Chablis in 6 layers

Chablis, in six historical layers:

~ 150,000,000 YRS AGO ~

A warm shallow sea, coral reefs swarming with diversifying squat lobsters, spiral-shelled carnivorous ammonites, single-celled planktonic protists, the shadowy bulk of plesiosaurs, all of which will eventually smush into the limestones that define the catacombs of Paris, the white cliffs of Dover, the chalk of Champagne’s Côte des Blancs, the buttery yellow chateaux of the Loire…

~ 500 YRS AGO ~

Walled towns whose names come from Gallo-Roman estates (Chablis –> Capleia, 867AD –> “house near the woods”) or colonies for legionnaires (Coulanges-les-Vineuse), abbeys with granted vineyards, polyculture on the flats, forests for firewood and game on the hilltops — also it’s CURRENTLY ON FIRE 🔥🔥🔥 — sacked by the Huguenots. (btw glass wine bottles haven’t been invented yet)

~ 150 YRS AGO ~

A booming modern wine region, 40k hectares planted mostly to red varieties like césar, gamay, gouais noir, or pinot, selling fresh, pale bistro wines on river barges that throng the Yonne on their way to the capital — but watch out, Paris is building a railroad south to the Midi and your entire economic reality is about to be upended by industrial capitalism…

~ 69 YRS AGO ~

Broken, shivering, decimated by phylloxera, war, and successive frosts, a region so denuded of vines that villagers go skiing on the slopes of the grand crus.

~ 48 YRS AGO ~

A world-famous and familiar synonym for “dry white wine” (and, occasionally, pink wine) that adorns generic bottles grown anywhere from Australia to California, made from everything from green Hungarian to colombard to chenin to sémillon, cf. the VOGUE crash diet where all you have is unseasoned steak black coffee hard boiled eggs and an entire bottle of chablis” every day:

~ LAST YEAR ~

Brand Chablis Ascendent: export sales ratcheting up every year (“a 200% increase in the last decade”), a regional name protected under international treaty (the New York Times in 2021: “This is not to say Chablis is the best chardonnay, only the most singular”), quality hierarchy among the most frequently taught in intro wine classes. (It’s an easy Grand Cru system for your students to wrap their heads around.)

Has there been a price of this success? The market’s insatiable appetite for Brand Chablis must be fed: mechanical harvesting, high yields, and more and more vinegrowing land pulled into the AOC. Polyculture is gone; the region is wall to wall vineyard. Soils are largely dead: Chablis boasts one of the lowest proportions of organic viticulture in France. And climate change is supercharging mildew pressure, swings between drought and excessive rainfall, frost damage, and a host of other issues that have wiped out or significantly reduced entire vintages — including the ’24s.

~ …FUTURE? ~

Bare slopes, as in ’56? Mildew-immune PiWis? I’ve heard rumors of experimental syrah plantings, as vintages warm and picking dates advance. Chablis remains an irresistible reference point for chic downtown drinkers — for now — but whether it will remain tied to landscape — whether that landscape will survive — is a more fraught question than we might think…