Don's Gillette's Wine Blog
Musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Read Don's full bio...
Email Don directly with your wine-related questions.
Saturday Night Special
Saturday night I cooked Prawn and Chicken Risotto, spiced with saffron and smoky Spanish paprika. I had in my cellar a bottle of 2002 Melville Clone 76 -- Inox Chardonnay, which I thought a fine match. This special Melville bottling is about pure fruit, with no oak influence at all.
Inox was born of winemaker Greg Brewer's desire to replicate the virtues of fine Chablis. Like the best of its French siblings, Greg's wine can be boldly ripe, cuttingly crisp, ultra-minerally and densely concentrated. It is a wine that will repay ageing, as great Chablis so often do.
The match was perfect. There is a synergy between crisp, minerally wines and rich shellfish. Each brings out sweetness in the other. The wine will, especially if it is without the extra richness contributed by new oak barrels, seem to grow lighter, while it makes the briny heaviness of the risotto appear lighter as well
Such strong mineral influences and crisp acidity bring a feel of hard austerity that really locks wine in for food service. Chablis is, of course, an archetype for that effect. Melville's wine can successfully replicate Chablis, but is so perfectly focused and prettily ripe that when softened a bit by age, it actually works as a sipper.
Only three years since its release, their 2002 shows cutting zest, tied to a compressed apple, dry peach, dry flower, gunflint character. My empty glass, hours later, smelled remarkably like a brilliant Zilliken Riesling from the Saar, a wine notorious for its flintiness. It is easy to see why last year Greg created Diatom, a new label of his own, just to make more wines like this one.