Michel Laroche 821 Blanc de Blancs 2022

I am SHOOK by this wine.

It takes a lot to get me worked up over a fermented beverage–I taste so many that many of them, while perfectly fine, never do much to inspire me or work up an emotion. But when I taste what feels like a perfect melding of two iconic styles, my palate perks up.  My senses are finely tuned to discover interesting things in the wild–anyone can tell you that a big juicy cab tastes good, or that rosé is brisk and refreshing in the summertime. But when I tell you that this doesn't taste like anything you've had before, I mean it–it's because that statement is true for me, too.

This is a sparkling wine made in the Chablis region of France, that is known for its salty, bright, dry, still white wines. Chablis is one of the wines that tastes most distinctly of the ocean–it's grown on ancient fossilized marine soils, and while we can't chemically prove it all the time, these wines taste like standing on the seashore.

When you hear of the greats in Chablis–Dauvissat, Raveneau, Fevre, Laroche...they're renowned not for their wine scoring points, or for their cutesy lifestyle branding. They're famous because their wine tastes more like a specific place on earth than any other wine is capable of. The greatest wines in the world do that. That's what makes Chablis and its wines cool–specificity. The fact that you can't just plant Chardonnay grapes any 'ole place and expect them to taste like salted lemons being shot at you from a batting cage machine. But in Chablis, you can.

When I taste a sparkling Chablis this magical, I am transported through time back to 2018 in France, when I still fit into my Belstaff jacket, and my friends Nelson, Tom, Scott and I were traipsing through the Grand Cru vineyard stretch of Chablis, which is in one big patch on the hill above town. We went around picking up chalky fossilized rocks on a rainy day, the petrichor in our nostrils and Chablis in our glasses, having a salty scavenger hunt for the best-looking Kimmeridgian chalk fossil.

This wine is classified as a "pét-nat" but hews closer to Champagne in its finely-bubbled texture and creaminess. It's not sour and kombucha-like in the manner of many natural style bubblies. But it's also not super nutty and oxidative like many long-aged Champagnes. It's Brut Zero, so carries no additional sugar, instead zinging with bright, zesty acid. It's a serious bubbly that still has the rocky, saline, lemony energy of the soil it was grown in.

I am getting as much of this wine as I possibly can. It will be my personal bubbly for summer parties, riverfront hangs, taking on boats, sharing with friends, and most importantly, eating oysters, crab and shrimp as we do here in the PNW. If you're a sparkling wine lover, this is for you. If you're a Chablis lover, this is for you. If you love salty snacks, this is for you and your chips.

Now that I've thoroughly exhausted my praise for this wine, GET SOME.

-Jackson