When push comes to Chave

S

Steve Edmunds

Steve Edmunds
Looking for something in my garage the other day, discovering, in my handwriting, there are 3 bottles of '97 Chave white in one of the boxes. Huh? Search memory banks...no bailout here, oh,yeah... Kermit set aside 3 each of the '97 white and red for me in '99, saying, "you'll want them!," so I bought them, but really I was just thinking about the red and totally forgotten the "other" bottles. Well, shit, that's probably old enough to at least take a peek.

After an hour (or so) open, the waking up begins. What began languid, and a little fuzzy, began to take shape, over four or five more hours, to kind of gather its bones. Oceanic scope to the aromas. Depths unreachable, but alluring. God, I don't even know, sometimes, why there are grapes here, after tasting this stuff.

But it occurred to me, here's a wine that has the kind of weight, and power, and IMPORTANCE that usually make me want to run the other way. But the center holds. No slouching, here.
 
It's an amazing wine -- I remember several discussions with Jean-Louis Chave about how 1997 is the archetypical white Hermitage, while the 1996, for all its attractive qualities, is very atypical. I also recall being surprised when one of our conversations were taking place, must have been ca. 2002, that Jean-Louis jumped up and fetched a bottle of 1997 blanc that he opened and that was surprisingly approachable (he normally recommends not trying the wines between ages 3 and 10).

Interestingly, also, Jean-Louis says that the new private customers only want the red, but the longtime (we're talking generations) customers are the big white fans.
 
This bottle may not have come open at the proper moment, who knows? I've had other vintages (not many altogether) that were more elegant, and prettier. I was lucky enough to have a '78 once with Kermit that was one of those get-down-on-your knees-and give-thanks experiences. But I was struck, with this wine, at the enormous depth of it, something that could not be tricked up, that could only come from a particular, perhaps hallowed, place.
 
I love your ekphrasis.

How much Le Meal is in this wine?

I used to pose the hypothetical challenge to colleagues (Natoci, mostly): the building is burning, you can grab one case only - Chave Hermitage - red or white?

White, I says.
 
Nice notes, Steve!

Last year, Ross had a Chave Hermitage Blanc vertical. The '89 and '90 were positively God-like. Jon Cook and I looked at each other and said "We're supposed to rank as to which one is first and which one is second?!" All we could do was laugh at the absurdity of it.

The only thing I could equate it to texturally is a great (and I mean GREAT) bottle of red Burgundy, like a mature La Tache from an excellent vintage. It was so silky and long that it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, it had that whole peacock's tail thing going on in the finish like La Tache, but in a more subtle fashion.

In 30 years of wine drinking, I can't think of a better dry white wine I've had. Maybe some that were as good, but NOT better.
 
Think of what happens visually when a peacock fans out its tail feathers. Now imagine that with a wine as it passes over your taste buds, how this enormous fanning out of different tastes and textures comes to play.

Those types of wines come few and far between.
 
originally posted by Larry Stein:
Think of what happens visually when a peacock fans out its tail feathers. Now imagine that with a wine as it passes over your taste buds, how this enormous fanning out of different tastes and textures comes to play.

Those types of wines come few and far between.
Click to expand...
Kind of like ekphrasis!
 
I was in a Grenache vineyard this morning, and there were a pair of turkey vultures, each standing on a post at the end of a row, with their wings up and out behind them. Levi, the vineyard manager whose truck we were in, said they were warming themselves. As the truck got closer they didn't seem at all frightened, and I mentioned how comfortable they seemed to be with this mammoth pick-up approaching. Levi said that they have the perfect defense mechanism: if people get too close they just start throwing up! So watch YOUR shoes, my friend!
 
This means you consider yourself a vulture? Who knew the ngociant life was so difficult? (many emoticons go here)
 
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