2008 Domaine Perraud Macon- Villages 'Vielles Vignes'
$16.50 Per Bottle, Six Bottles $94.50/$15.75, Twelve Bottles $178.20/$14.85 per bottle
I am often required to bring work home with me from the office, meaning long nights in my white lab coat at the dining room table swirling and spitting, plowing through sample after sample, writing page after page of notes, finally collapsing exhausted into bed in the wee hours.
Don't you feel sorry for me?
Actually, what really happens is that I cherry pick the most interesting samples we’ve received during the week, go home, make dinner for my lovely wife and whoever else I can corral to eat and drink with us, and audition the wine the way it most wants to be consumed. And so it went the other night when I dragged home five bottles of Maconnaise white from the 2007 and 2008 vintage to strut their stuff alongside some mushroom and arugula pasta. I poured the Perraud Macon Villages first of the five since it was from the most modest appellation and was priced accordingly.
WoW! My two visiting English friends both raved. One, who lives back in North Carolina, is having me send him a case. And my wife, the harshest Burgundy critic at Chez Rittmaster, cinched the deal, ratifying an immediate case purchase for the Rittmaster larder. The wines that followed, though each good in its own right, never measured up to the Perraud, the wine I now call 'the little Macon-Villages that could!'
But please, after reading this, don’t expect some monster Chardonnay. No oak trees were harmed in its creation and its considerable charm stems more from its oh-so-pure Bosc pear fruit and lemon verbena-mineral nose. It's just the right weight on the palate, too...not heavy, not light. It's a simply charming glass of wine that will do wonderful service alongside your best fish dishes, smoked fish salads and roasted chicken seasoned simply with lemon, salt and pepper. That mushroom pasta worked really well too. Or, as proven under laboratory conditions in my kitchen, it will drink pretty damned well by itself!
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