The Gift of Wine

The king of meme over at basic juice has launched yet another challenge to blogdom...pick a wine from your cellar and give it to someone. If you are as lucky as myself, the potential recipients far outnumber the bottles gathering dust in the basement.
Most of my friends know where I live, and my penchant for opening things. So in the spirit of the season I re-invite one and all for some Christmas joy.

So I will limit this gift to blogdom as the ‘why’ is almost more interesting than the ‘what.’ There are many worthy recipients out there so I have chosen two bottles. Beau, cuz he’s so damn cute, gets the magnum of 1996 Chablis, La Moutonne. As an almost full throttle, brett digging Europhile, Beau warrants a bottle of french, and a classic. Encompassing two grand crus (Vaudésir and Preuses), this epitomizes classic cool climate Burgundy. Raised in 100% stainless (after 2001 they began using a bit of oak), and at 10 years old, it should be perfect for the fisherman’s feast. What does it taste like now? No clue but I can’t wait to find out.

My second bottle goes to Huge. Now, while I tend to disagree with most of what he espouses, I find his perspective at least grounded in reason, and always with enough humour to make even his most obscene denunciation palatable. So I offer up one of my favorite of favorites, one of my last Fleurie 2003 from Métras. Widely considered one of the best plots of land in Beaujolais, this wine is a product of one of the masters of the ‘vin de nature’ movement. Indigenous yeasts, no enzymes, no tartaric acid (it’s natural acidity is staggering considering the vintage) and of course, super low sulfite. This means it is a bit reductive and is a bit aromatically challenged, but with a passage in carafe, it should satisfy the most fruit oriented wine lover.

For me, it is the best example of purity in winemaking and I would like nothing more than to crank back a bottle with his Hugeness… and find something new to argue about (like Hockey Huge?).