Today I have a chard from Burgundy that would be a little flashy for a Thursday night impulse buy if it wasn’t on sale. Sometimes I just feel lucky, and all it takes is a “mis en bouteille” and a year on the bottle to get me to take a swing.
VERY odd coloration in the glass – it’s what I imagine Chardonnay looks like if you have crippling depression. Super desaturated and flat looking, so much so that it doesn’t even split the light that passes through it. It just casts this color-matched glow on my counter.
When swirled, it has this oily-looking sheen on the surface. Afterwards, the swirl mostly breaks down without much of an exit, but it leaves behind this halo around the top that slowly melts (last time I saw this effect it reminded me of cartoon ice cream melting over a cone).
On the nose, there isn’t much to say. There’s some stone fruit, a sharp, acidic tinge that invokes citrus, and a little bit of an earthy, musty kind of thing going on. Very “underside of a log” or “grandma’s basement” type of damp.
At least the palate is consistent. The structure of this one isn’t necessarily awful, but nothing about this has impressed me besides the fact that I didn’t have to choke it down. It tastes like it should feel a lot rougher than it is. It leads with a SUPER sharp hit of acidity, followed by a little bit of an earthy, floral note in the middle plus some thin mineral play at the exit, but it’s not great. If I couldn’t tell that the producer at least knew how to store/age this properly, I’d have a hard time calling it good.
These French chards are SO hit and miss that it’s starting to annoy me now. I feel like this would be served at some brasserie in Paris with underseasoned food and waitstaff talking down at me as if I can’t understand their language because I don’t speak it natively. I know what this country can do with this grape in this soil, and to be perfectly frank with you, they can do better. Much better.
Price tag is a f**king joke btw.
84/100 – B
NOSE: citrus, stone fruit, moss
PALATE: stone fruit, floral, mineral, straw
$22.99
Grapes: 100% Chardonnay
CoI: France
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