Cour Cheverny, Le Petit Chambord, Domaine Francois Cazin, 2002

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Pungently mineral and firm and almost demanding food, this is a really lovely wine. Lean and mean, but with just enough fruit, every sip demand yet another. Not surprisingly, this is a Louis/Dressner selection, who else would bring in such an obscure Loire appellation. We can be glad they did as this wine is a steal at around $12. Buy, buy, buy! Made from 100% Romorantin, a rare varietal to say the least.

Saint Estephe, Château Haut Baradieu, 2003

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A refined, classically styled Bordeaux for drinking now and over the next several years. As befitting a St. Estephe, this is a real cabernet in style with plenty of herbs and spice that overlay the lovely, but appropriately lean fruit. If you’re wondering what a Haut Medoc Bordeaux is supposed to taste like but don’t want to break the bank this is a very nice wine. Think lamb chops.

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie, Domaine de l'Ecu, Expression de Granite, Domaine Guy Boussard, 2001

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Current winner of the longest name wine award this year, you’ll think the name is short when you taste this wonderful wine. Still a baby, it will develop and expand for many years. A lighting bolt of a wine that in all its leanness still explodes on the palate. Concentrated mineral essence with a delicate balance. A beauty that costs all of 16 bucks. Amazing.

Barolo, Villero, Giuseppe e Figlio Mascarello, 1999

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A really fine wine, exotic an balanced and absolute classic Barolo nebbiolo in style. True to type this Villero is forward, round and rich (by Barolo standards). Just starting to drink now, a few more years will be well rewarded. A great wine to recommend to someone who want to know what nebbiolo is really all about. I’m going to grab every bottle I can find.

Pian del Ciampolo, Sangioveto e Canaiolo, Montevertine, Radda in Chianti, 2002

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With a balance and refinement only found in fine Burgundy, this wine is an extraordinary value at well under $20. The light color may confuse some, but the expansive delicate aromas explode on the palate with an intense delicacy that is hard to find these days. A fine wine that reminds one about what made Tuscany great to begin with. Buy as much as you can afford. It’s great to drink now and will age for many years.

Ribera del Duero, Emilio Moro, 2003

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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.

Sant'Antimo, Ateo, Ciacci Piccolomini d'Argona, 2000

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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

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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!

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weatheroregon.gif“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

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buy a bridge.jpgI just noticed that the upcoming Wine Spectator has rated the 2003 Colgin Cariad Napa Valley 91 points and made it a highly recommended collectable. It sells for $225.

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

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winelab.jpgI could not believe my eyes. I had to read it twice: “and to my palate even the best paired food gets in the way of a pure and unadulterated one-on-one experience with the wine”

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.