French wine

Chablis has the paradoxical distinction of being at once one of the most famous and least well known of French wines. Hugh Johnson opined that it is “one of the world’s most under-estimated treasures.” I agree. We say that Chablis is Burgundy, but, situated on the Serein River some 100 miles southeast of Paris, Chablis is nearly 100 miles north of Beaune. Perhaps we can say that it is the Hadrian’s Wall of Burgundy. Hadrian’s bit of Britain was part of the Roman Empire, but no one would confuse it with Rome. The climate in Chablis is markedly different from and less forgiving than that of the Côte-d’Or: chillier and windier. Think of Auden’s poem, “Roman Wall Blues”: “The rain comes pattering out of the sky, / I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.

To you and me, “Châteauneuf-du-Pape” means the bold, dark, spicy red wine from the Rhône region of southeastern France, a bit north of the town of Avignon, with bottles usually featuring a glass-embossed representation of the keys of St. Peter. If you were Jacques Duèze, known to history as Pope John XXII, second and longest reigning (1316-34) of the Avignon popes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape meant first of all that “new castle of the pope” he built on the hill overlooking the town. After the popes left, it fell into desuetude and was raided for stone by local builders. During the Revolution, all the buildings except the great tower or donjon were sold off. During World War Two, the Germans attempted to dynamite the structure but succeeded in destroying only the northern half.