The Merry Drinker

Sipping this wine the other day, I reflected on how dramatically tastes and habits change. In the 1970s I drank Chablis a lot. Nowadays I drink it once every four or five years. This is not because I like it any less. On the contrary, I am sure I get far more out of it now than I did thirty years ago. So what has changed?

The short answer is “everything”.   If the past is another country, the 1970s are another planet.  Spacehoppers.  Jumbo flares. Chopper bicycles.  Kipper ties.  Even at the time it seemed an aesthetic wasteland; now it is beyond comprehension.

The popular wines of that period seem equally baffling, or at any rate many of them do.  Thinking back as dispassionately as I can, I should say they fell into three categories.  First you had the stinkers: Liebfraumilch; “Chianti” in raffia baskets; supermarket carafes from California.  All were indefensible.  Most have long since dribbled down the pissoir of history.

Next came a more sensible category, containing such things as Fitou, mass-market Riojas and the Hungarian “Bull’s Blood”.   These were the best low-budget wines you could get before the Australians arrived.  Most are still around, and they are worth sampling.  But by present standards they lack polish, and they no longer seem good value.

In the third category were some perfectly good wines, whose only fault is that they do not suit today’s palate. One is Riesling, which I discussed recently. Another is Chablis.  This was always thought an upmarket drink. It used to be produced at the better dinner party or public function, as it went with most food and hardly anyone disliked it.

But Chablis is not mightily strong, and unlike other white Burgundies, it seldom benefits from aging in oak. The distinctive Chablis taste is dry, austere and peculiarly mineral: the French call it goût de pierre à fusil, “the taste of gunflint”.  Other people liken the taste to metal; I have even heard it compared to aspirin.

All this is unlikely to find favour at a time when the prevailing taste is for fat, creamy whites heavily flavoured with oak.  Drouhin’s example is not bad: its nose suggests lime and kiwi, its palette grapefruit, white melon and, yes, a hint of aspirin.  I enjoyed it, my wife did not.  I thought it reasonable value for $28 (£19); she thought it excessive. Obviously, there can be no right and wrong in such matters.  But my guess is that sooner or later Chablis will return to public esteem.  I just hope we won’t have to wear jumbo flares and kipper ties while we drink it.