On Discernment

One afternoon, over lunch at Belotti in Oakland, we opened a 2007 Franck Pascal Quinte-Essence.

I was there with three of my oldest friends in California. I had first met one of them in Baltimore during my intern year. By chance, our first jobs after training brought us to the same hospital on the West Coast.

By the time we moved west, the grapes in the bottle had already been picked.

For years, the four of us shared meals, often with Champagne. These days, it can take months to find a date that works for all of us.

The wine began with lemon. Then mushroom, toast, herbs, the smell of damp earth. Mature and savory, with a faint bitterness holding it together.

Two of us at the table had opened many old bottles over the years and traveled through Champagne together. We had seen what time could do.

Freshness beneath the toast.

Fruit beneath the years.

Nothing needed explaining.

California taught me wine.

Not vineyards at first. Books. Tasting counters. Restaurant lists. Dinners with sommeliers and people who understood far more than I did.

I often dragged one or two of these friends along.

The lessons were generous. They gave me language for what I loved.

They also gave me a hierarchy.

Growers over houses.

Burgundy at the center.

Chablis. Champagne. The Northern Rhône.

Bordeaux became easy to dismiss. California Cabernet easier still.

I found California wines that seemed to prove the rules.

Matthiasson Cabernet and Chardonnay. Ridge Zinfandel. Littorai Pinot Noir.

Wines made with restraint rather than display.

I loved those wines.

I still do.

Roederer Collection 242 surprised me with its depth. The magnums were better still.

La Grande Dame. Vintage Pol Roger. Moët Grand Vintage.

Large houses. Beautiful wines.

Then came the red Burgundies I wanted to love more than I did.

I remember the explanations better than the bottles.

Too young.

Too closed.

The wrong vintage. The wrong glass. The wrong night.

Sometimes all of that was true. Sometimes the wine simply left me cold.

The price and pedigree made disappointment feel like evidence of my own failure.

With certain celebrated growers, I sometimes knew how much I admired the producer before I could say whether I enjoyed the wine.

The reputation arrived first.

The wine followed.

Franck Pascal was little more than a name to me when we opened the bottle.

Only afterward did I learn that he had trained as a chemical engineer before returning to his family’s vineyards. That he turned away from conventional chemical farming and embraced biodynamics.

That he speaks of listening to vines, respecting their energy, even spiritual engineering.

Some of this appealed to me.

Some of it made me skeptical.

But the story came later.

That did not mean I had arrived at Belotti empty. The books were there. The shops. Every bottle we had opened together.

Pascal’s story was not.

Pasta.

Old friends.

Lemon. Mushroom. Toast. Earth.

The wine had already happened.

Franck Pascal Quinte-Essence Extra Brut 2007

Structure

Vallée de la Marne
45-year-old vines
60% Pinot Noir, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Pinot Meunier
Clay, limestone, and flint
Indigenous yeast
Fermented in enamelled vats
15 years on the lees
Disgorged August 2022
Extra Brut

Pascal began moving the estate toward biodynamics in the early 2000s and received Biodyvin certification in 2005. He works with minimal intervention in the cellar.

The wine showed its age without losing itself: lemon giving way to mushroom, toast, herbs, and damp earth. A slight bitterness held the softer, developed flavors together.

Not sharp.

Complete.

Let it warm slightly.

Follow the lemon into the earthier notes. Notice what remains fresh beneath the developed flavors.

Then notice the bitterness.

Not a flaw.

Part of what holds the wine together.

Quinte-Essence is not widely distributed and is usually priced at $100 or more; the available vintage varies.

Check current listings on Wine-Searcher.

Among us, a strong opinion was usually an invitation.

Someone would push. Someone else would push back.

Sometimes for sport. Sometimes because it mattered. We understood one another well enough to tell the difference.

We never mistook disagreement for disloyalty.

A bottle could disagree with me too.

The glass held almost two decades.

So did the table.

Until the next bottle,
Manj

P.S. What is something you learned to admire before deciding whether you actually liked it?

Short Champagne notes on Instagram: @le_dosage