Amy Laughinghouse Hits the Road

How an Evening of Chablis Made a White Wine Lover out of Me

I have a confession to make. Well, quite a few, probably, but only one that is relevant to my purposes here.

I’m not a wine expert. There, I’ve said it. My ignorance is not for lack of “research,” mind you, but what little I do know mainly revolves around the world of red and can pretty much be summed up in three sentences:

• Nothing good can come from a £4 bottle of Cotes du Rhone.
• Do not, under any circumstances, drink red wine on your friend’s new white couch. That second bit I learned the hard way—as did my friend.
• I’ve never met a Chateauneuf-du-Pape I wouldn’t drink to the last drop. Then again, I’ll drink most anything to the last drop, as evidenced below.

The current contents of my liquor cabinet. When I say there’s nothing I wouldn’t drink, I mean NOTHING. Well, except maybe my bottle of Spisska Borovicka, which I’m fairly certain is Slovakian for “liquid death.”

Years ago, however, white wine was my tipple of choice. Of course, back then, it generally came from a box. That all changed when a friend of mine vowed to turn me into a red wine woman by uncorking three beefy bottles in one night. (No, that’s not a euphemism). But anyway, it worked.

Now, over the course of an elegant evening at the Andaz London Liverpool Street hotel, my oenophilic education is about to come full circle at an event dedicated to the veneration of pure Chablis.

My host is sommelier and restaurant critic Douglas Blyde. Clad in a velvet blazer and burgundy tie, he paces the room like the love child of a fevered poet and an evangelical preacher, passionately, extemporaneously extolling the virtues of tonight’s favoured French region.

First, though, the bad news. “Chablis has had an annus horribilis,” Blyde admits. The region has suffered hail, floods, frost—nearly every tragedy you can image, aside from a Biblical plague of locusts. Up to 50 percent of this year’s crop has already been devastated.

“But that doesn’t mean that what does come out will be troubled in taste,” Blyde maintains. “If anything, it will be the golden child, the survivor.” (more…)