TN: The Penultimate Pour, or Next-to-Last Call at Racines (July 29, 2021)

J

Jeff Grossman

Jeff Grossman
It is Thursday, the service before the last service. Racines is busy, in that bon voyage way, its community of geeks stopping by for one last taste. The fellow at the table next to us is up from DC; Lee Campbell is here; and many others.

Sasha and I aim for seats at the bar but end up at a table; there are worse fates.

We ask for pours of, well, anything they recommend. You know how it is.

David Lillie pours:

De Moor 2015 Saint-Bris "Sans Bruit" - the price of fame: CSW used to get several cases of De Moor wine every year but now they only get 6 bottles; pretty wine, clean, crisp without forward acids, it's Chablis-ish but with a bit more fruit and a bit less seashells

Chidaine 2019 Montlouis "Les Bournais" - beautiful wine, all the edges folded and tucked, maybe 8-10g rs makes it even more velvety

Pascaline's selections:

Bertin-Delatte 2018 VdF "Vingt Neuf" - from vines planted in 1929, chenin on schist, not limestone; the bouquet is graceful and hypnotic and demure; the palate is not so deep as it is from the usual (limestone) places but the acidity is just as firm, perhaps with slightly better manners; with air, the palate develops a slightly bitter, stony, flinty edge (hints at sulfurous) but the acidity plays guardrail and this train never goes off the tracks; over several hours the acidity and the flinty-ness both recede a bit; this will not displace Huet or Foreau or Pinon in my affections but it is an interesting version of dry chenin blanc

Occhipinti 2009 IGT "Il Frappato" - lurid, turbid magenta; this is amazing, fresh and wild, the texture has thinned but the flavor intensity is totally unchained, .sasha calls 'old Burgundy flavors' but with incredible shape, wow

Mac Forbes 2013 Pinot Noir, Woori Yallock, Yarra Valley - Pascaline conceals the bottle... OK, here goes: it's all mineral and structure, .sasha gets a hint of autumnal fruit, I'm pretty sure this is not from one of the regular desinations in France (Bordeaux, Burgundy, Loire, Rhone), .sasha says it has the taste of a southern climate but not the weight, but neither of us can imagine grenache or mourvedre tasting like this so maybe Corsica?, in any case it has some age on it; Pascaline reveals it to be anecdotal pinot noir (only 264 bottles made), Woori Yallock is a vineyard high above Yarra Valley


After 7 years, we must say au revoir to Racines NY and await whatever French phoenix takes its place.

(After Pascaline finishes her book!)
 
A lovely tribute.
Small story: several of us here in Sonoma used to celebrate each other’s birthday by going to dinner. We all brought wine. Although I don’t remember the vintage, once I brought the Occhipinti, Frappato. One of our group exclaimed,”that’s the way red wine should taste.”
I can’t think of a higher compliment.
Best, jim
 
Yes, a lovely tribute.

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

De Moor 2015 Saint-Bris "Sans Bruit" - the price of fame: CSW used to get several cases of De Moor wine every year but now they only get 6 bottles...
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So is that 6 bottles of wine across multiple cuvees? Wow. Even if only one cuvee, it still sounds brutal.
 
Lovely notes, Jeff, I'm curious what Pascaline's book will reveal...

De Moor 2015 Saint-Bris "Sans Bruit" is sauvignon blanc (interesting history for Saint-Bris appellation that sauvignon blanc is the cepage here). I'm curious how you felt the wine relative to other sauvblancs you have tasted/other regions?
 
Rahsaan... Yes, 6 bottles across all cuvees.

Karen... It did not taste much like any other sauvignon blanc, and it's less dense, as well. It made a sincere attempt to be chablisien, it was just a little full-fruit to pull it off.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Rahsaan... Yes, 6 bottles across all cuvees.

Karen... It did not taste much like any other sauvignon blanc, and it's less dense, as well. It made a sincere attempt to be chablisien, it was just a little full-fruit to pull it off.
Click to expand...

To my mind, a Saint-Bris SB that tried to be Chablisien would be unfortunate. I remember going to Saint-Bris in the 80s when it was virtually unknown in the US. It's SB was quite distinctive. It even had a very good restaurant known as far afield as Auxerre (a few kms down the road for those who can't spot irony). I guess become a sought after wine has its price, but those were distinctive wines.
 
i find that a saint bris of interest will tell both of its cepage and its terroir.

besides de moor, other go-to producers i've found include bersan, bernard defaix, and of course goisot.
 
I thought confusing Sancerre and Chablis was a thing. But maybe I just sucked at tasting and people said things to make me feel better.
 
originally posted by John Roberts:
I thought confusing Sancerre and Chablis was a thing. But maybe I just sucked at tasting and people said things to make me feel better.
Click to expand...

have you considered that the answer might be just to drink more of each?

worth a try.
 
originally posted by robert ames:

have you considered that the answer might be just to drink more of each?

worth a try.
Click to expand...

it might work. or it might not. there is only so much about taste / smell that a species can comfortably learn. think about teh transmission mechanisms.

as a dull illustration of this point, way back at the dawn of teh interwebz i was inspired to follow the advice of the politburo when it came to the education of comrades who didn't quite get the dialectic when it came to sancerre. i hadn't chosen to find sauvignon blanc disgusting -- why would i? that shit contains all of the usual components that would keep a fatboy happy -- and i was keen to share in the enthusiasm that the rest of my cadre had for this shit.

so, i carefully purchased all of the wines on the party approved list, and i diligently followed the proscribed pattern of five year plans that were guaranteed to maximize my enjoyment... all of which meant that after years of waiting, and after what seemed hours dealing with teh inevitable bullshit that accompanies working with teh wax capsules the are prescribed for wines on the party list, i cannot convey the excitement i felt when i popped the corks and prepared for my re-education. think podiums, lines of happy comrades, marching bands, and large vehicles conveying ridiculous outsized bottles in teh procession...

and you know what? the first signs were encouraging. the migraine inducing mess of piss and pyrazines i usually got when i stuck teh fatnose into a glass of sauvignon blanc had transformed itself into something that more resembled great chablis. i got minerals, and limestone, and the the ineffable correlations of experience we wave towards when we mumble 'terroir.' i was excited!

and then i took a sip. andi'll be damned if -- to me, obviously -- it didn't still taste of baby vomit. and of piss and pyrazines and the rest of the crap that always repelled me.

fuck. my. life.

to cut a long story short, subsequent bouts of re-education failed to correct this flaw in my ideological makeup. likely because genetics. because the way smell and taste perception work are, from a mechanistic pov, very different to how seeing and hearing work (a point that seemed lost on the governor of the gulag i was despatched to for my sensory thought crimes).

all of which is to say that there is a reasonable perspective that would maintain that despite the fact that there's a lot of shit we can learn from experience, and despite all of the very important self improvement lessons you may have gleaned from life and teh intersphere, it turns out that actually having opposable thumbs is important to helping us get by.

or something like that anyway.

fb.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Rahsaan... Yes, 6 bottles across all cuvees.

Karen... It did not taste much like any other sauvignon blanc, and it's less dense, as well. It made a sincere attempt to be chablisien, it was just a little full-fruit to pull it off.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I wasn't there in person, but if I were, I would have been tempted to liken the slightly flinty spine of this wine and its accommodating texture enhanced by some residual sugar that indicated it wants to recede towards earthiness in good time, to a 10-year old Culs de Beaujeu from Francois Cotat. So technically, while purely theoretically, it could have tasted like another Sauvignon Blanc.
 
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