Raveneau & Oysters: Variations on a Simple Pleasure
An oyster, a sip of Raveneau, and time.
I have been thinking about how much those few things can contain.
For anyone less familiar with the name, Raveneau is a small family domaine in Chablis, in northern Burgundy, making some of the most coveted expressions of Chardonnay in the world. The wines are known for their depth, longevity, and ability to reveal themselves slowly. For me, their particular attraction is the combination of marine flavors, enveloping texture, and a complexity that keeps developing in the glass.
Recently at Scott and Kate’s, we had Hog Island oysters with three vintages of Raveneau’s Chablis Premier Cru Montée de Tonnerre: 2010, 2014, and 2023. The 2010 was my favorite—less overtly fruity, with white fruit, verbena, hints of lychee and almond. The 2014 felt the most classical and balanced, with yellow fruit and a long future ahead. The 2023 was ripe, full of orchard fruit, and delicious.
Those are useful notes. They help me remember the bottles. But they only partly explain why I am still thinking about the meal.
There is a particular pleasure in eating an oyster, drinking its liquor, taking a sip of wine, and wanting to do it all again. The sweetness, the brine, the texture of the oyster; the depth and persistence of the wine. Flavors overlap and extend one another. I find myself following them, trying to understand where one ends and the other begins.
I can happily spend hours doing this.
Almost a year ago, I wrote about a similar evening: four of us, three hours, Hog Island Atlantic, Sweetwater, and Kumamoto oysters, and Raveneau Monts Mains 2020 and 2022. I called that post “A Symphony of Sea and Stone”. The 2020 was suave and relaxed, with a hint of mint and a quietly developing complexity. The 2022 was brighter, more citrus-driven, and a little brash. I kept changing my mind about which I preferred.
That last detail has stayed with me.
Usually, when comparing wines, we feel some obligation to arrive at an answer. We rank them, choose a favorite, make a buying decision. I do all of this. But there was something satisfying about letting my preference remain unsettled. Another oyster, another sip, a little more time in the glass. Each wine gave me a reason to reconsider.
There was no urgency to finish the comparison. We were enjoying it.
I spend a lot of time trying to understand what I like in wine. With Chablis, I keep returning to Raveneau and Dauvissat: ocean tide, seaweed, oyster shell, cream, honeyed complexity. Texture matters enormously to me, as does the way a wine develops with air and age.
Looking back at my notes from a 2012 Raveneau tasting at Vin Vino Wine in 2015, I recognize the same fascination: seawater, seaweed, honey, texture, and the extraordinary silkiness of a mature 1999 Montée de Tonnerre. The photographs are a little painful—$185 for the young Montée de Tonnerre, and I was already complaining about the prices. But what interests me most is how clearly those notes describe the things I still love. Eleven years later, I have more experiences to connect them to, and a better understanding of the kind of pleasure they give me.
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The 2012s at Vin Vino Wine, March 2015. |
Recently I spent several days with Samuel Billaud’s 2021, 2022, and 2023 Montée de Tonnerre. I appreciated their precision, but they remained more linear than I had hoped. I was waiting for a particular kind of unfolding. That comparison helped me articulate something about my own palate: freshness and definition are only part of what I seek. I want the wine to draw me further in as I spend time with it.
A 2004 Raveneau Montée de Tonnerre from magnum, shared by my friend Dan along with Dungeness crab seasoned with cumin and coriander, did exactly that. Initially soft and understated, it opened over hours, revealing iodine, ocean, honey, and a suggestion of rose. It was fresh, without oxidation, seemingly ageless.
I think about how easily I could have underestimated that wine in a brief tasting.
There is a practical lesson here about giving a bottle time. But I am also interested in what happens to us during that time. We settle into the meal. Our attention becomes less hurried. We notice something we missed, return to it, discover another detail.
The wine changes, and so does our ability to receive it.
Most recently, Dan surprised me again, bringing a 1990 Raveneau Vaillons to dinner at Los Altos Grill. There was some salinity, but little of the ocean and oyster-shell character I so often associate with these wines. Instead, I found laser acidity and beautiful maturity. Blind, I might not even have identified it as Chablis. It reminded me of aged Champagne without the bubbles—and I mean that as a compliment.
That bottle complicates my own description of what I am chasing. I return to Raveneau with certain expectations, built over years, yet a wine like this can take me somewhere else entirely. There is pleasure in recognizing what I love, and just as much in discovering something I hadn’t thought to look for.
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1990 Raveneau Vaillons at Los Altos Grill, shared by Dan. |
Drinking a wine like that makes me think about everything that has happened since its vintage. Thirty-six years, and here we were, sharing it over dinner.
And when I return to oysters and Chablis, that sense of time becomes especially vivid.
Much of an oyster’s appeal lies in its immediacy: freshness, coolness, the liquor held in the shell. A mature bottle may have taken twenty or thirty years or more to become what it is. Someone made it, someone kept it, someone decided that this was the evening to open it.
Then there are all the years we have spent learning to taste.
I would have enjoyed oysters and Chablis long ago. But I wonder how much of what moves me now I would have recognized then. Experience gives us associations, memories, a vocabulary. A flavor recalls another bottle, another meal, a place we have visited. We become capable of finding more within the same apparently simple act.
That is one of the things I love about wine. The pleasure can deepen as we get older. There is always more to perceive.
And yet the actual moment remains wonderfully brief. An oyster, a sip, the lingering finish. Years of preparation arriving in something that lasts seconds.
Fortunately, there is another oyster.
I love the intellectual rabbit holes. Give me a vineyard, a producer, a set of vintages, and I can happily disappear into the details. I want to understand what makes these wines distinctive and why they develop as they do.
But even a very thorough explanation leaves something unresolved. Why does this particular combination give me such pleasure? Why does one meal remain vivid while another, perhaps more elaborate or expensive, fades?
I suspect part of the answer is how completely we inhabit it.
At a large tasting, there is always another glass to try, another person to greet, another bottle that must not be missed. I enjoy that excitement. Yet an evening with a few wines gives me the chance to develop a relationship with each one. I can follow it, leave it alone, come back. There is room for surprise.
The same is true of food. A plate of oysters can hold my attention because there is so much going on within it. Differences in sweetness, salinity, texture, and finish become more apparent as I slow down. Simplicity gives those details space.
Of course, Raveneau is an extraordinary indulgence. There is nothing modest about the reputation or current price of these bottles. The simplicity I am describing belongs to the experience: a few things that work beautifully together, given enough time.
As a collector, I spend years preserving possibilities. I buy a bottle, find a place for it, wonder when it will be ready. Sometimes I wait too long. Sometimes I open it too early. Occasionally, everything comes together.
Those occasions help me understand what all the collecting is for. A wine I have thought about for years becomes part of an evening with friends. We open it, pour it, eat something delicious, and discover what it has become.
Raveneau and oysters keep bringing me back to that pleasure. They satisfy my curiosity and encourage it at the same time. I want to understand more, taste more carefully, cook thoughtfully, and make room for more evenings like these.
Two words on a menu. Raveneau & oysters.
Enough to think about for years.
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