Côtes-du-Rhône Villages x 2

Côtes-du-Rhône Villages. What does it mean? It means only that a Village wine has been designated a rung higher than a regular old Côtes-du-Rhône. Côtes-du-Rhône Villages are slightly more expensive and, it seems so far, significantly more personable than your average Côtes-du-Rhône. This wine is predominantly made from the crushed felt juice of Grenache, though also includes Syrah and Mourvedre and, potentially, a few other lesser known varietals in small quantities. Tonight we tried two, both quite good:

2007 Domaine la Soumade Rasteau Côtes-du-Rhône Villages ($23)
2006 Domaine Richaud Cairanne Côtes-du-Rhône Villages ($23)

Rasteau
Have you ever met someone who seemed nice and friendly and easygoing at first, but then you go out and have a few drinks and--WHAM!--they're all up in your business? But in a good way? That's Rasteau. Big fruity nose, easy and deep layers of over-ripe flesh and lushy flavor but with that Grenachey structure. I keep picturing purple, overdue plums. But then, in the finish, a little cactus-prickle creeps over the tongue. Especially on the sides, where the wine hovers for a moment before fading out. This is 14.5%, so the BIGness is no surprise. All that alcohol adds to the luster. This wine was made for a meat sauce.

Cairanne
First thoughts? Hamburger. Blood, maybe thinned out, after all, by 5 milligrams of Coumadin. The Richaud flares up more quickly than the Domaine de Soumade. It's antsier, more nervous. The sparkle is nice, though, and the wine has a kind of light inside it that is refreshing after the intensity of the Rasteau. Still, as it airs out in the glass an overtone of bitterness makes itself heard. Not much, really, but the wine doesn't sail along so easily if you pay close attention. I guess this may simply be a more tannic wine, with a little more natural bite. Good, but not quite the experience Rasteau offered so easily.

South African Pinot

I just cracked open a bottle of a fantastic Pinot Noir from South Africa. Tracy gave it to me for Christmas, and the bottle was so beautiful and heavy I stored it away like a big old rock, thinking I'd keep it for quite a long time. But then, a few days ago, I received a piece of particularly good news and wanted to celebrate. So I dug out the bottle and drew the cork.

2008 Hamilton Russell Vineyards Hemel-En-Aarde Valley ($42)

The color is classic Pinot, brilliant and clear with lots of room for the light to get in. The aroma is rich, with tons of loam and even some sweet stuff, like red ripe cherries. Very earthy and vegetal and woody. One thing I love about this wine is the way it stabilizes on the tongue, and moves very little. There are no swells of flavor that come and go. Rather, the wine enters the mouth fully formed and just pauses there, more composed than you are, until you decide to swallow it at last. Afterward, for a few moments, there's an echo that reverberates in the palate and eventually singes off. This is simply fantastic, special wine. I can't say I've really had better Pinot Noir than this in my life . . .

Côtes du Rhône x 3

I love Côtes du Rhône. Here are three affordable bottles. Why affordable? There are different classifications of Côtes du Rhône, including Côtes du Rhône, Côtes du Rhône Villages, Côtes du Rhône Villages with an actual village name included (e.g., Sablet), and then the  Côtes du Rhône Cru wines, like Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas and Hermitage. Tonight we're drinking humble old  Côtes du Rhône.

2007 Pont du Rhone Clerget Terroirs ($12)

This is plonk, pure and simple. It's thin, as a wine based on Grenache shouldn't be. It's a little bitter and sour and reeks of cheap oak. Flavors hardly come through, except expired cherry cough syrup. I wonder if this bottle roasted in the hold of a supertanker or spent too much time in a semi, boiling in its own sauce on the way from Mount Vernon to Smith Street, Brooklyn.

2009 Domaine Barry   Côtes du Rhône ($12)


Soft and light, balanced with fruit and acid. Flavors of blackberry, mostly, and a peppery sparkle. Long smooth finish, very nice wine. I notice the nose is packed and dynamic in a way the wine itself isn't in the mouth.



2007 Yves Cheron Côtes du Rhône "Les Dentelles" ($12)
The best of the lot, no question. Fuller in body, suppler of taste, plush and clean. Ripe, organic. Very even in the mouth, stopping where it began. Lots of dark fruits, berries and plums.

1985 Dom Perignon

At some point during the mid-1980s, my father was given a gift of a bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon champagne. It's a beautiful green bottle and comes in its own cardboard display box, with a little pamphlet explaining (in English and French) all you'd need to know about this peach of a sparkler.

So in the 1980s, the bottle was given. And there it sat, in my father's basement. Through the end of the Reagan and Bush years. Through Clinton's two terms. Through the entire Bush spectacle. And finally, through the opening moves of the Obama administration. Why? Out of reluctance, I imagine, to drink what one has. To save rather than to savor, own rather than drink. This makes me think of the verb To Have. Its double-meaning couldn't be better expressed than in this desire to both have a wine stored safely in the basement, and to have it with friends. Is the fear that by having a wine one might feel had?

In any case, I imagine some time in the early '90s would have been an auspicious year for uncorking this fine wine. Unfortunately, 2010 has proved to be a few administrations too late.

Why? The wine was, after all, drinkable. The sparks still flew across the tongue, and one could even say that all that time had enriched the light champagne, added texture and depth. There were distinct flavors of burnt toast, caramel, honey, and soft wood. I've read tasting notes from vintage Dom Perignons, and often the descriptor is "sherry-like," which seems right. The color was gorgeous, a saturated ochre. It was mature and wise.

And yet, it wasn't very pleasing to drink. I had to draw on purely intellectual capacities to enjoy it, to tell myself that something here was special. In fact, it probably was special. But ripeness, in this case, is not all.

So, Caveat Imbiber: have your wine.

Italian Whites II

Wait a minute . . . how many Italian whites are there? I think I've stumbled into an enchanted wine forest. There are, I'm coming to learn, literally hundreds of white Italian grapes. Today I'm tasting four new ones: Pallagrello Bianco, Vermentino, Insolia, and Verdicchio. What are they? I have no idea. I guess I didn't realize how many varietals are grown and bottled and consumed besides the grapes of global fame--Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc. This seems especially like an Italian thing (though I recently noticed the Swiss have lots of mysterious white grapes too). Last week, I was most excited by the Greco. Come on and let's see about these new aspatsafumatos!

2005 Alois Pallagrello Bianco ($25)

The Alois is very good! Very full and rich, lots of body and flavor, but in no ways too succulent or overbearing. The nose is deep and soft and wooded, the mouthfeel fat and loose. Great tastes here, of tropical fruits, including maybe pineapple and banana (maybe that last one's a stretch). The finish is cool and slow, and the tastes linger and develop on the tongue. Bold wine, not for absentminded sipping.







2009 Toscona Vermentino "La Spinetta" ($23)

Much lighter than the Pallagrello, round and breathy, almost no detectable acidity. In fact, this wine is almost weirdly flat in the mouth, like a very still lake of water. Melony, curvacious. A hint of pine sap. Maybe even some kind of muted fantasty spice-rack spice, like powdered orange rind. The fumes sing up in the high parts of the nose, almost tickling them. Quite lovely, a perfect balance between fullness and light.





2007 Mulinea Insolia "Curatolo" ($15)

The Insolia grape can be found all around Italy, but if it's spelled "Insolia" rather than "Ansonica," you're drinking a Siclian wine. This is beautiful, greenish-yellow wine with herbaceousness and a certain summery heft. Tracy thinks it's a little on the sweet side, though I don't taste the sweetness, just a little extra girth, especially in contrast to these lighter wines. It's fresh and clean, and drinking it now it somehow seems like a hopeful wine. It has a pleasing acidity, and ends with a surprising rush of flavor on the front of the tongue.


2009 Fattoria Laila Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi ($12)

This Verdicchio is decent wine, though not quite as nice as the other three. It's on the clear side, and has a waft of "white wine smell"--that oafy, somewhat lugubrious tone of cheapy white. Still, it's not a bad everyday wine, light and inoffensive and quaffable.

Italian Whites I

I've noticed so many types of Italian white wine lately, and I've tried some that are fantastic. Last Thursday I tried three wines, all for $16--a Falanghina, a Vernaccia, and a Greco. (I tasted a Greco in South Carolina a few months ago and loved it, so I'd been searching one out.) It's probably a better idea to try varietals next to each other--a Falanghina with a Falanghina--but my local wine shop only has one of each varietal. They were:

2009 Campi Flegrei Falanghina ($16)

Crisp, light, apple and white fruit, wide in the mouth, a slow finish. A touch of milky strength, but a good deal of honest fruit flavor that softens it out.


2009 Vernaccia di San Gimignano La Lastra ($16)

This is the famous Tuscan white. It's incredibly bright and lithe, quick on the tongue and full of hard lemon. Glinting, machine-like, steely and nervous. So thin the flavor blots out a little.


2009 Ocone Greco ($16)

The clear favorite of the three (Tracy agrees). More depth, more color, more layers. There is citrus and honey and something like a bark lengthiness to it. More character than the Vernaccia or Falanghina.

More Italian whites to come . . .

What is it about Chateauneuf-du-Pape?

I have no idea, but last night Tracy, Marci, and I tasted a truly fantastic bottle of Chateauneuf, plus a less impressive Cotes du Rhone for comparison. The wines were:

2007 Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape ($90)
2008 Domaine Monpertuis Cotes du Rhone ($15)

Chateauneuf is an appelation that allows for 13 grape varieties, and "classic" wines from this region, like the Beaucastel, sometimes plant and use all of them. In this wine, the wine's Website explains, the two main grapes here are Mourvedre (about 30%, giving tannins and structure) and Grenache (30%, offering the softer, rounder parts). There is also Syrah (10%), Muscardin (5%), and Vaccarese (5%), all offering some kind of color, spiciness, or whatever. They add a small amount of Cinsault, usually included to develop the nose, and seven other varietals, in very small quantities, that make up Chateauneufs.

This means, too, that this Chateau has in its fields, growing all together like a happy family, all 13 grapes. They're all sucking water and nutrients from the same soil, and getting pretty much the same sun. Then, they're harvested and fermented separately (many undergoing malolactic fermentation for that milkiness), and then blended together before being held another year prior to bottling.

In any case, this is a most delicious example of this kind of wine. Very full in the mouth and luscious. The tastes aren't really as distinct as you might think. For me, at least, there are not a ton of individual flavor notes popping out; rather, the wine settles in and kind of relaxes. It is a pleasure engine made of soft parts. It's calm. Really beautiful wine, happy and radiant.

The Monpertuis, for contrast, is from the same general area, and made of some of the same grapes, though by no means all--I think this wine is mostly Grenache and Mourvedre, with a little Syrah thrown in. It's fine wine, but in contrast very thin and pale. The metaphor most effective here is a spatial one--where the Beaucastel had depth and dimension, the Monpertuis was flat and lean. Where the Beaucastel opened up and expanded in the mouth as it paused there before being swallowed, the Monpertuis nervously rocketed through, lithe and unchanged.

In a way, it's good to know that significant price differences do in fact make some kind of aesthetic sense. Still, I'm somewhat off-put by the knowledge that to get this kind of placid brilliance from a wine one might need to spend so much. Still, it's got to be worth it, sometimes, to just taste this kind of thing.

One Fine Chenin Blanc

Chenin Blanc is a grape most people associate with Vouvray, great white wine from the Loire Valley, near to where the more globally popular Sancerre is produced. Chenin Blanc is an extremely versatile grape, and can be turned easily into dessert wine, Champagne-style sparklers, and light and crisp deliciousness. Tonight, Thursday Night Tasting sampled just one excellent and truly unique bottle of Chenin Blanc:

2009 Chateau Soucherie Cuvée les Rangs de Long, Anjou Blanc ($18)

That elaborate labeling really just indicates the wine producer (Chateau Soucherie), the "line" of wines from which this bottle comes (Cuvée les Rangs de Long), and the appelation (Anjou Blanc). There's also a little motto on the label--"Vendanges a la main"--which means "picked by hand."

The most noticeable quality to this wine is the intense floral—no perfumey nose. It's a soft aroma, full and light at the same time. It smells of something I can’t name, but that's so distinct, like a wildflower (I looked at some online descriptions of Chenin Blanc and a flavor called "white flower" was listed). Tracy says this wine smells like a French woman (in a good way). I also get clear citrus tastes, though just a drop. There wine is crisp and healthily acidic, and when I drink it I keep picturing the skin of the grape itself.

The other really noticeable thing about this wine is the color, which is quite lucid and sparkly. There's a kind of yellowy clearness that some wine has that I love, and it's rare. This looks a lot like a wine I had recently but didn't blog about, a Cassis, though that wine had much less delicacy of aroma and flavor than the Anjou Blanc.

Finally, though this wine drinks light and easy, it's a full 13%. This surprised me when I checked the alcohol content. 

Coming up soon on Thursday Night Tasting: killer rosés . . .

Rioja after Dachau

Thursday Night Tasting is currently on the road, in Munich, Germany. Tracy and I have just returned from Dachau, which is a few minutes by train from the center of the city. We saw the enormous central yard, where prisoners were forced to stand as punishment for a missing person at roll call, sometimes dying on the spot. We saw the camp's two crematoriums and the rebuilt barracks with their triple-stacked bunks. We saw the showers where prisoners were beaten with leather whips and the showers where they were to be gassed.

What does this have to do with Rioja? Nothing. But now, after a trip back on the S-Bahn, where we split a bar of chocolate and hazelnuts, I'm drinking a glass of it. We bought two bottles of Rioja, a red and a rosé at the supermarket about an hour ago. The small shops here close at 7:00pm, so if you don't get to the bakery, the wine store, or the pharmacy during the day your only real option is the supermarket. I'm drinking the red:

2008 Viñadel Asador Rioja (3 Euro)

It's OK. Lots of wine in Germany is sold at supermarkets, and it's surprisingly cheap. Some of it looks too iffy to consider or the blends are too weird, like Chardonnay-Riesling. In any case, this wine is light and thin, though with that kind of ferrous, almost metallic twang that gives it something half pleasing and half irritating. It's got wood notes but it's not oaky. It's not acidic but it I feel little needles on the tip of my tongue. Uncomplicated, simple, and really nice to have here at the kitchen table in our quiet neighborhood.

Chardonnays, Californian and French

The end of the semester + the beginning of summer = hard to log in Thursday night tastings. But they've been good recently, focusing on Chardonnays from the United States and France.

The wines were:

American
2007 Chalone Vineyard Monterey County Chardonnay ($20)
2007 Bedell Cellars Reserve Chardonnay ($35)

White Burgundies
2003 Beaue Gréves Domaine Jean-Marc Morey 1er Cru ($35)
2006 Auxey-Duresses "Les Hautes" Jean-Marc Vincent ($48)

The two American Chardonnays are instructively different versions of American style Chardonnay. In general, New World Chardonnays, and especially American Chards, are big yellow honeypots. One reason Chardonnay is so "big" here is the way it's vinified, which is, often, with lots of malolactic fermentation and long seasoning in new oak barrels. Malolactic fermentation is a process that turns the bitter malic acid present in grape must into lactic acid--the kind found in milk and butter. All that lactic acid is what gives Chardonnay that round buttery body. New oak, of course, adds flavors of vanilla and toast and (obviously) oak. A book could be written on the use of new oak in modern wine making. In any case, many U.S. Chardonnays are heavily oaked and malolactically fermented, and for that reason they have gained a reputation as big and bold--or obvious and tacky, depending on one's tastes.

What's interesting here is that the two Chardonnays are made differently: the Chalone is a big American without a lot of oak, and the Bedell is a big American with tons of oak. Both are produced with lots of malo. How do I know? Drinking them side by side can tell a lot.

Chalone is one of the west coast's most famous labels. Chalone's Chardonnay came in third in the famous Judgment of Paris, a 1976 wine tasting in France that established California wines on the global stage (George M. Taber's 2005 book Judgment of Paris tells the story in 336 pages). This bottle of 2007 was voted one of the top 100 wines of the year by Wine Spectator last year. Chalone Vineyard was also an early proponent of malolactic fermentation and brought Burgundian winemaking techniques to California wines back in the Ford and Carter years. The soil is said to be rich in granite and limestone, mimicking the terroir of places like Chablis. In short, this is a storied American wine. So unlike a Chablis, though, the wine is Americanly strong: rich and creamy with a depth of flavor (vanilla, pears, honey, flowers) and a muted nose. Barely any oak. While there is a lot happening in the glass, for my taste, this wine is simply too plush.

Bedell Cellars is not in California, where the great American Chardonnays are produced. Where is it? The North Fork of Long Island, never thought of as a true wine destination. Tracy and I took a trip there a few months ago and, at the tasting, got very enthusiastic about their pricey but boldly delicious Reserve Chardonnay. Tastings are not always the best indicators of how much you'll like a wine when you actually get home. You're out at a beautiful vineyard enjoying yourself and suddenly everything is delicious. This wine isn't bad in any way--it's really quite good--though it's ripe with oak and fruit and vanilla. I noticed that the colder it got, the more I liked it--which is perhaps a way of saying that I didn't like the lushness, as coldness keeps body and flavor in check. But tasting this next to the Chalone, it seemed that these two wines stood as good examples of American Chardonnay, milky and oaky and rich. The oak really pops out in the Bedell when tasted next to the Chalone, which restrains its wood flavors considerably.

The white Burgundies are dramatically different. In fact, the difference is not only great between the wines, but the actual styles of taste are of two separate characteristics altogether. That is, white Burgundy tastes like white Burgundy and American Chardonnay tastes like American Chardonnay. There are obviously exceptions to this, but in this case the differences between regions--and their similarity--was striking. The Beaue Gréves is a real 1er cru Burgundy wine, with layers of flavor and that depth and impressive range of flavor that these wines are famous for. It was full of bright toasty flavors, almost like a crispy piece of country bread. I also tasted that vegetal robustness many Burgundies display. This wine is rich and full, though without the more syrupy and dense mouthfeel of the Chalone and Bedell wines. The Auxey-Duresses was similar the the Beaue Gréves, though had a detectable whiff of forest mushroom along with all the other tastes. Beautiful, happy wines. One thing about great Burgundies is the color, which sparkles and glimmers, light and wry and rich and full at the same time.

Interestingly, these two white Burgundies are purveyed by two of the best-known American importers of French wine, Neal Rosenthal (Beaue Gréves) and Kermit Lynch (Auxey-Duresses). Both these importers ship their wines in cold storage to preserve the right cellar temperature during trans-Atlantic voyages. This is actually crucial to imported wines, which may sit in a ship's hold for weeks. Imagine wine headed to California, shipped through the Panama Canal, baking in the wicked Panamanian heat. Cold shipping adds a few cents to each bottle, but it most definitely worth it.

Gigondas

I just learned the word Gigondas about a month ago. Tracy said it. She told me how she tasted one once, years ago at a dinner party. What is it? I wondered. Sounds like one of Tolkein's elf kings.

Well, it's just a wine growing region in France. I'm focusing now on the southern reaches of the Côtes du Rhône. In the north reigns Syrah, but in the south it's primarily Grenache. This is the home of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, mostly Grenache but usually mixed with a variety of grapes. And so Gigondas, perhaps less well known, perhaps less iconographic as Chateauneuf, but in the same style and of the same land.

Last night, Tracy, Kristie and I tried a Gigondas and a regular Côtes du Rhône from nearby. In fact, these wines are from the same winemaker. They were:

2008 Domaine du Gour de Chaule Côtes du Rhône ($16)

2004 Domaine du Gour de Chaule Gigondas ($35)

I found both of these wines to be really satisfying and great, but in quite different ways. The first is friendly, warm, soft, and a little bit lush. It's an easy wine to drink, sunny and bright and approachable. The second, the Gigondas, is tight, dry, lithe, and canny. It's serious and noble. They're quite different wines, suitable for quite different moods. Like literary genres, neither style is, to me, inherently better than the other. Is a novella better than a renga? I may prefer reading rengas, but that doesn't mean they're better than novellas. It's just a matter of, er, taste.

And so the lesson from tonight: I think I'm learning that the French prize wine that's lean, light, tannic, serious, and restrained. Edgy wine. Wine with all its vertebrae intact. Wine with buttons and snaps. A wine in oils, not water colors. This is what counts as good in France. And maybe elsewhere, of course, though I feel like the French are taste-makers for the world of wine, or at least have been historically.

I find myself wondering if this hierarchy of taste really matters. I realize that the Gigondas is older, and probably represents a style of wine that's much more difficult to produce. These subtle, layered effects of the wry wine are simply more of a feat. It's hard to make, and less obviously announces its pleasures. And so, it's prized more highly. And yet, isn't that friendly Grenache the one I'd like to spend time with, too?

Côtes du Rhône

Soft, round, smooth, and balanced. Immediate pleasure. Flavorful without being juicy. An assertive tannic after-bite, mostly in the finish, which I feel in the front of the teeth and top of the palate. The body is lush and total, perhaps best described as a "wash" or "wall" (actually, the term "wash" is a water-color term; it refers to the effect of background layers of color that are evenly spread over the painted surface). It's a complete feeling to drink this wine. Tracy says this wine will braid your hair--I guess like a really good friend. I don't notice a lot of development on the palate over time--this wine is fairly stable, and doesn't really evolve in the glass as much as the Gigondas will . . .

Gigondas

This is developed wine. Have you ever had a friend who you liked because they taught you something? Someone you looked up to and respected? He is this wine. She is this wine. Or should I say, this wine is him? In any case, sizzling and light, dry and bouncy, this wine is lean with a lot of structure. What is structure? I take it to mean, here, that there is a burst of fruits--the typical dark fruits, which seem so characteristic of all these Rhone wines, plus the obvious berries--held in check by the brick-and-mortar of the tannins. Emerson called these quantities "power an form," both of which are necessary, both of which are present in any creative force. I notice that, over some time, the wine unwinds a little in the air and becomes rounder and smoother. The restraint, structure, leanness, and character of the initial sips is giving way to something more like the Côtes du Rhône--but not entirely. This wine keeps its coat on.

Two Syrahs, One World

Tonight's wines are both Syrah (though in Australia they say "Shiraz"):

2004 Carlei Shiraz Victoria "Sergio's Blend" ($17)

2006 Crozes Hermitage Alain Graillot ($35)

A few months ago I said I'd be tasting my way through a number of varietals as a way to generally educate myself about wine. Tonight, I'll taste a couple of Syrahs, more or less ending the plan of moving through the central grapes that, at the time, I had read were the essentials: Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, Tempranillo, Sauvignon Blanc, Sangiovese, Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Chardonnay. (In fact, I never tasted Chardonnays specifically, though over the course of these months have tried numerous pairings of white Burgundies, Chablis, California Chards of milky and non-milky varieties, dry and light Long Island Chards, heavily lactating ones, the oaked and the unoaked, and so on; no need for an organized sampling). In fact, now that I've focused on these popular grapes, I realize I'd like to try a few more varietals before moving on to my anatomy of French wine. Over the past months, I've read about grapes I had never heard of before--the Nebbiolo, for example, a tannic and rustic Italian hill grape championed by Neal Rosenthal. I've also had quick tastes of varietals that I'd like to know more of--Granache, for example, the rich base of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and a source for white wine (Granache Blanc) that I tried recently. In any case, tasting wine by tasting by grape has been an excellent pedagogy. 

And yet paradoxically, during these months I've learned that grape DNA doesn't equal grape consistency. One of the most brayed about truisms regarding wine, the keyword in any defense of fine wine and its regional inimitability, is the concept of terroir. As I've been tasting types of grape from various corners of the globe, I've been tasting different terroirs, and the differences have been so great that I have come to wonder about the very idea of varietals. If terroir is so essential, to what extent is wine pressed from grapes the product of its genetic makeup?

To take the most obvious example, what does it mean that a William Fevre Chablis (tasted twice in Thursday Night Tasting)--a light, chalky, crisp, lemony bolt of a wine--is derived from the "same grape" as La Crema Chardonnay, an unctuous, luscious wall of creamy California hugeness? They're both "Chardonnays" but they're so very different it calls into question their categorical affiliation. So does it make sense to learn about wine by tasting varietals? The assumption is that grape, not land and climate, is the determining factor in any wine. While the case of Chardonnay is perhaps the marquee example, the question goes for any wine, anywhere.

Well, I don't know. I still like varietal tasting and think it's incredibly useful, mostly because we live in a global wine economy. If I'm going to drink globally (which I'd like to do), I should know how a Pinot Noir from South Africa shakes out next to an Oregon Pinot and a classic Burgundy. How can I begin to judge Rieslings from New York's Finger Lake region, which I keep reading is producing brilliant Riesling, without knowing not only about German, Austrian, and Alsatian Rieslings, but California ones as well? Wine is everywhere now being sold by varietal, from China and India to the tropics. Apparently, an emerging technology called Deep Ocean Water agriculture is beginning to allow for the growth of wine grapes in hot and steamy climates (it seems to work by pumping in cold water from deep pockets of sea adjacent to farmland as a coolant). How a particular grape performs in various places may be just the relevant way to begin tasting wine.

So I'm sticking with my plan: I'm going to taste a few more varietals along the way, focusing on regional and geographic distinctions, but move more immediately (after tonight, that is) into the nebula of French wine, hopping from region to region--from terroir to terroir. France is, of course, the source of the concept of terroir, and French wine reflects this--one buys a Burgundy, not a Pinot Noir, a Bordeaux, not a Cabernet Sauvignon. France organizes its wine into "appellations," or AOCs, designated wine growing regions that are carefully controlled in terms of how much wine they can produce, what types of grape(s) they can use, and how they may vinify their wine. In France, terroir trumps varietal.

As suggested above, perhaps this way of thinking is out of date. I just read in Lawrence Osborne's The Accidental Connoisseur that the French are the world's most provincial wine drinkers, importing just an astonishing 3% of their wine. That means that many French wine shops carry virtually all French wines. This is quite difficult to imagine for an American, used to wine shops organized nationally, with American and French wines up front, and wines from Australia, Italy, Spain, Argentina, and many other countries in back. To Americans, wine is grapes gone global; to the French, it's local land.

In any case, tonight we're being a little global, as usual. If any country represents to the traditional wine world the impact of emerging regions, it's Australia. In fact, one might say that Australian Shiraz symbolizes above any other wine how new places shape new tastes and shift global markets. Their big, approachable, fruity flavor bombs have either satisfied or created a lust for this kind of gargantuan oeneological experience. (I should say, I've not chosen a Shiraz from the Barossa Valley, where the most decadently profound juice missiles are made; the Victoria region, to the south of Barossa, produces lighter stuff). The other Syrah tonight is from Crozes Hermitage, a highly regarded appellation that produces more typically French wine--leaner, tighter, more densely packed. So:

Carlei
Plum colored, silky, and fat. Nose is full and round, almost palpable, as if someone soaked a towel in a bottle of wine and then hung it under your nose. Lush and luscious, big and juicy, ripe all over. Tracy used the word "loose," and that's right--this wine has lots of room about it. The flavors include all the dark fruits, maybe some black licorice too. I don't actually taste blood, but it seems bloody, somehow. Ferrous, though not really much in the way of tannins, not a lot of structure. Many might like this wine for sipping with low key foods. The phrase "picnic wine" comes to mind.

Alain Graillot
Muted color, rich still but more rose-like, the saturated rose petal color from inside the whorl. Noticeable leather in the nose, plus salt and hardwood. A tight smell. I guess I'm getting used to French wine being thinner, lither, and more bracing than other types. Here it is, again--focused, spiny, bright and even a little rigid. There's a nice, long taste toward the back of the tongue, a delectable finish. That saltiness mentioned above, it comes back upon repeated tastes--almost a residual of oyster-shell. This wine makes me feel like wearing suspenders--or rather, it makes me feel as though I am already wearing suspenders. Braced up. Perhaps it goes without saying that, unless I'm having pizza or moc duck pad see ew for dinner, I'd choose the Crozes Hermitage every time.

Side-Taste: California Pinot

Well, I've always heard people--mostly from Oregon--say with decisiveness that California Pinots are not up to regional snuff. They're brash, loud, and overpriced, and fail to achieve all the wonders truly great Pinot Noir promises. I've often wondered if this line of criticism is true; it has the ring of something one learns to say, and its ubiquity as a comment leaves me dubious. I'm going to weigh in on the subject on the strength of just one bottle of California Pinot, while recognizing the limited nature of my observations.

Though I guess I think this bottle of Pinot Noir that I'm drinking--

2007 Rubicon Estate Captain's Reserve Pinot Noir "Carneros" ($29)

--this bottle is not really special. Take a look at the price tag: for such money, I should be getting a better wine. What's wrong with it? Nothing really. It's enjoyable, and I'm perfectly happy drinking it. But it's simply dull. First, the color. Pinot Noir is almost a different race of wine--typically, it's obvious as soon as the wine bubbles from the bottle's neck that a Pinot is a Pinot. The liquid is clear and sparkles in the light. It's bright and light and crisp and delicate, even to the eye. The Rubicon, however, has a heavy look, like it's just waking up. And the nose is full of generic oakiness. It's slight but noticeable, and reminds me of too many other wines, none of which really come distinctly to mind. The taste, I acknowledge, is pleasing--it's quaffable--but decidedly unremarkable. It's a little sweet, very full in the mouth, but it lacks the thing that great Pinot's have in barrelsful--fruit flavor without the fleshiness, complexity without the nuclear flavor. This wine is just a touch flabby. There's no structure. There's no identity. No character or grace.

Now, this is just one bottle of wine. But somehow, I feel that it does stand as an example of California Pinot. It's pricey (just look at that bottle, too, which is beautiful). It's from a vineyard--Rubicon Estates--that makes truly great, and truly Napa-Californian, Cabernet Sauvignon. Now that wine is delicious. Maybe I'll open a bottle of that some day soon.

Side-Taste: Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Cotes du Ventoux

What is Chateauneuf du Pape? It's an AOC in the southern Rhone valley of France that permits 13 grape varieties. The wine is typically dominated by Grenache but includes any admixture of Mourvedre, Syrah, Cinsault, Counoise, and Muscardin, Vaccarese and Terret Noir in the reds and Grenache Blanc, Roussane, Picardin, Picpoul, Bourboulenc, and Clairette in the whites. I don't know a lot about this wine, except the other night I tried two and liked them both very much. I'm going to try a number of other Chateauneuf-du-Papes, so stay tuned. The other night, they were:

2005 Cotes du Ventoux Chateau Valcombe ($15)

I have to disclose this fact: this is not an actual Chateauneuf-du-Pape. To be precise, it's a different appelation, Cotes du Ventoux. Still, it's a comparable wine from nearby Chateauneuf-du-Pape using Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvedre, and Carignan. This was a very nicely balanced wine, with lightness of body and flavor and what I tasted as cherry, plum, and a light spiciness. A really affable and considerate little glass of friendliness, but it didn't really prepare me for what was about to come, which was . . . 

2007 Domaine Monpertuis Chateauneuf-du-Pape ($38)

Wow, I really liked this wine! It's my first Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and I don't know if I just like this AOC a lot or if this bottle was particularly good, but this was luscious, friendly, fruit-filled but round and restrained wine. The effect was of layers of taste, sweetness and dryness and light and muscle all splayed out and balancing perfectly on the whole tongue. Not just the tip or the back or the sides, the whole flat place. I just tipped over a little when drinking this wine, one of my true favorite bottles.

In fact, I liked it so much that I'm going to get another bottle soon to double check my impressions. Also, I'm going to pick up a few more Chateauneuf-du-Papes to expand my experience with the entire appellation . . .

Chablis Chablis

Tracy and I just opened two bottles of Premier Cru Chablis. They are:
 
2004 William Fevre Chablis Premier Cru "Fourchaume" ($38)
2004 Chablis Premier Cru "Montmains" Dauvissat ($39)

In the first Thursday Night Tasting all those months ago--in which we drank Burgundies red and white--we tried a William Fevre Chablis, though not a Premier Cru. The second bottle tonight, the Montmains, I purchased from Rosenthal Wine Merchants on East 84th Street. What a store. I'll be purchasing much of my wine from them from now on, if I can get there often enough. We all know what a Chablis is by this point, so:

William Fevre
This is more of a white Burgundy to me than a typical, mineral-laced Chablis. Not as crisp, light, or dry as the other Chablis I've had. It has a soft mouthfeel and a bright fruit flavor discernible on the tongue. There's also a faint muskiness that I have tasted in white Burgundies before, a little touch of loam, mostly in the nose. After aerating the wine in my mouth, some slight hints of white-fleshed fruit comes through, mostly pear and maybe apple. This is surprisingly not like Chablis I've tasted. It's somewhat heartier and more robust.

Montmains
Lighter than the William Fevre, with more of that Chablis minerality. There's a little more acidity, and a touch of citrus flavor here as well, lemony arcs of flavor batting this way and that. Though again, I'm finding that both of these Chablis are quite different from the others--richer, more wooly and aged, a little wiser.

These wines remind me, a little, of the white Burgundy from the last posting, insofar as that wine was a little richer and deeper and more complex than other white Burgundies I've tried. These Chablis just have more in the saddle than the sunny brightness of previous Chablis. Most delicious, in any case.

Pinot Noirs or Pinots Noir?

If one drinks more than one bottle of Pinot Noir, would he be drinking Pinot Noirs? Or Pinots Noir? The former is correct, though the latter sounds better, like "passers by." In any case, the other night Edith, Gillian, Tracy, and I drank two exceptional Pinots, one from Oregon the other from Burgundy. 

Pinot Noir is perhaps the most fabled contemporary grape, mostly due to, again, the film Sideways. The character Miles, speaking more about his romantic fantasies than actual fruit, explains that Pinot "can only grow in these really specific, little tucked away corners of the world" and "only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot's potential can the coax it into its fullest expression."

Famously, that little précis of the Pinot Noir grape led to a significant bump in Pinot sales. I have to admit that I was swayed myself. I remember purchasing some decent Pinot Noir the next day, expecting some utterly magical spell to be cast in my mouth. I think I also responded to the romance of the grape, Miles's idea that the Pinot Noir required as much of its caretaker as it gave of itself. It was a description of love.

The Pinot is a magical, delicate, remote, and rewarding grape. And how quiet it is. The flavors are suggestions rather than clear statements. A well-made Pinot murmurs rather than explains. Its pleasures are even self-congratulatory. If you enjoy this wine, you feel like you know what enjoyment is.  If you can lean back and close your eyes and take it all in with the iPod dock on low, you feel like you're beginning to know something you didn't know before, about wine, about taste, about experience. At least, that's what you feel like telling yourself.  

The vineyards of Burgundy, in France, are the world's best-known and most celebrated terroir for Pinot Noir, though in recent decades Oregon has produced wines of equal stature. They're both ideal growing environments for Pinot: rainy skies and chalky soil in Burgundy and long, cool days and volcanic beds in Oregon. And I think that some of the Oregon Pinot growers have modeled their wines on French Burgundies. At least, Paul Gerrie, the maker of Cristom Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley, sat at the feet of Burgundy winemakers prior to establishing his own vineyards in the States.

The wines we tasted were both exceptionally good. They were:

2006 Cristom Pinot Noir, Sommers Reserve ($41)

2005 Gevrey-Chambertin, Domaine Louis Boillot & Fils ($65)

Cristom

The Cristom was a clear and clean cherry color (Gillian). Tracy called it garnet. In any case, it fell into the glass and shone clear and bright, just like a Burgundy. The nose was pretty harsh at first, and Gillian even said it singed her nose-hairs. We could all notice the harsh attack at first, the high astringency, the sharp tannins. Tracy felt like she could smell the grape seeds themselves. The body of this wine was wonderfully light and feathery. Tracy said it reminded her of balsa wood, though admitted she wasn't sure what that really was. We were all a little taken aback by the wine's assertiveness. But 

then . . .

. . . but then we let it sit for a little while and came back to the Cristom, and things had changed. The wine was a little rounder, a little sweeter--like Twizzlers, said Gillian. It was as if the wine had been slowly undressing and we were earlier tasting some of the garments. Now, flavors emerged: I tasted roses and pepper, and a distinct and extremely pleasant vanilla bean. This wasn't the vanilla that sometimes is imparted by oak--this was more like fresh vanilla itself. And Gillian felt that there were flavors of extracted fruit, like sour cherry. Tracy picked up currant and some kind of wood, though not cedar and not oak. The finish was perhaps what we all liked the most: long, easy, smooth and rising a little before fading away.

Gevrey-Chambertin

In many ways, this wine was similar to the Cristom: it shared the bright, jewel red hue, was light, dry, and tannic in the way Burgundies are. But the aroma was a little funkier. Gillian noticed what she called "fungus and burnt" and Edith got cinnamon and truffle. Tracy and I both detected an oaky smell in the nose, though neither of us could taste it. We also found rhubarb, spice, and leather, bitter but rewarding things. The wine itself was a little drier than the Cristom, a little more rigid and austere. And the finish was much quicker than the Cristom, more modest and withdrawing. It wasn't a wine that was giving up its secrets without a little bit of a fight. You had to push.

In fact, Gillian made an analogy between these wines and skis. The Burgundy was a set of high-performance skis that would reward hard skiing, that would work with you if you pushed them hard and rode them well. The Oregon Pinot--and, by extension, Oregon Pinots in general--was a pair of cruising skis, easier to ride and less requiring of drive on the part of the skier. This seems like a smart comparison.

One thing I am taking away from this is simply how good Pinot Noir from Oregon can be. This was my first one, though Gillian brought me four more. I'll let you know how they ski.

White Burgundy Madness

I split a fantastic bottle of 1996 white Burgundy with my friend Dave on Thursday night. As a 40th birthday gift, Dave took me to Veritas, a restaurant in Grammercy renowned for its wine list--enumerating a purported 196,000 bottles--that focuses on great French wines. We asked the sommelier for a white Burgundy for $250 or less. I drink in the cumulus. This was the cirrus.

The bottom of the cirrus, actually. Examining the wine list, which was as thick as a Dean Koontz, I was surprised to see that most white Burgundies were at least $200, though a few $150 wines popped up here and there. Many of these fine wines cost hundreds more. It seemed that $400 or so would make the selection process a little less, well, dainty. Plenty of wines were over a thousand dollars and there were numerous large format bottles. The list had the feel less of a restaurant's orders from various distributors and more of a private collection. Which, in fact, it is. The owners of Veritas built the restaurant around their pooled wine libraries, which were so large they realized they couldn't consume them in a lifetime.

When I was a kid I would have called a place like this a Fancy Restaurant. In fact, I did feel a little young in that room, and indeed, we were the freshest faces there. I was certainly the poorest, too. Mark Mothersbaugh and Bob Casale from Devo were enjoying a bottle of red a few tables down, so they must be doing okay. But if you begin taking wine seriously, the issue of price and class is unavoidable. Good wine is expensive, and expense itself is a kind of mythology in wine drinking. I had a bottle of $12 white Burgundy on Wednesday night and on Thursday I'm drinking a bottle of $250 white Burgundy. A rationalist would ask, is the second bottle $238 better than the first? Live long enough, I guess, and questions like that become dull. But it's difficult to escape musing on price and value when consuming a $250 bottle of wine, especially as the label sported a clearly discernible number, scrawled in black ink, in the top right-hand corner: 36. I imagine this bottle was purchased in 1996 for 36, what, francs or dollars? Must have been dollars. So we're paying for patience, too.

It's hard to tell yourself that you're going to drink this wine without considering that it cost $250 or that it once cost $36 and that it's inexorably improved over the past 14 years and maybe that means it's really worth what Veritas is asking. It's also difficult to ignore the perky sommelier, who exudes a sense of authority even though she's friendly, spunky, and recently 30 (she volunteered her age after learning mine). She not only helped us locate our bottle, but by dropping small bits of information here and there she seemed to validate the whole idea of expensive wine. In fact, perhaps her most winning move was professing not to know if the bottle we had chosen was drinking well. We had identified three possible bottles, and she could vouch for the first two but not the third, so she consulted another sommelier who knew this wine. In this context, not knowing became a sign of the care and precision authentic knowledge of wine entails. There are limits to the expertise of someone whose main job is to sell the wine listed in this little book, which names wines available just from this one cellar. Even she needed help. Wine was showing us the respect it was due.

And respect was due. The wine was, as they say, something else:

1996 Grand Cru Bâtard Montrachet Jean-Marc Boillot ($250)

In Burgundy wine, there are four classifications (I'm taking this from Neal Rosenthal's most excellent 2008 memoir Reflections of a Wine Merchant, though this is certainly not privileged information). Rouge or blanc country wine, the lowest, is simple wine made by local Burgundian winemakers, usually not for wide sale. Village wine is the next step up, and many affordable Burgundies are Village wines. The two haut classifications are Premier Cru and Grand Cru. As you can see, we were drinking Grand Cru. Dave and I have been friends since the mid-'70s.

The wine itself was much deeper and complicated than most whites I've had. The color was perhaps the most striking thing--golden and calm, rich and deep, but clear as well. Wine writers always talk about the way a wine captures light, and it was true here--the wine glistened and deepened in the light. It was a pleasure to gaze at, or through, the glass. The nose was fairly mellow. I didn't get a burst of typical Chardonnay flavors, though they asserted themselves more gently when we actually tasted the wine, which held little obvious fruit but lots of delicate flavors, including pear and what Dave referred to as "nectar" (I'm not sure if he meant actual nectar or if he was being metaphorical). The dominant flavor palette for me was a kind of vegetal woodiness. It wasn't oak or even the king of cedar "cigar box" flavors you read about, but a musky, loamy, forest floor flavor. I could feel this particular flavor sliding around in my mouth, though it's hard to name it, exactly. It was woodsy, not woody, and gave the wine an intellectual quality. Dave suggested during dinner that the wine was perhaps two or three years past its peak. Perhaps he's right. There was something a little loose about the wine, as if it were relaxing after holding in its breath all those years. I could even taste a slight effervescence, though that faded mostly after 20 minutes. But the finish was beautifully soft and smooth.

Thanks, Dave, for this experience. I'm happy that white Burgundies are out there, waiting. I'll be drinking this wine avidly till my death.

Tempranillos

This is a late post. A week late. I was in San Francisco last week, visiting Tracy's family, and we all went to a tapas restaurant in the Mission and tasted two nice Tempranillos, one a traditional Rioja and the other a similarly priced Spanish Tempranillo. Both wines were 100 Tempranillo, which is important to say because sometimes--often?--Temp is blended, much in the same way as Cabernet. In fact, Tempranillo is sometimes referred to as something like "Spain's answer to the Cabernet Sauvignon," though I'm not sure what that means. To me (though please keep in mind, I'm a baby ephebe) Tempranillo is altogether lighter than a Cabernet.

I must say something briefly not just about the wines but about where I purchased them: a store called K&L Wine Merchants, in Redwood City. It confirmed for me the museum-like quality that great wine shops can have. There on the shelves were Bordeaux and Burgundies from the 1960s to the present, arrayed like any old wines (though I noticed a 1965, which I just learned is actually a very poor vintage). They also have a yet-rarer collection of French and California wines in special glass cases against the wall that make you feel special and intimidated. Some of the labels are dirty and weathered. You can almost see the chateau cellar and smell the dank gray stones.

K&L also specializes in large format bottles--Jeroboams, Double Magnums, and even (I think) a Balthazar. Or perhaps it was a Methuselah or Mordechai--or was it a Nebuchadnezzar? These are large, very large, and Super Size Me bottles of wine--the Nebuchadnezzar contains 15 liters of wine.

Or as I call it, lunch.

But seriously, Google "large format wine bottle" and K&L pops right up. Such bottles are not only great sight gags but also age extremely well because, since wine ages due to oxidation, they reduce the ratio of air to wine. They also seem to create the sense of an occasion: to open one of these large bottles
would require a large gathering of some sort. And then, there's the Semitic angle--why are these bottles named after characters from the Old Testament? Did I mention there is also a Melchior (18 liters)? A  Solomon (20 liters)? A Melchizedek (30 liters)?

Anyway, I shuffled over to the forgotten corner where they sell Spanish wine and bought two bottles. They were:

2006 Ovidio Tempranillo La Mancha ($19)
2003 Rioja Alta "Vina Alberdi" Reserva ($20)

Tracy, her sisters Wanda and Jean, her niece Rachel, her stepmother Judie, friend Rosemary Murphy, Paul and I ordered a mess of tapas and tasted the wines. This is what we found out.

Ovidio
This was a deep, dark, almost purple wine, though it lightened considerably at the rim. Odors that we noted included red and black fruits, dark earth, and a general spiciness. The body was "soft and creamy" (Rose), and most of us called it some version of "smooth," though I also found it to be the slightest bit too tangy and sweet on the tongue. It was round and rich, though not as healthily potent as a full-blooded Cabernet. Other flavors we picked up as the wine began to unwind included vanilla ice cream (that was me), strawberries, white sugar, cedar, tobacco, and leather. Tracy also tasted bay leaf, which she's detected in other wines; for her, this means a ghostly spiciness mixed with mild sweetness. The finish to this wine was quite slow. In fact, it began to bother me as I found myself wishing for the last sip to fade before taking the next.

Alberdi
As I was leaving K&L, a clerk remarked that I had chosen a "classic Rioja." I don't know if I know what that means, but I sensed he was right. This wine was, I think, universally liked and rated higher than the slightly pugnacious Ovidio. It was lighter, for sure, almost like a Chianti. There was a hint of oak, but just barely. We picked up pepper but no fruit, none at all. It was actually odd to taste such a restrained flavor. Judie picked up something unique--upon putting her nose to the rim, she said she smelled coconut. She took a few tastes and affirmed it--coconut, clear as glass. Especially against the background of the Ovidio, this Tempranillo showed a lightness and spirit that we all loved.

I'm off to Veritas for dinner, a birthday treat from a friend. This restaurant, in the East 20s, is built around a 196,000 bottle wine cellar. Tune in soon. I think we're going for some white Burgundy.

Riesling Evening

I used to think all Rieslings were sweet but they're quite often dry. And I've always imagined that I liked just the dry stuff, believing that sweet wine was somehow undesirable. Why did I think this? Maybe sweetness seems too everyday. Or maybe it's because it's easy to appreciate sweet things and so to mark oneself as sophisticated requires the putting away of easy pleasures. Anybody can like sweets, but it requires taste to enjoy austerity.

Having said all of this, on most days I'd rather drink dry wine, but that doesn't mean wines with a little more sugar aren't great. Like with Chardonnay: I used to be anti-oak. Oaking was for rubes. But now I think that oak is just an instrument that has its place, kind of like timpani. One of the lessons I've learned for myself over the past few months of tasting varietals in all their various expressions is to keep an open mind.

The other night, Tracy, Tina, Claude, and I tried four Rieslings, three on the dry side and one fairly sweet. They were all very good, and to a certain degree this was to be expected: we didn't include a bottom-shelf or mass-market Riesling in this tasting, only fine wines. These four Rieslings were from the three major Riesling areas on earth: Germany, Austria, and Alsace. We also tried a New World Riesling, from California. In fact, all the wines we drank were from well-established wineries from their respective areas, which was kind of exciting because we felt that we were getting a real representative sample of some of Riesling's best expressions. Tracy made a spicy coconut fish dish to accompany the tasting. Rieslings go well with spicy, tangy food. Thai is a good choice. In any case, the wines were:

2007 Trimbach Riesling ($18)
2007 Weingut Bründlemayer Riesling ($25)
1989 Rüdesheimer Berg Roseneck Riesling Spätlese ($35)
2008 Trefethen Family Vineyards Riesling ($20)

Trimbach
This was our representative Alsatian Riesling, one of the most popular regions producing Riesling worldwide. Trimbach is also a very well-known winery, and this particular Trimbach was voted one of the top 100 wines of 2009 by Wine Spectator, earning a very high 91 points from that magazine. However seriously you take these things, it's worth mentioning.

Especially because this wine was so good. Cold, deep, and absolutely clear, the Trimbach was everyone's favorite (scores of 26 and 22.5 from Tracy and me, and an A-/B+ from Claude, who was more comfortable using letter grades). The color was crisp and bright and had a pale, grassy tinge, the body was light and mineral, though simultaneously round and smooth. The standout flavor was green apple, noticed by Tracy and affirmed by all. We also tasted very clear dried apricot flavors, as well as vanilla. This wine also displayed extraordinary balance: the palate was full of fruit flavors but they were intermixed with crisp acidity. The wine had "levity," as Tina put it--it floated across the tongue. And the finish was quick and snappy--though it did linger an extra moment on the upper palate, as Claude noticed. 

Bründlemayer
This was the Austrian Riesling, and it was dry and crisp as Austrian Rieslings tend to be. While it earned slightly lower scores (Tracy and I gave it a 22, Claude a B+), it was really nice. More sharp and angular than the Trimbach and with a noticeable fizz of effervescence, this is nervy wine: alive, tingly, bright, crisp, edgy. We noticed kerosene (Claude), tons of citrus, especially lime, stony minerality, and just a shadow of woody mustiness--was it oak? Claude said it was like drinking Champagne. While this is a great wine with tons of busy brightness and dry depth, it was a little less calmly regal than the Trimbach.

Roseneck

This is classic, sweet, German Riesling--and it was great. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's book Drink This: Wine Made Simple, from which I've quoted and cited numerous times on these screens, explains that German Rieslings may be quite dry or very sweet. Dry German Rieslings are called Kabinett Rieslings, and we didn't try one of these. Sweeter German Riesling (but by no means dessert-wine-sweet) falls into the Spätlese and Auslese categories. But like all things German, it's more complicated than that: both Spätlese and Auslese can be dry as well, in which case they'll be called Riesling Spätlese (or Auslese) Trocken. In any case, we had no Trocken in the house.

Tracy gave this wine a 20, I gave it a 19 (Claude marked it a lowly B). It was dramatically different from the dry wines we'd just tasted. Honey was the flavor that burst through to me--honey in the wine's hips and on my tongue, and honey flavors all up in the sinuses. The mouth-feel of this wine is full, deep, dark, rich, and vibrant. The color echoes the brown glass of the bottle in which it comes. Besides honey, we tasted tangerines, oranges, and what Claude described as charcoal. The finish lingered on and faded slowly away. In the past few days since the tasting, I've been taking a small glass of this wine as a post-dinner treat and really liking it. This is a 1989, quite an old vintage for a Riesling. I was 19 years old, probably watching the Berlin wall come down as they cut the grapes from the vine. 

Trefethen
If I had to compare California Riesling to the other regions we tried that night, I'd say that it most closely resembles Alsatian wine. In many ways, it was like Trimbach's younger brother. We got all the same lightness and acidity with all the fruit flavor, especially lemon peel and maybe peach. Two of us noticed lilacs as well, and I could have sworn I picked up on blueberry, but Tracy's doubt made me second-guess my own experience. The fourth wine can be tricky after three previous tastings (no spit-buckets here). We also got things here like caramel and salt, and began saying things like "this is a summer wine" and "it would go well with oysters." Altogether enjoyable, altogether delicious.

Sometimes I think maybe it would be great to go super-microscopic with these tastings--a whole tasting of German Rieslings, for example, trying a low-end mass marked German Riesling, a Kabinett, a sweet Spätlese, a dry Spätlese, and a German dessert Riesling. One could even do a full tasting of just Spätleses, or even hone in on just one vineyard and do a four-year vertical tasting (verticals are wines of successive vintages from the same vineyard). I guess I'd rather do this in France.

Sangioveses--First Blind Tasting!

Last night, Tracy and I conducted our first ever blind tasting, of two Sangioveses. Because the Sangiovese grape--base varietal of Chiantis, Montepulcianos, Brunellos, and Super Tuscans--is a brilliant partner to acidy, tomatoey Italian dishes (or so I read), I made a simple red sauce for linguine and we ate as we tasted. And we learned something, about Sangiovese and also about how it's priced.

So, the wines were:

2006 Monte Antico Toscana ($12)
1996 Castell'in Villa Chianti Classico ($24)

Interesting factoid #1: Though the Monte Antico is just three years old and costs only $12, it scored a 90 from Wine Spectator magazine (just inching it into the "outstanding" category), which also ranked it among the top 100 wines of 2009.

Interesting factoid #2: Though the Castelli'in is a true Chianti Classico--which means it is a higher-end Chianti, which is itself a regional designation for Sangioveses--from way back in 1996, we both liked the cheap Monte Antico better.

Interesting factoid #3: Though we liked one wine over the other, they weren't so different.

I'm sure we all associate the most famous of Sangiovese wines, Chianti, with one of two things, neither of them positive: the first is Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter and the second is wicker baskets. First, Lecter: remember the scene in Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal claims he ate a victim's liver with "fava beans and a fine Chianti--FWP FWP FWP FWP!" (Don't be fooled here: Hopkins pronounces it kee-YAN-tee, rhyming with "ante." It's really kee-YON-tee, rhyming with "full monte.") Somehow, Lecter's associating of Chianti with cannibalizing a schizophrenic's liver turned off a nation, or at least this nation-dweller, to this fine Italian wine.

And second, the wicker basket thing: that was a marketing gimmick from the 1960s and '70s, meant to rouse images of rustic meals in hillside Tuscan villas. Unfortunately, despite its immediate popularity, the wicker basket and round-bellied bottle came to signify cheapness. In 1993, while visiting Tuscany, I sipped my first really transformative red wine and abandoned this cheap or crass image of Chianti and Sangiovese. But I think these kinds of memories play a strong role in how we approach wines.

Anyway, back to the wines at hand.


Monte Antico
Tracy calls this wine a "true red" (she rated it a 21; so caught up in tasting and taking notes was I that I forgot to score these wines numerically). It is a well-balanced wine with tons of berry flavors, ripe black fruit, spicy prickliness, and a soothing tannic singe on the tongue and teeth. The flavor of this wine soared up into my sinuses and upper palate, full of leather, tobacco and what Tracy insisted was "cigar box"--a rich cedar aroma.  It was a perfect compliment to the acidic tomato sauce: light and clear and smooth. This is cheerful wine.

The Chianti
While there were some significant differences here, this wine wasn't extraordinarily different. (Tracy scored it a 20.) We found many overlapping flavors--leather, tobacco, cigar box, and black fruit--but also some decidedly new ones. Most conspicuously, I could taste with ringing clearness the hint of oak (and many Chiantis do spend some time in some oak). Tracy came up with the term "library" to account for the fulsome, woody richness of leather and mustiness. It was a little rounder than the previous wine--less prickly, I guess--and had a bare hint of sweetness. I liked this wine, but found no flavor or tone here that I didn't like better in the Monte Antico.

The first wine is half the price of the second. I think the blind tasting may have really helped us see that the wines are really similar. In fact, I'm wondering if blind tastings are essential here, because the Chianti bottle looks really great and the Sangiovese bottle looks quite plonky and amateur. I'm susceptible to bling. In any case, I would like to be the guy who buys the good $12 bottle.

I'm looking forward to trying more Chiantis in the future. On my list are a Chianti Riserva (that is, a Chianti Classico that has been aged for some time), a "Super Tuscan" (a complicated designation that means, essentially, that the wine is mostly Sangiovese, unlike Chiantis, which may be mixed with ancillary varietals), and a Brunello (the top-tier Sangiovese). I also have a bottle of 1999 Barolo, a very fine and special wine, but it has sentimental value to me and I'm saving it for some time to come.

Side-Taste: Mettler's Cabernet Sauvignon

Last night, Tracy had a mid-evening craving for a sip of something delicious. I pulled out a bottle of Mettler Family Vineyards's 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon ($25), and I realized after a quick taste that I had to make a little sketch of this wine.

The reason? I had a really distinct flavor experience: woodsmoke. Try a mouthful and notice how clearly this single note rings out at the top of the palate. What is this "woodsmoke"? I'm not sure, but I'm trying to name this very distinct, very clear flavor, and I think it's the taste of a burning log. A hardwood. Not the dense, ashy, suffocating part of woodsmoke, but the delicate residue part. The October night smell. I could also rightly say this is the scent of a hard smoked salami, something smokey, meaty, a little fatty.

What a great flavor! 

I also really like how this rustic smokiness asserts itself against the backdrop of the wine's lighter, more delicate texture. It's very nicely balanced, displaying many ripe berry fruit flavors and a crisp acidity. That's what makes this smokiness all the more welcome.

At $25, it's not a cheap option for dinner, but this would go so very well with red meat, especially a porterhouse steak. I don't eat meat (except for occasional pieces of fish), but in the interests of objectivity, I admit that this Cabernet would pair well with it. Or even a nice blue cheese. Or just on its own in a Burgundy glass because Tracy wanted a taste of something sweet.

Sauvignon Blancs

I love Sauvignon Blanc, but I've never really thought too much about it. It's always seemed a go-to wine, never all that bad and sometimes really good. I guess I've always had an instinctive distrust of white wine's depth, figuring that because it's so light it somehow offers less. I also never knew that there exist so many styles of Sauvignon Blanc, though the more I learn about wine I realize that no matter what grape one begins with, terroir and the process of winemaking itself play large roles in determining the taste and feel of any wine.

Having said that, I should add that Sauvignon Blanc is, more than almost any other major wine grape, the least manipulated and manhandled of varietals. About an hour before the tasting, I read Matt Kramer's column in the current issue of Wine Spectator. Kramer argues that there is less "intervention" in the wine-making process with Sauvignon Blanc than in grapes like Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, and many others. It's true that some special processes are used at times, things like "extended lees contact," in which the dead yeast and other organic detritus are stirred up into the fermenting juice to impart more flavor, or barrelling in oak (and very little of that last one). However, these are somewhat rare, and the reason for this hands-off attitude, Kramer points out, is that the Sauvignon Blanc is fine on its own. The grapes themselves have tons of flavor and character, and getting that straight into the bottle is job one. Sauvignon Blanc needs no gauze on the lens.

Last night, Tracy and I were joined by Jeff, who lives in the neighborhood, for a tasting of four good Sauvignon Blancs. For this tasting, I set out four wine glasses filled with various fruits--honeydew, pineapple, lemon, and apple--and we used them as "taste markers" to help us detect these flavors in the wines themselves. This is a great way to begin noticing flavors, and it's something I think we'll do from now on.

The Wines were, in order of appearance:

2008 Otto's Constant Dream Marlborough New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc ($16)  
2008 Whitehall Lane Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley ($16)
2008 Cade Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley ($32)
2008 Sancerre Clos des Bouffants Domaine Roger Neveu ($28)

Marlborough
New Zealand's Marlborough region is recognized as a producer of powerful, expressive Sauvignon Blancs. To sample the this varietal in its various forms, a Marlborough is required. This wine, which Tracy scored a 21.5 and I scored a 21 (Jeff didn't score his wines), had all the fruity bouquet and floral punch of a typical Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. The taste markers worked well: I sniffed the fresh honeydew and then tasted the wine and could immediately pluck out those melon notes. We also tasted grass, citrus, and pineapple, all to be expected of such a wine. Other pleasing things here included the wine's balance: while the fruit jumped right out, it was held in check by the prickly acidity and slight bitterness. Jeff said the wine had "different altitudes" and he could taste the honey and citrus working in some sort of spatial simultaneity. It is a full but light wine, "excitable" (Jeff) with lots of light, zing, and "pith" (Tracy). One of the most impressive qualities of this wine was the Raymond Chandler finish--that is, it says the long goodbye. In fact, the flowers and tropical fruit remained hovering in my sinuses for about as long as it takes that chord at the end of the Beatles's "A Day in the Life" to fully fade.

Whitehall
If you've seen Sideways, you may remember the scene where the the two couples go out to a long dinner with numerous wine pairings (it's the dinner following Miles's infamous anti-Merlot hissy). The first wine they try is a Sauvignon Blanc that has been aged in oak. Miles, who has seen a lot when it comes to wine, swirls his glass and says, eyebrows raised, "interesting." In fact, while it's unique to age Sauvignon Blanc in oak, it's certainly not unheard of. I imagine that Miles's apparent surprise issues from politeness. As I'm sure he knew, some oak-aged Sauvignon Blancs are among the more expensive bottles. Still, this practice is much more rare than the straightforward vine-to-bottle winemaking described above.

The Whitehall, if you haven't guessed, is an oaked Sauvignon Blanc. I should say immediately that the oak is not overpowering. Only 30% of this wine spent time in oak, and for just seven weeks. Still, this light oaking imparts an acerbic tilt to the outright friendliness of the other wines we tasted. Tracy (who rated this wine a 20.5) detected silt, tobacco, and musk, along with a slight vanilla twang. Jeff was also generally positive about this wine, calling it "mellow," "smooth," and "rounded." If the previous wine was a tenor, he said, this was a baritone. Jeff also referred to the Whitehall as "self-effacing," and I think I would agree, though maybe in less positive terms--to me, the wine was a little blank. I used the word "flat" twice in my notes, and as I drank it I pictured in my mind a long plank of wood. (I gave the wine a perhaps too-low 14.) Now, maybe I pictured wooden planks because I had recently read that a cheap way to oak wines is to toss in a few oak boards to a fermenting tank--though I know from reading about this wine that they used real oak barrels. I do think, though, that the flatness and blandness of a plank board is a decent metaphor for this wine. Which is not to say it's all bad. We need sturdy, serviceable planks. This is a solid wine and would go really well with light Italian food, maybe gnocci. A good, smooth, gentle wine, and a twist on the other Sauvignon Blancs of the night.As Miles would say: interesting.

Cade
This was the most expensive bottle of the night. I raise this issue of price at the outset because, while this was a really nice wine, it wasn't noticeably better than the others. (In fact, I think that Jeff said it was his least favorite of the bunch.) I had originally written here that one reason for the high price was that Cade is affiliated with the world-famous wine producer Merry Edwards. I was incorrect about this, as Jill informed me in her comment below. The reason for my error was simple: I was told by the clerk in the wine store that Cade was an offshoot label of Merry Edwards, and I didn't independently verify the claim. I should say that I won't make this mistake again. I realize that it's essential to keep such facts straight. And thank you, Jill, for correcting me.

Still, $32 for a Sauvignon Blanc should clearly reward the buyer.

One of the most noticeable and immediate issues here was that the wine displayed a slight effervescence. The fizz seemed to lessen in intensity after a few minutes, but it never entirely disappeared. That issue aside, Tracy got it right when she said the Cade is a nice combination of the first and second wines, with lots of the flavor notes of the Marlborough alongside the more angular and restrained elements of the Whitehall. We all noticed vanilla and citrus, and I honed in hard on the presence of a pleasing, but definitely assertive, alcohol burn in the back of the throat. This wine is, at 13.8% alcohol, indeed 0.8% higher in alcohol content than the other Sauvignon Blancs--but should that make such a difference? We also noticed how fast the finish was here, especially in comparison to the Marlborough.

Sancerre
France is best known for two regions of Sauvignon Blanc vineyards. One is the Loire valley, home to the towns of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. The other is Bordeaux, more famous for its reds but also a producer of Sauvignon Blancs (though these are most often blends with Semillon and other grapes). The Loire wines, though, are famous for their mineral qualities and prized as some of the more complex of Sauvignon Blancs. Many consider Sauvignon Blancs from the Loire valley among the best in the world.

I was surprised by the fruit-forward nature of this bottle (I rated it a 24, Tracy a 21.5). Perhaps I was hoping for even more minerality, more limestoney bite. It was, to be sure, more restrained than the first wine we tasted, and had a muted, quiet quality. We detected a waft of cork (this was the only corked bottle; the rest were screw-tops), grass, melon, flowers, and mild citrus. In short, this was a fairly recognizable Sauvignon Blanc, enjoyable, delicious, smooth, and balanced. A really nice wine, one that would go fine with food. I should add that out of all these wines, this is the one I'd like to drink most of all. Flavorful, cool, rounded, smart. The best Sauvignon Blanc I've ever had, I think.

I also had an already opened bottle of Sauternes, a sweet Bordeaux wine blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. We were going to taste it, but it had begun to turn. So I dumped the bottle and we had coffee instead.