San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Aligote a fresh pickmeup
Welcome to Wine of the Week, a new series in which Chronicle wine critic Esther Mobley recommends a delicious bottle that you should be drinking right now. Last week, she highlighted a briny, oceanic Pinot Gris from Santa Cruz. Check for a new installment online every Wednesday.
When people talk about white wines from Burgundy, it’s assumed that they’re talking about Chardonnay, the French region’s signature white grape variety. But there’s a second, lesserknown and lessergrown white grape in Burgundy, called Aligote. It may be the wine world’s most beautiful afterthought. Chardonnay is much more prolific — its acreage in Burgundy is about 10 times Aligote’s — and is widely considered capable of producing a much better wine. The conventional wisdom holds that Aligote wines are simple, thin, forgettable, basically just boring. The wine is perhaps best known as the base for a Kir cocktail, blended with potent crème de cassis.
But in recent years there’s been a renewed appreciation for Aligote’s subtle charms, both in Burgundy and around the world. Among its fiercest champions is the Santa Barbara County winemaker Jim Clendenen, who makes the Au Bon Climat and Clendenen Family Vineyards labels.
He first encountered the wine as a simple quencher. “I worked in Burgundy in 1981, and what they gave me when I was working in the cellar was Aligote,” Clendenen says. “I can tell you that when you’re thirsty, the thing that can pick you up is a 9% to 11% Aligote.”
As he tasted more, however, Clendenen came to love Aligote for its alwaysmoderate alcohol levels, vibrant energy and spicy, minerally flavors. It’s a sprightly foil to Chardonnay’s heavy richness.
Clendenen first made Aligote in the early 1990s from a vineyard in Hollister (San Benito County), which does not exactly have the reputation for wine of Burgundy, or even Santa Barbara. But he found an enthusiastic customer in the famous French chef Alain Ducasse, whose Paris restaurant, Clendenen says, became the No. 1 buyer of his Aligote. “They would pour my Hollisterarea Aligote into a beautiful decanter that looked like a swan,” he says. Apparently, some diners were fooled and thought it was a Burgundian Chardonnay.
Eventually, Clendenen got serious enough about Aligote to plant some at one of his own vineyards called Le Bon Climat in Santa Maria (Santa Barbara County), making it one of the only plantings in the state. (The other true believers include Calera Winery in Hollister and Ernest Vineyards in Sonoma County, both of whom make fine Aligotes.)
Although he used to try to make Aligote into a bigger, more showstopping wine, Clendenen now lets it be a little more like the thirst quencher he encountered in the Burgundy cellar all those years ago. It has a tangy, yogurtlike creaminess and reminds me of jasmine tea and underripe peaches that still have some crunch to them. In other words, it’s plenty expressive. But don’t get too hung up on looking for the specific flavor notes. This is a wine to drink for its mouthwatering acidity and its overwhelming sense of freshness.
Buy it from the Clendenen Family Vineyards website, at K&L or at Mill Valley Market.