RICHARD CALVER relives memories more than 30 years old sparked by a simple glass of French sauterne. Marcel Proust would be proud of him.

The smell and taste of a particular wine or food often triggers involuntary memory.

This occurs when something that you smell or consume evokes recollections of the past without you deliberately seeking out those thoughts. 

This is not a new observation: Proust was notable for explaining this phenomenon in his famous Remembrance of Things Past, published in France between 1913 and 1927 (there were a number of volumes totalling about 3000 pages).

Famously, he was thrown back to his childhood by the taste of a lemon madeleine dipped in tea, memories that the narrator indicates “infinitely transcended those savours”. The sensory cue triggers an intensely evocative memory.

I had my own Proustian moment recently at the end of a meal in an upmarket Barton restaurant where, as the final part of the birthday celebration, I ordered a glass of sauterne, a 2015 Chateau La Chartreuse de Coutet to accompany the crème caramel. 

This botrytis affected sweet wine is dark yellow, the bouquet of tropical fruit. On taste its honeyed flavours with notes of apricot overrun the palate with sweetness, but it was not cloying.

On finish there was a touch of citrus zest that created a balanced feel, a very good matching with the dessert. 

Later I looked up this wine and saw it costs around $40-$50 for a 375ml bottle. 

I believe that the Australian Noble One stands up well against this particular emanation from France with a similar reliance on noble rot-affected semillon, but with the French wine also containing sauvignon blanc (23 per cent) and a hint (2 per cent) of muscadelle. 

The taste and texture of this wine threw me back to an even more intensely flavoured sauterne that I’d tried after a lunch at Mietta’s in Queenscliff, Victoria, in the early 1990s.

Mietta O’Donnell, who tragically died in a car accident, and her partner Tony Knox had bought a run-down pub, the Queenscliff Hotel, and turned it into a weekend destination with a fine-dining restaurant. 

At the time I recall it was a very expensive way to finish what had already been an indulgent lunch; I ordered a glass of sauterne made by the famous French winery Chateau Yquem, which was established as a vineyard in the early 1700s. 

I recalled that we had an outside table on the terrace at the restaurant and I had bought lunch for my partner and her mother (I was trying for the good books). 

I recall that I achieved the opposite effect as I shushed the mother mid-conversation, which had gone on interminably. 

I stopped her so I could fully experience the flavours of the wine, with only a slightly apologetic: “Sorry, first time experience”. 

Now, I’m reminded of the mother-in-law story where she had bought a parrot and then went to return it.

“But why?” asked the pet shop owner. “Well this talking parrot doesn’t speak”, she said. Suddenly alert, the parrot says: “You haven’t given me a chance.”

I recall the Chateau Yquem had an intensity and depth that was not mirrored in my latest Chateau La Chartreuse de Coutet tasting but which had enough similarity in its honeyed smoothness to trigger a memory of more than 30 years.

In my searches around an imagined attempt to fully reinstate the Chateua Yquem memory, I found that a 2016 Chateau d’Yquem Sauterne 375 ml bottle is selling for around $520, while the earlier more highly regarded 2014 vintage is selling for a nudge over $1500. At these prices, the purchase of either is not on my agenda. The memory must suffice. 

“A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.” –Alexander Smith