Expensive wine 166: Drouhin-Vaudon Chablis 2020

Once more with feeling – white Burgundy for the Big Guy

The weather in Dallas was porch-like for a couple of days last week, and of course I thought about Mack Turner. It was just the kind of Sunday afternoon that he would have brought a bottle to the house and we would have sat on the deck, sipping and enjoying.

So, though we can’t do that any more, I can still write about the kinds of wines he loved to share with me – like the Drouhin-Vaudon Chablis 2020 ($26, purchased, 12.5%).

Chablis is part of Burgundy; though the wines are made with chardonnay, the style is much different – crisper, leaner, less oak. The Drouhin-Vaudon fits firmly in that style, though it does lean toward a rounder, fuller approach. That means it’s less austere Chablis, so softer (almost stone fruit instead of green apple) and a little less minerally. It’s still well made, of course – just an interestingly different take on the subject.

It’s Saturday night dinner wine, the kind to serve when you want to drink a better quality bottle but don’t want to spend $50.

Mack would have liked this, too. Our only disagreement would have been over price. I would have said it was a better value closer to $20 – since it Chablis, after all – and he would have given me one of his looks and said he enjoyed it a lot and why were we quibbling over a couple of dollars.

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