5 Months of Motivation

I checked the blog today and realized it's been almost 6 months since I've been compelled by incredible flavors to write something. I knew the day would come when I first researched my purchase of 2006 Grange de la Peres, I just wasn't sure when. The winemaker, Laurent Vaille, seems intriguing. He trained in Burgundy with Jobard, the Northern Rhone with Chave, and maverick Eloi Durrbach of Domaine Trevallon. You'd pick up cool things just by osmosis hanging around winos like those. When it came to terroir, he bought property next to Dumas Gassac, only he wanted poorer soils. Since it's Halloween, it reminds me of the guy being crushed at the Salem Witch Trials asking for more weight. So why did I wait 6 months? It was actually only 2 months since I purchased the wine, but the bottom line is life gets in the way of blogging.

So, on with the show, I cooked some lamb on the grill for lunch and the rosemary and olive oil transported me back to a lovely day I spent at Gros Nore in Bandol eating lamb with my traveling band of wine nerds. I have to say the weather is better here today. Anyway, lamb is a relatively exotic lunch when you are American and have an 8 and a 9 year old to feed, which led me to my most-anticipated uncorking in months - Granges de la Peres. (If you are wondering, the 9 year thought the "chicken" was great, even if it had a little kick to it.) The adults, too, thought the lamb was tasty, but I'm here to write about the wine.

My first impression, as I poured a tad into a glass was Welch's grape jelly. As the nose developed in the glass, I noticed black licorice drifting up on tendrils of alcohol. There was also a hint of cigar tobacco, which seems elusive, but I'd expect to develop as the wine ages. Finally, I'm getting a touch of pie spices, like cinammon and nutmeg. (This might be the most esoteric choice ever for a Thanksgiving wine.) This wine is hedonistically fruity and youthful. In the mouth, the wine is pleasantly one dimensional (at this time), with a nice vein of acidity that pokes through on the finish, keeping the wine from tasting flat. There are some tannins here, but they are silky enough to succumb to the purity of grapiness. Pomegranate, cranberry, and persimmon are lurking on the mid-palate and finish, but mainly I'm overwhelmed with ripe grapes. This stuff is rare and expensive, but I'm thrilled. It will be interesting to see the evolution of this wine.

Oh for the love of Italy

Just a day after casting dispersions at some Italian wines, I found 3 today that renewed my faith in the most interesting culture and country in Europe, Italy. Great Italian wine doesn't come cheap these days, but good ones sure can be dazzling. 3 wines from Marziano Abbona brought smiles to the faces of 12 hardened professionals as we ground through samples at a meeting today.

The '07 Barbera  "Rinaldi" was charming without the pretention of elegance. The fruit was just dazzling with layers of spice adding just the right amount of complexity. This was a jaw dropper that we opened on Monday afternoon.

'04 Barolo "Pressenda" had depth and body. This is truly great Nebbiolo with a voluptuous mouthfeel enhanced by a kiss of oak. Elegance, style, and grace with all those bottle flavors and aromas just starting to blossom. Drinking this wine makes you understand the comparisons between Burgundy and Piedmont.

'08/'07 Papa Celso - Barriqued-Aged Dolcetto. this precocious stunner deserves every glass Gambero Rosso gave it. So it's got some oak, still fun and delicious to drink.

Congrats to Frederick Wildman for a nice pickup on this estate!

Fish and Fine Wine All In One Week

I'm probably more excited about catching my first bass of the year, but it was a good wine week as well. Catching some fish makes it a great wine week.

Even being in the "business", doesn't mean that I don't still have to buy wine occasionally. Although, I'd be lying, if I didn't admit to professional discounts, but my point is this, even people in the biz occasionally buy bad bottles of wine. The bummer was that this week, I was one of those people. I bought 7 bottles, served 6, and despite its pedigree this bottling bombed. Oh hell, oh well. More upsetting is how my peers reacted, the tasting stopped being about 5 good/great wines and became about one bad one. That's a shame, because we were tasting Pinot Noir and we should all understand that with this varietal, 5 out 6 is awesome.

I was really impressed with Miner's Rosella '06. I've had 2 Miner Pinots in the last couple months and have really been impressed with the nuanced style of the Miner bottlings. We tasted several bottlings from both Gary's and Rosella's and at least today, I prefered the Rosella's. I think the Gary's may have a tad more long term potential as it seemed a little closed and showed more structure, but judging my glasses today Rosella really worked for me.

Pinot Noir is my favorite varietal and I love its schizophrenic personality and spectrum of flavors and aromas. I hate to be anthropomorphic, but Pinot is "complicated" just like a human. After tasting 12 wines over about an hour and a half, the evolution, in the glass, of each wine kept the smile on my face as my fellow tasters grimaced over the flawed wine and the fact that they weren't tasting "Cabs". There simply isn't another varietal that changes so much in the glass. Mesmerizing; and convincing me once again that Pinot is the sublime grape.

Mighty Wine Sonoma Wine!

I had the good fortune to break bread and taste through the new releases from Patz and Hall with James Hall. These wines went beyond my minimum standard for writing about a wine or winery, "solid", soaring all the way to "compelling", "cerebral", and "delicious". It would be hard for me to imagine someone that would be unhappy purchasing and drinking any of the wines I found in my glass. Patz and Hall is never heavy handed and the wines really show finesse and balance while remaining distinct in each bottling and reflecting the different terriors. I tasted most of these wines in the early Fall and feel like the extra 6 months is allowing some exciting subtleties to come forward. Since everyone is probably thinking it, my favorite wine of the afternoon was the "Chenoweth" bottling. Subtle and superb, perhaps I got Burgundy on my mind when James was talking about his love of Burgundy, whatever the reason, there seemed to be a hint of Chambolle-Musigny in my glass.

Cheers.

Shades of Deliciousness

It has been a couple of weeks since the last post. This blog is a hobby rather than a job, and after 2 weeks in France, I needed to reconnect with the family and my job. So after a couple hours in the yard raking leaves and picking up sticks, I've got my next topic organized in my mind.

Yesterday, I was part of a judging panel for wines being shown at a charity event in a couple of months. I know, only a true nerd would give up a perfectly good Saturday to taste wine. Believe it or not, there were close to a hundred other nerds that showed up for the action as well. My quandrary began as I thought how do I approach scoring wines that I was tasting double blind. The only info provided was a very vague price range, under $15, under $30, over $50. I started thinking about whether I was equipped with enough info to even judge fairly. The paradigm I used was as follows, assuming I thought I could clearly identify the varietal, did it taste correct and then beyond that, was it delicious enough for me to be happy if I had to pay the upper limit of the stated range. I quickly shifted gears slightly after the first flight and the paradigm was modified around whether the average consumer would be happy with the level of deliciousness for said price. I don't  know if that is fair, but that was my method.

After the tasting was over, I talked to my compadres and we realized each one of used a different paradigm to judge by. I guess everyone should take comfort in the power of numbers, any silliness we exhibited should be tossed aside by the average of 95 other tasters. I became thoroughly confused however, when I tried to figure out what the consumer really wants and what will be good for them in the long run. I think the average person would just want to know what was most delicious, but that's why they are average.

I think I owe it to them (the "everyman consumer") as a professional to know and remember that scores based solely on taste will render a very homogenous wine world where some grapes and terroirs will never compete and we will run the risk of waking up to a glass of flavor of the year. I can't get away from varietal correctness, because in the end, it is the only way to keep diversity in a world where wine is still a business. Given the chance, and that chance is a good score, most wineries would like nothing better than to chase the public palate.

I think the last flight of the day proved my point, I tasted winemakers that I can only assume attempted to make wines in a style that would appeal to a person with the amount of money they wished to charge. I hated doing it, knowing the price, but I couldn't give exceptional scores, because I knew if I opened my wallet and then popped the cork on those wines I'd be left with the taste of regret in my mouth.

This made me ponder this morning the concept of fact-based scoring. Our atmosphere yesterday was relatively sterile and honestly, it sucked the life right out most of the wines. For me, I need to know the back story to begin to enjoy the wines. I taste double blind with a group frequently and have come to believe that at best it becomes sport, but I can't tell you how many wines are rendered lifeless without knowing the personality of the winemaker, the history of the property, or the circumstances surrounding varietal, vintage, and terroir. All these variables frame the context from which the wine can be enjoyed. I'm sure had I known even half the variables involved, my scores would have gone up, because I would know how to enjoy each wine. At the end of the day isn't that what we want, to taste a delicious wine and enjoy it?

Maybe next year, I'll make the assumption that most wines have some compelling story to accompany them, and boost my scores by 10% across the board. Just some things to think/worry about next time you read a review or see a score and get ready to shell out those hard earned dollars. It's probably terrifying knowing a curmudgeon/nerd like myself may be tugging at your wallet with the skill of puppet-master. Sorry, for the record, I still felt like I just called it like I tasted it yesterday.

Golden Nectar in Barsac

It seemed appropriate that I peered out the window and looked at rain soaked vines in Barsac. That same moisture and humidity that I'm feeling in January makes a glorious fungus possible, Botrytis Cinerea, "Noble Rot" , in August and September. Ah, the mysteries of nature...

It always amazes me how sweet wines with great acidity jump out and wake your palate up. Earlier in the trip I had an exciting Vouvray Moulleux made from Chenin, then a few sips of Banyul, and now Semillon in all its glory. For me the Roumieu-Lacoste's "Cuvee Classique" was gorgeous, possessing a refreshing sweetness of fruit without ever being cloying. Two other cuvee's, "Leon" and "Andre" take character and intensity to the next level, but for me lose the versatility of the original wine. I was fortunate enough to taste a bottle of the "Classique" from 1959 and trust me, you don't need to be over the top to stand the test of time. Overall, I think there is reason to be excited by the current vintages. '07 is ripe, '08 is balanced, and '09 appears to be both.

For the dry whites of Bordeaux, I found all the vintages tasty with '08 showing the most acidity and great balance at the moment.

I found the most difference in vintages in red Burgundy and red Bourdeaux. In Bordeaux, those differences bordered on downright unappealling. Given the option on red Bordeaux I'll be purchasing '05, '07, and '09. My palate likes the greater amount of fruit showing in those vintages. We'll see where it all shakes out in time. My bets are on '05 and '09.

I'm back in the states now and reviewing my notes, so we'll see how things get remembered without the aid of ambience.

Sante!

36 Hours of Sunshine

7:00 AM - No hot water in the shower
7:15 AM - No hot water in the sink
8:00 AM - Minimal breakfast, surly waitress
8:15 AM  - Walked outside raining, cold, not light yet
Now - Just checked Paris weather and rain/snow mix through Friday

And the day doesn't start for 30 minutes, so let me harken back to a kinder, gentler day when the sun warmed my sweater, I could look out onto Med, and breathe in the garrigue in the air...

OK, I'm back in reality...I finished in the wilds of the Languedoc yesterday and drove across the Masif Central to the rain in Bordeaux. I tasted two outstanding producers outside the village of Faugeres, Maxime Magnon and Leon Barral. Each is a disciple of biodynamic farming, but rather than burying cow horns under the full moon, they take a simpler and tastier approach that is a full circle of life. Pigs, piglets, and goats wander the vineyards fertilizing and weeding. The grapes love it and grow strong and healthy, and then the animals arrive monthly on the table. Full circle, as only Didier Barral can describe it.

As for the wines, Magnon's Corbiere's is cheap, but it is by far the most fresh and exciting expression of the appellation I've had the good fortune to taste. You can tell Maxime apprenticed under Marcel Lapierre, because the Beaujolais "joie de vivre" jumps from each glass. Didier's wines  are a touch wilder and more exotic, but cut from a similar cloth, with just enough difference to make things interesting. These wines put sunshine in my glass on an overcast day.

Cheers for Now