A Hedonist in the Cellar Read Online Free PDF Page A

three Chardonnays produced here, starting with the ten-dollar Alamos bottlings, represent exceptional value. Bodega Norton, founded in 1895 by an Englishman to satisfy the Argentine thirst for cheap, oxidized reds, has undergone a similar transformation and now produces the best Sauvignon Blanc that I encountered in Argentina.
    At prices ranging from ten to twenty-five dollars, Chilean and Argentine Chardonnays represent a great value these days, in part because of low land and labor costs. They also seem to have more natural acidity than other New World examples, which makes for more refreshing summer drinking. You don’t have to picture the snowcapped Andes in the background as you sip them in the dog days, but I know I will.

THE FORGOTTEN WHITES OF BORDEAUX
    The white wines of Graves have an image problem. Bordeaux is practically synonymous with red wine, which accounts for about 85 percent of its vast production. Made from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, white Bordeaux remains something of an enigma to the average American consumer—less glamorous than the reds or the Chardonnay-based whites of Burgundy.
    Situated to the south of the city of Bordeaux, the Graves appellation is the home of most of the best Bordeaux whites. Connoisseurs have long sought out the ageworthy whites from Haut-Brion, Laville-Haut-Brion and Domaine de Chevalier. I’ve been collecting them just long enough to start appreciating their amazing potential. At a recent dinner party I hosted, the ′83 Laville, which was like liquified crème brûlée and peaches, aroused far more favorable comment among the grape nuts than the mature (and expensive) Burgundies that followed.
    The best vineyards of the Graves district are set in the midst of the congested suburbs of Talence and Pessac. The vineyards of Haut-Brion, with its sixteenth-century château, occupy a gravelly hillock amidst a rising tide of boxy housing complexes. Best known for its first-growth red wine, Haut-Brion also makes small quantities of ethereal white. Across thetreacherously busy street are the vineyards of La Mission– Haut-Brion (red) and Laville-Haut-Brion (white), which in 1983 were purchased by Haut-Brion’s owners, the Dillon family. Winemaking on both sides of the street is overseen by one of the great statesmen of Bordeaux, Jean Delmas, who was born at Haut-Brion.
    Like the reds—for that matter, like most siblings—Haut-Brion blanc and Laville-Haut-Brion have separate and distinctive personalities, despite their physical proximity and a shared winemaking team—a good argument for the importance of terroir. Laville has a higher percentage of Sémillon, which is fleshier and oilier than the snappy, high-strung, citric Sauvignon Blanc; in partnership, these two grapes help give white Bordeaux its unique, balanced, food-friendly character.
    Drive down the road, turn right at the
rocade
, or ring road, and if you watch very carefully you’ll eventually see the sign for Domaine de Chevalier—a sea of vines surrounded by dense pine forest. The single-story château is modest and homey by Bordeaux standards, although proprietor Olivier Bernard and his wife, Anne, must be one of the best-looking couples in the region. Their domain has the benefit of deep gravelly soil and the misfortune to be among the most frost-and hail-ridden patches of all Bordeaux. In those years when neither affliction strikes, Domaine de Chevalier produces, in addition to its red, a complex and haunting white, which improves and develops in bottle for years. As in nearby Sauternes, the grapes here are picked in several
passages
to guarantee optimal ripeness.
    The Big Three whites of Graves, all located in the recentlycreated Pessac-Léognan appellation, are relatively expensive and hard to find; but for about half the price of a village Mersault you can find some smokin’, early-drinking white Graves, thanks in no small measure to the work of white-wine-making guru and consulting oenologist Denis