Closing Time

“ Yeah the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
and it's partner found, it's partner lost
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops:
it's CLOSING TIME” Leonard Cohen

You pay the big bucks on the big wine with the big points, but it doesn't deliver. What’s up?

“It's closed” is the big excuse. You see it on the wine discussion forums all the time. Some whiney writer complains that the pointy Barolo they opened was disappointing because it was closed. This is either a big lie or a huge rationalization made by people that either:

• don’t understand what they bought
• read the Wine Spectator
• actually don’t like the wine they bought (the nebbiolo curse)
  
• have to rationalize that they dropped big bucks on something they just don’t like

The fact of the matter is that in over two decades of tasting I have never tasted a great wine that did not show its greatness every day of its life - and I mean every day. Exceptional character is something that cannot hide.

I don’t care how tight-assed that Giacosa (or Colla, Marcarini, Conterno, Mascarello etc.) Barolo was – there was never one day could you not taste its potential greatness. If you have a great wine that you are unimpressed with; you either don’t like it or don’t understand it – and that’s true from the time it’s ready to bottle. There is one exception to this and that is travel or other bottle abuse. Shipping wines across the Atlantic or the continental United States is like putting a wine through a blender and many wines need months of rest to recover – especially Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo.

There is no “hell to pay” from drinking wines that are too young or closed. Certainly there will be better times to drink them, but if a wine is great it will always be great each and every day of its life. “It’s closed” is a crutch used by too many wine drinkers who empty wallets on wines based on fashion instead of what they really like. It’s like buying a shirt that is the hottest thing in fashion that looks ridiculous on you, but justify it by thinking it will look better on you next year: an unlikely event.

There is never a truly great wine that is not always, from the beginning to the end of its voyage, enjoyable and intellectually stimulating. The more complex the wine, the more responsibility the drinker has to participate in that greatness and to appreciate the individual character and development of that wine at that moment.

Enjoying greatness in wine is an interactive, not passive experience.

Drinking the Best at Their Worst

Never have the great wines of the world been more clearly identified. Same for great vintages. Magazines, newsletters, web sites and blogs provide us with up-to-the-second reports on great bottles not to be missed. Big scores create feeding frenzies that clear store shelves nationwide. Now that we know who the best-of-the-best are, what do we do with them? We drink them as fast as we can.

More and more we are drinking the best at their worst. Consuming them at the very moment they are overwhelmed by full-blown young fruit power. What all this means is that consumers are learning that a great young wine, it all its majestic simplicity, is what great wine tastes like. This is truly a waste of some potentially great wine.

Robert Parker comments on drinking wines too young  in the current New York Times article by Eric Asimov, “It's like walking into a maternity ward and looking at all the newborn kids, and other than the different colors, they all look alike."

Very, very true. With modern vineyard and cellar techniques, wines are more intensely fruity than they used to be when first released. This fruitiness, while charming, is simple stuff to what many of these wines will offer with a little bottle age. Perhaps everyone should stop blaming Mr. Parker for big, simple fruity wines and blame their own impatience and unwillingness to cellar a wine in the rush to taste whatever is hot and new in the press.

Recently I purchased two wines with a few years of bottle age on them from The Wine Expo in Santa Monica. The depth of complexity these wines offered from just a few years of bottle age was stunning. No amount of breathing or magnets can replace this time in the bottle. If you are going to seriously collect great wines, access to proper storage conditions are essential to enjoying these expensive and rare bottles at their finest.

Looking for Mr. Right Vintage

Those who know business travel, but love wine and food know the drill. You finally get to your hotel to0 late to seek out the best local restaurant, but you are starving. With no choice you head off to the hotel restaurant. There is little hope for an interesting wine on the list and forget anything nice by the glass. You are in corporate wine heaven - otherwise known as your wine hell.

When handed the wine list in such situations, sometimes,  low-and-behold there is one wine that looks promising. This week I found a bottle of 2000 Talbott, Case Pinot Noir, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard in the midst of all the blandness. It was lovely.

It reminded me that all to often, when looking at lists we focus on varietals and price, when a better strategy may be to run your finger down the vintages. My 2000 Talbott was a full 3 to 4 years older than the other pinots on the list and what made this wine so enjoyable was the fact that it actually had few years in the bottle. It was no longer dominated by the big dark black fruit flavors of young wine, instead offering real nuance and complexity.  You can't replace bottle age. Strangely enough the 2000 Talbott was actually cheaper than some of the more "famous" names on the list.

Keep an eye out for those bottles with a few years of bottle age on them when you search the wine list and not only will you be rewarded with a more interesting wine, but you just might save a few bucks as well. 

Fino Sherry is Disgusting

Fino Sherry is a disgusting wine…at least by the time we get through with it. There the poor dusty bottle sits half-full on the back bar next to the Ports and Cream Sherry going bad as fast as it can.

It is rare to find a restaurant that properly serves and stores Fino and Manzanilla Sherry (the same thing from slightly different areas). This is a real sin as, when fresh and cold, these are among the finest aperitif wines on the planet and one of the most versatile white wines made, matching with an incredible array of dishes and, in fact, is the best match out there for Sushi.

The Sherry industry, importers and distributors must take the blame for this “wholesale” destruction of one of the world’s great white wines. Obviously none of these organisations gives a hoot if Sherry is served properly as long as someone buys it. The restaurants must also take part of the rap as serving warm, oxidized (Fino is not an oxidised style of Sherry like Amontillado and Oloroso) Fino to customers giving them good money is treating their customers poorly. Fino/Manzanilla Sherry should be served just like any other white wine they are serving by the glass. Certainly this is not too complicated of a concept for them to grasp. Can you imagine the reaction a restaurant would get if they served warm pinot grigio by the glass? Also, speaking of glasses, please stop serving fine Sherry in those crappy little liqueur glasses. You don’t have to invest in proper Sherry glasses for Fino, as your Champagne flutes will work perfectly.

Fino and Manzanilla are the most delicate of wines. They are never better than the first day they are bottled and decline in freshness every day after that. These are wines that should be consumed within six months of bottling and should be served chilled to enhance their beautiful fruit, mineral and nut flavors. The bottles should be consumed as soon as possible after opening, unless you drink Sherry very quickly, half-bottles or 500 ml. bottles are highly recommended.

There is one hero out there trying to save Fino from this awful fate. Steven Metzler at Classical Wines from Spain (http://www.classicalwines.com/) is almost a lone voice trying to educate the American trade and consumers on how to enjoy fine Sherry. He has good reason to do so as he is the importer of perhaps the greatest Manzanilla Sherry, Bodegas Hildalgo La Gitana Manzanilla, a beautiful wine that is worth all his efforts to protect. Steven imports this great wine only in 500 ml. bottles to promote freshness and carefully controls his distributors inventories to make sure they don’t offer wine past its prime. To understand the glories of this style of wine at its best, enjoy a chilled bottle of La Gitana with the freshest oysters you can find. There will be no going back.

Most people say they don’t like Sherry because their experience is limited to wine destroyed by neglect. This is like deciding you don’t like Burgundy when the only bottle you have tasted spent the last week in the trunk of a car in Arizona in August.

So I have a new cause for all of you. Save a bottle of Fino Sherry this week. Confront your bartender and get those bottles in the cooler!

For more information on Sherry - click here for my article: Sherry Use it or Lose it

I'll Huff and Puff Your Wine Away

Breathing may be overrated. Don’t get me wrong, I like to breath and try to do it as often as possible every day.

Breathing can do many things, it keeps us alive and opens up young wines to improve their drinkablity. What breathing does not do is replace time.

I don’t understand the claim by some that many, many hours, stretching even into days, can improve wines to the point that it almost replaces years and years in the cellar. Barolo/Barbaresco is the focal point of most of these wild claims. Time and time again you hear the refrain of, “when I first opened the wine it was closed, but after a day (or more) it finally opened…”  This, I think, is a bunch of crap.

As someone who opens far more bottles than he should, I constantly find myself with a cabinet full of bottles that have been open for various days or weeks and never has a bottle been better the next day than it was after a few hours of breathing. Some wines do better than others, with some bottles remaining delicious for days, while others are shot the next morning. Strange as it may seem,  the girth of a wine has little to do with how it fares with exposure to air.

A case in point, was a recent (gorgeous) bottle of 1999 Giuseppe Mascarello, Barolo Monprivato, which, when first opened was tight, but after two hours in a decanter was sublime and it then gained in complexity over the next two hours of sipping. Never once did it lose its edge. However, the next next night, this extraordinary wine was a shadow of itself: although a lovely shadow it was. The problem was, is this shadow now lacked definition. I want wine with sharp edges, not a diffuse, less interesting profile. It is best to drink a wine before it loses the edges that make it unique.

I agree you can’t argue with taste – actually no, I am debating taste on this point. I think that those who argue for outrageously long breathing periods for wines just don’t like the firm edges, that clear definition that certain wines bring you. Twenty-four hours in a decanter will make those edges hazy, less focused and demanding of the palate. While young wines certainly benefit from exposure to air before consumption, this evolution will never replace those slow years of development in the bottle. From time to time you will visit a producer who will proudly proffer a  wine that has been open for days to show its durability and the precision of their winemaking, but not a one will recommend that their wine is best if you leave it in a decanter while the earth does a complete revolution before consumption: not one.

For young, tight wines like Barolo and Barbaresco, two to three hours in a decanter before serving is adequate. Nebbiolo greatness comes from its firmness, precision and edgy cut. Don’t steal a wine's character and try to turn it into merlot, revel in its tannic beauty.