It is a question we field nightly, one wrought with
great consternation and a tinge of fear. Doubtless,
grown men and women lose sleep over it prior to
important dinner parties and business dinners, and
certainly more than one burgeoning collector has
pulled the cork on several coveted bottles only to
find the promised pleasures contained within drained
of personality or intrique...

Is this wine ready to drink?

Several weeks back a number of San Francisco
Sommeliers had the distinct pleasure of sitting down to
a (mini) flight of wines from Domain Francois
Raveneau. Monsieur Raveneau himself presided over the
occasion of a sneak preview of his soon-to-be-released
Chablis from the 2004 vintage. The wines were
textbook Chablis, suffused with aromatics of lemon
curd and meyer lemon custard, oyster shell and tart
green apple. They were wrought with minerality and
precision, and, as Chablis is want to do, displayed
why Chardonnay grown in these northern reaches of
grape growing are unlike thoase produced anywhere else
in the world.

We slurped and swirled, swirled and slurped. We (and
i use this loosely) lamented the seeming infanticide
of pulling the cork on such a wine at so young stage,
recollecting times past (wine is always suffused with
nostalgia) when we had the distinct pleasure of
treasuring a properly aged bottle of Monsieur
Raveneau's exquisite bottlings.

"What is your favorite vintage for drinking now?" A
question of such inevitibility that it surely seeps
into the sleep of winemakers the world over. (it
happens to all numbers of artists; do you write by
hand, typewriter, computer?)

He thought only briefly, smiling in the diminutive way
of a man who spends his days pondering the sheer
unpredictablity of nature, and said, "1990".

Wine geeks heads nodded like the bauble headed doll
whose head is attached by a spring. "I remember
drinking...." "We were in a 3 star restaurant in
Paris when we saw this old botlle of...." Everyone
whisked off into their own remberences of times past
(sans madelaine, or with, in some cases).

Glasses were whisked out by several sommeliers and a
bottle of 1990 Valmur procured from the cellar of
Michael Mina. Where else in the world of San Francisco
restaurants can you simply amble to the cellar for a
bottle 1990 Grand Cru Valmur from Domaine Francois
Raveneau?

The wine was ethereal - hazlenuts and baked apple, the
minerality still very much present. We thanked Rajat
profusely and Monsieur Raveneau even more so. We
lifted our glasses to the light to marvel at the
color, to marvel at the miracle of wine as a vehicle
for the terroir of Chablis, to marvel at the sheer
luck of being the few who could sit at a table at 12
noon in San Francisco and enjoy a legendary wine from
the 1990 vinatge in Chablis.

I heard the first rumblings from the far side of the
table as the old vintage was put asied to revisit the
the same vineyard's gift from the 2004 vinatge. "

"I think I like the 2004 more than the 1990."

Suspicious looks. Did we just hear the equivelant of
heresy? Murmurs rose and fell, glances were shot
to see who would stand belittle our hapless brethren
for their lack of faith and insight.

I, for my part, agreed.