Easter Long Weekend Wines

Knowing what wine to take with you when you go away for the weekend is tricky. This weekend I took a 2005 Chapoutier "Les Meysonnieres" Crozes Hermitage and a 2004 Domaine d'Elise Chablis with me when I went up to Oxford for the Easter Break. Chances are there was going to be at least one opportunity each for white and red over the course of the weekend - beyond that I simply had to gamble that my choices would be suitable.

Friday went to plan. Neil cooked dinner - roast chicken legs, pigs in blankets, rosemary potatoes, caramelised carrots. Rustic, comforting food called for a rustic wine (and also I was road testing a wine for next week's Rhone Valley tasting), so the Crozes Hermitage was opened. Smoky, peppery, nose. Savoury, meaty palate, white pepper, bacon, red fruit, and river water, finishing with very pronounced, lingering tannins, even after substantial time to breathe. Ever since Andy decided that the last Rhone wine I served him tasted like river water I've tasted nothing but on anything from the Rhone, particularly Crozes Hermitage. Amazing. Usually the only red wine that reminds me of river water or river pebbles is Bordeaux from St Estephe, but now that it has been pointed out to me it seems to be a pretty good way of describing Crozes Hermitage. Crozes is a wine that I've always thought of as salty, bacony, often with a red-fruit palate with a bit of leanness or steeliness to it and I think that river water falls into line with that flavour profile. So well done Andy.

Neil put me in charge of cooking salmon for dinner on Saturday. Here's where I could make the Chablis shine - I was toying with poaching it, or maybe serving it with pesto mash or some sort of cream sauce. But oh, no, the boy had to mention that he had a knob of ginger and a bag of red chillies, so of course the gauntlet had been thrown down to concoct a preparation with a nod to Asia in it. I decided to steam it with spring onions, lime, ginger, garlic, chillies, sesame seeds and soy sauce. But so doing eliminated any possibility of serving it with a nutty, layered Chablis. What that dish needed was something crisp, overtly fruity, lean, and with naively high acidity. Oddbins on High St Oxford has an appalling range of Rieslings, so, enamoured with the Loire Valley, as I have been of late, what with daylight saving starting, I purchased a bottle of 2005 Domaine Lebrun Pouilly Fume and gave that a try instead. Very pale. Delicate, pristine nose of passion fruit, apple, pear, gooseberry and white honey. The palate is austere, flinty, clean, smoky, with a chalky finish. After a while in the glass it settles down, and begins to show softer fruit on the nose - honeydew melon and pears - and river water (again!) on the palate. I rather preferred it just as it was when it was opened. Initially invigorating, it gets a bit lazy over time, which made finishing the bottle a bit of a bore. Nevertheless, the wine's initial optimism was appealing, and matched the fish very well (if I do say so myself).

That left the Chablis for today's picnic. We contributed goose rillettes and a pork and apricot pie to the festivities, which went well with the wine. You don't get a tasting note (I was at a picnic for fuck's sake), but it tasted like Chablis. Instead you get a rant. This week I rant about the problem of "picnic wine leeches". Much like dinner party wine leeches, these are people who bring crap wine to the picnic (or dinner party) and then drink your much nicer wine when they get there. This is grossly unfair. I had about one glass of Chablis before I had to revert to Banrock Station Chardonnay if I wished to continue drinking. (I passed). At least the owner of the Banrock Station was honest - "I brought this" she said "but give me a glass of yours, it's much nicer." "Piss off" said the voice in my head. "Of course, allow me to pour you one" said the idiot voice that came out of my head. There should be a rule that you must drink all of what you bring yourself to a picnic before asking others for a glass of what they brought. It's like the way little kiddies have to eat all their broccoli, and then they get some ice cream. Drink your Banrock Station crap, then I'll consider giving you some Chablis. More for us in the mean time. I think there would be considerable advantages to this scheme. First, it would prevent the current punishment of those who do bring nice wine to picnics. But second, it would encourage the leeches to bring something nice in the first place - since as they know they're going to be lumped with drinking it in the first place they would probably wan to make that experience as pleasant as they can stand. Unfortunately that is a scheme I can only dream for. At least the current orthodoxy prevented me from getting too pissed before the egg-and-spoon race.