Riesling: foe or waste of time?

The title here is a feint. I was scribbling messages with a friend and wondered what might be interesting to talk about on this blog. His suggestion? Knowing my proclivities: "Riesling: foe or waste of time?"

Of course, I countered that the answer wouldn't make for a very long post: "Both."

Now, I try to be open-minded in my approach to wine. I will even go back for certain punishments just to make sure I really, really don't like a vinous thing.

Then I get all bombastic and pretend I have set-in-stone tastes.

Thing is, for all of my railing against riesling (there's been a bit of that, as well as passing off glasses to friends, liberal use of a dump bucket, &c.), I have in my day quite liked quite a few.

Since I have my very own personal palate issues with residual sugar, the rieslings that have managed to curry favor with me have tended toward the Austrian and Alsatian side.

Yet exceptions abound. Some older Germans: yum, who knew? Some nasty Clos Sainte-Hunes: need to replace my tooth enamel!

So, roll it all up into a ball, and say, well: both, and neither. The exuberant aromatics of riesling can be enormously appealing; the body can be viscous; I do like that petrol thing. But the riesling grape is not a reliable friend. It's a friend who sometimes kicks your dog and sometimes gives you a bunch of lilacs tied with a ribbon.

So I'll stick with the chardonnays and the romorantins and the grüner veltliners of the world. Until their green-blue corks start heralding premature aging and walnutty oxidation.

Then I'll have no recourse but chenin....

Wine? Or crack?

This blog post is a public service announcement for those interested in wine. The picture of the seemingly harmless bottle above is one you should stamp into your retinas and retain. Blink twice. You see this bottle, here, now, safely virtual. If you see this bottle in the real world, flee. Or else give in. I'll have warned you.

Sometimes wine crosses you over to the dark realms of craving, though it's not often. Well, the bright and sunny bottle you are being shown here in fact hides a terribly addictive philter within its glass confines.

2008 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Nº2, with its headily aromatic nose and will-breakingly deep palate, redolent of all those things you want in a sauvignon (lemon zest, rocks, white flowers, and then a fleshy hint of calisson or apricot), bests a whole host of Sancerres and other supposedly higher-end regional fodder. Sip it alone, sip it with shellfish, sip it at the beach or at the Buttes-Chaumont or on a deck festooned with striped deck umbrellas or in a city apartment.

Then be prepared for the consequences. You will want more.

Naturally unnatural: orange wines

A vaporous collaboration with VLM, who let me drink almost all of the Radikon

I was sitting at my desk on a dark, cloudless spring night with a lamp shining indirect, yellowish light. I had a bottle on the glass desktop, next to the MacBook. The bottle was cool to the touch. The label was minimalistic, hand-drawn, and from the side peeked out the recognizable font of the LOUIS/DRESSNER importer label.

Opened and poured into a large stem, the wine shone ocher through the glass. I swirled and smelled. 2006 Cà de Noci "Notte di luna" has heady perfumes of spice, cardamom, orange peel, gingerbread. I sipped and felt it expand in my mouth, sending floods of complex quince and tannin over my palate. This is god wine.

Before last fall I had never had an "orange" wine, and did not even know they existed. That a disparate and geographically diverse handful of natural winemakers would choose to produce pungent, tannic skin-contact white wines in an unmistakable style, relying on barefoot crushing, on wild yeasts, and, for some of them, on amphorae, hadn't been part of my wine lexicon. Especially as there wasn't anyone doing it in France.

So, my first dalliance with Notte di luna was memorable, and I blogged about it at the time. But I didn't realize that what we had on our hands had been, for all of its remarkable uncommonness, of a style. Thus, I was still the novice several months later when, during a dinner, my friend SFJoe got out a skinny 500ml bottle with a blue label. I rolled my eyes, thinking he was once again slinging the sweet stuff, as he is wont to do. Wrong. And how.

2003 Radikon "Jakot" - A dry, bright wine with hidden depths. This hits your nose before you get anywhere near the glass. What I loved about the wine was its offhand, palate-flattering approach, which then spirals wildly into great length and complexity. It's both easy and tricky. Its name is a joke, too, being the backwards of Tokaj, which is its grape, but which it is not allowed to be called any more. This is a natural wine that is impudent, jokey, the fool, and foolishly good. (It also fools you by making you think it's light in alcohol; then you find yourself tipsy and realize that despite its balance, it carries 14% abv.)

The Radikon was both an epiphany and a spark in my mind: I wanted more of this. But "this" was both a particular and a category. If other wines out there could bring the heady category confusion of Cà de Noci and Radikon, I wanted to taste them, to test them.

One day, when it was raining really, really hard, it was time to open a Gravner, after having kicked off shoes so wet they could have been wrung out.

2002 Gravner Ribolla Gialla "Anfora" - A more austere wine, in comparison to the Radikon. Deep amber in color and with heft on the palate, it stretched out in dark slices of pain d'épice, but was as tight as a fist. Closed and stern, it was fascinating like someone who won't tell you what he's thinking. This needs far more time – years – but promises to be a gorgeous butterfly when it gets out of its cocoon. It'll have stories to tell. It'll spill the goods.

I had now sussed out what this orange wine phenomenon was all about, and was all knowing with another bottle – this I enjoyed less, and didn't retain the producer's name – quaffed at the restaurant Convivio over a plateful of crab and sea urchin malloreddus. Yet to my mind, I thought it was an Italian thing.

Flash forward.

Last night, Josh Raynolds came at me with a bottle bearing the brown-toned label of the California winery Wind Gap. I waved him away. "I've had their wine before!" I demurred, recalling a very even-handed (12.5% alcohol!) unoaked chardonnay about which I'd thought: Sure, but they can do this in France in their sleep.

Josh said, "But this is an orange wine."

I turned around (yes, I'd already turned my back on him and was retreating toward the last sip of a glass of Donati Malvaisa frizzante). He smiled wickedly and poured a healthy pour into my now emptied glass.

2008 Wind Gap Pinot Gris Here we go; clove and quince and thick delightfulness. "Look at that color," he observed. Slightly cloudy, it was deep. And as it opened and unfurled in the glass, I found those tastes again.

Those unnaturally natural orange wine tastes.


This post is part of the natural wine month series at saignée.

Natural and unnatural activities

It has been pointed out to me that of late, I have been doing more of the tactile (tasting, drinking) approach to wine than the cerebral (writing). That must change, now, as I have agreed to parnter up with VLM, of the stupendous wine blog The Vulgar Little Monkey Translucency Report, for a pair of posts about natural wines.

This we are doing as part of saignée blogger Cory Cartwright's month of guest scribblings. The man has been bold enough to ask mad vinous web log scribes to churn out prose on the topic of, funnily enough, natural wines. It may be an unnatural turn of events for a blog you never thought would see the word "fuck" used on it, but a natural affinity for natural wines can churn up all kinds of unnatural antimatter, now can't it?

I mull this over as I sit here letting the last vapors of a hangover produced by quite a bouquet of natural wines waft away from my being. I am at the keyboard ready to sing of the rosy-fingered dawn of orange wines.

The posts go up tomorrow as part of the series that's running on the site linked to below.

As Joe Dressner would say: Enjoy.

saignée

Spring things

Spring is for lightness with a bit of residual sugar, I've decided. Light whites, Loire whites, chenins, romorantins, weird Monts-Damnés Sancerres from hills so aslope, their aromatics explode and they persist on the palate with a heady blend of alcohol and sweetness.

These things we can deal with, now that the sun is out and flowers bloom in buckets in front of florists' stores. You want to mash basil with a mortar and pestle. Sauté some seasonal greens. Eat fish that only come around once a year, and maybe their roe, too. And pour things like the following, for a start.

1991 Pichler Ried Dürnsteiner Kellerberg Riesling Smaragd - an Austrian riesling with age and smoothly matured aromatics. A lovely thing, long and sinuous on the palate. Great while scarfing down focaccia.

2006 Bornard Arbois Melon "Le Rouge-Queue" - Oxidative delight! A Jurassian chardonnay that delivers ample funk, like a mountain stream in an opium dream. Let it tangle with your tongue. Who knows who the winner will be?

2000 Brégéon Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine Gorgeois - Long, involved, complex, noble of brow, yellow. Deep and ponderous and lovely. And something to slurp oysters down with – if ever one should admit to eating oysters at this point in the season.

NV Mayragues Vin de Table de France Brut de Mayragues - a méthode ancestrale bubbly made from 100% Mauzac. With its lazy bubble, slow and happy on the palate, like a turtle sitting contentedly in the sun. Somewhat lavish, despite zero dosage; round, fruitful, good, made to quaff.

2007 A. & P. De Villaine Bouzeron - City mouse and country mouse, at once. Expressive, floral, and stony; another mountain stream – this time, sans opiates. Sharp, sleek, too: a flash of light off the hood of a very shiny car, which you walk into, because you're momentarily blinded.

2007 Ostertag Sylvaner Vieilles Vignes - once, this wine had an off-putting dill note to it; now it has a bit of honeyed oxidation. Ah, that's certainly more like it. A heavy-hitter of a sylvaner, but still, true to its sylvanerism, affable and easygoing. A patch of sunlight in the grass back onto which to lean after you've had a couple of glasses and are feeling blithe.

2008 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Nº2 - perfect. A platonic spring wine. A platonic wine. A wine that is soon no more, because you drink it all. And I mean all.

Others, of course, could be added to this roster. More keep sprouting like new buds and stalks. And I haven't even gotten to the Tale of the Bubbles.

Anon.

It's time to step out for some air and light.

Splashes

Mark and I sat at the bar and sipped Rioja while picking from a huge pile of olives on a glazed terracotta platter in front of us. There would be a long night of sipping and quaffing ahead, but here we were reconnoitering and enjoying the solidity of heavy, tall bar chairs. I leaned back.

*

When Carrie and I walked into Ten Bells, it was dark and crowded, but the instant Jorge splashed a taste of sparkling pink Bornard poulsard into a low coupe, the room went bright.

*

The cork was crumbling, and even after twisting it off the corkscrew, left bits in the worm, but Joe had managed once again to best the elements that were rife with treachery for any lover of older wines. He reached for a round glass decanter and poured the ocher liquid seamlessly from the raised bottle.

*

Nathan swaggered over with a magnum of some 1982 Brovia and in a hesitating half-step, seemed to wonder if it were really worth it to continue punishing me over an inability to taste German riesling – not to mention the fact that I had bogarted the 2003 Radikon Jakot. Would he relent and tilt some Brovia into my empty glass?

*

The phone rang on a Tuesday morning. "Hi, it's Michaël. Do you want to go visit Selosse in Avize next week?"

*

"This is really good," George said, looking deep into his glass of 2000 Marquis d'Angerville Volnay. "It's like an Oregon pinot noir, only so much more elegant."

*

The room was turning around in the dark. Dark tendrils of Chambertin ran through my mind in swirls and whorls. There was the bed; it looked low, soft and flat. Voices next door may have been wondering where I was, but the bed was speaking in a silent rush of softness. I could sneak beneath the covers and dream of smooth, dark-cherry opulence.

A pair of Chinons

I'd been having a hankering for some Loire cabernet franc, a hankering that had gone unsated for some time. Which is why it was propitious, then, to walk into Jay's apartment on a bright Sunday afternoon and see a handsome decanter standing next to an empty bottle with the pinkish label of Bernard Baudry's Croix Boissée. I walked up close to the artifact: 1996. A quick nose toward the top of the glass container indicated hints of just those savory, spicy qualities I had been thinking of.

Doubled was my pleasure when Chris appeared, an hour later, with a bag that included the unmistakable white-and-blue label of Olga Raffault's Chinon. A 1989 Picasses.

As the starting wines were poured (a lovely 1996 H. Billiot, deeply aromatic Ambonnay bubbles with a sapid quality and a nutty color; a surprising 1988 Piper Sonoma – Jay would say, "This does not have any right to be this good," and he wasn't wrong – followed by various Loire chenins, romorantins and sauvignons, including a 1924 Huet Le Haut-Lieu Moëlleux to pair with seared scallops), I thought on forward to the pleasures of the Chinons to come.

Good Chinon with age is like Chinon young. It hovers in timelessness, encapsulating the place with its bramble and dark fruit and violets.


Later, the Ligerian pair did not falter. The 1996 Baudry Croix-Boissée was smooth and fresh; perhaps a bit absent on the midpalate, but with good length sustaining it into its floral finish. And the 1989 Olga Raffault Chinon Picasses was a punch in the face, and I mean that in the most flattering way possible. Paired perfectly with leg of lamb, it was dark, brawny, rustic and perfect.

What more could one ask for?

Now I need some Breton Bourgueil to take care of the other side of the river, and all will be well.

The silence of the drams

I have had so many memorable wines of late that I have felt somehow cornered into silence. How to choose! How to talk about them!

But it's important to talk about them, of course - to get their texture and weave, to remember that morning you woke up with a curious aftertaste of 1983 Domaine de Chevalier Graves on your palate and puzzled over its gorgeous gravel before falling back to sleep for a little.

Or how you chased down a snappy NV Pierre Peters with a thick, heady pour of 2003 Radikon Jakot while stabbing bread into a dish of olive oil.

Or the awesome, yeasty surprise of 2000 Lassaigne Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature, which wore zero dosage with mastery and beckoned, and beckoned, and beckoned to have more of itself poured into your glass.

I want to talk about all of those things. The 2007 Dashe L'Enfant Terrible, still as nervy and peculiar and succulent as ever. The 2006 Lapierre Morgon with its silky langorousness swirling through the tastebuds. The 1998 López de Heredia Tondonia Rosado that starts out oxidized and then tightens into a dazzling burst of fruit and flowers. The floozily sappy 2006 Richaud Cairanne, the exquisite, tangled and complex 2005 Texier Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc and crackling NV Peillot Montaigneux Brut.

Not writing about them creates the danger of forgetting them. And these are wines I don't want to forget.

Wine for rain, wine for sun

I had never thought about it before, but there is something about the delicious minerality of a Puligny-Montrachet that goes well with the rain.

The other night I ran out with not one but two umbrellas (well, I was using one, and one had been loaned to me on some other rainy day, and I was returning it to its rightful owner, who would be on hand). Finally, despite wearing new shoes that kept wanting to remove themselves from my feet and go flying into a puddle, I managed to turn up at the set destination: a wine restaurant.

Once wet things had been cast off to some coat area, it was time to have a seat and ponder the wine list.

As the rain splashed lightly against the front window, a few minutes later, the sommelier opened a bottle of

1985 Carillon Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru "Combettes" - Well, as Tina Turner did not sing, I can stand the rain. In fact, the sound of cold patter on concrete was a great backdrop for this deceptively simple and increasingly enthralling wine. There's a term the French use that I like a lot: évidence. It indicates something's "of-course-ness." There was about this wine an ease of being, a raciness, a stony, high-handed purity, an évidence. It was youthful (not a drop of oxidation to its brisk yellow body) and a little shy until maybe a half-hour in. Then it bloomed. Blossoms under the rain.



A few days later, the sun was out. It was warm. A bunch of us decided to gather in the park, and I threw a slightly chilled bottle of López de Heredia into my bag, reasoning that the ambient temperature would warm it.

2002 López de Heredia Rioja "Viña Cubillo" - all part of my enthrallment with Riojas from this producer. Interestingly enough, I had had a bottle of this same, younger-drinking cuvée a week earlier at a wine bar: there, it was more austere, harder around the edges, tighter and more tannic. Here, under the sun, with a dog slobbering around (Peanut would eventually eat the Rioja cork) and people nibbling cut sausage, it was lighter in color (maybe the wine bar had been too dark), lighter-bodied, fresh and earthy. God, I said to myself as I cosseted it, it was such a pleasure of a wine to sip on a breezy, warm day. A wine for sun, clearly, with all its broodiness cleared away, replaced by a daringly rustic backwardness to it that had immense charm.

Overcoming grape fears

Since last I wrote, I have continued valiantly affronting my prejudices. Now, of course, we all have grapes we don't like. I know some highly recommendable people who have, shall we say, issues with Cabernet Franc or Grenache. (Actually, the most common bête noire among wine-drinking friends seems to be the oft-maligned yet intensely wonderful (well, to me) Chardonnay grape. I will have to get proselytizing). That said, I must reluctantly remind one and all that I myself am known for not consuming hogsheads of Chenin Blanc or Gewürztraminer, say.

But as ever, I like to be on the frontlines – or down in the trenches, pick your military image – of my own preconceptions, flighting that fight. Because, really, it's a voyage of learning, now, isn't it? Well, along with getting tipsy, carousing, and having shared mini-epiphanies with friends.

This week, two towers crumbled right down to the dust. How's that for Ozymandias?

2002 Huet Le Haut-Lieu Demi-Sec - this wine knocked me off my feet, and I sat down next to Brad Kane and nodded with that half-smile that indicates great pleasure and surprise. My notes from the evening I tasted it have long since disappeared into some dumpster behind a tony midtown restaurant; suffice it to say that this wine opened my eyes in a particularly crystalline way. I wanted to cup it to me, but of course that would have warmed it up, so I just stared deep into it, then gradually drank it away.

2006 Jérôme Prévost "La Closerie" - Eeeew, pinot meunier. That was the thinking. But this was immediately more imposing than other expressions I have had of that grape. A rich, vinous nose met me as I leaned into the glass. Dark amberish color, with just a touch of walnutty oxidative overtones. I was enchanted by its smell. On the palate, however, at first, this was tight, hard in its lines; very low in dosage, it was clear. The apple, quince notes were pleasant, but they were somewhat pushed aside by a hard mineral finish. This needed more age, and first, more air. So I let it open up, expand in the glass. It did come into its own with some breathing, broadening, becoming more smooth. Being a few degrees warmer also did it a nice turn. It does need age, but it is already an impressive drink.

Taste and smell

I have been thinking about questions involving taste and smell lately, as, recently, an offhand comment from a friend surprised me and got the cogwheels turning. I was talking about a dish I like – a foodstuff/aromatic pairing that was once (when Alain Senderens boldly used it a couple of decades ago) shocking and deliciously offbeat, but which has now become fairly standard: lobster with vanilla.

This friend recoiled. "I can't stand the taste of vanilla in savory foods. It reminds me too much of horrible overoaked Chardonnays."

Not only was my plan for a lobster bread pudding with vanilla sauce sent spiraling right down the drain, but the comment got me thinking. Does tasting and drinking wine transform our vision of food?

I know it transforms our way of smelling in the world. Sometimes when I walk out into the street, I am overwhelmed by one odor or another. I pick things apart. Leather from jackets hanging in front of a clothing store; roasting chickens with thyme and tarragon stuffed in them; and of course, the manifold unsavory scents we have to endure. There are places in the world, too, that smell corked. (I remember the unmistakable corkedness of a street off Leicester Square filling my nostrils in London last fall.) My nose is sharper than before I was interested in wine, obviously. Those muscles have been trained.

People are taught not to wear perfumes or use strong-smelling soap before tastings, but some wine geek friends eschew them always (well, maybe they're always drinking?).

But, getting back to tastes: I wonder if loving wine, and especially certain types of wine, has broadened my palate for food. Are there some foods I liked less, which I now enjoy because they evoke some flavor component in a wine I have come to love?

Fodder for thought.

Go forth, blindly

I don't usually taste wines blind. But last night, Chris showed up at Brad's with a bag. Two wines were within. Somehow, a 2006 Ridge Monte Bello, previously decanted and rebottled, metamorphosed upon the table, where we were eating thick-cut dry sausage (it's better that way, per Brad) and hacking into some stinky cheeses.

Chris felt best to repair to the balcony to pour his mystery wine into a decanter.

It awaited us on the table, thereafter.

So, accordingly, some time later, with steaks, we poured the mystery wine. I swirled and sniffed. Hm, very young and fruity. But with a richness to it that wasn't of a young wine from a cold climate. It reminded me of the nose on young Côtes du Rhône. I sipped. Smooth, lacking any hard angles, and very pleasant to drink.

"This has got to be Syrah," I opined. (And we'll smooth over the fact that I don't like that grape.)

Brad said, "But no, there's no peppery, garrigue thing going on..."

I shook my head. "It's got to be that! There's a kind of loamy taste there."

We debated the wine's tastes for a while, and finally, Chris showed his hand.

Good god!


Yes, it was Gallo Hearty Burgundy. No vintage noted.

Chris described having drunk this (or watched it being drunk by his parents) many a year ago, before the American wine world's new flowering. A jug wine, now utterly reviled as a distant, benighted drink of yore.

But, amusingly enough, this was more than "correct" to drink. It was even quite proper.

We surmised it might be a blend of Zinfandel and Petite Sirah, perhaps somewhat highly cropped, resulting in lower alcohol levels.

But not a bad mass offering by any stretch of the imagination.

A truly unexpected, wonderfully nostalgic thought!

Bring out the rumaki.

Our guys in the trenches

(Marc Ollivier of the Domaine de la Pépière wrangles tasters)

Last night, I had a great conversation with Eric Nicolas of the Domaine de Bellivière. Not only did I have the unusual chance to bring him up to speed with the latest cutting-edge news about New York wines (eh, oui!), but we discussed a little about the winemaker's multifunctional role.

Turns out, Eric, being a Renaissance stripe of person, enjoys what has always seemed to me to be a crazily dispersive element to the job of vigneron. How, I always thought – all the while loving the non-commercial, passionate aspect of visits to domaines – can one person do the work in the vines, the work in the cellar, and then – ooh! presto-chango! – turn around and suddenly be greeting visitors, pouring wines, selling them, doing trade shows, traveling, talking the talk, etc. All the activity of a salesman, in its cold, clear-cut-ness – which most of the passionate vignerons I have visited, obviously, do not have as part of their natural fiber.

But Eric, far from frowning on or lamenting the need to get the wines tasted and to meet the (potential) hoi polloi, was enthusiastic about that element of the winemaker's life. In fact, he opined, it helped broaden horizons. It helps, he said, to leave the plots of land and the cuves.

And I couldn't help but be reminded of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who always thought that a long, three-league walk through the Lake Counties was the thing to jog the poetic spirit and get the juices flowing afresh. A change of pace, brought on by a contrast of activity.

Though he did think that laudanum was pretty good, too.

What a difference a day makes

A few days ago, I opened up this one, a 1996 Ridge Geyserville.

Now, as far as American wines go, I have a soft spot for Ridge. A glorious 1987 Ridge Monte Bello remains one of my most rapturous wine-tasting experiences. And not so long back, a 1999 Geyserville had impressed and astonished a group of friends who had never tasted the Zinfandel grape in their Gallic lives.

I was looking forward to trying one with a little more age, even, than that – which, while still young, had taken on a good openness, a suppleness, of nearly ten years.

But the 1996 was an animal of a different stripe.

Poured into the glass, it was inky dark. On the nose, very appealing. Ripe, spicy, with plums and dark fruit. I sipped it. Hrm. It seemed to lack elegance. It was tight, tannic, hard-nosed, with an off-putting raisiny note. Aggressive stuff, brawny and unbalanced.

I listlessly finished a glass, hoping with a little air it would improve. No dice.

As it was late, now, I left the bottle on the counter and went to sleep.

In the morning, walking into the kitchen, I saw that it had remained stranded, open, there, and mechanically put a cork in it.

At the end of the day, coming back with a bag full of food to prepare and a hankering for something white, I nevertheless looked at the 1996 Geyserville, which was still standing (with, as you'll note, streaks of disdained juice down its label like tears) on the counter. I uncorked it and poured a quarter of a glass.

Hey! This was more like it. Swirl, sniff: still that pretty nose. But now, on the palate, it had gotten very elegant. There was still a lurking little bit of overripe fruit to it, but otherwise, the pepper and dark cherry and meaty notes had coalesced into a very pleasant wine.

That, I would never have imagined. A small pleasure.

Fresh fruit

Spring is here. It's over sixty degrees out! (Fahrenheit, for those of you in the Anglo-Saxon world.) And what better way to bask in the newfound warmth than to open some fresh whites – and fresh reds.

I'd chilled the 2007 Lapierre Morgon. It came out of the fridge. So it was no wonder that at first, it was muted and basically said "Brr!" to the palate. But the table is warm. Conviviality is warm. And with half an hour in the glass, with the ambient temperature pushing it past the threshold of coldness into gentle coolness, this wine flowered.

A lovely, fruity, fresh Morgon that suddenly buzzed and sparked with all kinds of tinder. God, this was gorgeous. God, I took another sip and sipped in air and sloshed it around my mouth and loved it. I treated that wine with attention, as its finely unfurling gamay fruit merited.

Perhaps I had been too zealous in its chilling, one could argue. But then, it's always a fine trick to see the dove fly out of the hat.

This was definitely a dove-out-of-the-hat experience.

Wine with others, wine alone

Everyone has a different idea of which things in one's life one does alone and which must be done with others. Sometimes it seems to me that the variations and possibilities are as broad and manifold as the different types of likes and aversions in enjoying food. So, as it happens, just as I like every foodstuff on the planet except dill and bananas (as a fairly newfound convert to previously disliked Comté cheese and vin jaune; merci Philippe!), I am someone who prefers to go to the movies alone. I am someone who would rather enter a restaurant after someone else. I don't like to talk on the phone.

But what about drinking wine? Is the experience perceptually different when the wine is shared as opposed to when it's drunk in contemplative solitude?

So much is made of the difference between drinking wine in situ – with a meal, with other wine lovers – and sipping and spitting at a tasting. Different wines prevail; enjoyment factors and levels are tweaked, skewed and become unrecognizable from one platform to the other.

But what of the human context? If I open, say, a 2000 Rousseau Chambertin* for my own self in the privacy of my own living room with nice stemware and some food I've prepared with care, am I missing out on something?

My thought, my gut reaction, is: yes. Being able to share impressions and enthusiasms with someone or a group of friends is very important to the experience of wine drinking. Something is lost when there is no echo, no quick glance, no shared smile, no nod.

So my new stance will be, if ever I should find myself eating alone and wanting a glass to pair with the meal, to choose something novel; to make it a learning experience. But not to try for enthrallment, for emotion.

It's good to scale back, sometimes.

Now, to head out to a big wine-geek dinner. Thank god there are others of us out there!


*The cool thing about hypotheticals is that you can go as high-end as you want. And the 2000 Rousseau Chambertin is a damn lovely wine.

Southern fraîcheur

I have to say that I hadn't thought a lot about Picpoul de Pinet in my time. I'd had it a few times and found it a sprightly, uncomplicated southern French white (from the Languedoc, for those geographically uncalibrated to the appellation).

Then a couple of weeks ago, at the end of a rather protracted evening, I found myself in a wine bar with some friends, and here, we worked in a bottle of 2007 Félines Jourdan Picpoul de Pinet. Hey! This was not what I had been expecting. (To be honest – and I hope throngs of Picpoul producers will not come at me with pitchforks – I had seen Picpoul as a kind of southern Gros Plant... thin, spritzy, thoughtless. But shh... no more of that, oh, no.) This was not that. This captured my attention.

My recollection being hazy, I decided it was time to revisit this interesting wine, so a few days ago, I opened another bottle of the 2007.

A very expressive aromatic palate met my nose on swirling. And, tasted, it had so much character. 13% alcohol, so no frail creature, it had a bright, transparent body to it and on the palate was fresh, floral, with an excellent lime-y, peppery bite to it. It was spring in a bottle, just the thing for a late February cold snap, reminding you of warmer climes and warmer times.

And with smoked salmon, a perfect match.

Rioja ephiphany

Crazy ideas need a crazy followup. One such crazy idea was hatched on a recent evening when a friend of mine suggested preparing fish with mushrooms. Fish with mushrooms? Every rustic bourgeois Frenchwoman deep within my soul turned in her rustic French grave. (Please, just go with the image.) So what better wine to pour alongside a papillotte of monkfish with black chanterelles, minced Serrano ham and shallots than, of course, an aged red Rioja?

Huh?

I was skeptical. But with the perfect uncloudedness of hindsight, I see that that was an inspired choice. And not just the pairing: the wine. Oh, the wine! This was one of those wines that make you realize why you spend 2/3 of your waking time* thinking, reading and writing about wine, as well as drinking it.

1985 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia - a gorgeous nose of strawberry and underbrush immediately grabbed my attention. I had in my glass that magical thing, a wine you want to coddle and sniff for a long while before even sipping it. Such glorious aromatics. At last, though, I struck out to discover if it was going to be an interesting sip, to boot. Zounds. On the palate, it was even better than what its heady scents promised. Such death-defying complexity! Waves of silky, elegant fruit and earthiness, with a sudden twist of sap and bark right in the middle, and then playing out forever, until I was wide-eyed and shaking my head. Wow.

And, some time later, as the level of the wine in the decanter got dangerously low, I savored its last sips in their full bloom, along with the utterly nosh-worthy monkfish decked out in minced black mushrooms.

Not so crazy, it turns out. Just insanely good.


*Depending on the day.

Flaw!

I think I'm usually pretty lucky. There are some things that haunt wine lovers. Corked wines. Premature oxidation of white Burgundies (and, some are now sinisterly saying, of Alsaces perhaps and next, who knows, Muscadet?). Brettanomyces. Other sundry flaws that leave you aghast and pouring out glass and bottle into the nearest drain. I don't usually run into those specters. My corked bottle rate is so low you'd think I had some kind of saran wrap secretly hidden in my fingers.*

But recently, alas, my luck was out. I had the most alarmingly, awfully flawed bottle of wine I have perhaps ever had the misfortune to taste.

2003 Léon Barral Faugères Tradition. Now, I had the 2005 version of this usually lovely and straightforward wine a few weeks ago. It was, well, lovely and straightforward.

Flash forward to its 2003 incarnation. Uh, oops! Who poured nail polish remover into my Faugères? The nose was acetone and ungainly. It could only be less marked on the palate, I reasoned in my benightedness. Slurp. Ugh, no! It was in fact worse. Along with the nail polish remover taste was a dirty, rotten uncleanness in the background, hovering and killing all fruit and pleasure.

For once, for me, one sip was enough.



*For, as old wino's tales tell us, dipping saran wrap into a glass of corked wine whisks away the corkiness (along with some fruit and other flavor components, but you can't have everything).

Back in time

Yesterday, I was remembering the very first time I had a glass of wine. It was in Williamstown, Mass. It was cold, the dead of winter, with 10º snowy blasts of air cutting under my coat as I walked across the campus to the home of my French professor, Prof. P., who wanted us all to call him by his first name. Who was hosting a dinner for the French club. We'd all help, and I was to prepare the stuffed mushrooms.

He poured me a glass of white Burgundy and set it beside me as I hunkered down over the mushrooms, stuffing them just so with the farce I had prepared from various finely chopped ingredients, and then painstakingly basting the tops with melted butter.

He came over to me and said, "Look at you basting those! You're like an artist trying to get just the right touch."

I was something of a laughing stock for the rest of the evening.

So I turned my attention to the wine. First that white Burgundy, which came on, to my young American palate, like something that was going to be lush and sweet, but... it just wasn't sweet; it had a hard angularity to it that was unlike other things I'd had to drink. Some kind of tannins, some kind of minerality. So odd. I didn't like it, but I was intrigued by it and could only mark it in my mind as something I would have to learn more about.

A lush and fruity red was then poured as the guests laughed and chatted in broken, heavily accented French and ate the various bites we had prepared. This wine I understood more. There was no hard spine to break over my palate, just soft fruit.

"Don't worry," said Prof. P. in French, coming back around. "Last fall, you didn't know how to use the passé simple. Now you're reading Flaubert."

He wasn't wrong. A couple of years later, I would find myself in Ligré, quaffing rustic Chinon.

A happy little claret

Ever on the outer limits of testing my palate, last weekend I dove into the Gironde, through the largesse of neighbor and friend Guy, and was able to whet my palate with two superb clarets.

I'd never had a Château Margaux before, and I found the 1989 ripe, mature, with a bit of a grainy texture coming on with age, with the kind of length on the palate that makes you go, "Woah, ho, ho..." as it draws on and teases out and does not finish but rather comes romping back to say "hi" again before flaring out in a splash of aftertastes.

I had been told to expect something special, so that confirmation was, while impressive, not a surprise.

What did surprise me, however, was the 1996 Ducru-Beaucaillou we drank that evening, too. Upon opening, it was a bit tannic and even green about the gills. But after a couple of hours' air on the mantelpiece, it had softened up. As we sipped it with the cheeses (nice raw-milk stuff), it made me feel happy, warm, and good.

I got to thinking that that is what I like most about wine. The sense it imparts of unexpected comfort when it is at the right age, poured at the right time.

This would happen again a week later, two nights ago, with a 2000 Allemand Cornas "Reynard." Wine for swooning, when you least expect it.

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

A recent discussion drifted over to this brilliant show from the early '90s.

Here's an on-topic favorite.

Empties

Empty bottles are everywhere! The carnage of holiday celebrations strews the floors and sidewalks and window-ledges of the world!

And I haven't written a post in some time, which needs quick remediation.

Now, as wine is something essentially convivial, it's all the better to have the best of good excuses to open things that "need a reason." Of course, I would argue that things don't necessarily need a reason - but I'm somewhat full of hot air in stating that, because you don't see me uncorking a Rousseau Chambertin when I'm home alone, now, do you? (Well, I'd make sure the shutters were closed.)

But crisis arises when it's time to navigate the multiple wants and tastes of multiple parties at a convivial, wine-involved affair. And, tragically, several people I know and often engage in conviviality with are averse to Burgundy, of one or both colors. (Note to self: try Marsannay rosé on them?)

So I consider it a small triumph to have garnered approval from Catherine, she who shakes her head at any and all Côte d'Or pinot noir up through and to (wait for it) La Tâche (why wasn't I there that day her generous friend opened it, instead?). We drank a 2005 C. & Cl. Maréchal Chorey-lès-Beaune, all masterful, streamlined fruit and acidity and gorgeously suave. She nodded her head: she liked it!

And for a moment, there was harmony.

It could be a whole lot worse

As holiday season is here and we are undeniably in the thick of it, I thought it would be apposite to look back with a tear-filled eye at the vinous wonders enjoyed throughout the year. Some doozies, and some exciting new finds, including grapes and regions (Grüner Veltliner! Syrah from Switzerland!) I had never before gotten the chance to dip into. On the balance, I have to say I drank a lot of bubble. But there's no harm in it, and it doesn't even stain your lips.

I will take a little time to work on a blowout rundown, perhaps to be followed by Vinous Resolutions for 2009, but my overall impression is one of bounty and discovery. I even drank a lot of chenin! Who would have thought?

Going into the holiday season, of course, with its looming excesses and even more bubble, I decided to revise the classics last night with a very fine bottle of 2006 Domaine d'Etilly Chinon. Simple, pure crunchy fruit, and just the palate cleanser for what's next.

1996 Pierre Moncuit VV bounce-back

It's always a treat to get to check back in on things, even if it's your last bottle. Actually, it's best when it's your last bottle and you've caught it in the right place, like some unknowable particle you stop right there where it needs to be, when it could have been far adrift to either side just seconds earlier.

A month and a half ago, in celebration of Michel's birthday, we drank, on the heels of a magnum of Ruinart rosé (or was it the other way around?) a 1996 Pierre Moncuit VV "Cuvée Nicole Moncuit", which at the time I found disconcertingly evolved, quite amberish in the glass and with distinct notes of evolution and some intrusive oxidative overtones.

Flash forward to, well, now.

Chilling a last bottle of 1996 Pierre Moncuit VV was a snap choice. A planned champagne brunch with friends today was cancelled, but there was no question of giving up the party so easily. Hereabouts, there are standards to keep up, &c.

1996 Pierre Moncuit VV "Cuvée Nicole Moncuit" - while this is clearly not going to go the distance, it is drinking very prettily now. On the nose, a first flush of toast with lemon curd spread really very thickly on it gives way to some hints of walnut. On the palate, unctuousness and a bit of dosage tangle with pith and acidity to fine effect. Oxidative overtones are on the pronounced side, and the cork was thin, rather than expanded, so I would be preoccupied for its continued health, but its dandyish negligence is not without charm right about, well, now.

Where it goes down

My current wine life is not unlike braille: everything stands out. You want to run your fingertips over these wines in appreciation, such good things have I had.

And that, from all angles and walks and stripes of vinification, age, grape, and climate. One day last week, I went from a 1976 Lopez de Heredia Bosconia GR to a 1990 Carbonnieux Blanc. Another day, I drank aged mourvèdre and young old-vine carignan as a chaser to Crémant du Jura.

Which creates a problem, here. In the lapse since I delved into rosy self-questionings nearly two weeks ago, there are too many things that have been poured under the bridge (or into the gullet) to roll out a detailed report: because, as we all know, long screeds of tasting notes are so bleedin' boring.

So maybe I can talk about the places that these things were drunk. Because that is part of it, too. Wine comes from a place, but it is also consumed in a place, and you're not going to have the same reaction to a pour of Rhône syrah out of an Enomatic machine at Lavinia as to a glass of prosecco on the balcony of a hotel in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood, where the apartment building across the way has shirts and socks on clotheslines waving in the breeze. A pink glass of Selosse Rosé tastes different in a white-tablecloth restaurant than in a broad chai full of barrels.

Maybe that would enliven tasting notes, actually. "Grüner Veltliner on a bridge." "Morgon Côte du Py with a picnic on the bed." "Volnay in a tiny, warm restaurant." Etc.

I'll do that. Just not right now.


Tasting notes, however, can be seen here, here, and here.

Rosy thoughts & ameliorations

So, a kindly reader of this blog has asked me via private correspondence why I gave no mention of my rank in the world of wine bloggism.

Here goes, then.

Google's Top 100 Wine Blogs shows that Sharon's Wine Blog* is #6 and is the first "independent" on the list.

So, now that I have acceded to such rare heights, I would like to inquire of my readers what thoughts they may have about my blog's current format and structure.

Suggestions for improvements? Exhortations to stay the same? Bottles to send my way, just 'cause?

Thanks to all of you for reading me and following me in my vinous exploits and explorations, in any case. You are the best.


*Note the Ouroboros-style link.

Sharon's Champagne Blog

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to rename my blog.

I cannot deny that the picture above represents one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

But let's backtrack. It was Monday morning, and it was early that I set out from Paris with David, to reach the small, obscure village of Congy. By an amusing coincidence, we, along with fellow oenophile Michaël and a friend of his from Germany, were scheduled to visit the domain Ulysse Collin. That is, precisely, the champagnes of Olivier Collin, whom I'd spent all Friday afternoon tasting with in Paris.

What followed was a genial two-and-a-half-hour visit of Olivier's cellar, a tasting of his wines from barrel and then bottle (a 2005 that was of quite a different character from his 2004, as well as 2006s in both blanc de blancs and rosé de saignée versions, the latter of an interesting "œil de perdrix" color with great depth of bitterness).



Afterward, we headed out with our vigneron friend to visit Les Perrières, a curious plot of vines with silex in the soil. It was pretty muddy, so Parisian boots were spackled grey, but that was no issue. It is always fascinating to see how the look and feel of the vineyard relates to what one tastes in the bottle. Grass grew here, and the four parts to the Perrières parcel were each positioned differently. An interesting and instructive glimpse behind the curtain.

Then we got back in our cars and sped off toward Avize.


We were late to Selosse's, but he received us with the usual expansive generosity. I hate to say it, but going to his chai always makes me feel the wonderment and joy of a small child. I know I'm going to taste fabulous things and have a curious and unpredictable conversation.

This was the case on Monday, with an even greater pleasure to find that all the wines were showing their best, most balanced attributes (it's true that since these are uncalibrated bottles, things of nature, they can sometimes show less brightly or off).

We tasted V.O., 1999, Rosé, Substance, Exquise and Il Était Une Fois.

The first, V.O., is Selosse's non dosaged extra-brut, and it was absolutely balanced, perfectly deep, the picture of "verticality," as he puts it.

The 1999 was a brawny thing, yet mastered. 14.2% alcohol, and no dosage, as he had disgorged it on the spot. It had great length and complexity, but was more a snapshot of a year, with that year's attributes, than the vertical, plunging and seemingly timeless V.O.

The Rosé, here, came off as more Cistercian than usual: as it turns out, Selosse had changed the dosage, lowering it for the same bottling compared to the shipment that went out to America a few months ago, and which he now prefers. This has about 2.5g/l, whereas the American version has 3.5g/l. However, I found great beauty and minerality in this version of the Rosé. I love, too, that his rosé is absolutely, just absolutely Selosse; its adjunction of red wine (from Egly-Ouriet) does nothing to obscure the particular character of his wines.

Substance was an opulent thing of beauty. Layers upon layers of heady pleasure, with dense bubbles and a full feel in the mouth. Once you've had this, there is never any going back.

The others were tasting Exquise, but I begged for a taste of the 2000, which was open and half-hidden. With a nod and a quick check that no one was looking, Anselme silently poured me some, then returned to pouring Exquise for the others.

The 2000 was unlike the previous vintage Selosses I've tried. Something more uncertain, for now. Anselme was very critical of it, but I think it's just struggling its way out of the starting blocks and needs some more time to find itself. But that's just me.

I had to catch up with Exquise, so I helped myself.


This was an interesting expression, but I cannot claim a preference for wines with sweetness. I does wear its 52g/l lightly, but I like the purity of the extra-bruts.

Then we got to taste the mistelle Il Était Une Fois - a "wine" made from excess grape juice that exceeded INAO regulations and couldn't be vinified. Selosse had been keeping this juice for 6 years. At the end, he added fine de Champagne to make the mistelle. It is 15% alcohol and about 168g/l of sugar! A sweet, sticky thing, I had tasted it in April and it had searingly pure Selosse character. Here, it had been marked by more aging and some oak and had taken on walnut notes and confited fruit. Curious; and a one-off experiment for him, whence its name, which means "Once Upon a Time."

For this tasting, unusually, we were in a bright room up top in the chai, which he decided to use because we were freezing and it was heatable, but which scribbled notes on the wall showed hadn't been used in a while - they were all dated 2004, 2005. I asked why, and he said that he'd just stopped using it. Well, at least I found a marker that still worked.


Though I forgot to date it.

All abubble

Never enough bubbles, not ever!

Of late, my Champagne Tracker has been exploding like a carelessly opened bottle of the stuff. This is, of course, a very good thing indeed.

This weekend was Le Grand Tasting in Paris, and with two like-minded and highly willing co-conspirators, Peter Liem and David Rayer, along with an interloper in the form of genial champagne producer Olivier Collin, we ravaged the landscape assembled at the Carrousel du Louvre in the form of winemakers from the Montagne de Reims, the Côte des Blancs and even l'Aube.

It was like cramming for a test, if one can liken drinking several bottles of champagne later with dinner to a test. (Perhaps a test of stamina.)

The treat was in the nuances. I liked to sound off the heady extra-bruts from Veuve Fourny with the angry yet fascinating 1995 extra-brut from Fleury (this vintage from that house was declined in three versions, from 3.5g/l to 14g/l (the brut was, unfortunately, slightly corked, so muted) and then a whopping yet amazingly elegant 52g/l for the doux). I dipped into exciting new finds, such as Roger Coulon and J.-L. Vergnon, was disappointed by a large house or two, and found reassurance in the latest brut from Jacquesson, 733.

What did I come away with?

Thirst, and a renewed appreciation for delicately handled, very low dosage.

Now, I left my heart somewhere on the Côte des Blancs sometime back, and luckily, I'm going to be able to go back and look for it, because tomorrow, I am heading to Avize.

First a stop in with aforementioned Olivier Collin of champagne Ulysse Collin, and then on to Selosse.

And maybe I'll write about it, this time.

A fairytale night

This happened on the other side of the Atlantic. I was in New York, and the night was cold and windy, very dark. It was last Monday, November 10. Forty-second street went stretching along, until a small set of stone stairs rose to some other street on another level of the world. This was where I was going: Tudor City. Needless to say, I had not been there before.

Inside the restaurant Convivio, my destination, the whipping wind was nowhere present, and all was warm and as though slightly blurred at the edges. A round booth coddled the three of us who were seated at the table. There was a hum to the warmth, sounds of pleasant murmur and soft silverware, smells of sausage and pasta.

And what better figure to enter the field of fairytale vision than a tall, smartly dressed and keen-eyed sommelier. Levi Dalton would whisk us (well, not too rapidly) through a series of wines, from bubbly to white to red, that I had never had nor, indeed, even heard of before.

Most memorable. Most shocking, a dish of gnocchetti with crab and sea urchin, and the wine I sipped by its side, so impossible, so impossibly lovely.

2006 "Notte di Luna" Ca' de Noci Moscato Giallo/Malvasia/Spergola (Emilia-Romagna) - This white wine comes across on the nose with a robust nut-shell and dusky flower scent, and on the palate is flooring. How to unravel the things going on here? Such depth and complexity, a bit of oakishness and supple body not unlike a white Burgundy; it seems to do a pirouette, then to wrap and unwrap itself and spool out more, fresh tastes.

As the evening wore on, we came back to this with the cheese, and it had become even more fleshily wonderful.

An extraordinary surprise to the start of a week of the unheralded in New York.