Drifting off continent: Clos Mäia Blanc, July 2024

Chalk like Chablis. Bitter melon. Pith. What to say about a wine that clearly isn’t ready yet, but is also brilliant, and more enjoyable as a chrysalis than most “wide open” white wines will be at their zenith. 

Sea water blowing off the ocean fills my mouth. The edges of the world are blurry. My eyes water. Tiny abrasive pieces of the earth stick to my skin. I don’t seek comfort. Resistance. Too soft is a turn off. 

You can walk down an unpaved road near the landing strip to reach the ocean. Egrets congregate. It’s a slog. The sun doesn’t waver. Every quarter mile, a tricked out Bronco or heavy duty pickup hauls ass down the pathway. Angry flags, Yeti, a bed full of neon chairs. The largest trucks founder in sand soft like 00 flour, near dunes anchored by spiky flowers. Tailpipes fire. The caravan’s passengers are deafened to the sound of eddy’s water, boiling with fish the size of small sardines. 

I catch the sudden motion of kingfishers. It’s a fight not to turn back, sunscreen dripping in acrid rivulets as humidity rises. 

I buy the whole fish. Pliers, pin bones. An isolated hour. Others are relaxing. Tension in my chest. Idle time deferred.

I’m not sure the wine wants you to drink it without resistance. Its life was struggle: infertile rock, constant wind, a high remote place. A woman made it with no concern for an easy pathway. Maximum expression, deep fidelity to the unscrubbed identity of a heterodox land. A fingerprint on a rough hand. Concentration. Undiluted is a jolt from watered down existing. 

Looking into Geraldine Laval’s life I saw tolerance for the primacy of nature. 

We leave simulacra, and drift to the edge of a continent. At the frayed periphery, I feel consonance with an artifact from another borderland. Clos Mäia resonates with tight cracked skin, abrasion, light that doesn’t pander. I skirt the word real because to speak directly of the schism feels taboo. Invoke demons and this fragile illusion shatters. Polarised, somnambulant. Wake ancient forces and things could get altogether too real, in a jiffy. 

Finish the meal with some herbs transported from home, a hodge podge from the kitchen garden, stuffed into a ziplock bag and now all smelling of each other. Thyme might as well be sage, mint über alles.