Olga Raffault 2017 Chinon Les Barnabés.
Between the effort involved in getting acclimated to two new jobs, the distraction of house renovations (don’t ask me why replacing the roof also meant replacing plumbing, but it did), and the fact that our wine remains in storage in Chicago until we get our cellar built, we’ve been living a very different vinous life over the last nine months. Thanks to a couple of small but well-curated shops here, we’re able to keep our palates happy, and one of the two shops has even helped us bring our average case price way down from Chicago levels. But last week we finally had something that made us go back for more immediately.
This Raffault doesn’t have quite the depth of the Picasses, but it’s so vibrant, so perfectly suspended between juicy fruit and green, flinty pucker that we nearly fell out of our chairs. (No, it wasn’t the second bottle of the night.) probably not for long-term keeping but it’s absolutely delicious now.
Now if we could just get the gutter guy to show up before the spring rains...
Cheers, Patchen