Rochebin Mâcon Azé Chardonnay 2021
Price: $21.95
Channel: LCBO Vintages
Producer: Domaine de Rochebin
Country: France
Region: Burgundy
Appellation: Mâcon Azé
Grapes: Chardonnay
Alcohol by Volume: 12.5%
Sugar Content: 2 grams per litre
In the Southern Burgundy chapter of Ten Vineyard Lunches (1988), Richard Olney pairs a 1983 Mâcon Villages with Truffled Sausage with Pistachios in Court Bouillon. Or, to be honest, while he does not explicitly pair Chardonnay from the Mâconnais, a bottle of it lies in focus next to the dish in photograph that accompanies the recipe.
Ten Vineyard Lunches is one of my favourite food and wine pornos: a travelogue cookbook through the wine regions of France, when Grand Cru wines and Micheline Star dining was affordable (at least compared to now). It’s a pure fantasy of dishes I will never likely cook and wine labels, discreetly shot, that I will more than likely never taste.
Still, for the sausage recipe, Olney kept the wine pretty down home, which is why I reached into my book shelf to find it when I was tasting through the 2021 Domaine de Rochebin Mâcon Azé, which at $21.95 is indeed an affordable Chardonnay by modern Burgundian standards, especially for one that is well made in an old school, mineral driven style.
I’d like to think that the village of Azé was one of the Villages in Olney’s 1983 lunchtime bottle. Would it also have a strong vein of peachy stone fruit, lifted by pronounced food friendly acid, but tempered by an enrobing weight in the mid-palate? And, would it be seasoned, judiciously, by that very old fashioned French touch of volatile acidity, redolent of nail polish remover? In my fantasy it does.
The Rochebin Mâcon Azé would indeed pair well with a sausage lunch. Or, roasted chicken, or with evening snacks.