VA
There was this wonderful smell. Exotic, floating enticing, but what was it? It had been a while sense I’d experienced it and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it came to me it, that clean tang of Balsamic vinegar. This wine had VA and I loved it.
The wine was 1998 Alion, Ribera del Duero, from Spain’s revered Vega Sicilia. I found it to be wonderful, complex, layered with both power and balance. The kind of wine that grabs your attention and holds it every single sip and sniff, always growing, changing and expanding. This is a wine that plants itself in your memory. Yet, it clearly displayed volatile acidity. Something considered to be a fault in modern winemaking, that often was an integral part of the great wines of the past.
Volatile acidity refers to acetic acid, which we more commonly know as vinegar. There is no doubt that acetic acid is a threat to wine, but there is also no doubt that tiny traces of it can add a new dimension, a highlight, to a wine’s character. While some VA is always present in wine, a very little bit goes a long way, but certain wines seem to dial-in just the right extra touch of VA, like the 1998 Alion does. Today’s drive for squeaky clean wines often takes some of the most interesting edges of the wine away leaving only simple fruitiness for a wine to hang its hat on – charming, but not the most interesting of characteristics.
While no one can deny the vast improvements in winemaking, our goal in winemaking should not be to make wines so sterile they’re no longer alive.
Wine Blogging Wednesday #22 Wrap-up
Wine Blogging Wednesday #22 host Tim Elliot of Wine Cast, the excellent wine podcast site, has posted his wrap-up of this month’s event. The topic of WBW #22 was red wines under 12.5% alcohol. While to some that may appear to be a challenging quest, by the results it was easy to find nice wines if you drink French wine.
You can find Tim’s synopisis of WBW #22 at his website from the link below:
You can read my contribution to WBW #22 from the link below:
http://craigcamp.com/journal/2006/6/13/tiny-dancer-wbw-22.html
The Red Wine District?
What an outstanding publication The Wine Spectator is! The recent June 15th, 2006 issue features an exciting, in-depth special edition on creating your own wine cellar. It’s a beautiful pull-out piece called A Connoisseur’s Guide to Wine Collecting and what a slick publication it is.
With beautiful photography and insightful articles, they lead the trusting Wine Spectator readers down bumpy road to wine collecting. The feature articles outline: “Five Winning Cellar Strategies” and “36 Wines to Buy Now.” Certainly that last one has Wine Spectator readers running to the store with their pull-out list in hand. In order to give you a sneak peak and a head start to the store to snap up these 36 wines to buy now, I thought I’d list a few of them here. Their “Balanced Cellar Selections” include such absolute must buy estates for any collector like: Beringer, Greg Norman, Stag’s Leap Winery, Chateau St. Jean, Penfolds, St. Clement, Gabbiano and, getting even more exciting for any serious wine collector, hard to get wines like: Beringer Merlot, Rosemount Shiraz, Campanile Pinot Grigio. Wolf-Blass Chardonnay and Taz Pinot Noir. What would a great collection be without such wines? Well these recommendations are a bit confusing as they don’t mention any vintages, but what would vintage matter to anyone collecting such extraordinary wines as these?
As you dig into this great piece of Wine Spectator journalism we finally reach the pinnacle of wine collecting as they recommend seven vintages of Beringer Reserve Cabernet. For their investment cellar, more wines from Penfold’s, Stag’s Leap Winery, Wolf Blass, Chateau St. Jean, Rosemount and Beringer are recommended. Certainly The Wine Spectator has done us all a great service with this well researched information and many johns will use this fine piece of wine journalism as their guide to building a wine cellar.
…but wait a second. Isn’t every one of these wines part of the World Wine Estates Portfolio? You know, World Wine Estates, that mega-beverage wine corporation. This must just be an accident as I can’t believe The Wine Spectator, that bastion of wine journalism ethics, would ever publish an advertising piece produced by some giant corporate advertiser in a way that it would look like it was produced by the editorial staff of the magazine. Without a doubt, they would mark such a piece as advertising so as not to confuse it with their editorial content.
So it must just be an coincidence that 100% of the wines in this special pull-out section are World Wine Estates brands that are heavily advertised in The Wine Spectator, and we can all rest assured that they would never publish an article that would confuse their readers between real content and advertising.
Should someone, somewhere feel a little dirty?
Tiny Dancer - WBW #22
It was haunting. Mysteriously darting here and there while all my senses reached hungrily out for each nuance,
There’s a pretty good chance you’ll hate it, or won’t get it, but I find myself pulling the cork from a bottle of this wine several times a week because I have found few wines so satisfying at the dinner table.
It’s not big. It’s not powerful. It’s not pointy. It is simply delicious. No juicy-fruity Duboeuf here, but a wine with a strangely powerful delicacy. The bouquet entices not attacks and on the palate it dances, challenging your palate to follow its lead - if you have the time and inclination. Considering the under $15 price tag, a wine that can lead your senses in so many directions is a staggering bargain.
Never passing 12% alcohol and produced without manipulation, the delicacy of such a wine is sure to disappoint palates trained on the hyper-extracted and manipulated wines of today, but if you are getting a little bored with indistinguishable wines from unidentifiable places, maybe, just maybe, you can open your palate and mind to something new. Actually, it’s not new; it’s very, very old. We all just forgot.
Beaujolais , L’Ancien, Vielles Vignes, Terres Dorees is imported by Louis/Dressner
Death Wish
Wine and Spirits Magazine must have a death wish. They are writing about interesting wines in interesting ways, and to make matters worse, they are writing about interesting wines that are good values. Considering how popular the commerce driven style of coverage is in other wine publications, Wine and Spirits is certainly trying to commit suicide by taking such a radical approach.
Look at the current issue (June 2006) featuring value wines of the year. For example:
- Joshua Green is recommending Clos Puy-Armand Côtes de Castillon and Navarro’s Methode à L’Ancienne Pinot Noir
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Tara Thomas suggests Castel Montplaisir Malbec from Cahors, Château Les Tours des Verdots Bergerac Mouelleux and Domaine Berthoumieu Madiran
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Patrick Comiskey likes Château de Beauregard (a Pouilly Fuisse of all things!) and Amavi Cabernet Sauvignon from Walla Walla
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Peter Liem recommends Domaine des Terres Dorées Beaujolais ( a wine sure to confuse California or Australian wine drinkers) and a German Pinot Gris from J.L. Wolf in the Phalz.
Throughout the article the Wine and Spirits writers recommend French wines from little-known regions, wines from producers around the globe making elegant and balanced wines and ignore the power brokers of the wine business. There can be no other reason for such reckless behavior than a desire to put the magazine out-of-business. Perhaps this article was edited by Marvin Shanken in disguise. I mean, who could possibly want to read an article full of recommendations of wines that are wonderful to drink and don’t cost much.
Unfortunately, for Wine and Spirits, way too few people.
Barbera d'Asti Superiore, Litina, Casina Castle't, Maria Borio, 2003
The lovely cascading “C”s of the front label well convey the delicous wine in the bottle. This is an outstanding Barbera with both depth and zest. Both deep fruit and mouthwatering acidity. Both, both, both as this is a wine of perfectly intertwining counterpoints. The combination of rich fruit with electric acidity makes this a perfect wine for steaks and chops. It is sure to impress anyone who takes a sip and pays attention.
Barbera del Monferrato, Goj, Maria Borio 2004
Maria Borio is rapidly becoming my favorite Barbera producer for the clean authentic beauty of her wines and this zesty Barbera is no exception. It is vivace, or lightly effervescent and this lightly sparkling quality is well-loved in Italy, but has no counterpart here in the USA, so consumers are often confused by such wines. However, there is nothing to be confused about as these wines are all about simplicity and straightforward pleasure. The combination of acidity and effervescence makes such wines extremely refreshing with the rich everyday dishes so common in Northern Italy. I find this wine an absolute delight with pizza and recommend drinking this simple pleasure slightly chilled.
Chianti Classico, Fontodi, 2004
All oak. Where’s the Chianti? Avoid. Buy Monte Antico for a quarter the price and get a better modern Sangiovese.
Bandol, Chateau Jean-Pierre Gaussen, 1999
A year in Provence is not enough when you taste wines like this. Deeply aromatic and earthy with a wonderful layered character unlikely to generate many points, but certain to generate pleasure at the dinner table. Yes, this is a big wine, but not by today’s standards as it sports the weight of a big Bordeaux on the palate and will seem almost delicate to Shiraz drinkers. A top-notch wine that really adds pleasure to a meal.
Barbera Piemonte, Mattei, 2003
The real stuff here and more. Firm and bright without going over the edge and joining the over-juiced efforts jammed out by so many producers today. Certainly there is a lot of fruit here, but it is very balanced with all the characteristic Barbera acidity that any traditional Barbera lover could want. Highly recommended.
Pleonasm
Definition: pleonasm: the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea
I have a new word for Webster’s – eno-pleonasm: the use of more winemaking techniques than necessary to make a wine.
Winemakers today seem to lack confidence, or perhaps it’s a personal vision. Most of all, it’s a lack of a solid tradition. Not so many years ago, winemakers didn’t have to give much thought to the style of their wine. That was determined by tradition: you knew what your wine was supposed to taste like and you made it like your father and grandfather and great-grandfather did. That was good and that was bad. A lot of bad wine was made because little thought was put into it, but a lot of good wine was made because the winemaker had a clear sense of history and time and what that meant to their wine. This confidence meant change came slowly. Of course, this meant that many beneficial changes were too slowly accepted, but it also meant that regional character was safe from the whims of the wine fashion market. No longer is this true.
Today winemaking has taken on the same emptiness as the fashion runways of Milan and Paris, where it is more important to shock than create real clothing. Today’s wines are all-to-often like the bizarrely dressed models prancing down the runway in an outfit that no one could really wear in real life – or to put it in wine terms – have with dinner.
Too many of today’s winemakers create eno-pleonasms using every intervention at their disposal instead of making real wine, because they don’t really know what they want and, as a result, are slaves to the fashion world instead of wine with food world.
Champagne, Brut, Nicolas Feuillatte. NV
Don’t waste you money on this generic effort. You can buy Oregon or California sparkling wines for the same price that offer much more to get excited about. Proof that a name in itself no longer has any importance in an era where top quality wines are produced around the world. As much as I revere Champagne, there is nothing to revere here. Try Oregon’s Argyle for $10 or more less a bottle and you’ll get a far more interesting wine.
Dolcetto Diano d'Alba, Bricco Maiolica, 2003
Brightly fruity and lively with good complexity to boot. A very, very good Dolcetto with none of the excesses so many display today. Drink up!
Valpolicella Superiore, Ripasso, Monile, 2003
A very nice, if not exceptional ripasso. Creamy and smooth with a nice ripeness. No real complexity here, but a very nice drink and a nice Valpolicella. So if you haven’t figured it out yet this wine is nice and that’s about it.
Rebecca Wasserman
I was looking for a good bottle of Champagne, but, in all honesty, I find the big firms like Cliquot make pretty boring wines at high prices. The best values in the 
world of Champagne are no secret, it is the Récoltant Manipulant (RM) brands (small producers making Champagne from their own grapes) that offer the most interesting wines at the best value. The trick is knowing which to pick from the dozens of RM labels, which are now being imported into the USA.
I was again faced with a selection of promising RM Champagnes, but not having tasted them all, I began turning the bottles around to find the name of the importer. On the back of one interesting bottle I found the reassuring words: “Becky Wasserman Selection”. I bought it immediately without another thought because I knew if Becky said it was good – it was good. I was rewarded with a delicious wine at half the price of some of the bigger guns on the shelf. In fact, not only was it half the price, it was twice the wine, making it a spectacular value. The wine: Champagne Camille Savès, Brut Rosé, Grand Cru Bouzy
As interesting as this bottle looked, I might have passed it over for a lesser wine, but for Becky’s name on the bottle. Certainly no name on a bottle is more important than the producer, but for imported wines the name of the importer or shipper is next in importance. While it is a daunting and impossible task to stay on top of all the top small domaine wines of Europe, we are fortunate that there are people like Becky Wasserman who have devoted their lives to this quest. Their name on the bottle is a guarantee of high quality and, as there are only a handful people like Becky who are obsessed with quality, you don’t have to memorize the names of hundreds of estates, you just have to remember the names of a few passionate importers. Unfortunately it is a short list as few importers have the passion, patience or palate it takes to seek out the finest small wine estates.
When you see “Becky Wasserman Selection” on a bottle, you can be absolutely assured you will get a bottle of wine with character and an expressive personality that reflects the vineyards where the wines were born. Becky’s selections will never be easy to find, but the wines that carry her signature were not easy to make. The winemakers worked hard to make them, Becky worked hard to find them and a little effort on your part will be required to drink them, but good wines never come easy and your efforts will be well rewarded.