Sharon's Wine Blog

Talking wine

2011-11-22T19:06:00.004+01:00

Often times, as wine fiends, we think we know our tastes, supremely confident in the knowns and unknowns to us, the preferred and the shunned or slighted. Some good friends of mine (more in America, as France doesn't have the informatique infrastructure) make their wine purchases online and have the wines sent to their home, bypassing any physical act of wine store purchase.

To my senses, they're missing out on something crucial: shooting the breeze with smart, like-minded folk.

There is nothing to compare to stumbling into Caves Augé or Chambers Street Wines and seeing familiar faces and talking about the latest tastes. If travel expands your world, I think that talking to other people who are passionate about wine expands your palate, pushes you to new fields (regions, grapes).

Of course, there can be flubs. Poor pairings, let's call them. Or a careless caviste. I'm never going to like that Riesling, mea maxima culpa. And I'm certainly not interested in paying thrice as much as my enjoyment for something I don't quite enjoy.

But when I think back over the past months of my wine experiences, I get a little smile on my face when I see Chris Barnes at Chambers Street bringing over a Valdespino Inocente sherry. (Salty sharp zap to my brain!) Or Tim Mortimer offhandedly mentioning Lioco Indica at Discovery Wines in the East Village. (Oh, how pretty that is.) Or Max Delorieux giving the down-low on black wax Overnoy at Augé in Paris. Or Josh Adler at Spring Boutique pulling a cork on a Burgundy I have never tried.

This is our tribe, after all. Tempting as a thousand, thousand candy stores, the smart friends of the bottle wait for us to push the door open and embark upon new landscapes.

It's a playground sprawling throughout the city, throughout the world.

The Wine Importer, Joe Dressner

2011-09-19T17:22:00.002+02:00

Joe Dressner has left us. I choose that expression carefully. In concrete reality, he passed away from brain cancer on Saturday morning. Also, though, he has left us, well, so much.

He was an impassioned importer of "real" wines from France, Italy, and Spain. A champion of candor who tirelessly cut away the bla-bla of marketing and aspirational thinking and swindlerism. A friend of honest work in vineyards and cellars. An unabashed curmudgeon of unpredictable views and angles. A man who gave to Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health. One of the funniest people ever, who left us with a body of writing in which kernels of truth hide amid uproarious floods of the absurd.

He was also a friend, to me. We shared wine, and didn't talk about it. We could argue or gossip in that particular brand of French that was his own. His real frankness and humanity allowed for conversations to swing from the acerbic to the intimate.

The wines he imported to America and which his team will continue to bring us are a good reflection of him: Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon is preposterously good, almost blindsiding you; Domaine de la Pépière Clos des Briords is limpid, earthy, frank; Eric Texier's Rhône wines are deeply intellectual; Christian Chaussard's are hilarious, until you notice the firm backbone of seriousness.

The wines speak Joe Dressner, as do the writings and memories of him we have.

Catching wine

2011-09-08T22:02:00.009+02:00

I just read an amusing article about a drunk elk that got caught in a tree in Sweden. Apparently, it was running after fermenting apples. Fortunately, I have never so much as gotten my foot caught in a sewer grate running after bottles of wine in the city.

However, several recent events have reminded me that when you catch the wine after running around town after it, you might not want to lose it again. Let me explain what I mean by that. It's that my mind has once again been jostled into the recognition that writing down the wines you taste is a good idea, along with maybe a word or two about them. (One hates to be stuck thinking: Was that blaterle* a white or a red?)

Exhibit A: "Any recollection of what we had on Aug 7th and Aug 9th?" writes S, a couple of days ago. Oh yeah, those two great dinners with friends and stupendously good food and lots of bottles. My brain now saw the evenings, though, like a scattered puzzle—of which many pieces had skittered under the radiator or behind the sofa. I remembered a Coche-Dury and offered, "I think it was a 2002, but which?" To which I was, humblingly, told: "Right, the Volnay." Ah, right. Coche-Dury red. Now I remembered, though my slipshod recall had been casting about for various Meursault Rougeots or the like.

Exhibit B: I went to a lunch just a few days ago—vibrant food and company, and a set of wines I had never seen nor tasted before, a sneak preview of imports soon to hit these shores. Talking about that meal with another friend who had not been there, I was asked, "What were the wines?" One might hang one's head to admit it, but for almost all of them, I had to go look at the pictures one of the lunchmates had taken and posted on a social networking site. For shame!

"Remember," said my friend, sitting there in scentless sensibility, "it's not unimportant to write down what you taste. There are reasons we do this."

So I will. And here, too.

*Don't worry, dear reader, I am certain that you know which color wines the blaterle grape makes.

Photo by Melody Dye

Rats

2011-06-13T10:17:00.007+02:00

When I was a teenager, I liked to talk with my uncle about his early days training as a clinical psychologist. We would talk about the different approaches and schools. The fact that the mind had so many ways of coming at it fascinated me, and I read around, ranging and rooting for ideas. One day, we started talking about behaviorism and B. F. Skinner.

My uncle said, "He was a failed writer. He wanted to be a novelist, you know. But he had nothing to say. So he went back to the lab with his rats. Much more comfortable with the rats."

My uncle was teasing me, because he knew my perfectionism, my striving, sitting on the stairs with my composition notebook and my fountain pen. But attempts at perfection in writing do not create diamonds; they create a blank.

So, here I am before a blank blog page, and I ask myself: do I need rats, or can I grow words out of wine?

I put a picture of Causse Marines' Gaillac above, because I have always found it amusing and inexplicable that they should boldly state that no badgers are allowed in, on, or around the wine. I think I should use this as an allegory and impetus to avoid creeping beasts and get on with it.

Earth and wine in Champagne

2011-04-20T10:44:00.013+02:00

Champagne is not dead!*

It is fairly telling that a tasting organized by a group of like-minded young Champagne growers and held on a sunny spring day in the town of Aÿ would drape itself in this rebellious slogan:

WINEGROWERS CONTINUE TO REVOLT IN THE NAME OF CHAMPAGNE'S TERROIRS!

One day, eighteen growers, pouring vins clairs and finished wines. Coming from all corners of the region, from Merfy, north-west of Reims, all the way down to Les Riceys, some 200km south, and all the way west to Crouttes-sur-Marne, almost abutting the Paris region: these were the vignerons of Terres et Vins de Champagne. If their vineyards were relatively far-flung, a shared spirit of revolt united them, however.

Revolt. The word is important. It snaps off the tongue; it is a banner and a flag of pride for the group: a front united by friendship. Ask anyone, even wine geeks who like champagne, and you're likely to hear that it is the most "artificial" of wines; that it bespeaks its terroir the least; that it is a marketing entity; that the landscapes of the region are dead.

To a large extent, commercialism and the lucre-seeking tactics of some big négociants have made this true.

But Champagne is budding. This new guard of growers—and what is equally exciting is that I can think of many others who are doing similar things in a similar spirit—believes in place. Believes in both tradition and the earth.

I was struck when Aurélien Laherte told me that his cuvée Les Clos, which is a field blend of all of the 7 authorized grape varieties in Champagne (chardonnay, pinot noir, pinot meunier, arbanne, petit meslier, pinot blanc and fromenteau) was not a wine that had been calculated with such and such a percentage of each to create a technical marvel. It was done as a "kind of archival act," he said, of conserving roots in the past, keeping alive those little berries that had their use (petit meslier keeping up the acidity in a warm year when the pinot meunier might get too flabby). "Who knows, if we have another vintage like 2003"—the heat-wave year—"we might be saved by petit meslier."

Some of the growers have ungrafted vines, like Chartogne-Taillet's Les Barres and Tarlant's Vigne d'Antan, both distinctive, and deep. Some forgo sulfur, such as Benoît Lahaye in his excellent cuvée Villaine. Many opt for low or no dosage, which ripeness allows for. We are worlds away from technical laboratories and vast quantities of wan juice tricked up with sugar and a little bit of old wine so that they taste the same from year to year.

These growers are aware of the land, the soils, the climate, and what their practices are doing. Pascal Doquet has been converting his vineyards to organic farming over the past decade, and he said with startlement that very quickly, the roots of the vines went from being spread out almost horizontally very shallowly beneath the soil to plunging downward—here, with the gesture of a hand, he showed the roots no longer rebuffed by the tight, unbreathable soil in which everything had been killed by pesticides.

But of course, the cool thing is that this is not just talk. Tasting the vins clairs showed the stuffing of what would be elaborated into finished champagnes. And those champagnes. They are so good. This is why we care.

At the end of the day, all I had in front of me was a comfortable train ride from Epernay back to Paris. How could I not beg a glass of Pascal Doquet Vertus here, or René Geoffroy Pureté or Bérèche Vallée de la Marne Rive Gauche there?

I did so. I drank them down, and every drop was real good.

*By the bye, this lovely picture of vines in Vertus was taken by Pascal Doquet.

Stay tuned...

2011-04-14T17:12:00.000+02:00

Lurker

2011-02-10T09:54:00.006+01:00

When people have asked me over the course of the past mumblemumble many weeks why I've been away from my blog, I've responded, "Oh, I haven't been away. I've been lurking."

I kid, but it is clear that I do need to feel the firm grip of vinous passion wrap itself around my, say, upper arms, straighten me in my chair, and put both of my hands on the keyboard, index fingers on F and J.

Tap, tap, tap—but where to start?

A wine post is a snapshot, a burst of light and words. Wine itself is a crystal ball.

The last glass of 08 L'Anglore Sels d'Argent is a snowglobe of... what?

If I can look through the specks into the depth of its gold, what do I see? Actually, it is a good marker, for me, of two things. I discovered this wine last summer and have since come back to it with enjoyment, enjoyment, enjoyment, and delight (and maybe a couple more enjoyments and a delight or two).

For me, it marks both the discovering of new wines and the low-level thrill of tasting the variations of a single pleasure. (On that note: there is nothing wrong with drinking Prévost's La Closerie early and often, or vice versa.)

Let's take it a shade darker.

Some of the most compelling wines I have had in the past months have been uncompromising, heavy wines. Wines that are hard to follow up with another, "meditation" wines. I should suspect myself for that. But how can you not go limp with a glass of 2001 Radikon Oslavje, all deep spice and wonder, in your hand? You can't not. You'd have to be an ascete.

1999 Ganevat Vignes de Mon Père spent 130 months in its topped-up barrel and left me, one night a couple of weeks ago, sitting on top of the butte Montmartre as though I were on the highest spot on earth. You could smell it from the decanter across the table.

But just as music that is all clash and bombast gets tiring, we need a little flutey lightness to get a kind of contrapuntal vibe going.

It was not felicitous to follow god's own Ganevat, that night, with a frilly little carbonic grolleau. But I will admit It was a nice evening out, a week later, the night I wended my way over to a wine bar in a sooty part of the 9th arrondissement with some contraband chicken liver pâté I had made at home to share a bottle of 09 Landron Muscadet Amphibolite with a friend.

My dabbles with the Melon grape have been middling to poor, but I won't give up. A current thrill is the 09 Domaine de Cadette Melon, from that variety's native land, Burgundy. I don't love it (only) for its woodcut or for the memories of Vézelay that spring in my head when a bottle gets near (or for that matter, for a happy memory of an insufficiently air conditioned hotel in Avignon where a cool bottle of Cadette Melon was a chill and a breeze and a delight)—I love it because it's deceptively simple. Something you can drink down, but then step back and nod with that pursed-lip look of being impressed. And the lime curd thing, too.

These three aspects of wines have me thinking and typing again.

Christmas lights and bubbles

2010-12-21T17:53:00.003+01:00

A lot of people haul out champagne for the holidays; it's like that, it's suggestive. I, however, as someone who guzzles the stuff at every wine bar and restaurant and private residence in the land, rejoicing when a muzzle is offed and a conic cork removed—well, you'd think I would turn a sour eye at all the transient enthusiasm.

Hell, no. Are you, dearest reader, senseless? (I think not, and thank god this is only a rhetorical turn, because you, dearest reader who makes my blog worth continuing, are crazy like a fox.) Far from pooh-poohing the seasonal gold rush, I embrace it with all the more fervor. Everybody else wants to, too! More for all! More deliciousness!

Do it, it's les fêtes! Order another bottle of Lassaigne, of Prévost, of Egly-Ouriet, of Tarlant, holy crow. Get out the Bérèche, the Boulard, the Françoise Bedel, that crazy Vouette et Sorbée fizz. Remember your stash of Veuve Fourny, some stockpiled Gaston Chiquet or that vintage Jean Milan. Crack the new year open with Chartogne-Taillet or Diebolt-Vallois. Decide you don't have to afford to replace Selosse, 'cause it tastes so good now.

In that spirit, and in the spirit of my calamitous blog sparseness, which I intend to correct with the new year, I am currently enjoying a brand new site by the Boston-based champagnophile Peter Czyryca, Recent Disgorgements.

I would also love to hear, in my pruriently curious way, what anyone traipsing through this post might have in mind to drink, champagne-wise, for the night that turns this year into 2011.

As the wine turns

2010-10-20T18:04:00.008+02:00

–Flashback–

Seamus wasn’t looking quite himself this morning. I'd made a Halloween pumpkin, carved out a carefully plotted set of eyes, one nose, one mouth. It glowed prettily with its fangs and squint, set on a windowsill. But that was a week ago. So long, Seamus, I glibly proffered as I clacked the door shut.

A week later, I'm back. Back in the night from a trip to the country, feeling around in the dim for just the right place to set the keys down, finding the way to bed in a trail of shoes and socks and pants and slipping into the covers.

This morning, I walked out in short clothes to make coffee. Oh, goodness. Seamus, no. He'd gone from ten to eighty in a few days. Time-lapse without the flow; a jerky leap into the derelict future. Wrinkled and cowed, he looked a pity. I should have kept him in the fridge like some Michael Jackson during my absence.

Farewell, fall friend.

–End flashback–

Wine is, of course, like that. Yes, I have it on good recommendation that such fare as Ca' de Noci's Notte di Luna can hold up when one leaves a part-empty bottle be for a bit. Ditto Radikon (but, sorry, when has a 500ml bottle of Radikon ever survived an evening?). Wine, though, doesn't hold once open to the air and all things that modify and corrupt it. It's an almost Dante-ish view of the world (everyone now reread the Purgatorio and hold hands).

Yet once again I'm curious about these different side- and after-effects of our passion for wine. I am, too, about how little is known regarding the chemical specifics. Why do some wines (I've heard) require a full-day decant? Others start to fall to pieces minutes (minutes!!! (she said, striking fear into hearts everywhere)) after uncorking?

Ah, it might be just that uncertainty and those flashes of unstable and unpredictable beauty that make wine such a wily and willful partner.

But it also might be that œnology should be considered a worthy science. Some money should be put into this stuff, smart people put on the case, and then we won't have to wonder and ask and do imprecise and costly experiments with aging and storage and all of the bugbears that thwart, challenge, and enflame wine lovers.

Despite my desire for a flippant conclusion, I'll remain staunch. Our fruitlihood is at stake.

Very pale bubbles

2010-10-05T15:57:00.004+02:00

Oh, psssh, this blog hasn't flatlined, what are you talking about?*

Mysteriously, no post has appeared in two months. It could be that they do not sprout, like mushrooms after a rain, but rather must be hewn from the living blogosphere, like so many sculpted soaps.

The wine-writing bug is still jumping about in me, wearing a little sombrero—but like the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, I've been chilling with the cicadas in Avignon, rather than following those little Formicidae down a dampened Parisian street to, say, Spring wine bar, sipping something and running back to type.

I have things I want to talk about. Things I have only known since my last post here. Like 1996 Pascal Doquet Le Mesnil! 1970 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva! And so much more! (All for only $29.99! Yours! With this free tea cosy!)

I am back. Fall's fallen. It's wet and the windows are closed, and I am here to sip, and to write.

*Though thanks to TWG for the clarion-clear reminder of just how many days it'd been. Noah and a half!

Wine & film

2010-08-04T10:40:00.004+02:00

Every summer from mid-July to early August there is an outdoor cinema festival at the Parc de la Villette in the northeast corner of Paris. As night falls at 10.30pm or so in these long days of the year, the film starts late, leaving a broad expanse of time to go tipple elsewhere or—which is more gratifying—directly in the park.

Aside from a couple of shameful tourist spaces—I'll name names: the Champs-Elysées and the Champ de Mars (that flat mown park in front of the Eiffel Tower)—where boozing has been proscribed, everywhere else in this fine town, one may bring one's bottle(s) and corkscrew, stemware, whatever else seems apposite, and tuck in.

Picnics abound.

And, oh my brothers, a few days ago they showed (in the original with subtitles) "A Clockwork Orange."

It had been warm that day, nearly 80°F after a week of chill, overcast and mediocre dashed-hopes summertime. No, this day was hot and sunny. It was still fine out as night fell, but it was also nice to have a woolen blanket (rentable from the park) and to sit on a canvas lawn chair and watch that still startling, still hilarious film under dark and beautiful yet calm skies, with a wind that kicked up.

My friend Meg brought the last of her stash of 2007 François Chidaine Montlouis, bought in a frenzy of appreciative relief in, I dunno, March or so, at a wine festival.

We'd had a curious bottle of bubbly back at the ranch (viz., her flat nearby) before striking out to the park, whetting our filmgoing vinous appetites with NV Domaine de L'Ocre Rouge "La Perle," a méthode champenoise from the south of France, about 11 miles north of Nîmes. Half pinot noir, half chardonnay, it rides the back of a very Champenois blend. And it has an ace up its sleeve: the vigneron is in fact a son of those chalky hills—Ayméric Beaufort, of the family renowned for the exuberantly good Champagne Jacques Beaufort. But given the dramatically different climate, the wine was a curious creature; dry with a bit of citrus pith, but also a pearish tone. An interesting discovery, and a fair friend for the small round yellow zucchinis my host had prepared, stuffed with ground pork and spelt, robed with a few leaves of basil. We should all eat basil when we go up to heaven.

Then: the park. The film. That dark yet clement sky. The savory Montlouis (damn, Chidaine is a monster of pitch-perfect winemaking). The lovely silence amid many. All were quiet. I hate to say it, but films are better when lots of people are watching them. I always go alone, but here we were all alone, and all enrapt.

But we were drinking best.

Proust for winos (or vice versa)

2010-06-14T17:46:00.002+02:00

I had a madeleine the other day.

Not the tea cake, but y'know, one of those things that jogs you, like a cobblestone sticking up that catches your foot and makes you stumble into the past. A wine remembered from earlier times, one that conjured up those times. So I thought it would be interesting, amusing and perhaps even illuminating to submit this blog (and myself) to the vinous version of the (in)famous Proust Questionnaire.

Forthwith, rendered into terms propitious for wine:

1. Your most marked characteristic?

In wine, I like being (as they say in French) a horse that eats from all the troughs. There are styles of wine I like less (moelleux springs immediately to mind), but I like to test periodically my so-called wine prejudices. Sometimes there have been fabulous turnarounds. I've been seen proselytizing for chenin, of late!

2. The quality you most like in a ~~man~~ red wine?

I like ethereal red wines. I also like a certain rusticity. What I don't like is overbearing viscousness or jammy fruit. My gamut might span from Pineau d'Aunis to Cornas by way of Pinot Noir and cru Beaujolais. (And indeed, I am mixing up grapes and appellations. At least I don't say "varietal.")

3. The quality you most like in a ~~woman~~ white wine?

I like slightly oxidative whites. Like a woman showing her flesh. Or a barrel giving a sigh.

4. What do you most value in your friends?

I'm friends with those wines that take themselves seriously. Not in their outer trappings (unless we're talking high-quality corks)—heavy bottles, designer labels or consequential pricing. But wines that are not funny. They don't referment or reek, just as they don't float, aromatically, with the remnant particles of toasted wood chips. They are honest but honed.

5. What is your principle defect?

I break stemware.

6. What is your favorite occupation?

Two, where wine is concerned. One is obviously sitting at a table with good food and opening bottles with friends, enjoying them over the course of the evening. The other is visiting a vigneron, seeing where and how the wine is made, by whom, and tasting it there.

7. What is your dream of happiness?

A really fine Burgundy with the right amount of age. Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, something I have never heard of before that turns out to be astounding. I could make my short dream list. I have friends with quirky taste.

Hm, I feel so serious! So sententious! This is the first third. Maybe the others I'll do more Dada in style. Stay tuned.

Hello, Grenache gris!

2010-05-23T17:24:00.004+02:00

This is my latest thrill. And it's thrilling*

2008 Domaine de L'Anglore "Sels d'Argent," which I tasted a couple of months ago twice, two days in a row, made my eyes pop.

2008 Clos de l'Origine "Les Quilles Libres," tasted recently, confirmed that I must inquire more into the grape, which is simply unheralded. This wine has such utter acidity, such wiry and unpredictable aromatics, it cannot be from the Côtes Catalanes, yet it is. And it's gorgeous.

Readers (if I have any left, given my desultory posting frequency of late; a lapse I intend to right, right away), please do tell me of grapes I should be drinking more.

And do not correct the "grapes ... drinking" sentence structure: it's a synecdoche, I swear.

*Fittingly for a thrill, you'll tell me.

The "T" word, followed by the "N" word

2010-04-26T19:38:00.002+02:00

I have nothing against tasting notes. Truly I don't. Some people write such lively and lovely ones, one wants to read them for the joy of it, not necessarily in order to bone up about the wines being described. Interesting, that: the tasting note is normally a thing with an expiration date. Who wants to know ten years down the line what a freshly released Sancerre tasted like, back in the day? But the effort of insight and originality remains persuasive, timelessly. Creative minds work with material and produce novelty and brilliance, and for this I am glad.

Yes, you can't go reading through the last pages of the Wine Spectator magazine, as someone (I forget who) recently wrote. But on the other hand, you can't simply have a lavish description of the winemaker or the bottle label or vinification practices or time in barrel or just say "we enjoyed it so much!"; a little more needs to be said about the experience of a wine.

Yet two days ago, I hit my tasting note nadir. I sat in front of a list of wines and my sharp memory of each, and there was just no way I was going to extract anything interesting, let alone a series of quips and quirks and potentially thrilling and enlightening material. I gave it a bash. But lord, it was wan. And I tucked the document away, and eventually, reader, I deleted the document.

I have nothing against points. I like stars and hearts and numbers, they catch your eye. I also have nothing against descriptions of dogwood and plums and pear tarts. Those are pretty, and evocative.

But it's true that a tasting note, when you get right down to it, is like a Schechuan peppercorn. It's a loud, spicy blast in the middle of what needs to be meatier to handle the intensity of its purported "objectiveness."

And points are like a metal skewer: eat around them.

Pic by genial writer Manuel Camblor.

Vin nature & andouillette... nature

2010-04-04T15:50:00.006+02:00

Terroir, yes, indeed. It is often said—and rightly so, I think—that the foods and wines of a region flush, by nature. Some kind of terroir symbiosis. Some earthy confluence of tastes and angles. Swig that Sancerre with your local goat cheese (come to think of it, hit the crottin motherlode at a small boutique in Chavignol, if you're ever in that bend of the Loire Valley); pour some dark and stainy Cahors with your cassoulet (and avoid heart disease while plowing through duck fat and sausage).

Readers of this blog might know that sometimes I drink champagne. But what regional specialties does that call forth? Gougères have been sneaked in the side from Burgundy. Puffy interlopers. Oysters? Forget about it, they're from coasts afar.

But... Champagne production also gravitates around the more southerly town of Troyes. Whose specialty is a rare delight: the tripe sausage known as andouillette, grilled crispy and often served with a mustard sauce.

Thus it was that Troyes native and genial vigneron Emmanuel Lassaigne arrived at a natural wine tasting last weekend in Paris as an ambassador of his terroir. With a small array of bottles showcasing his compelling way with chardonnay, what else to taste alongside than a very natural andouillette, he opined. Served nature. So nature that it was simply raw, and Lassaigne took it from its plastic sleeve and cut it into thick rounds with his folding knife. Cut and serve.

Jarring to eat something raw that usually gets fried up, but the thing was fatty and tasty and a great foil to the chiseled beauty of the bubbles. With a pedagogical smirk, he explained that of course, you have to choose wisely the andouillette that can withstand the direct glare of raw eating. Often, seasonings include chopped onion and the like, which just doesn't do.

But this did. As did a magnum of La Colline Inspirée, Lassaigne's cuvée made from old vines and redolent of the sunny slopes of Montgueux, and the poem that inspired the bottling's name.

Pic by Meg Zimbeck

Still bubbling up

2010-02-28T17:46:00.003+01:00

Unable to contain myself, I have returned to my frequent thematic stomping ground of farmer fizz.

Just up, a guest post scribed by me for my friend Scott Reiner's blog, The Wine Explorer.

In the meantime, I shall sedately relax from the pleasant aftereffects of a few bottles of Lassaigne (07 Papilles Insolites, 06 Le Cotet) and Selosse (Rosé) shared last night with a pair of similarly champagne-hoovering friends.

A Pommard. Like that.

2010-02-23T17:57:00.004+01:00

Yes, Pommard. It's one of those things that people who don't know anything about wine know. Like Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Margaux. The word Pommard has a heft to it, a stately ring.

I knew Pommard when I knew little about wine—less about Burgundy, even, than Bordeaux (my early days were curiously canted toward the Loire and the western seaboard of France). Pommard, when I started to gather up the splinters of Burgundy information, well, Pommard was the Côte de Beaune's masculine wine, ruggedly flexing its muscles near the lacy Volnay.

(Then I went there. It was astouding to see a little string of Christmas lights, those villages, so close: a mere kilometer in distance, apiece, from Beaune to Pommard to Volnay to Meursault. But that should be the subject of another, daintily nostalgic post. (I'm sure you all know how dainty and nostalgic I can get, here.))

It took some time for me to debunk the standard Gallic wisdom: Volnay = girl wine. Pommard = boy wine.

I've had a lot of tangly, rustic Volnays (most recently a 2005 from Henri & Gilles Buisson that was angular; though traditionalists might argue that that was the bluestocking version of the feminine Volnay). And there are some supple Pommards afoot.

Witness:

2002 Jadot Pommard. There you go. I wanted pinot. Burgundian pinot. I hankered for it, craved it. So I thought: well, I'm having dinner by myself and it'll be simple and lazy, some goose rillettes and a piece of Camembert*, or something. I uncorked this.

OK, yum. Just yum. Just yum. Silk and lace and (yuck, that's starting to sound like a Victoria's Secret catalog); scratch that. What I mean to say is that it was pure. Vibrant 2002 pinot fruit, little cherries, all the pleasure that a balanced, tasty Burgundy can bring. Glug-worthy, hell.

So if Pommard has to be the man's wine, I'm going to wear a hat and a fake mustache. I have no shame.

*For all of you cheese snobs out there, I gleefully invite you to indulge in an actual good, non-industrial Camembert. The poor thing got so popular for a reason, and despite the fact that 97.99% of today's Camembert is made in a factory in Laval (I approximate), the real thing is great. Perhaps too great for potential moderation, but that is another issue altogether.

Good nature: gamay

2010-02-11T10:56:00.004+01:00

After several days in the Loire Valley tasting natural wines, I find myself back in Paris. Natural wines hold pride of place hereabouts, as well; so it was that I stopped in to a local store — Naturalia, an organic food store, for those curious — and picked up a bottle of 2008 Clos Roche Blanche Cuvée Gamay.

What can I say about this wine but that it gives vins nature a good name? It burnishes those tarnished images of sanctimonious flops: VA-riddled, Brettanomyces-laced catastrophes poured forth by certain natural winemakers with all of the earnestness of Moonies, proclaiming that inadvertent secondary fermentation is just the voice of the grapes coming out. Damn it: teach those grapes to sing properly.

Which is what they do, at Clos Roche Blanche. This wine is a joy. It is clean and balanced; the fruit is unabashed in its forthcoming freshness; the texture is silken; the whole has masterful transparency of its grape and earth. It avoids funkiness as a disgracedly tattered flag. This is a wine, like others of the domaine I have had the luck to taste and drink, that is Platonically simple, and ridiculously good.

It's a shame the Touraine appellation is almost a mar for producers who are doing such astounding work. As I've written here before, I would rather drink their Sauvignon Blanc than many, many a Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé, supposedly of nobler extraction.

Color in blanc de noirs

2010-02-06T13:38:00.005+01:00

At a recent day of tasting in the small Loire village of Valaire, I joined champagne vigneron Olivier Collin at a table full of Italian wines. The Roagna lineup included a white, "Solea," that was mostly chardonnay, but which included a certain amount of nebbiolo in the blend (about 25%). Olivier Collin asked Roagna about its color, which to the naked eye was indistinguishable from the color an unblended chardonnay would have. As they discussed the way the nebbiolo grapes were handled, I started to think about color in champagne.

Olivier's own pinot noir, the Ulysse Collin Blanc de Noirs, is an uncommon treat. But despite the "blanc" part in its title, it is nearly pale pink in color. I first tasted the 2005 a year ago at the domain, and the vigneron had been considering calling it a rosé, then. (Or at least he referred to it as "the rosé.") But now it was slightly attenuated in tone, and while with time it has evolved into a lovely drink, it bucks the tradition of lily-white blanc de noirs in its unabashed and very natural tint.

Two questions arose in my mind: (a) why do makers of champagne want their blanc de noirs to be white? and (b) how do they get it that way?

Apparently, adding lees from chardonnay is one of the little rabbits in that magic-trick hat. Another is using activated carbon to strip out the color. This is not a happy thing for the finished wine, as far as taste nuances go, though.

Which made me muse on why it was so important to get the stain out. Why the search for whiteness? Whence tint as anathema?

Tasted that same day, a "gris" of pineau d'Aunis from Catherine Roussel and Didier Barouillet of Clos Roche Blanche was just a drop of pomegranate juice in a barrel's worth of off-white. Yet it is "the rosé."

At what point, then, does a wine become rosé? Is it a question of its taste, or of its color? Or of our perception of it?

I may need to pour some Ulysse Collin as I ponder this.

Or some Clos Roche Blanche.

Unexpected addiction

2010-01-28T10:46:00.004+01:00

It was a month and a half ago, back in the dim gloom of mid-December, as the days were pulling tight and the dark, cold curtain of night fell with its heavy, blunt blade earlier and earlier...

(I should cue some atmospheric music or something. How about bluegrass? Nah.)

I went out to Le Verre Volé for warmth and boudin noir with fellow wine tippler Rahsaan M. (though I should note that he is not a fellow boudin noir enthusiast, despite an unexpected openness to tasting a tiny dab on the end of a knife). As is the wont of inveterate lushes the world over, we began the evening with champagne and moved on to darker fare, and against all reason, a third bottle for two.

Which he suggested should be a 2006 Champ-Levat Mondeuse. Now, my experiences with Mondeuse had gone from the catastrophic – a cooked mess of a bottle picked up on a lark at a shop in New York renowned for poor storage, in 2004, back when I'd had to ask what a Mondeuse was, by gum – to the pleasing – young fare from Franck Peillot at last spring's Louis/Dressner tasting. But it wasn't something I thought it'd be worth giving my liver the sock for.

However, it was. This silky purple thing, with piquant tannins but much peppery lushness, was like a mountain Syrah. It was so pretty, so lovely, so empty, by the end.

So it came to pass that a few weeks later, as the days were getting longer, but damn, it was still flippin' cold out, friends and I found ourselves at Le Bistrot Paul Bert, where after a fine 2005 Villemade Cheverny "Bodice," I jumped up and down like a monkey (well, verbally) insisting the Champ-Levat Mondeuse was the thing to try.

It did not disappoint, and even though the context was different and the foodstuffs dissimilar (I was eating a yea-big andouillette stuffed with coarsely chopped tripe, alongside gratin dauphinois), that unexpected elegance was there. That river of purple. That soulful bramble.

I can't wait to have this again.

Fizz, fizz

2009-12-31T09:50:00.004+01:00

For all those who have an unquenchable thirst for more about champagne, surf away immediately to the excellent website Paris By Appointment Only and peruse my roundup of some fine bubbles I'll try to be drinking again post haste in 2010.

As the palate turns

2009-12-29T14:47:00.006+01:00

It's the end of the year, but I'm not going to do a "best of" or "top #" post. I'm just not. In fact, I'm just going to slap up a picture I like of a wine that pulls no punches, and then ramble about other things.

The year 2009 is drawing to a close, and my wine life, it would be fair to say, went through an unbridled overhaul, over these twelve months. Many discoveries were made (or offered my way, or stumbled into); some previous favorites discarded in light of new twists to the tastebuds; and former dislikes rallied to and overcome, until these days, you can sometimes find me ordering a chenin blanc.

Clearly, that's one of the fun things about taking an interest in wine: watching your palate evolve. Favorite Cali Cabs of yesteryear (all right, I didn't get to go through that phase, but you can imagine some similarly dark back-story for me, if you'd like) give way to shimmery Muscadet or wiry Albariño.

There's a Comments section, below; I'd be interested to hear some tales of vinous discovery and change from my ever-vigilant readership. What have you unearthed? What do you suddenly shun?

And a free bottle of Puzelat "Brin de Chèvre" for anyone who can guess one wine I used to adore but now can't stomach.

White, black, white

2009-12-11T11:50:00.006+01:00

The intention was obviously to write about an astounding champagne I'd had a few weeks ago. But then other great bubbles came my way, and I realized it would be hasty to sum up everything in one epiphanic blanc de noirs. So I'll give you a pair, instead.

2006 Lassaigne "Les Papilles Insolites" - this is a 100% pinot noir with no dosage and no sulfur. I had been forewarned that it would be unlike most typical Champenois fare. (As though that would shake me!) So I popped it for myself, because in that case – this is the principle of going to movies alone, to avoid the dread "bad choice" that could alienate one's movie-going companions – there would be no one else to register shock, discomfort or, well, drink the rest of the bottle. I let the cork out and poured some into a Zalto champagne flute. The bubbling liquid was deep yellow in the glass. And a lean in to smell what was nutty and aromatic led obviously to a taste, which led to a few moments of internal parsing, then quickly, a contented nod. Oh, yes. This wine had everything I pine for in a good glass of champagne, but was, obviously, not something one fills one's stem with every day. It has depth and breadth, is vinous but detailed, streamlined. Crunchy fruit to it, and tannins to structure the whole thing. This would be a champagne to decant, if I could ever be that sensible. By the next day, it had developed roundly, and was even more compelling. I am itching to get back to one of the two wine merchants who purvey it and snap some more up.

NV Egly-Ouriet Brut Tradition Grand Cru - ashamed as I am to admit it, I used to think pinot noir-dominated champagnes were not my style – Selosse Contraste aside, I would say with a dandyish chuckle. Well, not a bit of it. If Lassaigne's Papilles Insolites was already one colossal raspberry to that particular prejudice of mine, a recent bottle of Egly-Ouriet's Brut Tradition (75% pinot noir) was a kick in the pants, to boot. I can no longer claim disdain for that robuster grape. This bottle, disgorged in mid-2008, was of vinous depth that had me grinning from ear to ear. The notes of almond paste and toast were addictive. I vaguely recall that I had had too much to drink that evening. But this, dear readers, was worth the plunge into excess.

2009-11-25T11:32:00.004+01:00

It's mushroom season; we're in the thick of it, and beneath, say, a squab en crapaudine or a ballotine of wild duck will be a little heap of black chanterelles or mousserons or cèpes. A few days ago, I was wandering around with a camera and snapped these boletes raw. It was only later, looking back at the girolles and chanterelles and pieds bleus and sheep's foot mushrooms I had also taken in the "seasonal market" series that my eye was caught on the price. Well, 50€ a kilo! That's 75 of your American dollars, at this juncture. Sure, split it by 2.2 to get the equivalent in pounds, but in truth, that's not the price of leeks.

I stumbled upon an article in the Times (London) about organized crime visiting the forests of southern France. And whatever the validity behind the alarm (I have heard expert talk that the fear is slightly overblown and the situation a bit different than described) the truth remains that King Cèpe can only be had for a ransom.

So, in the spirit of populism, I will not write such siren song phrases as, "The murmur of voices filled the restaurant, and the cepes glistened in the dim light."

No, instead, I'll suggest a cheap quaffer that'd go well with that kind of thing. The bounty of good, unpretentious fermented grapes can be all of ours.

2007 Clape "Le Vin des Amis" - a little wine from a great Cornas producer; a little bit like a Cornas, with good tannins and a rustic back-end. There is fruit, there is bark. There is a certain spiciness, that of black pepper ground. It is a happy thing, and a friend of the forest. I had this recently, and I look forward to having it again.

*

Now for the cliffhanger: soon I will write about the best Champagne I have had in well over a year. A year, note ye, filled with... Champagne.

Glug

2009-11-08T11:03:00.003+01:00

It's November and is almost time for the "new" wines to come out. I got an early taste of one a couple of days ago when I stopped by at the unusual wine store La Cave de L'Insolite. (I say this with redundant literalness: "insolite" being the French for, well, "unusual.")

2009 Karim Vionnet Beaujolais Primeur - Vionnet used to make wine for another natural Beaujolais producer, Guy Breton, but is now making his own. If this is a glimpse of the 2009 vintage, we are in for quite a bit of fun. Gorgeously crunchy and light, carbonic yet weighty, this new gamay is uncommonly lovely. After sipping some of Vionnet's 2008 Beaujolais — a wine with a hard tannic edge but lots going on — this, on a return visit several minutes later, was lacy, spicy, and had a marked tendency to disappear in a snap.

2005 Villemade Cheverny "Désiré" - A 100% pinot noir bottling that Villemade, these days, only puts into magnum. The wine had been open for several hours and had finally digested its oak and was offering light, funky, soulful Loire pinot. I find this a much more expressive and racy wine than the sometimes angry "Ardilles." Gorgeous and also difficult to keep in the glass.

I came away from the day with something no one would expect me to be glugging in the dark Parisian autumn (or at any other time or place, truth be told):

Gérard Schueller Edelzwicker - no vintage on this 1 liter bottle, but I believe, if I read the tiny coded small-print adeptly, it may be a 2004. In the glass, it is cloudy. Beeswaxy yellow and cloudy. The nose is aromatic, floral, very pleasing. And on the palate, this has an excellent balance between sweet and savory and sour, with a bit of yeasty umami. It's got persistence, it's got an unusual appeal for what is generally the throwaway wine of Alsace. I would not throw this away. I might even acquire more.

Insolite, indeed.

Mushrooms, boar and blood

2009-10-27T15:54:00.005+01:00

It was a dark, dark, dark fall night. The wind was whipping, and garish bright lights festooned the outside of the Cirque d'Hiver, where many children and balloon-holding parents streamed across the rue Amelot, blocking a taxi in which Barbra Austin and I were ensconsed, late for dinner.

One block later, we egressed from the cab and met Todd and Scott outside of the restaurant Repaire de Cartouche, a place as old-fashioned and wood-decked as a country inn in some tale of banditry.

One hour later, the scents of porcini cream steamily filled the air around a large, circular table, upon which an almost-empty bottle of 2005 Villemade Cour-Cheverny "Les Acacias" stood, beading.

Soon after would arrive dishes of game and mushroom; what better fodder to match them with than something redolent of the iron blood of the Mourvèdre grape?

2001 Grange des Pères Vin de Pays de L'Hérault - What a fine thing this was: heavy on the blood, resoundingly echoing the sang that stood amid the flesh of a well-crusted venison steak to my left and the deep, stewed-wine daube to my right. (My own dish of pheasant picked up the ruffles of cabernet, I think.) I love this wine; this is the third vintage of it I've had, and each time, I have marveled and swooned; marveled and swooned. It is long and profound and exciting. It calls you back to it with great presence and is demanding.

The only way to follow up such a powerful wine was to slip into something similarly prepossessing, yet more coy.

2001 Allemand Cornas "Reynard" - The nose was slight, after the previous, with a curiously lactic note. But on the palate, the silky rush of it all was a jolt. It could hold its own after the Grange des Pères, and more. A lush beauty of northern Rhône syrah. It also paired well with the various game dishes, of which bites were being passed, here and there, across and around our table of eight.

We gobbled and drank.

Then there was no more food, plates were being cleared, and the wine was gone. It was time to turn back to the list.

Three of our party had just spent ten days in the southern Rhône, so perhaps it was time for a complete and total paradigm shift.

"Do you like Arbois?" I asked my friend Todd as I looked sharply up over the edge of the wine list.

"I've had vin jaune, but I must admit, it's not my favorite."

"What about a red?" I'd seen something that had sparked my desire.

There was general ignorance as to the reds of the region, so I filled in with enthusiasm. Words came tumbling out of me as I described poulsard, plousard, ploussard, trousseau.... Was I making any sense? My thoughts were on Overnoy. I was trying to convey the essence of Jurassics, but I'm sure clarity ran low. It was a jumble in his mind like a word-salad e-mail, from what I could tell, as I drew to a close.

Nonetheless, we ordered it.

2007 Overnoy/Houillon Arbois Pupillin - The light color of this wine is a jape. It's a quick switch. This wine is a berry blade. It's a sharp flick of the colorful rope. God, I love this wine. It's got intense acidity and lovely aromatics. It is long and fine on the palate.

It was a great way of ushering in dessert, which I forewent for more of it.

And more.

A mouthful of pig and a handful of grapes

2009-10-21T13:15:00.003+02:00

I love those sticky, fatty, piggy dishes, especially as in Paris, autumn is starting to cool down the air and a cold breeze sometimes picks at my cuffs.

Lately, I stopped in at Le Comptoir and knew I had to glut myself on some offal. The main course would be a boned, breaded pig's foot. But what to drink with it?

2008 Gramenon Poignée de Raisins - The match was tasty, as was the wine itself. All silk carbonic perfection from this young-vines Grenache cuvée of the "natural" Côtes du Rhône producer. It had both raspberry-fruited purity and clove-y, peppery complexity; it was "natural" and showed the thin edge of no sulfur, but had no flaws. Nary a whiff of brettanomyces, etc. In fact, the absence of flaws, in combination with natural winemaking transparency, was a source of fascination, pointing out that when it's done right, that approach is compelling.

Py in the sky

2009-10-09T11:15:00.009+02:00

Paris may not be Rome, but it does have a few hills. Accordingly, I like walking up to the heights of Belleville to stop in at Le Baratin. Last night, I did this, and sat down to a nice terra cotta dish of tripe and veal foot stewed with chick peas and chunks of red bell pepper.

A glass of NV Lassaigne Vignes de Montgueux beforehand was shockingly, and wonderfully, vinous. Where had the green apples and the asparagus gone? It was all winey and deep.

The followup was intended to be a 2007 Foillard Morgon, but as it turns out, they were fresh out of stock, so the young barman suggested something I had never had nor even heard of prior to that instant.

2006 Foillard Morgon 3.14 - Yes, the name is a pun on Côte de Py, where the cuvée is from; yes, punning is contagious; no, I'm not proud. What I am is enthralled by this wine. I stuck my nose in the glass to smell a short pour and make sure it wasn't corked – and did a double take. No. Fricking. Way. Intensely aromatic, it was a sucker-punch of glorious fall berries. I looked up at the barman, as though to say, "You've got to be kidding." He nodded, the pantomime, "Eh, oui." I tasted it, and it sent my brain circuits briefly on the fritz. I was not in the Eternal City, yet here was some kind of big ecclesiastical mass of vinous choir and song and organ and vestment and hell, god, it was just so good. Trumpets.

It was in a decanter, which was all the better for its continuation, as it smoothed; there was something a slight bit coarse to the tannins at the start, like a pleasant cat-tongue, just to show it wasn't some kind of manufactured thing.

Because really, if someone in a lab could make this, well, I'd have it running out of a faucet in my pantry.

But let's come down from our cloud. My only niggle with the night was the rushed turnover of the tables. Mine I could squat only from 8pm to 9:30pm, so it was over to the end of the bar, after, to pay my last devotions to the 3.14. Which it resoundingly deserves.

A trio of St. Joes

2009-09-30T12:55:00.007+02:00

At the bar at Fish, things were getting loud. We'd gone through some Gatinois champagne and some ethereal form of Alsatian riesling; now it was time to buckle down and go tannic.

2006 Gonon Saint-Joseph - I have had this wine a number of times in the past year, but this time, it was utterly brooding. A knockout nose of depth and berries and smoulder, yet on the palate, the tannins bruised. It softened a little with air, but this was some form of minor medieval warlord of a St. Joe.

A couple of nights later, it was on up to Montmartre, back to the rundown hole-in-the-wall I adore, the Cave des Abbesses, forthwith to order a bottle of:

2007 Graillot Saint-Joseph - Ah, here we were in a different idiom. No longer draped in crusty leather and holding a mace, this was light and harmonious. So slick, smooth. Something that plays around with your tongue and leaves you smiling. A witty, eighteenth-century St. Joe with nice calves.

Then, of a solitary evening, in recent days, I opened a bottle of 2007 Dard & Ribo Crozes-Hermitage. But, hey, to write about it would destroy the trinitary unity of this blog post. And as god knows, blog posts are all about classicism and coherency.

So, let's use the well-traveled literary device of the flashback.

2007 Dard & Ribo Saint-Joseph - It was spring in New York, and very hot. I was at the Dressner tasting and had just discovered the astounding white and red Châteaneufs of Eric Texier. I then made my way to an unmanned table, but was not, uh, unwomaned by it and was able to pour my own tastes. This was a wiry, coiled, energetic thing. It didn't have the same tangle as the Crozes-Hermitage (regular bottling), but had a kind of undertow that instantly gave the feel that it would age. How would I describe this St. Joe?

I dunno. My prose has run out of steam.

Food, simply, or wine, simply

2009-09-23T16:31:00.004+02:00

One weekend day this summer, I was deep within a cold cellar, talking with a fellow wine geek. We were slurping at a 1997 Clape Cornas (wonderfully funky, like an exploding cherry tinged with brettanomyces) and started evoking the visions of food that were beginning to shimmer into solidity in our minds as we tasted it. I was thinking something simple: a grilled piece of meat, or some such.

And then I had to admit that I carry around a little box of index cards in my head – this food goes with that wine; never pair such-and-such with such-and-such – but despite it all, and despite many pairings in the course of my life, I don't usually get much out of it. I'm never awed and pleased at a thunderously good pairing, or disgusted and outraged at something that skews wrong or falls flat. I guess you could say that, in short, things don't flow together, vinously and culinarily, creating a melded whole that works or does not, for me.

Instead of looking at me strangely, my fellow wine geek said there was a much simpler rule: just make sure the two don't fight. Not only jarring pairings, but the complexity angle. His rule, which I found persuasive, is that a complex wine needs a simple food for it to show its many facets; a complex dish needs a simple, well-built wine.

So here's to a tricky culinary act of complication with a frank and pleasant Dolcetto or Chinon, a standby Sauvignon.

And then to sipping at a lovely Jean-Marc Brignot Trousseau with a piece of meat. A gorgeously twisty and leesy Valette Mâcon-Chaîntré VV with some whelks. A bottle of really old moelleux Huet with foie gras. (Huh?)

I wonder what I might have with foie gras, actually.

I mean, it's really a staple.

This quintessence of must

2009-09-08T10:57:00.009+02:00

In the countrysides, the harvests are getting under way, and in the cities, the fall Foires aux Vins are stocking shelves in air-conditioned supermarkets with gleaming bottles of Bordeaux. Special offers are sliding into mailboxes and popping up on computer screens.

It's la rentrée, and, as opposed to the more paschal renewals of spring, this is the golden-leaved time for revisiting wine. Soon, we'll be drinking a glass of carbonic bernache, or seeing just how much a favorite from last fall has changed before bottling. I've been giving in to the irresistible impulse to revisit things (I thought) I loved, just to see how they and my palate have evolved. It's a fun exercise, and also helps tame the overgrown cellar.

(And this will come as a spoiler to no one: I still love those Selosse champagnes.)

Last night, I opened a curio: the darkest rosé in the world.* It is the Domaine de Rapatel's "Ça, c'est du rosé?," purchased last year at the domain, which is situated just outside of Nîmes and whose wines are mostly in the Costières de Nîmes appellation. At the time, the wine had been slightly funky, still working in the bottle, a curious discovery.

Last night, it was angry. It had consolidated itself around a core of something it wasn't quite digesting, a kind of raspy backhand of not-quite-stilled CO2. Still, it had a top layer of fruit that was pleasing. This was utterly atypical fare. And as such, it made me smile as I looked at it, turned the glass, swirled, and thought, I am drinking the darkest rosé in the world. Ha ha!

A fitting close to the summertime months and their rounds of Bandol and Côtes de Provence and even, hell, the uncompromisingly taut and pale Baudry Chinon Rosé. Something dark, something not-quite-right, something transitional.

And soon, a new season.

*Readers may feel free to contradict and shoot me down, for my own edification.

What we talk about when we talk about wine

2009-08-25T13:09:00.006+02:00

In a week, a wine board I like to participate on will celebrate its first birthday. Realizing this, and thinking back over the many online conversations I have had, spanning from Tahiti to Burgundy, by way of Mount Etna, Rioja and Cornas, I thought it was an apposite moment to bring up the topic of why it's so important to have these venues for conversation, banter and arguments.

Knowledge and taste are such slippery, ever-changing things; our palates and opinions evolve, inevitably. And one great spur to their evolution is, along with the simple tasting and drinking of wines, discussing them with people who have a similar fervency, people who are informed, ask questions and spout thoughts.

What I have found fascinating in the eclectic, angry, roving, uncommon group of oenophiles on the Wine Disorder board is the challenge of it. In order to join in the fray, to confront a conflicting or ill-formed opinion, one's own opinion needs to be clear, expressible, and thought-through. Even to chip in with related commentary requires a cataloguing and systematizing act of the brain. Someone will call you out – and that's part of the fun.

This I love. I also enjoy the play with the rigor, the allusiveness, the humor, the extraneous, geeky nonsense. Because ponderousness is a bad old saw in the wine world, I like that I can flee preconceived notions and skip off to a playground for sharp winos.

My palate has changed and evolved over the past year, and this is in part due to the questions other oenophiles have put to my set of prejudices (which I also try to assail here, but in a less back-and-forth way). I would never, too, have thought to drink Overnoy Poulsard, say, or Clos Roche Blanche Pineau d'Aunis, or orange wines without the steady tide of fresh thoughts and tastings provided by that group.

Which is why I have decided to toast Wine Disorder with a nice glass of leesy chardonnay.

Mazel tov!

The mysteries of Paris

2009-08-18T12:03:00.003+02:00

Baudelaire wrote that the shape of a city changes faster, alas, than the human heart, but in truth, the days of Haussmann are over. Paris has achieved a sense of equilibrium, and one can walk past the same buildings and shops, look in the windows, and see that what has changed are the vintages on the wines.

New producers sprout, too, though. Fittingly, while in recent days I have come back to favorites (last night's 2007 Graillot Crozes-Hermitage was fresh and lithe, just like I like it), there has also been room for discovering new fodder, including this interesting Chambolle-Musigny, pictured. Unfortunately, the photo's too dim for me – dim, too, it would seem – to read the producer's name any more.

But, oh well; there will be new finds. And of course, I know where I found it, so I can find it again.

Little Cramant bubbles

2009-08-12T11:02:00.005+02:00

I think it was Richard Juhlin who said that it was hard to make bad wine in Cramant.* I have to concur: that village on the Côte des Blancs turns out some of the most deep and racy champagnes there are, from Diebolt-Vallois and Lilbert Fils to the profound Vieille Vigne de Cramant from Larmandier-Bernier.

So, a small caviste in Montmartre was selling the champagnes of Lancelot-Pienne, from that burg. Why not? I thought, given that the rest of the store held some nice little gems. I was having a friend over for dinner, so I picked up a half-bottle of the NV Brut Tradition.

Night was flooding through the window when I popped the half-bottle and poured some of its frothing contents into two glasses. After handing over the one, I stuck my nose in the glass in hand. Mmm, that Cramant smell. Chalky and biscuity. On the palate, this was even-handedly dosaged, with good balance and a savory quality to it that was very pleasing – and very much of its place. Part of me wondered if its mature drinkability had to do with its being in a small vessel, because in recent months, I've had some champagnes that really did need more time (people don't give champagne enough bottle age, often). Whatever the case may be, this was a small, happy pleasure; a little drop of Cramant elixir to open the palate.

*Though, to be honest, he used it backhandedly to criticize a certain grower: how can one screw up Cramant? Look!

Dark mysteries of the cellars

2009-08-04T18:59:00.005+02:00

Last night I had a dark and cobwebby bottle of 1976 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva. It was whitish with the work of long-dead spiders, and a thick black layer of something frighteningly giving lived in the punt. After a slight jump back (trying not to disturb the sediment, nonetheless), I opened the bottle over a trash can (wax covering the cork; one of those things that goes everywhere if one's heedless, the way I had been the first time I had a bottle of Clos la Néore), decanted for sediment, poured out said sediment, rinsed the bottle and put the wine back in it, cut off the musty end of the cork and recorked it.

A balmy night out. Up the street: a restaurant that allowed corkage. The preliminaries done, the waiter turned his attention to the bottle of wine standing there in all of its ashen glory. He saw it was already open, picked it up, pulled out the cork, then to pour it, took the bottle in the way waiters everywhere are trained to – thumb straight into the punt. A black hole of decades of cobwebby crap. He gave a start. He tried to smooth out his expression and continue pouring, but I leapt to his aid. I should have warned him, I said, and of course it was OK to pour holding the bottle around the side. This he did.

A bottle of 1973 Tondonia two days earlier had been youthful with that light, leafy fruit I so love, but there had been a hovering uncleanness that marred what was otherwise a lovely wine.

Here, none of that was the case. The 1976 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva was straight-on lovely, darkly lovely. Inexplicably teasing and tangled on the palate, it was opulent yet firm, the kind of wine that makes you want to close your eyes, then open them, then go running around the room. A dream of a wine. A dark, hidden dream that had been coaxed out into the air.

Riesling: foe or waste of time?

2009-07-16T17:42:00.002+02:00

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?

2009-07-08T16:33:00.007+02:00

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

2009-06-29T07:11:00.008+02:00

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

2009-06-28T19:41:00.007+02:00

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

2009-06-07T21:30:00.004+02:00

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

2009-05-29T20:36:00.005+02:00

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

2009-05-19T15:35:00.005+02:00

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

2009-05-06T17:45:00.005+02:00

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

2009-04-20T15:15:00.004+02:00

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

2009-04-13T16:32:00.004+02:00

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

2009-04-06T16:57:00.006+02:00

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

2009-03-30T02:24:00.009+02:00

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

2009-03-23T02:47:00.004+01:00

(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

2009-03-15T21:56:00.002+01:00

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

2009-03-09T02:01:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-28T21:53:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-23T15:45:00.004+01:00

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

2009-02-12T16:38:00.006+01:00

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!

2009-02-08T16:15:00.003+01:00

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

2009-01-26T12:54:00.002+01:00

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

2009-01-17T14:22:00.004+01:00

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

2009-01-09T13:42:00.001+01:00

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

Here's an on-topic favorite.

Empties

2009-01-05T11:19:00.004+01:00

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

2008-12-23T10:25:00.004+01:00

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

2008-12-14T15:44:00.009+01:00

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

2008-12-11T11:32:00.006+01:00

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

2008-11-29T13:18:00.005+01:00

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

2008-11-26T14:01:00.008+01:00

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

2008-11-23T12:00:00.005+01:00

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

2008-11-18T11:55:00.007+01:00

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.

In with the old

2008-11-05T10:19:00.004+01:00

Two nights ago, David brought a few special treats over in a wine bag. We were gearing up to treat friends from abroad (read: the USA - how exotic!) to Burgundy and some food. Things got screwed up on the food front - I have never dragged anyone, beloved or reviled, through such a shambles of a home-cooked meal - but the wines were delicious.

This one stood out. It's the oldest champagne I've had to date! And reminds me, with its ungainly bottle and weathered label, of the image in Rabelais of Socrates as a silène. Or, put more prosaically: good things can come in unexpected packages.

1971 Lanson Red Label. How the details of vintage, &c., were known to David escapes me, but I'll believe him. He knew what he was talking about, in any case. We poured this champagne, after I had tasted a drop and nodded with a bit of a gleam in my eye (oh yes, it was good). It was still-looking - nary a bubble in the glass - and of a deep ocher color. Yet the nose was exuberant, and as it turns out, the champagne was racy and alive on the tongue with bubbles, and it had a heady, slightly oxidative, mature note. A straight backbone and nutty and biscuity savors had me ignoring the tide of conversation around me, like some autistic Champagne Whisperer.

Until there was no more, alas.

Burgundian thoughts

2008-10-29T10:19:00.002+01:00

This weekend, glass in hand, I got to explore my deep and abiding love for Burgundy. Not only was there the legendary annual Burgundy tasting at Caves Augé, but there were other bottles of the Côte d'Or's fine chardonnays and pinot noirs hiding, it seemed, behind every corner (all right, every bar and wine rack).

To make an exhaustive list would exhaust me and certainly frighten you, gentle reader, as to my liver. So let's just say that what seems interesting to me at the tail end of the marathon is the principle of less-is-more applied to Burgundy.

I've always applied this to "little" wines like Cahors or Corbières - the high-end stuff is invariably overoaked, overextracted, etc. But Burgundy? Well, where more up can you go than a Lafon Meursault Perrières? Now, I'll tell you: a Chassorney Saint-Romain.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not purporting that the little crus will amass and destroy the grand ones. Last night (I'll say this all offhand, like) we drank a 2000 Rousseau Ruchottes-Chambertin that left one just askew with longing. But what is key, here as elsewhere, is balance, simplicity, what the French call évidence.

And I have found that a few times in the past days, in curious new places.

La bernache est arrivée!

2008-10-23T10:27:00.004+02:00

I was walking toward the Seine yesterday under blue autumn skies, and as I headed down a narrow street with a 17th century convent on it, I noticed a bistro with a big white banner across the window: "LA BERNACHE EST ARRIVÉE." Ah! 'Tis the season of the sweet, yeasty pink fizz. The sign's peppy excitement made me smile (and made me realize, too, that it's time to get back up to the excellent L'Estaminet du Marché, a table d'hôtes in the 3rd arrondissement where they pour and sell bernache at this time of year).

On the face of it, bernache shouldn't be my kind of drink. It's carbonic, muddled, funky, and especially, pretty darn sugary. Bernache is, in the Loire Valley, Sologne and Berry, the not-yet-wine that gets bottled for timely consumption while the yeasts are still at work. It's weirdly tasty. And it has to be bottled with a rubber stopper with a hole, lest the bottle explode.

What I like about bernache is that it is the embottlement of the fleeting joys of wine, its seasonality; like a liter full of harvest festivities. You can sling a couple into a cloth sack and head out for a picnic near a lake.

Disappointingly, I won't be able to pour any, lakeside, this fall. But I like the nifty little reminder of nature and impermanence.

All shook up

2008-10-19T13:40:00.009+02:00

After vying for the worst pun in a blog title, I will now move on to the worst blog photography. In fact, this one, snapped last night early in the evening (you wouldn't know it, would you?), can stand as a marker for the unbridled excesses to come.

One thing I am proud of is - at last! - having broken out of the "hipster" wine mode. All my recent posts have been about Amphibolite this and Puzelat that. Well, yesterday we shifted into the stately realm of classic wines.

A first toe-dip into the evening was NV Agrapart "7 Crus" - a favorite of mine for its offhand elegance; this was no exception. It was a very pretty wine. And before you go clamoring that it's biodynamic and all that, see here: it has 10 g/l of dosage! Look, ma, no Extra-Brut!

After we sat down at the table (table and home being that of the most gracious hosts in our neighborhood, or many a neighborhood, Guy and Anne) and espied foie gras with onion and juniper compote on the small white, green-rimmed plates, it was a bottle of 2006 François Villard Condrieu "De Poncins" that was poured into our glasses. As, curiously, I was playing ringleader for the dinner, Guy had allowed me to tip the scales for a wine with the foie gras. Now, he had some Sauternes, but as I don't like sweet wines, I thought this would be interesting and probably floral enough to pair well with the fatty liver. It did; it was a very lush, very floral wine that impressed me with its balance. Viognier is tough to rein in, but this was both opulent and completely mastered. Nice.

With the New England-style palourde chowder it was time to move on to a white Burgundy, and I had brought a bottle of that 2002 Mestre Santenay 1er Cru "Passe-Temps" described two posts back. I opened it and poured a dash in the glass: TCA city. Corked wretchedly. Back to Guy's kitchen and pour it down the drain, then have a quick, minor pow-wow, as no other whites seemed presentable other than, as it turns out, a curious Muscadet he had in the fridge.

The 2006 Louis Métaireau Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine "Grand Mouton" came in a small black plastic bag tied with a plastic string. The bag was opened, and inside, the bottle was crusty, with faded red wax covering the cork. Apparently this producer keeps his wines under the sea. This bottle was very saline, with broken shells and sea wind. It was a little light for the cream-based chowder, but it was quite an interesting drink.

With the cheese platter, involving some Tomme de Chèvre, Pérail, Camembert, Langres and 2006 vintage Swiss Gruyère, we opened a 2002 Philippe Alliet Chinon Vieilles Vignes. Like a little homecoming; sometimes Alliet just blows me away with the precision of his wines*; he takes Chinon up a notch while remaining absolutely true to the tastes and tangs that make it Chinon. Like a dream of Chinon, like Platonic Chinon. This was still young but was drinking well and was flawless.

And as we wound into a blackberry crumble tart, out came more bubbles: 2000 Ruinart. I am helpless against the fizz, and I drank a lot of it. Which may explain my inability to tell you the least thing about it. But it must've been OK.

And it clearly wasn't a hipster wine.

*Except excessive oak in some Coteau de Noiré, but I have been told that he is backing off it, so I may give those another taste.

Puzzle me that

2008-10-13T12:01:00.004+02:00

Sorry, just making a bid for the worst wordplay in a blog post title, 2008 edition.

In any case, a Sunday meal of quiche lorraine and arugula salad (or rocket, for the UK faction) gave me the chance to chill a bottle of Thierry Puzelat's 2005 Clos du Tue Boeuf "Brin de Chèvre." Counter-intuitive, perhaps, as I usually like to break out something like Edelzwicker with egg stuff (who knows why); but then, with chunk bacon, onion, egg and cream you can be all over the map, and I have poignant memories of Meursault with the dish. So, shaking it up, here we were with Puzelat's Menu Pineau cuvée in our glasses.

I'd had the 2006 and, probably some time in the distant, dark hipster past, things like 2004 or even 2002, but this was my first encounter with the 2005. It was a thing of absolute clarity and precision. You could walk out on the deck of a seafaring vessel and look through it, seeing sharp for leagues. I've never had a wine with such intense minerality, and such bone-dry command. Not a bit of residual sugar, which had been my slight complaint about the (also much enjoyed) 2006 version of the same.

So, no surprise that this was unanimously (or bilaterally) voted "the best white wine tasted in quite some time."

And the cool thing is that I can actually afford more! (If I can find it.)

Heaven(s)

2008-10-07T10:35:00.004+02:00

Heaven, I'm in heaven... Fred Astaire sang it. Driving through the vineyards of the Côte de Beaune this weekend under mottled skies, I felt it. This curious emotion that comes from being in places that evoke taste memories on your tongue. Oh! Puligny-Montrachet! Minerally, heart-breakingly taut 2004 J.-M. Boillot. Oh, Volnay. 2002 Pascal & Reyane Bouley Volnay 1er Cru "Champans," beating soft and lush like a heart. One feels surrounded and swept up.

And then, of course, being there gives ample opportunity for tasting the local goods. We found an interesting little producer in Santenay whose white 2002 Santenay 1er Cru "Passe-Temps" was a rich whirlwind of precision (shh, it does so make sense). We drank 2001 Denis Thomas Nuits-Saint-Georges, which was perfectly pinot-y, with fruit and tannin braiding into deliciousness. We had a super young, vibrant 2006 Tollot-Beau Chorey-lès-Beaune with searingly open fruit.

So, we didn't drink any Leflaive Montrachet. But then, did you really think I had?

Cheesy dreams

2008-10-03T11:35:00.003+02:00

Apparently, the British Cheese Board believes that eating cheese has a beneficial effect on sleep and dreams. This titter-worthy study reveals some of the ins and outs of the curd's influence over our nocturnal life.

Two nights ago, I did an informal test of my own, ingesting a fair piece of Roquefort at the end of my evening meal. Indeed, consequently, my dreams, as the old wives' tale holds, were colorful.

But that aside, eating Roquefort got me to thinking two things. One, that any cheese that requires putting something even higher in fat (i.e. butter) on the bread beneath it is a thing of perversity. And second, that as far as wine goes, Roquefort is the avenging angel, wiping out reds, whites, and bubblies with a cold metallic knife. No quarter! Those wines turn tin.

As I'd already been drinking a fine bottle of dry table wine, I wasn't going to go and open a Sauternes or Jurançon - and of course, I don't like stickies, anyway. So where does that leave me with this curio of a cheese? Will I be able to find something it'll go with?

Probably just a pipe dream.

Punk plonk (& good stuff, too)

2008-09-29T13:07:00.003+02:00

Here's one to go with pizza. Especially pizza at Pink Flamingo, the Canal Saint-Martin's little pocket of heaven. Especially the Basquiat, with prosciutto and gorgonzola. Or any of them, really. They all rock.

I wanted to cry, nearly. Hadn't been back in ages to the PF, whose delivery fellows on bicycles will deliver canalside in the warmer months, after one has been given a balloon to identify one as having placed an order. And since Le Verre Volé is just up the street, takeout wine and pizza delivery assure a delightful, rustic evening as the deep and filthy water flows by and night starts to fall over random merriment.

But this weekend it wasn't so warm as all that, so refuge was found within the PF. Along with a bottle of On S'en Bat les Couilles, 2006 version. Now, as its label suggests, the wine's name does indeed mean something along the lines of Never Mind the Bollocks (literally: we don't give a toss). But the wine is in no way simply, well, tossed off. It's actually a brilliant little funky gem of "nature" winemaking.

From old-vine gamay in the Touraine-Mesland area of the Loire valley, made by a renegade vigneron with the strangely Corsican-sounding name of Pascal Simonutti, this bottling is totally delicious and totally impudent. The pizzaiolo – probably called Jean-Luc, but never mind – popped it and glugged it into a big magnum carafe, swinging it around to loosen the carbon dioxide, which ushered out. The first glass or so was a bit frizzy, but after that it smoothed and was just a heady, good gamay de Touraine. Deep purple, fruit and bite.

Satisfying stuff.

Unicité

2008-09-25T08:54:00.009+02:00

Over on Wine Disorder, MarkS wrote, in response to a tasting note about a Cour-Cheverny:

I don't find romorantin that [sic] unique: to me, but then, many grapes tend toward similarity. Very strongly chenin blanc-like, with maybe a dollop of godello.

This was kicking around in my head yesterday evening. I mean, it's not rare for people to start talking about typicité, often with some debate. But what about unicité? Are grapes' tastes unique? Should they be?

Of course, no one is going to confuse a Gewürz with a Riesling or a Roussane with a Viognier, but are there more similarities than differences?

I suppose that another factor to add to the lot is age. Does great age on wine efface varietal characteristics for an overall "old wine" taste? This is a theory I have heard stated, and it is somewhat convincing. I think back to the lineups of stickies at the end of the three Académie des Vins Anciens dinners I've been to. I don't know if I could have pulled out a Sauvignon from a Sémillon from a Chenin or a Muscat. But then, I was drunk at the time.

The other angle would be to question if it could simply be, as MarkS seems to suggest, that "lesser" grapes are somehow more "same" than nobler, complexer, "more" unique ones.

If such is the case, Pinot d'Aunis is the king of grapes.

*Oh, and a bottle of Chinon to anyone who can identify the cultivar in the photo up top.

Quick, drink!

2008-09-22T10:39:00.004+02:00

Yesterday evening, slightly dazzled from a surprisingly sunny weekend in the north and head abuzz with thoughts of seashells and the like, I opened a bottle of 2007 Amphibolite.

I'd been enthusiastic about this (as usual) in February, as well as a couple of times soon after, in early spring. But six months will do something to a young wine of its nature. It had lost its pearly bead, shifting from youthful tingliness on the tongue to something more slate-and-brine – which was nice, too, but was more traditionally Muscadet than I'm used to this cuvée being.

It got me to thinking about wines I like drinking young, and how I don't buy too many of them, for fear of not getting to them in time. Hervé Villemade's 2006 "Pivoine" was like that; a dazzling floral, fresh burst of Côt. So was the 2007 non-rosé Costières de Nîmes rosé from Gérard Eyraud (note to self: must drink that soon). Or the Bretons' wild 2007 Avis de Vin Fort.

What's great about wines like these is that, though ready to go from release, they are the antithesis of the big, standardized wines shot out by global-type wineries, heavy in alcohol and toast, with their whatnot processes in the winery to make them user-friendly, fast and forgettable.

These are little asides, beautiful trills, and definitely lovely things to have on hand while waiting for the vins de garde to age. Character in spades – even if fleeting.

Lost & Found

2008-09-15T10:54:00.003+02:00

This is the best view of my cellar. Once you leave the clean-swept earthen floor of the hall and unlock the padlock sealing away oh so many Sancerres and Chinons and other random fodder (a couple of Apulian reds, some Pic Saint-Loup and two bottles of 2001 Château Pavie (oh yes, my enemies!)), mayhem ensues.

There are two sofas in my cellar (white, blue). There is a broken computer. There are some roller blades that may or may not belong to Arnaud, though I have never seen him rollerblade. There's a table and its detached legs. There is even a framed print with a broken pane.

But this makes it all the more sporty and fun to push through the wild jungle of dreck to get to the good stuff, avoiding giving a little tip to the pile of unracked bottles dangerously lying three-high on the floor. Of course, sometimes this means that instead of coming back up with a Bouzeron from A. & P. de Villaine, there will be a bottle of Villemade Cour-Cheverny in my hand, but no matter!

I suppose all of this is an attempt to fly in the face of the particular madness that seems to inhabit wine "geeks": orderliness. Control. Inventories kept rigorously on online databases. Dated tasting notes.

Plus, it's cool to find something you'd forgotten you had. Especially when it's a bottle of Charmes-Chambertin you run into while looking for a red Anjou. Score!

Baudelaire interlude

2008-09-11T14:45:00.006+02:00

Deep joys of wine, who among us has not known you? Who has not felt remorse to calm, a memory to conjure, a sorrow to drown, a castle to build in the clouds – all have invoked you, mysterious god hidden in the fibers of the vine. How grand are the acts brought forth by wine, as though we were illuminated by an inner sun! How true, how burning is the second youth man draws from it! Yet how formidable are its searing raptures and its draining enchantments. And yet: say, in your soul and conscience – judges, law-makers, men of the world, you whose happiness leaves you gentle, whose fortune makes virtue and health a thing of trifling ease – say: who among you would have the pitiless courage to condemn those who drink genius?

Baudelaire, Wine and Haschisch

Ack!

2008-09-06T09:33:00.005+02:00

As debate rages on as to terroir and the word "natural" applied to wines, I have a counterpoint to my Worst Wine Ever. In the interest of this exposé, I will have to reveal at last that that other undrinkable wine was a California Pinot Noir that tasted like grapefruit and was searingly alcoholic and awful.

The next day, I fobbed the remaining part of the bottle off on Neil for independent corroboration: yes, the forensic Neil study came up positive. I believe the expression was something along the lines of "Holy screaming lord shite alcohol eau de vie Jesus Christ"...

Fast forward to sometime last week (my memory grows vague, as of someone looking back on a burning city). I proudly bring an Alsace-shaped bottle of 2004 Rouge-Gorge to the table. What are we eating? Was that when I made ratatouille? No, probably not. Maybe that was the seared chicken livers. Anyway.

I pour it with excited trepidation into the glass. I mean, I love Eric Nicolas's whites. And that's saying something for someone who has issues with Chenin.

What a tasty nose, a little candied. Bright red in the glass.

And on the palate. Oh, god! What on earth did I do to deserve to have this in my mouth? What a foul, foul thing. Bracken. Rotting moss. Broken sticks of licorice wood. Quinine. Stuff you wipe off a scraped knee with. Bad stuff. Stuff you don't want lingering on your tongue.

I fought my way through a glass.

And thus are set the bookends of the worst wines I have had the misfortune of tangling with. Bookended from California to the Coteaux du Loir.

Available at Lavinia, 15 €. I dare you.

The latest major marketing fun

2008-09-03T08:36:00.006+02:00

A friend sent me an interesting press release for my perusal.

It seems that the good people at Krug have sat down and said, "Now, how can we get people with more money than the population of Alabama to give lots and lots of cash to us? We already did the Clos d'Ambonnay, and that's selling at a healthy $3,000-per-bottle clip. But that isn't enough, and we don't have enough of it! What can we do?"

Of course, the word lifestyle is an incantation to marketers. Let's see where it leads.

Already having installed "Krug Rooms" - lavish caves of icy crystal and yeasty champagne - in such fine palace hotels as The Dorchester in London and something or other overlooking a Swiss lake, along with a swank skyscraper in Hong Kong - they suddenly decided to amp it up a notch.

For a mere £10,000 ($17,775; 12,275 €; other currencies, please enquire), you may embark upon a splashy, quite fabulous two-day escapade, leaving London's Waterloo station by Eurostar (not included in the package) - to wind up in Paris, the city of light! Behold the gloriously strobing Eiffel Tower by night! The whirling Concorde ferris wheel! Designer stores with things in them by Philippe Starck! Waiters in white gloves handing you petits-fours!

Yes, because you will check into the Plaza-Athénée, and when you wake, you will be served a lavish breakfast alongside a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée. Later, you will do some other stuff, then you will lunch at Le Meurice, with a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée. Following that, you will be whisked off to Reims for more Krug Grande Cuvée and a visit of the vineyards. Then more Krug, maybe a vintage to break it up a little.

Finally, at weekend's end, you will be packed back up into the Eurostar, three sheets to the wind, and sped back home, not quite sure if you still have your keys.

Cost? £10,000. Seeing who buys it? Priceless.

Celebration(s)

2008-08-31T11:25:00.013+02:00

If you will recall, some time ago, Arnaud suggested I keep a "Champagne Tracker" to prove that indeed, despite my plaints to the contrary, I do imbibe quite a non-negligeable amount of the bubble. Perhaps it is time to show you a spreadsheet or graph, in all its glory. Maybe I will soon. In any case, the CTracker was abuzz this week, as things to celebrate flooded through and those famous six atmospheres of contained pressure popped open into the ambient world.

NV Jacques Lassaigne "Vignes de Montgueux" - thanks to Alice for the delicious excuse to quaff this en terrasse on a sunny summer afternoon. It had more breadiness to it than the previous times I'd had it, less green apple acidity. A fine glass, and even finer conversation.

2003 Dufour Pinot Blanc - A curious champagne, to my taste. Made from Pinot Blanc, it has a discreet attack, yet is extremely persistent on the palate, with a deliciously pith-bitter finish. Somewhat like a Prosecco in its light body, though with more chalky depth.

NV Duval-Leroy Lady Rose (or is it Rosé?) - This gives what it purports to; a girlish, raspberry-and-strawberry confection; simple, bubbly, weirdly likeable, creamily dosaged: to file in the "guilty pleasure" category. Please tell no one I liked it. Please.

NV Fallet-Prévostat Extra Brut Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs - Once my "little grower that could," this unknown from Avize has disappointed me twice. On this opening, there was a gorgeous, vinous Avize nose: just what makes me weak-kneed. But on the palate, something lurked that was off, unclean, or overevolved. Drat. Drat. Drat.

1998 Jacques Selosse - Why can't something important enough to open Selosse happen every day? This bottle was so good I felt like my mind was going around in circles. I sat there with the glass in my hand and a smile of begoggled childishness on my lips. Full-bodied and vinous, with some honeyed overtones but not as oxidative as the Substance register, it was persistent, enveloping the palate. Not a huge amount of detail, but that's like asking foie gras to be crunchy. That's not its vocation. This wine's vocation was to provoke minor rapture. Which isn't too bad, now, is it?

Tempest in a tastevin

2008-08-25T11:48:00.003+02:00

Too much noise! Too much clatter! Too much controversy, muckraking and terrorism of varied vinous stripes! My head is ringing.

I've been reading about today's wine world in different media: books, blogs, journals, forums, reviews, leaflets (OK, not leaflets). Words are blitzing about. Yeast. Oak treatment. International style. Volatile acidity. Typicity, for the love of god.

I will take a breath. I will embrace this new, cantankerous, staunchly-opposed world, with its factions and factotums. Some love what they see as talent and opulence in a bottle; others prize unretouched honesty. Some argue that the ways wine is being made now are a travesty and destructive; others that wine has never been better nor more accessible. Everyone's trying to pull back the Wizard's curtain.

No one can deny that the wine commentator faction is drastically split.

I was going to write an article called "In Vino Calamitas," pungent with the irony that this drink that brings us together in broad conviviality should also now be the stomping ground of angry persuasions that tear oenophiles asunder.

But, nah.

I think I'll just read something cool and factual like Jamie Goode's article on phylloxera in The World of Fine Wine.

And have a glass of something I won't reveal. So there.

White stone

2008-08-14T10:39:00.005+02:00

When we started seeing troglodyte homes lining the side of the street, tucked into the greenery-covered stone hills, we knew we were in the land of plenty that is the region around Chinon. Tuffeau walls and homes abound. There is an amazing clarity to the villages, with their luminous castles and churches and houses.

It was late morning and we had an 11am appointment with Bernard Baudry, a maker of remarkably pure Chinon wines. Each time I taste his wines, I marvel at their simplicity and purity; nothing is out of place.

Baudry himself is of that same kind of perfect simplicity, with a dash of humor. He was there with a group of young blond men and women from Normandy (I picked out the 14 on their license plate: the Calvados region), going through the tasting of his current lineup. He came over and greeted us, let the youngsters consult with his wife and make their purchases, and what ensued was a three-hour marathon of talk, barrel-sample tastings, bottle tastings, and a visit to the cellars up the street.

When we tipsily said goodbye at 2pm - we had stopped spitting at some point along the line - I felt a pang as I closed the car door. Baudry was opening the metal gate for us (visits had officially stopped some time earlier), and I nodded as I thought back to something he'd said a half-hour earlier. He had once been a wine consultant and had traveled around different regions visiting different vineyards. Now, he said, "Chinon is special. It really is all about Rabelaisian delight, shared pleasure and conviviality. You can see that right away by the way different winemakers greet you. In Bourgueil, the wines are similar, the same grapes, similar terroir - but there isn't the same feel. Vouvray is completely different, very businesslike." Then he smiled. "And don't get me started on Montlouis..."

I have to agree about Chinon; there is something in the wine that incites to excess, generosity and gluttonous pleasure. Accordingly, Arnaud and I drove back into the town proper from Cravant-les-Coteaux and found a wine bar at which to eat a late, lush lunch. Damn if that wasn't some of the best charcuterie I've had - washed down with some Pascal & Béatrice Lambert Chinon, of course.

Degas with bubbles

2008-08-07T10:55:00.008+02:00

Joe had a camera in his hand as we were starting into our second bottle of bubbly at Le Verre Volé two days ago. I said, "Just don't take one of me looking like Degas's Absinthe drinker..." and started to mime that downtrodden visage. Snap. Oh well.

Joe was in town for one day, so we arranged to dine, and fellow wine person (or is that "personality"?) David and I met up with him on a hot night at Le Verre Volé, a great wine bar whose only downfall is having a revolving fan pointed the other direction, behind the bar.

David and I plotted our attack as we strolled around the empty, cozy space looking at the different bottles on their shelves and waiting for Joe to turn up. Drawn, then, both like moths to a particularly sparkling flame, we gravitated toward the Champagne shelf. Tempting stuff, indeed. Larmander-Bernier, Ulysse Collin, Vouette & Sorbée... and oh, hey, Selosse V.O.

Now, I did have the pleasure of drinking a bottle of Substance in the Palais-Royal garden last week, so it was a particularly spoiled and hedonistic move to pounce on the V.O. But, well, you only live once, and I really only said yes because David seemed to want that one so badly...

The patron had gone back into the cellar to see if there were any left, and had (phew!) brought one out and set it on the bar when Joe walked in. David and I turned around, looking like children caught opening the snack cupboard.

But Joe, despite a grave aversion to Chardonnay in its still expressions (why?!), is a Champagne enthusiast, so we were set to go.

The evening rolled on from that first, joyous note, as we reconnoitered, slipped, slurped, and ate terrine, andouillettes and a stunning slice (yes, slice) of black pudding (boudin noir) prepared by the potentially alcoholic but assuredly talented charcutier Joël Meurdesoif.

And I was even strongarmed into what turned out to be a delicious surprise, a 2006 Pacalet Gevrey-Chambertin that was light on its feet yet an intense tangle of young fruit and bitter tannin - I loved it.

As the evening wore on, we had finished our food and the Gevrey; there was only one road to head down, and it would not yet be the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir on a bicycle, which would be my route an hour or so later. No, it was back to Champagne.

The NV Vouette & Sorbée Blanc d'Argile Extra-Brut is a thing of beauty. I'd tasted it in horrible conditions last December - under an awning in the freezing cold, caught by rivulets from a driving rain, shoes and feet soaked as I sipped and talked to the affable Bertrand Gautherot.

These conditions were better: friends, laughter, a comfortable wine bar, giving the patron a glass, strolling outside to talk (until the moths started to bother me and I ducked back in). And the wine was delicious.

So the snapshot would have been more appropriate if glass and bottle had been empty!

Veering into Bordeaux

2008-08-04T11:15:00.005+02:00

I've made a radical decision. Yes: I am going to drink Bordeaux.

Thursday, a bunch of friends are coming over, and we're going to open some bottles, share some cheese and other victuals. But the theme, if any, has yet to be defined. We met up two weeks ago at Lavinia and sounded a couple of Champagnes off each other (tasty NV Ulysse Collin Extra-Brut and 2000 Pierre Gimonnet Oenophile Extra-Brut), follwed by two red Burgundies.

These friends are wine-curious but fairly new to the game of grape varieties or blends, regions, appellations, and crus. "I know Bordeaux, in general," Sara said.

And, well, that's about all I can say for myself, other than a few catch-phrases. Paulliac pencil lead! Cedar, cigar box, tobacco, who knows what else? My hands-on (palate-on) knowledge is slim. So, I have to strike forth. Let's see what's really going on here.

Because, after all, it's summertime. Life can loosen its collar. It's warm, not hot. Why not head up the Gironde? Sip some Left Bank on the Left Bank?

And that way, I won't be the only person who's had more Pinot d'Aunis than Cabernet Sauvignon in the past year.

P.S. Suggestions welcome...

Pesto & ... ?

2008-07-28T10:22:00.003+02:00

It's hot out, now. At last! Paris is balmy, perfect for biking off to a park and lying splayed on the grass with a book and a bunch of newspapers.

Coming home, I walk through the entrance to my building and the concierge's apartment is there to the right. The concierge and family being Portuguese, there are often delicious, garlicky scents wafting through the metal grate that covers their door. (Along with the sounds of the bandeleon her husband plays, some evenings.)

Sizzling bell peppers, or the sharp smell of frying sardines make me want to cook up flavors of the south, too.

So the other day, I bought a big bunch of basil.

Pesto is god's gift to... well, the pleasures of the palate and stomach. Pasta with good pesto is just plain hedonism.

But what on earth do you drink with it?

I made a big batch so that we could have it more than once (varying the pasta cut and shape to "update" it with a "riff" - or something like that). The first time, we went for a robust, garrigue-y southern French red.

Nah. It did nothing against the pine nuts and pecorino romano.

So, the second time, I pulled out an odd bird. We'd biked down to the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood in the 13th a couple of weekends ago and stopped in at a wine store, where the engaging young caviste offered us a taste of a white from the small Languedoc appellation Saint-Georges d'Orcques.

Of course, afterward, the poor bottles we bought had to go rattling along in the bike basket as we rode over cobblestones, up hills and through traffic circles. But they made it home more or less intact.

2007 Domaine de la Prose Coteaux du Languedoc Saint-Georges d'Orcques "Cadières" - this is about half Vermentino, with a bit of Roussane and Viognier to round it out. I like what those other grapes do to smooth and flesh out the spiky, lean Vermentino grape. The wine is simple yet exact, refreshing yet hostile on the attack, like someone you're unsure will be your friend or your enemy. Like someone from the south of France who has his own sense of conviviality and also of curtness. I like this wine. It's friendlier than Corsican Vermentino, by a hair. And it goes well with pesto.

Not rosé. Rosé.

2008-07-20T12:57:00.004+02:00

Believe it or not, the bottle in this picture is clear.

This is Gérard Eyraud's rosé. To ward off any wild nay-sayers, he simply labels it with the question one might reasonably spout: "That's rosé?"

We were in Nîmes a few days ago, and one obligatory destination was to taste his wines. So we headed out of the city in the heat to the Domaine de Rapatel. What followed was a protracted afternoon of discussion, tasting, and generally fascinating discovery.

This producer of Costières de Nîmes is atypical, to say the least. The first time I met him, I said, "I've had one of your wines... It must have been the 2004." He laughed and said, "Then it wasn't my wine."

It turns out, he only made Costières de Nîmes in 2000, and not again until 2005. All the rest gets bottled as Vin de Pays du Gard. Ah ha.

But as idiosyncratic as he is, Eyraud makes remarkable wines. Before a marathon vat-tasting session, with numerous exciting surprises, including a heartbreaking 2006 Grenache I wish he would bottle alone (but he prefers the alchemy of assemblage), we tasted a bottled 2004 Domaine de Rapatel "Petite Signature" white, a 2005 Domaine de Rapatel Costières de Nîmes "Grande Signature" white and then a series of reds (a superb 2006 Domaine de Rapatel Vin de Pays du Gard and the legendary 2005 Domaine de Rapatel Costières de Nîmes, as well as the 1997 Domaine de Rapatel Costières de Nîmes, which was expressively aged, with some autumn leaves and tobacco and lots of dark fruit). But the intermezzo was memorable.

He asked me, "What do you think of rosé?"

I shrugged. (Here I'll admit: rosé can be fine drinking, but great wine? Ha.) I said, "I like robust rosés, ones that have character. I can't stand the sugary, girly Cabernet d'Anjou, for example."

He smiled, nodded. "You're going to buy me out, then."

After heading to a different part of the chai, he came back with a bottle and started opening it. He poured some in our glasses.

Red, the color of Gamay de Touraine or Pinot Noir d'Alsace. Dark. I smelled it, swirled and smelled again. Exuberant raspberry and violet and blackberry notes, incredibly expressive.

I sipped it as he poured the rest of the bottle into a decanter, swirling vigorously. "It has a bit of carbon dioxide in it still."

Yes, the drink was carbonic, but lord, it was tasty. Fleshy and ripe, with red and black fruits, a well-constructed structure: I loved this.

After a few minutes of swirling, all the bubbles subsided on the sea-foam that had formed as he agitated the decanter. A still, dark wine lay there. We poured out the previous incarnation and tasted again.

A wine of a different character, now. More polished, more elegant. It lacked the wild, unclassifiable nature of its previous incarnation. Fascinating, too.

A new look at rosé, for me.

Pleasure

2008-07-08T11:14:00.002+02:00

Sometimes it's good to come back to what draws us to wine. This week, I couldn't bring myself to post here, because I felt defeated by the ever-unfurling tidal waves of high-end wine grandstanding on a bulletin board I participate on. I had conflicting feelings of wanting only to post about cheapies (yum, that Gamay de Touraine!) or else just let it drop entirely.

I've been drinking some good wines lately, though, so it would be a shame to slip away into some bubbly netherland and never make a peep about what can be, and so often is, an alchemical experience: the sharing of fine wine, the joy and headiness of pleasure.

So, fittingly, I had a dinner at my place with a bunch of friends. The talk and laughter got so loud I had to close the window. We poured some stuff, a 1999 Pierre Moncuit Vieilles Vignes, a 2000 Ruinart, a 2004 Laroche Chablis 1er Cru "Fourneaux," a 2001 Henri Germain Meursault 1er Cru "Charmes," a 1999 Denis Thomas Vosne-Romanée.

I can still taste the roundness of the Ruinart against a caramelized shallot tart I'd prepared. And the sharp tangle of citrus and light grassy straw in the Laroche Chablis sounded off perfectly against shrimp in coconut milk.

We finished the evening with a massive lashing of cheeses, trying to coax the Vosne-Romanée out of its tight-fisted, tightly coiled slumber, and appreciating the absolute balance of the Meursault.

Then we had two warring strawberry tarts (a planning mixup, but amusing that C. brought one too), and were all drunk and merry. As it should be.

Champagne manifesto

2008-06-25T21:31:00.007+02:00

I'm getting out my beret. And not the old Frenchman-with-the- baguette-under-his-arm-and-a-liter-of-red-wine-in-his-paw beret, but rather the revolutionary El Che beret – cigar and beard and firearms and all. This is my Champagne manifesto.

Listen up!

• Champagne is a wine.
• Champagne is made with craft, skill and devilish deliciousness by passionate vignerons.
• No bubbly from elsewhere comes close to its depth, precision and minerality.
• Heavily spackled big house Champagne with lashings of sugary dosage is anathema.
• Trend snobs who say there is no terroir in Champagne should be deprived of any and all of it for good.

So? What are the Champagne lover's commandments?

• Thou shalt quaff of the bubbles even outside of accepted festive moments (baby showers, weddings, New Year's eve);
• Thou shalt seek out diverse expressions of Champagne: Aÿ ≠ Mareuil! Vertus ≠ Cramant! And 2g/l ≠ 7g/l...;
• Thou shalt not be partisan, that said, of a particular grape. No whining, "I love the powerful Pinot Noir" or "I'm a Blanc de Blancs chick" (all right, I have to say 10,000 hail Dom Pés for that);
• A big Champagne house can make good wine (Henriot! Bollinger!); yet
• Big house Champagnes are not to be patronized except in extremis (Veuve Clicquot?! Mumm?! Moët, for the love of god?!) and the prices! Compare Pierre Moncuit to Canard-Duchêne and weep;
• Thou shalt seek out new and unheard-of producers. Raise a toast to Vouette et Sorbée here, please. And tell me every last underground tip...

Phew. Militantism is exhausting. I think I need something to quench my thirst...

Stop. Do not pass palate.

2008-06-17T13:40:00.007+02:00

Well, there you have it. I have officially opened a bottle of wine I simply could not swallow. It happened recently. The bottle was in my cellar. I went down in the late afternoon and brought it up to the kitchen.

I cut the capsule. I put in the corkscrew and outed the cork. I smelled the wet end of the cork (why do we do this? force of habit, but it only ever tells you so much). I was planning to let the wine breathe for the two hours or so before we would pour it for dinner.

I gave a splash in a glass.

I swirled. I sniffed. Hm, pretty nice nose, there. Fruits, spice. Not bad!

And I put it in my mouth. I sucked in air and chomped a bit. I swallowed, god love you. And that sealed my fate. Suddenly, I had evolving in my mouth the most awful tastes imaginable. The wine wasn't flawed; it wasn't cooked or corked or oxidized. It was just purely disgusting to my palate.

Astonished, I left glass and bottle on the kitchen counter and repaired to my computer. I searched the Internet for reviews and remarks. And what I discovered in page after gory page was that everyone loved this foul, tangy brew. They noted some of the flavor characteristics I did - aside from one glaring awfulness, which they downplayed into something similar but less gross - yet they found the wine a delicious thing of joy!

Well, I will call this a learning experience. I will recognize limits to my broad-mindedness (I - as someone who "hates" vin jaune - having attended two Percée du Vin Jaune festivals with gusto and an oft-emptied glass).

I will pretend this is a good thing.

Or else a whole lot of people have really, really screwy taste.

¡ Que viva Sancerre !

2008-06-09T08:00:00.014+02:00

Saturday morning, we set out for Sancerre in a tomato-red Smart we'd rented - which, curiously, came with Spanish license plates. It was pretty odd, and we mused about whether on driving back into Paris after the finals of the French Open we might be stoned by a throng of irate Swiss people if Roger Federer lost.

But aside from a gas station attendant outside of Gien who spoke to me in Spanish, there were no dire consequences to speak of. And the trip went perfectly. Who would have thought a Smart could hold nine cases of wine? And go 150km/h with all that in the trunk? (Yes, quick calculation: 150km/h is somewhere in the neighborhood of 90mph.)

After stopping in Briare to see the 19th century "Canal-Bridge" - which is a canal that overpasses a river, with big pompous streetlamps in all their glory - and have a bite to eat, washed down with a bottle of Coteaux du Giennois (simple, frank gamay served chilled), we took tiny country roads down to Chavignol.

Pascal Thomas greeted us at his cellar, and we set about tasting the 2007s, which were (especially the Réserve Spéciale) very aromatic for what I had imagined was a pretty feeble vintage. We talked about the different ups and downs of the vine and France's wine politics, and we tasted an interesting cuvée called "Bois Perdu" (a 2004, the last time he made that particular one, to date), which is pretty atypical, hard to define, made from old vines and partially aged in old oak barrels: a wine it'll be fun to have friends taste blind.

After our tasting - and drinking a few more glasses of Bois Perdu - with Pascal Thomas, we loaded our bottles into the back of the Smart and headed up the hillside toward Verdigny, where we had an appointment to taste with Paul Prieur.

Amusingly enough, I've been drinking Prieur's wines for almost ten years now, but despite the fact that I've been to Sancerre a good handful of times, I'd never set foot in Verdigny, which is a tiny hamlet maybe three kilometers away, and just "a flea's jump" from Chavignol.

We walked into the tasting room, and I got an immediate sense of friendliness from the easygoing, generous attitude of M. Prieur, who went to get some artisanal chèvre to go with our tasting.

So, first off, we tasted the range of his latest wines. He makes one of each color, full-stop. No parcelling, no special cuvées. Just traditional Sancerre, in rosé, white and red. And the ones we tasted - 2007s for the rosé and white, 2006 for the red - were model Sancerres. The rosé was fleshy but bone-dry; it was beautifully balanced. The white blew me away: harmonious, suave, rich but not brawny in the way of those Rafael Nadal wines, the overextracted, tiny-yield monsters you sometimes encounter these days, where you feel like the juice has been squeezed out of the only grape on a twisted, 120-year-old vine. No, this was classic, limpid and refreshing, extraordinarily classy Sancerre.

The 2006 red was, for me - ever the skeptic about red Sancerre (nb: that did get me roped into a delicious blind tasting of a 1993 red at Arnaud's parents' place, but I think I've already written about that here) - for me, usually skeptical about Sancerre reds, this Paul Prieur red was excellent. A very different expression of Pinot Noir than you would find in Burgundy (yet Sancerre practically rubs up against the western part of that region, though it's cordoned off by the Loire), it was a serious wine with good structure. It clearly will age well - and we got proof of this soon after.

Seeing our interest and enthusiasm, M. Prieur was eager to show us the cellars and taste the 2007 from barrel. Still cloudy and a little carbonic, it nonetheless was already quite straight on the attack, with good material. It will be a nice wine in a year.

Then, acrobatically climbing up on a metal cage full of older bottles, our host plucked out a bottle of red - then repeated the exploit further on for a white. We went back up to the tasting room to open them.

2004 Paul Prieur Sancerre (white) - Hm! This was a delicious, absolutely harmonious wine. After some recent experiences with white Sancerres going a little sugary with time, tasting this one showed me that they can in fact remain light, flinty, with body but no lashings of residual sugar. Excellent.

And the surprise red: a 1996.

1996 Paul Prieur Sancerre (red) - Wow! Right from the start, it had a dark, brooding, expressive nose. On the palate, the wine was dense and complex, with a striking youthfulness and serious, well-constructed matter. Earth, cherries, stones... It was like a Burgundy from the Côte de Nuits...

And as we kept up the banter and talk, it grew later and started to rain on the flowers in M. Prieur's garden. Fortunately, there was enough room in the back of our little Spanish Smart to hold several cases of his Sancerre - which may help console me for my idol Roger Federer losing the Open... alas...

A Visit to Paumanok (North Fork, L.I.)

2008-05-27T11:00:00.005+02:00

It's raining in Paris now, but it wasn't much in New York these past ten days. It's good to get back to the smog and traffic and the smell of fresh bread.

That said, I drank some excellent wines while on the other side of the sea, and sneaked in a visit to a vineyard, to boot. With a schedule as hectic as one might imagine after over a year remaining "on the Continent" without a return home, I couldn't go all-out among the North Fork vines; I chose carefully...

So, the sunny gods of springtime were out frolicking amid the SUVs and fruit stands of the North Fork of Long Island last Friday as Arnaud and I wended our way to Paumanok Vineyards. We drove in, parked, and were greeted in the tasting room by Charles Massoud and Kareem Massoud.

What would follow would be an exciting afternoon (and I do mean all afternoon: we closed the place) of barrel tastings, followed by a cheese and wine (and even bitter cherry alcohol) smorgasbord, not to mention the surprise appearance of a certain Brad Coelho, fellow blogger and participant on the Mark Squires board.

Charles and Kareem are not only two of the most generous people around, they are also the most affable and are sharp as a tack. And they make some pretty damn fine wines.

We started with a tasting from two 2007 Barrel-Fermented Chardonnay cuvees which had just been put in their tanks and were still cloudy. Up wafted a pure Puligny nose from the second; the first was more opulent - the two will be blended together. I have to say that between the 2007 and the 2006, 2005 and 2000 Barrel-Fermented Chardonnays, they do excellent things with Chardonnay at Paumanok (I say this as a Burgundy nut). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Next we tasted from barrel the 2007 Merlot, which was ripe yet balanced with good acidity and a nice tannic cut at the end. This is Long Island-style Merlot, with good heft to it. Next to it, the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon was not a success; it seemed thin, with a little bit of green pepper, along with white pepper, as Kareem noted, or even cabbage, Charles felt.

As an inveterate Chinon fan, I was curious to taste the Cabernet Franc. Long Island does this well. I was not disappointed. Still in two separate barrels, one of the 2007 Cabernet Francs was pure Chinon. Extremely delineated, a beautiful violet color and bursting with violets and tiny berries. I wanted to swallow this. I think Arnaud did...

The second 2007 Cabernet Franc was Saint-Emilion, much earthier, and though from younger vines, more full-bodied. I liked both. They will be blended, but I wish the two snapshots of Cabernet Franc could remain independent; they were among my favorite wines of the day.

After, we tasted different barrels (new oak, older oak) of 2007 Merlot, which made for an good comparison between what the oak imparts or doesn't. Interestingly, the old oak left the wine itself more tannic, with the tannins in the new oak paradoxically acting to soften the impression of the wine's own tannins.

Last, before leaving the cellar, we tasted the 2007 Petit Verdot. I wish this were already bottled, because I would have bought a stash. I love it. It's weird, inky purple dark and unexpected on the nose, with blueberries and sumac and clove. At first I thought it was like a cross between grenache and syrah, but it's much more sweet spicy. Great stuff. I hope they still have some the next time I'm back.

After this, we were invited over to the house for some cheese and some bottled versions of their wines. This is where the quality of the Massouds' wines became very clear. We started with a 2007 Chenin Blanc, which was a very tropical-fruit, new world rendition of that grape. As someone used to Vouvray and Savennieres, it was a sharp contrast and a floral, pretty wine. The 2007 Sauvignon Blanc also gave me a head-snapping, "We're not in Sancerre anymore..." feeling. Passion-fruit, some sweetness and just a wild fantail of floral and fruit notes. 2007 Riesling and 2007 Riesling Demi-Sec were also exuberant, flamboyant wines.

A trio of Barrel-Fermented Chardonnays - the 2006, 2005 and 2000 Barrel-Fermented Chardonnays - brought us back to the Old World. Though the 2005 was a little fatty, with gobs of butter, the 2006 was very Meursault-like and I found Puligny minerality in the 2000. I was surprised at how the 2000 had aged: it was young and fresh and had years to spare. These were excellent.

Next we moved on to the reds. By common assent, we were just blown away by the 2000 Merlot Grand Vintage. How did this Right Bank Bordeaux get made on Long Island? This was serious wine, seriously beautiful and without a false note. I started to think about Charles's penchant for classicism (Kareem may go off in a weird new direction, we'll have to see... ), and how compelling that can be. The 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Vintage was young-seeming, and interestingly had more heft than other Long Island cabs.

Following this, we tasted a pair of 2005's and that showed how young they were. The 2005 Petit Verdot was somewhat more stately than the wild 2007. I'm glad they're doing this bottling; it's really interesting.

Then to finish up (or so we thought), we moved on to the 2006 Sauvignon Blanc Late-Harvest. Well-made sticky, similar to a Sauternes.

Brad was finishing up catching up - he had come in when we were already on the 2005 reds - and Charles went and got us a little find from Germany, a bitter cherry alcohol he served in tiny green-stemmed Alsace-shaped glasses. The bitterness of the cherries differentiated this from kirsch, and was piquant both on the nose and on the palate.

We had filled up on cheese and conversation. Kareem, who has been making the wines since 2001, is a great proponent of the use of screwcaps, and has tested his theories from New York to New Zealand and back, by way of South Africa. The 2007 whites are closed this way. He pooh-poohs the notion of problematic reduction and looks forward to bottling the age-worthy reds under screwcap. His knowledge and passion for what he's doing are exciting to engage with.

Charles sees things with a much more classic eye, and I got the sense he was the driving force behind the classicism of many of the vineyard's red bottlings - though he does admit to a current penchant for the more exuberant whites (the ones I found so "new world").

Long Island wines' fascination for me includes their very maritime Frenchness. Afterward, we walked out into the setting sun. I felt positively transported.

Splendor in the grass

2008-05-05T10:08:00.008+02:00

It's hard not to heed the picnic's siren song on a sunny May day in Paris when it's in the 70ºs (F, that is) and the market is brimming with all the fresh fruits, charcuterie and roasting chickens you could want.

Six of us convened on the Coulée Verte, which is a deep green stripe running through the 12th arrondissement with bike paths that flow directly into the Bois de Vincennes a few kilometers away. Our bike baskets were filled to the hilt: sausage, duck pâté, partridge pâté, a roast chicken and a half, salad with corn and avocado, bread, six kinds of cheese, grapes, apples and a homemade chocolate cake with whipped cream.

We settled into the deep grass. And then Vianney and Anne-Juliette announced they are getting married! (In Beaune, with a reception where they'll be pouring Vosne-Romanée, I should add.) So they had brought a small producer's champagne to test-run and see if it would appeal to our palates for the reception. I found the NV Frédéric Massonot Cuvée de Réserve 1er Cru Brut to be well-balanced, with a judiciously light dosage; I'll enjoy drinking it in Beaune.

With the pâtés, we had some rosé that Vianney's school buddy had brought and kept mysteriously shrouded in its chilled sleeve. Nice southern French unpretentious stuff.

I'd popped the 2000 Philippe Alliet Chinon "Coteau de Noiré" early, but Arnaud was thirsty for red and it got poured about fifteen minutes later. Closed, dark and tight with surprising underbrush tastes (I had imagined it more "sun-drenched") this petered out in the mid-palate; I was expecting something a little more polished. But with air, it fleshed out and smoothed out. Not the Platonic ideal of Chinon I had been expecting, but very Chinon, which is a coup and an answer, too, to people who think Alliet deforms the model a little too much with this cuvée. Everyone else loved it, but Arnaud was cantankerously opposed. He did down quite a bit, though, just to make sure.

2006 Janin Moulin-à-Vent - we'd tasted this with the producer a few weeks ago and it had curiously paled beside the more complex and deeper Beaujolais-Villages. Here, it had come back into its own and was the picture of classically styled Moulin-à-Vent with that tasty, unmistakable gamay nose.

As we headed into the cheeses, I regretted not bringing the rest of the 1998 O. Leflaive Corton-Charlemagne I had brought home from a wine dinner the evening before. What we had to work with here was a 2005 J.-P. Mugneret Hautes-Côtes-de-Nuits, which is light-bodied yet upped the complexity a tiny bit from the Moulin-à-Vent and gave us a brief sprut of pleasure until everyone was wined out and we ate fruit and chocolate cake and then drank tea and lay back in the grass for an hour or two, to the sound of birds chirping and children playing down by the lake.

Stop the press

2008-04-25T00:51:00.004+02:00

Just got back from a day in Avize.

Wait till I get the sparkles out of my eyes and I'll post something good...

(In the meantime, there is the version française.)

Springtime wines

2008-04-21T10:40:00.004+02:00

It is getting warmer, the skies are getting bluer, and walking around Paris has become an exuberant thing, under the big, leafy trees. It's also time to sip chilled whites and fresh Loire reds. This weekend we had a few.

With the ongoing drama of having no gas in the house (see here for gory details), cooking is lighter and touch-and-go (salads, charcuterie, with every now and then an ambitious duck breast with pan sauce or something like that); wines are supple.

We opened a 2005 Domaine de Veilloux Cheverny rouge this weekend, which was quite delectable. A couple of years ago, it had been too extracted, closed like a fist. Now, still full-bodied, it was smooth drinking, and a curious cross between Burgundy and Loire tastes. After, a 2003 Breton Bourgueil Perrières was commanding, brooding and an exceptional wine that can clearly age; not marked by the heatwave year, other than in a kind of weight, it stopped conversation a few minutes at the table. A couple of snaps in the whites gave quick pleasure at different times of day as apéritifs - a 2006 Jacques Rouzé Quincy was a burst of white flowers, and a 2005 J.-M. Boillot Bourgogne blanc was round, with citrus and cake, and even better on the second day.

We also walked along the Canal Saint-Martin and stopped in at the once populaire, now refurbished and trendy Hôtel du Nord for a glass of southern white (talking too much, did not catch the name). And as night fell, sat out on the terrace of an Italian joint and shared a bottle of young 2006 Chianti Classico.

Alas, Monday is here, and the weather has descended into drizzle. All the better, I suppose, for getting more serious, turning back to work, and giving the corkscrew a rest.

Ancient wines to delicious excess

2008-04-03T18:19:00.005+02:00

This morning I woke up feeling like a rose, despite an evening of serious wine consumption (and I won't tell anyone about the half-bottle of NV Laurent-Perrier I shared with the charming wife of a friend at a hotel bar prior...)

So, we happy ancient wine aficionados of François Audouze's Académie des Vins Anciens met up at the restaurant Macéo, where Mr. Audouze himself had, some hours earlier, singlehandedly opened a lineup of wines that would be enjoyed over the course of the next few hours with dinner.

NV Besserat de Bellefon Brut (with 15 years of cellaring) - this we drank before being seated. Honey and hazelnut on the nose, it showed few bubbles; just a light frizziness. On the palate it had integrated a sweetness and become a fine, round drink.

1998 Le Brun de Neuville Blanc de Blancs - this was a first champagne served at the table; it was sharp and young with sour citrus tastes and a very quick attack on the palate.

1978 Dom Pérignon Rosé (from magnum) - an awesome nose of crushed raspberries and strawberries, and tastes of ripe strawberries on the palate, this was nonetheless quite streamlined with great finesse, and a pleasing bitterness on the finish; long, long on the palate.

1966 Calvet Meursault - expressive Meursault nose. I was worried I would find this over-the-hill, as I don't usually like (or should I say "get"?) older whites; here, though, while there was an original walnutty vin-jaune note, that blew away and the wine fleshed out into a classic Meursault; a little hollow on the mid-palate, but with a fine, round finish that came bouncing back at the end.

1949 Ph. Meunier Puligny-Montrachet - the nose on this was discreet, almost inexistent. Vigorous swirling refused to bring it out. The original impression on the palate was of a much less seductive wine than the Meursault, less immediately pleasing, but its acidity was well-balanced and it showed excellent Puligny typicity. Then, when tasted with the starter dish of marinated white fish on a little tower of quinoa, fascinating crunchy, toasty notes came forth. A wine made for quinoa, apparently!

1975 Château Montrose - the first of the reds were poured, and I stuck my nose in this glass. Ooh. A sumptuous nose on it. Just lush and powerful. On the palate, it was powerful and silky both, with fruit and ash; I loved it. Outstanding wine.

1964 Château Brane Cantenac - cloudy purple in the glass, this had a much less "flattering" nose on it than the Montrose, but was more complex; it was fascinatingly backward yet unabashed about it. Curiously, then, its tastes were all fruit and softness. It tired in the glass before long, but it was a pleasing wine.

1955 Château Moulinet - another incredible surprise; a very dark color in the glass, it gave off aromas of dried rose petal and lilac, almost like pot-pourri; it was lush and round once tasted, with poised, offhand balance. Wonderful stuff.

1965 Château Lafite-Rothschild - lighter in color than the precedent, this had a slight, very slight whiff of cork on the nose. It was silky, complex and long, and I don't think the cork taint was present on the palate. Seamless and very long, utter finesse.

1934 Pomerol "mise de Luze" - this had a very "confited" nose of prunes; it was compact, somewhat confited and skewed a little toward acidity on the palate; it was not up to the level of the others.

1921 Château Rauzan-Ségla - somewhat cloudy in the glass, this was also "confited" on the nose, similarly to the Pomerol, but less so. And what I loved about this wine (I loved this wine) is that it was utterly "flawed" yet utterly seductive. I loved its tastes of compoted fruits; it had sweet charm.

1969 Louis Latour Corton "Clos de la Vigne" - Hm! As someone who loves Burgundy, I went weak in the knees when I smelled this, as though finding in its aromas of pinot noir and soil the memory of pleasures past and to come. And tasted, it did not disappoint; it was lacy, long, complex, brilliant. My favorite red.

1964 Clos de Tart - smelled after the Corton but before tasting either, this gave off a nose of mint and menthol; on the palate, it had tastes of moss and dark fruit; it wasn't as sensual as the Corton, but it had aged well, showed no signs of tiring, and was a powerful Burgundy with a very distinctive style.

1953 Pommard Epeneaux (prod. unknown) - dark and brooding, this was like a punch in the nose after the heady grace of the Corton and Clos de Tart. A taste of grilled steak at the end!

1934 (?) Jaffelin Bourgogne "Grand Vin des Caves du Chapitre" - this was off; corked or compromised.

1959 Mont-Redon Châteauneuf-du-Pape - a second strike in a row, this wine had seen better days. Didn't linger over it.

1959 Vega Sicilia Unico - though this still had the power of a Vega Sicilia Unico, this is the second time I have had the 1959 and it did not show as well as the previous time. A sugary, stewed side was peeking out. Enjoyable, but not grandiose.

Now, as people were starting to talk a little louder and walk around a little more, we moved on to the dessert wines (and my notes grew more sparse):

1957 Truilhé Langoiran moelleux - this is either from the appellation Cadillac or Premières Côtes de Bordeaux; it had a petrolly nose to it; I moved on quickly.

1962 Château Sigalas Rabaud - classic, elegant Sauternes. As the French would say, "Rien à redire" - i.e. it gives you just what you want from it.

1934 Hugel Gewurztraminer Vendanges Tardives SGN - when I taste old sweet Alsace wines, I am always shocked by their supernatural ability to age. This was, though it did have a bit of petrol on the nose, incredibly young. It is also the lucky winner of a tasting note I can no longer read: "slight apisanchare"?!

1969 Château Suduiraut - another stunner of a Sauternes. I only got a taste of this from someone else's glass, but it was lovely.

1932 Rivesaltes ambré Cuvée Prémisses - dark, dark toffee color; amazingly light fare in the mouth (I don't know why I always have the image of Rivesaltes as heavy; they are closer to port in alcohol level, no?); it was delicate, with an amusing maple syrup finish. I liked it a lot.

1937 Domaine du Pin Premières Côtes de Bordeaux moelleux - another great surprise from an unprestigious appellation, this was refreshing and had aged perfectly. It was also as dark as toffee, but it was light and nicely balanced. I drank more of it than I should have.

At least, afterward, I was able to locate my coat in the cloakroom and had the good fortune of having put my umbrella in my pocket, so was able to bid François Audouze and the other revelers good night and head out into the rain with a light if somewhat imprecise step...

Around the Hexagon

2008-03-29T11:23:00.009+01:00

Yesterday I met up with Neil at 1pm. We had a serious agenda, but unfortunately, I had grabbed a quick bistro lunch with Arnaud just before and ordered dessert - a Paris-Brest, which is a puff pastry filled with hazelnut buttercream - and, to my horror, and then unbridled gourmandise, the dessert was sized for a party of four with a hearty appetite.

So, it was in a sugar comatose haze that I met Neil before the Saint-Paul metro stop, next to a whirling merry-go-round.

We headed up to the Caves Bossetti to taste lineups of Chablis from William Fèvre and Côte de Beaune whites from Bouchard Père & Fils. Afterward, we would jump in the metro and go to the biggie: the Salon des Vignerons Indépendants, which is a bi-annual show in which some five hundred independent winemakers come and pour their wines, taste, discuss, and sell them.

When I got home at 7pm, my lips and teeth were a bit dark, and I was a bit sleepy. I had tasted quite a fearsome amount of wine. I will be systematic in the future, but at this early date, and before a tasting this afternoon, I will just jot down a few impressions.

Standouts:

2007 Amphibolite (Jo Landron) - I cannot get over the sheer exuberance of this cuvée. Landron's other Muscadets are more polished or classic (or, like the one aged in old oak - whatsit called, Fiefs du Breuil? - atypical and full-bodied), but Amphibolite is one quirky, jumpy, lively wine; its green-apple and brine are great.

2005 Breton Bourgueil Perrières - (with special mention to the splashy, crunchy 2007 Avis de Vin Fort and Nuits d'Ivresse - I am going to snap up cases of those babies) - this one was extremely elegant, smooth and not at all in the usual Breton "it's green because we like it" vein. I have hereby renewed my cultish adherence to the domain, after some doubts a year ago. Even the sparkling Vouvray - with far, far less RS this year - was delicious. And Pierre Breton remains the coolest person to talk to.

2005 Dupasquier Jacquère + Altesse + Altesse Marestel - Where has Dupasquier been all my drinking life? Back up the truck; this is Muscadet of the mountains, with a wild, incredible spicy thing going on. First taste; want much, much more.

2005 Bouscassé Madiran - Great bite, smooth then barky and hard on the finish. The starter of their lineup, this was, to my tastes, the outstanding bottle of the Montus/Bouscassé offering, though I also liked a tannat/cabernet blend, which I found quite suave.

We also tasted some more traditional fare: many Burgundies (a shock of pleasure with the Domaine Bernard Bachelet's 2005 Meursault Narvaux; bis repetita with Domaine Chevalier's white 2004 Ladoix "Bois de Gréchons," which both took the stuffing out of Bouchard's lackluster lineup.)

I was left with a couple of questions: why do people like William Fèvre's Chablis? I have never gotten any pleasure from them. And how come not more people enjoy Irancy - especially with a 5% slug of César grapes? (Much enjoyed a 2005 Ferrari Irancy "Paradis"; yes, aptly named.)

I also confirmed my opinion that old oak on Champagne is good.

All right, off to taste some cru Beaujolais.

Pop! And, crash...

2008-03-23T15:52:00.008+01:00

Friday night, we had a lot of wine, preceded by a lot of champagne. A bottle of NV Raymond Boulard Tradition Brut Nature opened the door for our debauchery: steely pinot excellence. Next up was the old standby I am always glad to repop, NV Pierre Moncuit Grand Cru "Moncuit-Delos." Then we went through a bottle of NV Charles Cazanove, which I found too common and indifferently dosaged.

*Cue sinister music*

I had put my favorite to chill in the freezer, because Sara was going to be late and we were running out of everything bubbles.

NV Fallet-Prévostat Extra-Brut. Now that, which I had first tasted last week, is one heady, vinous blanc de blancs from Avize. I was dying to taste it again.

This morning, of course, two days later I found it. (See picture, above.)

On a more positive note, I got to test run the Zaltos, which were thin enough to be like a blade against one's lip and gave an incredibly expressive and sharp take on the champagne in the glass.

But it's hard to judge calmly with so much banter and commotion (not that I have anything against friends and revelry... au contraire). So my new party line (Arnaud, take note) is that I need to try another bottle of champagne in the very near future, just to confirm and hone my first impressions.

And not be such a dolt with the chilling method.

You drink what?!

2008-03-19T09:04:00.012+01:00

There's always someone to tell you you're wrong, in wine. (Or to ask awkward questions like how much you paid for something you're wild about, when you don't want your boyfriend to know - but that's another story.)

Yesterday I posted to the board Wine Therapy about an Yves Cuilleron Saint-Joseph I had this weekend in Lille, which I loved, and which was (drum roll...) aged in oak, of the new persuasion.

Well, it may not fly for the oak-shy (which reminds me: one of the most egregious oak bombs I have had was the often-praised Cahors from Lagrézette, the 2000 Pigeonnier, selling at something like $150 ex cellar and undrinkable in the extreme)... Anyway, I have my tastes, and they do sometimes include discreet wood.

This weekend in the north of France was full of new landscapes - and the safe haven of La Part des Anges, a wine bar/restaurant that has my dream wine list. Five of us went there for lunch on Sunday and had some delicious and offbeat fare. But for the second time in three days, I was working around the wine hates of one of our party - and for the second time, those hates were firmly targeted on Burgundy, both red and white.

Now, I know I started this post with the complaint that there were always people to shout you down in the world of wine... But no Burgundy, red or white?! Get REAL!

The only solution was to get a white anyway and hope that the word "Rully" didn't ring a bell...

Here are a few notes from Lille.

NV Pierre Moncuit Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs "Moncuit-Delos" - Lively tiny bubbles and a delicate nose of little white flowers. On the mouth, great minerality and acidity with green apple.

1999 Alphonse Mellot Sancerre "Edmond" - Curious. I hadn't had an Edmond since the 2002, and that was in 2005. This was an odd bird for me. Good "wine" but not very typically Sancerre. Aged in oak, it had by now smoothed it out, but maybe that added to its curiousness. A great deal of body, unctuous on the palate, extremely young for a nine-year-old sauvignon blanc. I would have loved it, but there was a serious dash of residual sugar that I found out-of-place.

2005 Vincent Dureuil-Janthial Rully 1er Cru "Meix Cadot" - Plump young white Rully from my favorite producer of the appellation. An inviting, toasty nose, and on the palate, it wears its oak fairly discreetly, has a lot of body yet some rocks to it.

2005 Yves Cuilleron Saint-Joseph "Sérine" - I heart Yves Cuilleron. This was just a beautiful expression of northern Rhône syrah. A touch of caramel on the nose, and amazingly expansive yet suave on the palate. Everyone fought over this one. Me too.

2004 Alter Ego de Palmer - Haven't tasted this since a year ago. It is still pretty green and wiry stuff. The nose is quite heady and "racé" (i.e. lots of class), but on the palate I think it needs more time to smooth out. It is long on the palate, though, evolving into bark, chocolate, minerals, and violets.

P.S. Back in Paris, Zalto's time is nearing... I can feel it...

The big Z

2008-03-12T11:13:00.005+01:00

Well, well, well, if it isn't Zalto... Yes, someone showed up on my doorstep this morning, at long last. Big box, very light, and I attacked it with a pair of scissors.

No, it wasn't, as labeled, six Bordeaux glasses, but rather a pair of champagne flutes.

First reaction: Oh? That's it? So small and light and not in some way the splendid grail of wine-glassery.

But of course, we'll have to give them the chance to prove their mettle. Heading down to the cellar soon to fetch something I can chill for this evening...

To be continued...

The Frightening Optimism of Wine Collecting

2008-03-06T16:07:00.004+01:00

I drink wine (a lot, even); I explore wine; I discover wines; I seek them out, sniff them and sip them. Cheapies I glug, sometimes.

But I have trouble collecting wine. Cellaring it. Purchasing it in quantities sufficient to allow long storage, untouched. Of bottles that need that kind of lengthy slumber before being mellow and right to pour.

To me, collecting age-worthy wines is an act of wild optimism - folly, almost. I have trouble even taking out a magazine subscription - I mean, how do I know I'll still live in the same place a year from now (let alone two)? Or that I'll still be alive? Given my gun-shy attitude toward something as simple as a monthly glossy in the mail, how can I grapple with the problem of amassing many, many heavy objects that you can't take with you anywhere, unless you hire a big truck?

I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the shift from backfilling (since I'm not so crazy as to drink age-worthy wines young) to... aging them. We'll see.