We’ve been opening mostly modest, food friendly, easy going wines during lock down and enjoying them thoroughly. But this weekend we took delivery of some gorgeous blonde morels from Oregon and asparagus from California, and decided to pull a few higher end bottles to celebrate these quintessential spring luxuries.
2007 François Raveneau Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre - first out of this case from an impeccable source in the UK, shipped and stored properly. Did a quick decant, planning to drink over dinner. Color was bright gold, what I’d expect for it’s age. We poured two glasses and quickly determined that the wine was sound. The nose was restrained, but no signs of flaws, with pretty typical Raveneau flavor profile. When we tasted, it was recognizably Raveneau, recognizably sound, but…zero fireworks. Okay, maybe it needed more air. So we put the decanter aside, leaving our glass on the table, and decided to try the Ramonet.
2014 Jean-Claude Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Vergers - also from a pristine case purchased in the UK. Since we have a nice stash of this wine, we thought it would make sense to try one young, especially given all the glowing notes I’ve read. We assumed this would need some air, based on familiarity with other young Ramonets, so decanted it about an hour before dinner, planning to drink it after the Raveneau, which would give it a couple of hours of air. It poured a bit darker than I would have expected, but there were no signs of premox, no apple cider. There also wasn’t much of anything else. Almost no nose at all to begin with, but there were some slight hints of Ramonet mint and a bit of white flower, so figured it might just be very tight. Put it to the side. When we went back to check on it after finding the Raveneau a little dull, we found the palate was equally boring. Really watery through the mid-palate, no stuffing, no depth. A totally uninteresting white wine. We put it back in the bottle and in the fridge and will revisit it tonight, but I don’t have very high hopes.
We did return to the Raveneau after the big disappointment of the Ramonet, and drank the rest of the bottle over the next two hours, which is really slow for us. We kept hoping something good would happen, but it remained a decent bottle of Chablis without Raveneau class or depth or zing.
Both my husband and I have had a lot of Raveneau and Ramonet of all ages. We’ve had a lot of corked bottles, a lot of premoxed bottles, a lot of heat damaged bottles and are pretty good at picking out those signs. We’ve never had an evening where two bottles which should have been really good, albeit young (the '14 more so), showed so blah. Other than the slightly darker color on the Ramonet than I would have expected, there was nothing overtly wrong with these. But nothing overtly right. Notes on both have been generally good. There was one note on the Ramonet in CT that also described it as pretty dull, so perhaps it is a phase.
I know it’s reflex to say they both need more time. The Ramonet could be totally dumb phase right now. I certainly hope that’s the case as we have quite a bit more. Just one of those nights? But what a disappointing night! At least the mushrooms and asparagus were great.