Gaubilicous

I have always only liked one wine at the famed Rousillon estate of Domaine Gauby. That was the white wine called "Les Calcinaires." It was around $24-$33 retail and was a killer value. Drank much higher than its price tag and had no oak. The blend was also cool comprising of 40% Macebeu, 40% Muscat and 20% Chardonnay. Gauby's reds were never my style. Too rich, too extracted and too oaky. The Muntada is their high end wine and has never really done much for me and is north of $100 a bottle. I also never really liked the VV white bottling as I thought they never mastered the oak. But that all changed in 2007 as the 2007 Domaine Gauby Vieilles Vignes Blanc was a revelation to me. It is comprised of 55% 100+ year old Macabeu wines with the rest of the blend being Grenache Blanc (50-100 years old), Grenache Gris (50-100 years old) and Chardonnay (15-20 years old), in that order. The wine had some of the most brilliant use of new oak on a non White Burgundy that I can remember. Lest we forget most people mess up their oak regime in Burgundy and few get it right. Roulot, Carillon, Prudhon, Leflaive and Ramonet come to my mind as producers who get the oak right in the Cote de Beaune. But getting the oak right outside of the Cote d'Or on white wine just seems to be a persistent issue in the wine world. There are countless numbers of over-oaked Viogniers from Condrieu and California that can attest to that. Or the bold producer in the Loire who wants to oak their Chenin Blanc and fail miserably. Yes there can be exceptions like l'Insolite from Germain but they are few and far between. Most white wine has a delicate profile and oak just obliterates that unless used as a seasoning, like the way a chef uses salt. So when I encounter a non-Chardonnay that has a delicate touch on the oak, it gets me excited, as it so rare.

The '07 Gauby VV really just blew me away in regards not just to the oak, but having that laser-like precision, that I just love so much in great white wine. And this was great white wine. It's like if Meursault-Perrieres was planted with Macebeu and Roulot made it. Most of the grapes sourced for this cuvee are planted on limestone, so there's that. The wine was that focused and precise, blind you would think it was great white burg. The purity and energy were astonishing and I actually was salivating from how impressive the oak was. Oak was merely a component along with, beautiful pure fruit, wonderful sap and extract from the Macebeu old vines, and zingy, zesty minerality and of course all that acid. After the wine completed its thing on your palate it left you salivating for more. That is what every great white should do. The wine kept changing in the short time I had with it - about 20 minutes - getting more nuanced and complex with every sip. I can only imagine what it would be like with 5 years in the bottle or a 10 hour decant.

I would classify this wine as a value. It retails for $45-$50 a bottle which doesn't seem like a value, but on an absolute qualitative scale, this is a value, if you compare it to what you can get in the world of dry white wine at this price-point. It really exceeded my expectations as I requested to taste my fave, the Calcinaires, and was very dissapointed when the salesman pulled out the VV. But all that has changed and I now have two Gauby wines I love. Now if they could just get their reds right.