I Forbid the God of Cliché

On this, the Day of the Duck, I could be posting about an Oregon wine. Quack to that! I'm sticking to the Loire. And this time, for what seems the Nth time, although it's probably only the third, the non-vintage brut Vouvray from François Pinon.

I'm drinking a white in the winter and a sparkling wine on a Monday that's not a holiday and a French wine with nominally Italian food (pasta with pesto). I don't have a flute because I don't want one, so into the wide-bowled Burgundy glass it goes. Little about this scenario is "correct."

Still, everything feels right. Pinon (nice Wine Doctor profile here) provides an unmasked, acid-driven expression of Vouvray. There are no autolytic aromas to hype, no poached pear on toast flavors to profile. "This is me," it says — the crunchy honeycomb flavors, the telltale chenin bitterness, the fine minerality — and the acidity cuts nicely through the rich green herby pasta. It's slightly oxidized, in a good way. Have I had drier white wine? Yes. But not that much drier.

Today feels to me like a good day not for the simple, but for the unadorned.