A glass of Chinon reveals the difference between price and value

At a certain point in Rabelais's Pantagruel, Bacbuc offers Panurge a silver book, having first filled it from a fountain of Falernian. "Swallow this philosophy," he commands. Pantagruel's entourage, having drunk the contents of the book, assail each other with rapturous hymns to the god of wine. In outpourings of philosophical nonsense, they celebrate the power of Bacchus to turn an arse into a face and vice versa, the versa being the usual product of the vice.

Rabelais's own face - slim, witty and compassionate - was as unlike an arse as a face can be. And the wine of Chinon, of which Rabelais was a native, resembles him. This cool, clear-red product of a temperate climate and of the reticent Cabernet Franc grape has the luminous forehead of the great philosopher. Rabelais's face appears on the labels of the best Chinon I know, that of his fellow philosopher Charles Joguet - and Joguet's wine carries the eternally valid message of Gargantua and Pantagruel: enjoy what you are and others, too, will enjoy you.

Joguet was studying painting and sculpture in postwar Paris when his father's death called him back to the vineyard. Charles was not the normal French intellectual, despising fortune, faith and family for the sake of some paradis artificiel. His greatest desire was to belong to the territory that now belonged to him. He and his mother began to restore their meagre patrimony and he applied himself to the question of why the Cabernet Franc has never been valued at its worth. The error, he concluded, had been the failure to localise. A product can have a price however freely it roams; but it can have a value only when attached to somewhere definite. In Burgundy every enclave competes for eminence. But, while the Chinon appellation has existed since 1937, the habit has been not to distinguish the terroirs. Chinon lovers have their private sources, but the world knows of no favoured hillsides or treasured clumps of vines.

Charles inherited several such clumps, and set about cultivating their distinctiveness. In 1983 he went into partnership with the appropriately named Michel Pinard, and two more friends soon joined them. Today the wines that the Joguet venture produces are marked not merely by the serene love of the soil that caused Charles to begin his experiments, but by the years of family love and faithful friendship that are the natural result of settling in the place that made you.

You can obtain the Joguet wines from Berry Bros, which has three single-vineyard Chinons of the 2001 vintage, all of which will improve, and one of which - the Varennes du Grand Clos - is so balanced, generous and aromatic that, even at £12 a bottle, it will teach you the real distinction between value and price.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website