Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
So, here I am twice disgruntled. One of my favorite restaurants ever, ever, ever (viz. Repaire de Cartouche, in Paris's unillustrious 11th arrondissement) serves fabulous noshes and has a wine list to be revered for its non-partisan eclecticism and just plain great things to drink.
However. I was there last night. We ordered a 2004 Overnoy Savagnin. A fellow wine geek was out for a smoke and the third rounding out our party was a food geek, so I was to taste. I sniffed. Huh? Uh, dude, that's chardonnay.
I tasted it: chardonnay. Nice, Jurassic chardonnay. But not savagnin. By no means.
I sent it away; the sommelier was very apologetic, but soon came back saying that it was indeed the savagnin, no doubts about it.
The other wine geek came back in and I asked him what he thought. He agreed: a ressemble du chardonnay...
Yes, slightly oxidative, leesy chard, like you'd get in a bottle of Valette.
But the wax on the bottle was yellow, the domain's sign of savagnin (they don't put the cpage on the bottle; wax tells all: white for chard, yellow, savagnin).
So, we drank the thing, but it was not savagnin, I will go to my death bed denying it.
Which did make me wonder, however, because at this self-same address a couple of months ago, I had had an Overnoy, a 1998 that time, billed as savagnin, which was... chardonnay.
At the time I did not know about the wax differential, so did not retain its color. But something's amiss or afoot.
Come to think of it, I've had the 2000 Overnoy Savagnin twice in the past eight months or so, and that, dear fellow wine geeks, that was clearly of the grape.
So perhaps the wax sometimes gloms wrongly.
And I wish I could put this in tiny, tiny font... Repeat aversion therapy, re: chardonnay is retraining my palate.
Oh, lord, can Kaneism be far off?
However. I was there last night. We ordered a 2004 Overnoy Savagnin. A fellow wine geek was out for a smoke and the third rounding out our party was a food geek, so I was to taste. I sniffed. Huh? Uh, dude, that's chardonnay.
I tasted it: chardonnay. Nice, Jurassic chardonnay. But not savagnin. By no means.
I sent it away; the sommelier was very apologetic, but soon came back saying that it was indeed the savagnin, no doubts about it.
The other wine geek came back in and I asked him what he thought. He agreed: a ressemble du chardonnay...
Yes, slightly oxidative, leesy chard, like you'd get in a bottle of Valette.
But the wax on the bottle was yellow, the domain's sign of savagnin (they don't put the cpage on the bottle; wax tells all: white for chard, yellow, savagnin).
So, we drank the thing, but it was not savagnin, I will go to my death bed denying it.
Which did make me wonder, however, because at this self-same address a couple of months ago, I had had an Overnoy, a 1998 that time, billed as savagnin, which was... chardonnay.
At the time I did not know about the wax differential, so did not retain its color. But something's amiss or afoot.
Come to think of it, I've had the 2000 Overnoy Savagnin twice in the past eight months or so, and that, dear fellow wine geeks, that was clearly of the grape.
So perhaps the wax sometimes gloms wrongly.
And I wish I could put this in tiny, tiny font... Repeat aversion therapy, re: chardonnay is retraining my palate.
Oh, lord, can Kaneism be far off?