Pinot Noir, David Bruce, Russian River Valley, 2004
A bit big and chunky, but overall very good stuff. Like most California pinot it’s on the ripe side, but this wine is quite well balanced and gives more than enough complexity. With a few more years in the bottle it should be really nice, but I would not age it beyond that otherwise the fruit may lose to the funk.
Régnié, Cuvée des Braves, Domaine Jöel Rochette, Vielles Vignes, 2004
Pure essence of easy drinking pleasure. An absolute delight with brilliant fruit, biting acidity and a perfect balance on the palate. Drink up now as this wine is perfect as it is. If you have a light touch in the kitchen this wine is for you. Buy cases and cases. Yummn!
Touraine, Clos Roche Blanche, Cuvee Pif, 2004
An explosively attractive blend of cot (malbec) and cabernet franc, this wine is addictive it its pure charm. High on the list of perfect everyday wines, it goes far beyond this as it also offers plenty of complexity along with its fruity charms. This wine sends your saliva glands into high gear. Drink as soon as you can and buy cases of this pleasure
Ribera del Duero, Emilio Moro, 2003
Here’s an excellent big red wine. Big, intense, but balanced. It perfectly matched some garlic lamb kabobs with its bright fruit intensity, structured tannins and racy style. A rich wine, but not overwrought like California zinfandel so often is. I would rate this outstanding as it almost compels you to pick up your glass and bury your nose in it. Drink over the next five years or so to preserve the gorgeous fruit.
Aglianico Rubrato, Feudi di San Gregorio, 2003
Big bright and fruity. Very easy to drink. Wines like this make you wonder why anyone buys all those commercial California and Australian labels as this wine delivers all the easy to like fruit, but far more complexity and, frankly, real wine character. Drink up with your favorite pizza or cheeseburger.
Sant'Antimo, Ateo, Ciacci Piccolomini d'Argona, 2000
Well I did not expect much from this famed Brunello producer now making a wine from a D.O.C. essentially created by Banfi, but boy was I wrong. This is a lovely wine with an earthy intensity that surprised when I was expecting a bland oaky internationally styled wine. This is a real Tuscan wine worth drinking with a big steak. Outstanding structure, complexity and varietal intensity. Drink now and over the next several years.
Marsannay, Les Longeroies, Domaine Charles Audoin, 2002
Well this is a lovely pinot noir and worthy of any Burgundy fan. I tasted this wine at a restaurant where it was tough to find a bottle I wanted to drink for under a hundred bucks. Frankly the wines were brutally overpriced. This fact forced me to look beyond the obvious and I discovered this beauty. Lean, mean structure and acidity combined with mouth watering bright fruit, a delicate yet firm balance with a long bittersweet fruity-ness that all lead to a hell of a wine. Certainly it can be cellared for a few more years, but if I had more bottles I’d be drinking them now. Delicious and a great value.
Bitch!
“Bitch!” I sneer again in my thoughts as I glare at the all-to-perky blonde weather girl who is amazingly bright and wide-eyed at 5:00 A.M. In a classic case of shooting the messenger, my frustration has to be directed at this former cheerleader as it will do no good to rail against Mother Nature.
The cute plastic blond on the TV had just forecasted rain. I cannot imagine worse news. It has not rained here in Oregon’s Willamette Valley for months. “Why can’t the god damn rain wait just a few more weeks,” I grumble to myself as I stare at the cloudy, damp morning that seems even grayer in the pre-dawn gloom. So far it had been an almost perfect vintage and the vines are loaded with beautiful fruit that is now just a couple of weeks away from harvest - and now this. The mood at the winery changed right with the weather, with sunny smiles and optimism replaced by a gray moodiness as the clouds covered the bright, warm sun that had shined reliably every day since last June. Now all we can do is wait and hope.
It is this visceral relationship with the daily morning weather report that will forever divide the way wines are perceived by critics and winemakers. Giving a wine points in this context is almost insulting nature to someone who has lived with the vines every day. When you see vines on a daily basis, then pick them, crush their fruit and guide it in its journey to becoming wine you see each wine as an individual. Like a parent thinking of their children, you don’t rate them, but appreciate each of them for their strengths, weaknesses and individual quirks. Every vintage has a personality worthy of consideration if the winemaker lets that personality show through. You also learn from them with each generation giving you information that will make you a better parent with the next.
This is a more beautiful way to look at wine than the sterile rankings of people like Parker, The Wine Spectator and Tanzer. Not only is it more beautiful, it is more natural and in line with what wine really is: a product of nature.
I’m not talking about commercial, industrialized plonk like Kendall Jackson, Santa Margherita, Two Buck Chuck, Yellow Tail or the long list of beverage alcohol products that are brands only designed to please inattentive palates with a static style regardless of natures whims, but about the myriad of wines made by producers who live with their vines and to whom winemaking means something beyond making a buck. The market is full of wines that speak of the nature that created them. If you pay attention to what you drink, you can feel the intensity and complexity created by the combination of human aspirations and nature’s power. Points have little to do with wines that exhibit this electric synergy, so depend more on your palate than scores, which are sure to miss the nuance and complexity layered through such wines - be they simple everyday wines or classics for your cellar.
“Bitch!” It’s going to rain again today.
91 Points: What a lousy score
Also recommended at 91 points is the 2004 Jean-Louis Chave Côtes du Rhône. It sells for $20.
Isn’t 91 points a lousy score for a $225 bottle of wine?
“There’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take ‘em.”
Stealing a Wine's Soul
It made me a bit sad. How had the wine experience become so sterile? The comment was made on The Robert Parker Forum by a frequent poster there. It should come as no surprise that such a anti-wine and food comment should come from a forum dominated by points. The world where a giving a wine 89 points instead of 90 can actually devastate its sales.
For millennium humans have chosen wine as the perfect compliment to a fine meal, as a healthy everyday beverage and as an agricultural product worthy of connoisseurship, collecting and study. Yet somehow, in just a few decades of wine appreciation in America we have reduced it to points and a beverage whose appreciation is only confused by food.
Perhaps we should try to remember that like cooking, while there is art in wine it is not art in itself. Wine is the highest form of agriculture, not a pure art like music or painting. As an agricultural product, its highest appreciation and purpose is to be enjoyed at the table. Taking wine away from the dinner table to be considered only on its own or in competition with other wines rips the soul that Mother Nature has put there out of the wine. Of course, there is enjoyment in pure tastings; verticals, horizontals and every other permutation, but we should not confuse those real pleasures with wines real purpose.
I can’t help myself. Every bottle of wine I pick up makes me think of what to cook. Every trip to the market where I discover wonderful fresh ingredients takes my mind to my wine rack. At a restaurant I can’t help but select my meal and wine with equal attention. It is this harmony of wine and food that brings a wine’s character to its highest level. Everything on our table comes from the earth and wine is just one more color on nature’s delicious palette.
The appropriate attire for wine appreciation should be white linen napkins, not white linen lab coats.
IPNC 06 #4: Wine and Food
There was a seemingly endless stretch of fine pinot noir wines to taste at this year’s International Pinot Noir Celebration held in McMinnville Oregon. Table after table of of wines produced by some of the most passionate pinot noir producers on the planet. I tasted and tasted - concentrated and concentrated - took detailed note after detailed note. It was a wonderful intellectual experience.
The next day it was off to the vineyards and our bus drew the lovely Lemelson Winery in the Yamhill Carlton district of the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon. There waiting for us with a staff busily at work creating our lunch was the outstanding Portland chef Cathy Whims whose restaurant Nostrana was selected as Portland’s best new restaurant in 2006. The menu was sumptuous starting with huge platters of Salumi salami (from the famous Batali family) followed by spaghetti with roasted eggplant sugo. The suitably dramatic main course was Bisteca alla Fiorentina followed by a refreshing Cavaillon melon with a counterpoint of rich Montellet cheese from Northwest cheese producer Fromagerie Mejean. Cathy’s menu was a delight and served as an amplifier for the fine wines chosen to marry with these lovingly prepared dishes.
The wines for this mouthwatering lunch were from the host Eric Lemelson and the guest winery from Burgundy, Domaine Christian Clerget. An extra bonus was our moderator Allen Meadows of Burghound. The wines presented with our luncheon - excellent all and all highly recommended - were:
- 2004 Lemelson Vineyards Pinot Noir, Thea’s Selection
- 2002 Lemelson Vineyards Pinot Noir, Thea’s Selection
- 2004 Lemelson Vineyards Pinot Noir, Stermer Vineyards
- 2003 Domaine Christian Clerget, Chambolle Musigny
- 2003 Domaine Christian Clerget, Echezeaux Grand Cru
Feeling perhaps a bit whimsical from Cathy’s wonderful lunch, I could not help but ponder the fact that all five of these wines seemed far more alive than the wines tasted at the other formal tasting events. I concentrated on these wines too, took plenty of notes and discussed them ad nauseam with the other pinot noir nuts in attendance. However, you could not deny the clear fact that everything about these wines was brighter, more alive and more exciting than the wines tasted complimented only by other wines.
At both tastings there was plenty of focus and intellectual appreciation of the wines presented, but there can be no greater experience of a fine wine than with fine food. One without the other leaves gaps in the other. When I experience wines of this quality, produced by people with the passion of Eric Lemelson and Christian Clerget I want to taste their delights as the winemakers intended - as part of a dining experience.
(pictured above: “The Enterprise” at Lemelson during crush.)
Burghound - The Burgundy Journal of Record
I want to make this as clear as I can: anyone interested in buying Burgundy no matter what your level of expertise or the size of your collection should be a subscriber to Burghound.
Advocating The Wine Advocate
Each of these new writers offer a strong personal perspective that does not necessarily mirror Parker’s own and their addition marks the transition of The Wine Advocate from a publication based on the cult of personality that developed around Parker himself to a full-fledged wine publication with a team of stars that will each draw their own readership. In particular, Galloni has quickly established his credentials as a critic of Italian wines and his coverage will return to The Wine Advocate many Italian wine consumers that had abandoned that publication years ago. The same goes for Burgundy where Schildknecht’s famed obsession with detail will give him the tools required to attack this most complex of wine regions.
It is well worth noting that this change from a publication dominated only by Parker himself to a true team effort makes The Wine Advocate a much more sellable brand. Before this The Wine Advocate brand was worth nothing without Parker himself, but now The Wine Advocate will have many readers that don’t even bother to read the sections that Parker pens himself as their interests and palates diverge from his, but match well with one of these new writers. There will be many new subscribers who sign up to follow either Galloni or Schildknecht on their own merits who have little interest in the wines that Parker himself covers. We can certainly expect to see a major expansion of The Wine Advocate brand on all fronts and that soon it will become a much larger and more frequent publication than it is now. This is truly the beginning of a new era for The Wine Advocate.
Eight Glasses of Pinot Noir
The next day we are at it again and once more in front of us are four glasses of pinot noir. After more debate than the day before wine #4 is a unanimous choice as our favorite with number #2 a close second.
These eight glasses of pinot noir were in fact not eight different pinot noir wines, but just four bottles of wine with the second tasting repeating the first after the wines had twenty-four hours of air.
To make matters even more confusing, not only was there not eight different wines, there were not four different wines. In reality there were only two wines. The glasses held the following wines:
- 2003 Willakenzie Aliette Pinot Noir, Cork-Free (screw cap)
- 2003 Willakenzie Aliette Pinot Noir (cork finish)
- 2003 Willakenzie Pierre Léon Pinot Noir, Cork-Free (screw cap)
- 2003 Willakenzie Pierre Léon Pinot Noir (cork finish)
What made these two wines four in our blind tasting was not the wine, but the closure. Oregon’s Willakenzie Estate bottled the exact same wines under two different closures in 2003 and in the process turned two wines into four because there are clear differences between the wines under cork and those with screw caps. It is interesting to note that the clear winner of each of our tastings was cork finished.
On the first day, the screw cap finished wines were clearly brighter and fruiter, but the 2003 cork finished Aliette seemed more complex and aromatic. It was my theory that the differences between the wines would become less distinct after being exposed to oxygen overnight, but it was not the case. The cork finished 2003 Pierre Léon, which was closed and tannic the first day, positively sang the next - a really lovely wine. To prove the final judgment of our group (winemakers all) the two cork finished bottles were empty, while a good third remained in both screw cap finished bottles, which by then had been unveiled.
Certainly there is not enough data here to say screw caps are inferior or superior to corks, but it does raise some interesting questions. One of the big debates with screw caps is how much oxygen needs to be in solution when the wine is bottled. The theory is you need to leave more oxygen in the wine than you do with corks as the screw cap is much less permeable to oxygen than cork. This issue would indeed change the way the wine tastes. Another variable is the tasters themselves. We are more accustomed to cork finished wines and our palates may just be tuned to that channel. However, one thing was very clear: the wines were different.
There was one other thing that was very clear - Willakenzie made some very fine pinot noir in the difficult 2003 vintage, they stand out for balance and restraint in a year that had few such wines and I would happily pull the cork (or unscrew) a bottle of these excellent wines at any time.
Roannaise
The wine was 2004 Domaine du Fontenay, L’Authentique, Côte Roannaise. Out of my glass came gloriously refined, clean and floral gamay aromas that most Beaujolais can only dream of - most don’t even dream of it. This charming wine is light yet mouth-filling on the palate with a singing purity of fruit that makes even a simple meal a memorable experience. The exact opposite of most of today’s highly pointy wines, this is a wine based on finesse and grace and it only costs $12 a bottle. What a tremendous bargain!
But what’s the deal here - great Côte Roannaise? A quick trip to the estate’s website solved the mystery. The wines of Domaine du Fontenay are made by an Englishman, Simon Hawkins, whose dedication to quality is very obvious in the wines he makes. Hawkins believes the tiny Côte Roannaise, with its granite soil, is the ultimate climate for gamay. He is producing wines from vineyards with extremely low yields using natural, minimalist treatments in both the cellar and vineyard. Hawkins actually uses a traditional vertical basket press, a rarity in the age of horizontal presses. The wines are un-fined, un-filtered, un-chaptalized and un-everything. This “un-ness” shows in the beautiful purity and expansive, yet delicate flavors and aromas of Hawkin’s wine.
Thank goodness for small importers like Triage Wines in Seattle, who imported this gem as I dont think the Côte Roannaise is on Diageo’s priority list.