Wine Club
Chevalier, the white knight and the red
Possibly the finest white wine of all France, Chevalier Blanc is remarkable for having a little known cousin, a red Chevalier that stands up to many of the fine wines of the Médoc
At lunch after the tasting, Olivier Bernard, as hospitable a host as his predecessor, rather baffled his mostly Bordelais guests by serving, blind, two 1985 Bâtard-Montrachets with the first course. Then glasses of four different reds appeared. There was a flurry of guesswork, including the correct supposition that they were all 1985 Bordeaux. Names of first growths flew through the air (mostly the wrong ones, it turned out). Three of the wines were Latour, Mouton, and Margaux. The fourth was Chevalier. Only one person had chosen what turned out to be Chevalier as his favourite of the four, but no matter. The red Chevalier did not pale in comparison with its august cousins from the Médoc, even if it couldn’t quite match them in terms of finesse and poise. If the red has rivals, and more successful ones, the white Chevalier has peers, perhaps, but no evident superiors among the white wines of Bordeaux – or, one is seriously tempted to suggest, France.
TASTING NOTES
After each vintage I have added the year in which I last tasted the wine.
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