer to Champagne. In fact it is more or less in a direct north-westerly direction. Draw a straight line from Beaune to Paris and you will drive through Chablis. I think the problem is rather that I have no idea where Champagne is, and so if I am trying to find Chablis starting from there then inevitably I am going to get lost. Champagne is in fact more or less due east from Paris, but much further west than Burgundy. Where I think Champagne is appears to be somewhere near Nancy. I digress.

Back in our youth Mrs L and I used to stop in Chablis on the way down to Beaune from Paris. Seems it was on the way, who knew.... My parents lived in Paris for a while, and when we came to visit it was our habit to squeeze in visits to Burgundy. Sometimes as part of a longer trip we would leave Paris in the morning and be in Aix for lunch. Anyhow, as all of you bird fiends may know, Chablis is an excellent source of white wine. Chardonnay, so the same as Burgundy - indeed in my head Chablis is in Burgundy - but the wine is very different. I'll spare you the lecture this time, but the soil there is a mixture of chalk, limestone and follisised shells, and this translates directly into the grapes, and subsequently into the glass. STGT as John Livingstone-Learmonth would put it. Chablis is (or can be at any rate, choose wisely) wonderfully chalky, saline and somehow steely.  A sip from a classical bottle can transport to a beach of wet pebbles and salt spray, like licking seaweed. It pairs brilliantly with shellfish as you might expect, and it is a Chateau L favourite. You need to be quite strict with your selection, stricter than the growers often are in fact, as rising temperatures in the region are causing to Chablis to lose its character. With excessive summer heat the wine takes on rich tropical notes, about the last thing you could want in Chablis. If a critic bangs on about yesteryear classicism in a bottle of Chablis that is a good sign. 

Oh dear, another digression. When we used to drive from Paris and back, half a lifetime ago it seems, we had small children. Chablis was an ideal break point for two reasons. 1) see above, and 2) on the banks of the the Serein, sandwiched bewteen the river and the hillside of the Grands Crus, a gently sloping crescent of vineyards, there is a small public park. It has picnic benches, and crucially it also has playground equipment. Slides and swings. We used to stop there just in time for lunch. If we were lucky there would be a Saturday market in full swing in the town, and there we would source baguettes and Chaource, a locally made soft cheese. Laden with fresh goodies we would head to the park and have a feast whilst the children played. Bougros, Les Preuses, Vaudésir, Grenouilles, Valmur, Les Clos, Blanchots - those are the seven Grand Crus north to south. The park is probably between Les Clos and Grenouilles, at the point Valmur spears into a point and meets the road. After lunch had been consumed and the children had rid themselves of excess energy we would head to La Chablisienne, the regional cooperative. We could not afford the Grand Crus at that stage, but if you picked carefully from the Premier Cru, the next level of wines down, you could come away with really lovely wines. The hillside of Grand Crus continues south and starts to curve east and away from the town. That slight change in exposition is all it takes for the downgrade, and Montée de Tonnerre and Mont de Milieu make excellent wines in their own right. If you go the other way you reach Fourchaume - this was always a favourite of ours and I still buy it and the other two today from certain producers. But I have not had any wine from the Chablisienne for many years. Today was the day we would put that right (and they had half bottles of Montmains and Vaulorent, yay!)

We had a late start from Beaune. A bit of a logistical hassle to find somewhere to park the car close enough to the accomodation so that we could bring all the wine we had accumulated down to the street. The back seats were down, but two adult bikes take a lot of space. In the end we created a thin layer of boxes such that the bikes lay on top of the wine, and off we went. Destination, a small park with some swings near a quiet river. It wasn't market day, and we had no small children with us, but we found what we needed for a casual lunch and headed to our favourite bench to relive the old times. It was just as we had left it. Well, maybe the slides were new ones, but you get the picture. Great.

Les Grand Crus