Riesling, Dr. L, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Loosen Bros., 2006

Riesling, Dr. L, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Loosen Bros., 2006

If you want proof that the best wine values are to found in wines from Europe, not the new world, just taste this delicious riesling. With far more complexity, riesling character and charm than American rieslings at twice the price, this is an incredible bargain. Fragrant and racy with just a touch of sweetness and laced with fresh peach and juicy apricot flavors and aromas all tied together with a mouthwatering acidity. Priced well under $20 this is a wine to buy by the case so you can always have a bottle waiting in the fridge when you get home from work. On top of it all is a screw cap so you’ll know each bottle will be perfect.

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, Vieilles Vignes, Domaine des Dorices, Sur Lie, Eermine d'Or, 2004

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, Vieilles Vignes, Domaine des Dorices, Sur Lie, Ermine d’Or, 2004

It’s hard to imagine a more wonderful dry white wine for under $20. Light gold in color with layers of flavor and complexity throughout. Firm slate, chalk and wet stone aromas float over delicate, bright green apple and ripe pear flavors and aromas. The finish long and perfectly balanced without a trace of the residual sugar that mars the finish of so many new world whites. Offered by the every reliable importer Christopher Cannan. 

Drinking and Tasting

Having just completed the triathalon of pinot noir tastings, Oregon Pinot Camp, the Steamboat winemaker’s conference and the International Pinot Noir Celebration, the contrast between the tastings and the lunches and dinners could not be more clear. During tastings people look for faults and drama, while during meals people look for pleasure.

We have ended up with a system, the 100 point scale, that only measures how wines taste with other wines, while ignoring their primary reason for existence - pleasure at the table. Buying wines selected in this way is a bit like buying a car after sitting in it with0ut ever driving it. When you sit in it you can see all the bells and whistles, but without driving it you can’t really get the feel of it. That’s what our critics offer us, wines ranked without ever really getting a feel for them. Can there be a less pleasant picture of enjoying wine than someone speed tasting dozens of bottles in an attempt to rank them in numerical order?

Anyone that pays even the slightest attention to the wines they drink knows that over the course of a meal fine wines evolve tantalizingly and this evolution is exactly what makes the best wines most exciting. Power, speed tastings to give wines a ranking based on points ignores this most beautiful aspect of enjoying wine. Hiding under a guise of helping the consumer, today’s critics point consumers to wines that are too expensive and not very good with food. What’s that protecting the consumer from?

Automobile writers drive a car for hours or days before reviewing it, while major wine writers may spend mere seconds with a wine. Would you want to buy a car based on the review of a writer that only sat in the car for a few seconds? This is exactly how wine criticism works today. 

Dunn Gone Too Far

Randy Dunn makes big wines. At least he used to make big wines, but now most other winemakers have left him in the dust. It’s hard to think of a Dunn Howell Mountain wine as medium bodied, but that’s exactly what has happened. The alcoholic powerhouses of today are over-the-top for even Dunn and recently he sent a mass email to the press decrying the 15% ethanol Port-like wines being produced by so many of his compatriots. You can read that email and other coverage on Appellation America at:

http://wine.appellationamerica.com/wine-review/447/Winemaker-Randy-Dunn.html

 A telling point in all of this is that Dunn notes that his famed Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon has consistently come in between 13.2 and 13.8% alcohol over the years. That’s how far things have swung out of control in just a few years as those levels used to be thought of as big, while today they seem restrained. Dunn’s Cabernet is certainly a substantial wine, but gains its complexity and power though the distinctive character of that vineyard and the fruit grown there instead of using overripe fruit flavors and big alcohol to fool consumers with sweet upfront flavors that masquerade as complexity to inexperienced tasters or palates overwhelmed by tasting too many wines in one session.

Dunn is to be applauded for taking such a public stand on a topic that is sure to displease many of his neighbors. I hope it makes a few winemakers think about this issue of out-of-control alcohol levels before flaming shots of cabernet become the next college fad. 

A Boléro Bottle

Starting out deceptively simple, understated and lithe it slowly built to a dramatic crescendo over the course of the meal. The wine was 2001 La Chapelle di La Mission Haut Brion, Pessac Léognan, the second wine of Chateau La Misson Haut Brion and it is a wonderful, classically styled Bordeaux.

Wines like this are so differently conceived that it is hard to compare them to today’s powerhouse style of winemaking. I can see how someone accustomed to the obvious charms of Napa Cabernet or Australian Shiraz would find such a wine hard to understand. The La Chapelle was all about nuance and finesse and, most of all, it is designed to be a harmonious component of a meal. As you sip this wine with your food it weaves a web of complexity that expands and focuses your senses on the complete experience of dining. Perhaps the biggest contrast that such wines have with so many of today’s wines is that the La Chapelle was actually refreshing to drink. The 12.5% alcohol also is a big difference enabling you to enjoy several glasses and to really experience it’s swirling, changing characteristics as you get to know this wine better.

The best wines should become more complex as you drink them. However, all to many wines are one-trick-ponies that offer little after the first bombastic sip. Like Boléro, the end should be more exciting than the beginning.

North-Westrey Cuisine

It was a beautifully warm July night with a gorgeous sunset expanding over the horizon. A fillet of very fresh, wild-caught Copper River Salmon was looking for a good partner and out of my cellar came a 2004 Westrey Reserve Pinot Noir, Willamette Valleyfor the occasion.

Such a full-flavored fish needs little additional fanfare, so I just sprinkled the fillet with fresh Savory from my garden along with a spattering of red sea salt and fresh ground pepper and quickly pan-roasted it to medium-rare. Then served it with a baby arugula salad from a local farm stand and some crusty, warm bread from the famous (in McMinnville anyway) Red Fox Bakery.

The Westrey seemed a bit harsh at first, but soon opened into a silky complexity that brought alive the palate in a perfect counterpoint to the dense, rich salmon. A spot-on example of the wired, electric richness that makes for great Oregon pinot noir this 04 Westrey Reserve is not only delicious, but a bargain at under $30. The initial tightness of this pinot underscores the necessity of decanting young Oregon pinot noir. A short exposure to oxygen will give you a wine with more complexity and balance. The reductive style of winemaking required to make outstanding pinot noir means that decanting young wines should be a standard practice. Let’s face it, with the entry level price for good pinot noir at $20 and well over $30 for real complexity, to not take the time to decant these wines if you’re drinking them young is a waste of good money and good wine.

As the last bite of this sumptuous salmon crossed my lips, the Westrey just hit its stride and a good stride it was as this pinot noir will challenge far more expensive wines.  Winemakers AmyWesselman and David Autrey (get the name of the wine?) continue to not only produce great values, but great pinot noir in Oregon. 

Three Beauties

It was a blind tasting and I guessed a mix of Napa and Washington cabernets. Wrong I was. They were all Washington wines and there were three beauties that are not to be missed, but I recommend waiting at least 3 or 4 years before you pull their corks.  Below are the unanimous top wines of the evening:

• 2003 L’Ecole No. 41, Apogee, Pepper Bridge Vineyard, Walla Walla Vineyard (47% cabernet sauvignon, 45% merlot, 5% malbec, 3% cabernet franc) Frankly I love this wine. There is a incredible combination of elegance and power trapped in this bottle that would seem to defy the laws of physics. A case of this wine is going into my cellar for sure. This is one of those wines that are difficult to drink because you can’t get your nose out of the glass. No brooding monster here, but a silky beauty that will only get better and better, but is pretty damn good right now. (My wine of the night)
  
• 2003 Carriage House, Côte Bonneville, DuBrul Vineyard (cabernet sauvignon 77%, cabernet franc 13%, merlot 10%)  This just blew the other wines it its flight away and it was a very good flight of wines. The balance of this wine is almost perfect with aromatics and textures that are completely seductive. Perfectly structured for aging and anyone with the patience will be well rewarded. (everybody else’s wine of the night)
  
• 2003 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon - With all the hype you almost want to not like this wine, but alas it’s great. This is a big brooding wine that should not be drunk for at least five (if not more) years.  Even with all this intensity you can just feel the complexity lurking in the background waiting to explode. It’s too bad, but with the scores this wine got, you can believe that 90% (or more) of the bottles already have their corks pulled.  What a waste, because someday this will be a truly astounding wine.
  

Demon Alcohol

They say you can’t argue taste. I believed that until I read a recent column titled Demon Alcohol by The Wine Spectator’s James Laube. In his article he argues that the 2004 Martinelli Zinfandel Giuesppe & Luisa at 16.9% alcohol is a balanced wine. Balanced for what? Perhaps month-old hung wild boar with a sauce of aged Stilton served while you’re smoking a big cigar? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“If you taste a wine and it seems to be balanced, the alcohol content shouldn’t matter,” writes Laube. I could not agree more, but if someone thinks a dry wine, destined for the dinner table, that has 16.9% alcohol is balanced, I just have to question what their standards of taste are, one thing for sure, they do not mirror my own.

So in this case I will argue taste with Mr. Laube and fundamentally disagree. Balance in wine is not like a balance scale. It does not mean that if there is enough massive big fruit on one side of the scale that it will naturally balance the massive big alcohol on the other. Port is balanced because it has both fruit and sweetness to carry the alcohol, take the sweetness out of Port and you’ll have a raw, harsh wine. Keeping the scale in balance is not so simple and is not dependent on the wine alone, that is unless you believe  a wine’s purpose is to be consumed with no accompaniment or, perhaps, only with other wines.

Ultimately it’s true, you can’t argue taste and if Mr. Laube loves the Martinelli Zinfandel at that alcohol level so be it. However, trying to convince the rest of us that such a wine is truly balanced seems to be taking things a bit far. Perhaps it’s understandable. Lord knows what I would write after drinking a wine with 16.9% alcohol. 

Burn Baby Burn

The finish just would not end. The length of the finish is one of the defining characteristics of a great wine and this one had a doozy. It started out great with an earthy, deeply fruity nose and concentrated flavors that flowed into a finish of epic proportions. The only problem is that this wine had a finish more appropriate to Bourbon than wine.

The 2003 Jade Mountain Napa Valley Syrah has much to commend it up front, but as soon as you swallow, Dante’s Inferno overtakes whatever there was to like about this wine. The big fruit is soon sucked down and overwhelmed by an intense alcohol burn that would be more appropriate at a cigar bar than the dinner table.

I had this wine with a giant steak at Morton’s and it was too big even for that much fat. If it can’t match that, it can’t match anything. Yes it had a finish that wouldn’t stop, but the problem was that I wanted it to. In fact, the Cognac we had after dinner had less burn that this Molotov Cocktail of a wine.

Wine by the Glass Heaven

Available by the glass, quarter bottle, half bottle and full bottle:

• Zwiegelt, Burgenland, Austria
• 2005 Bourgueil, Breton, France
  
• 2004 Pic-Saint-Loup, La Coste d’ Aleyrac, France
  
• Collioure, La Rectorie, France
  
• Gamay, Vallee d’Aoste, Grosjean, Italy
• 2002 Montevertine, Tuscany
• Bizkaiko Txakolina, Gorrondona, Spain
  

… and that’s less than half of just the red wines by the glass at Portland’s Navarre restaurant.

The white, rosé and sparkling wines offered are equally interesting and delicious. Here is a restaurant with not only courage, but a firm knowledge about what it wants to be. They serve hearty, honest food based on the best ingredients from Oregon and Washington all complimented by a wine by the glass program that embarrasses America’s most elite restaurants. Navarre offers cutting edge wines that other restaurants just don’t have the guts, knowledge or work ethic to offer. Not one snooty sommelier is in sight, but the eager to please wait staff is willing to share their enthusiasm with you. All of this in a storefront restaurant with absolutely no style, pretense or ego. They put all of their passion into real food and real wine and don’t waste their energy on the Paris Hilton frills that seem to define so many restaurants.

The dedication that goes into the food at Navarre is evidenced by the superb wines they offer. The food is humble, but intensely deliciously humble. Their wine list lifts that experience to memorable heights.

The wine list is so good here you almost don’t care about the food - fortunately the food lives up to the wine.

Merlot and Wings

One of the wine pleasures of living in Oregon is the weekly wine column in The Oregonian by the excellent wine writer Matt Kramer. Matt is constantly championing wine by small, terroir-driven producers who have little clout in the market, but make wines that are wonderful to drink and great values besides. Inexplicably, Matt also works for The Wine Spectator, which of course promotes exactly the opposite style of wine as the champion of the big, power-marketing side of the wine business.

In a recent column in The Oregonian, Matt points out an amazing statistic, that is that red wine consumption has overtaken white as the national wine drink. Matt cites Nielsen statistics putting red wine sales at 52.9 % of all wine sales in the first 16 weeks of this year. This is amazing because not so many years ago this was the land of chablis and brie.

This is a big problem for winemakers and helps explain the state of red wine in America today. The fact of the matter is that most wine consumption in America, unlike Europe,  is not as a part of a meal, but as a cocktail. A quick visual survey of any popular upscale restaurant will confirm this. First of all most consumers don’t have any wine with their lunch, so that meal is out. Then stop by the bar after work and you’ll see glass after glass of red wine, grasped by the bowl like a beer, being gulped without a bite of food in sight. American’s drink a lot, if not most, wine as a cocktail and that means that big brand winemakers don’t make their wines to taste good with any food beyond bar food. It means they make it to taste good by itself. It  means wines that are fruity, a little sweet and most of all not complex. Complexity is a confusing distraction to bar conversation and must be avoided.

Because red wine has become a cocktail instead of compliment to a meal in America, you will be hard pressed to find many inexpensive red wines produced here worth drinking. They are all bland, sweet and indistinguishable from each other with variety being irrelevant. The same goes for most reds from Australia. For good red wine values you must look to Europe, where they still make wine to go with food.

In just a few years we’ve gone from the land of chablis and brie to the land of merlot and wings. That’s progress?

Virtual Corky Paranoia

Corky paranoia, the fear of getting hassled for returning a corked bottle of wine, was an ongoing problem that we had learned to live with. We just accepted that look of contempt from a waiter or store clerk as they refunded your money or replaced your bottle as part of being a wine aficionado. I remember one experience in Chicago when I returned a spoiled bottle only to have the restaurant refuse to bring me a bottle of the same wine assuming that there was nothing wrong with the wine and that I just didn’t like it. Even with all these hassles over the years there was always a real person there to whom I could actually return the bad bottle to prove my point. In fact, I always kind of enjoyed watching the restaurant manager or store clerk taste one of these stinky bottles to check on me. As a grimace of disgust crossed their face, I could hardly resist the urge to pleasantly quip, “I told you so.” Of course, the reason we have corky paranoia  in the first place is because all to often they taste a brutally bad bottle only to respond, “It seems fine to me.” before they grudgingly refund your money or bring you a new bottle.

Now that I am buying quite a bit of wine via the internet, the new issue of virtual corky paranoia has settled in. Now when I get a bad bottle there’s no one to hand the offending bottle back to and the best you can do is call and complain. All to often I have shrugged my shoulders as I poured a bottle down the drain that I have purchased online and just let it go, but this kind of attitude can make things quite expensive. After all, if you buy 6 bottles for $20 and one of them is bad, you just increased your purchase price to $24 a bottle. When you remember you also had to pay shipping on these wines it can soon become a very bad deal to buy online. Considering that the minimum number of corked bottles you’ll get is 5%, not being able to return spoiled bottles purchased online could put a good dent in your wine budget.

Last week a bottle I had purchased from Chambers Street Wines was corked and, after I poured it down the drain, I decided to shoot them off an email to see what would happen. Within the hour I had a return email where they gave me  a credit to apply on my next purchase. Now, I know that Chambers Street is no ordinary wine merchant, but what this proves is that it’s well worth your time to seek out a real wine merchant like Chambers Street as they understand the issue and can respond appropriately.

Merchants like Chambers Street are the only proven therapy for corky paranoia. 

America's Ultimate Wine Merchant

The Offer to End all Offers: A Massive Vertical of F.X. Pichler

As far as we know there has never been an offer of this magnitude from any retailer in the United States; even in Austria mature wine from older vintages is extremely difficult to find. These are not the most expensive wines out there, but they are among the rarest!

Move over Hubert … .Here comes Lignier-Michelot and his startling 2005’s.

The ‘05 Lignier-Michelot’s have arrived and they are sensational. The 2005’s are by far the best wines that have ever been made at the estate. From the stellar Bourgogne Rouge to the extremely underrated Clos de la Roche these wines are absolutely overflowing with luscious 2005 fruit.

 

Mature German Spatlese for under $30: 1994 Wegeler Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese

After the resounding success of our mature German Kabinett e-mail we have sourced a mature German Spatlese and it is spectacular. It is extremely difficult to find older German wine in the marketplace today as the wines are mostly small production (10-1200 cases)and usually gobbled up on release by savvy consumers. So this offer today is a rare treat. Many estates in Germany do keep an extensive library of older wines. Von Schubert, Zilliken, Karthauserhof to name but a few of the top guys. The condition and provenance of many of these wines is perfect

 

The three excerpts above are from the newsletter of Chambers Street Wines in Manhattan, certainly America’s finest wine merchant if you are seeking interesting wines at prices that surprisingly enough don’t break your  wine budget. Never in my life have I seen a store that thinks so independently, ignoring fashion and the pointy wines from the big wine publications in a search for wines of true distinction. Instead Chambers Street Wines offers its customers some of the most unique, exciting wines in the world - often offered at bargain basement prices. I cannot urge you enough to go to their website and subscribe to their email newsletters. These newsletters are an inside track to wines that will change the way you think about wine. You will see many names and places you don’t know, but your wine world will be opened to wines with a range of complexity that is beyond the comprehension of The Wine Spectator and other such publications whose superficially pointy recommendations only dull your palate, your mind and your meals.

 

There are many dedicated wine merchants throughout the United States (not one of them large) that share the spirit and dedication of Chambers Street Wines and you should do your best to seek them out and support them. However, Chambers Street Wines not only has the desire to seek out the best, but are lucky enough to be located in New York City, which gives them an unparalleled access to some of the world’s most unique wines.  This access combined with intelligent, well trained palates and open minds makes Chambers Street Wines a wine merchant without equal.

 

Chambers Street Wines 

160 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007
Phone: 212-227-1434
Fax: 212-227-7978

 

Perfection in Pleasure

A more beautiful line-up of wines you’ll not see from one producer than the 2005 releases from Domaine des Terres Dorées. Each of Jean-Paul Brun’s current Beaujolais releases are nothing short of perfection in pleasure. These are among the prettiest wines you will ever look at, smell, taste or fondly remember.

It’s no surprise these gems are imported by Louis/Dressner, who comments on their web site about Brun’s wines, ” Brun’s view is that Beaujolais drinks best at a lower degree of alcohol and that there is no need to systematically add sugar to the must (chaptalize) to reach alcohol levels of 12 to 13 degrees. So he chaptalizes minimally or not at all — depending on the vintage and the cuvée. His Beaujolais is made to be pleasurable — light, fruity and delicious — not an artificially inflated wine that shines at tasting competitions. Only a minimal amount of S02 is used at bottling to keep the wine fresh and “headache-free”. Fermentation naturally produces a lot of CO2, which acts as protection against oxidation during aging; leaving some in the wine at bottling time also helps to keep it fresh. Filtration is also minimal so that the wine keeps its original fruit and aromas. Brun’s wines are not ‘blockbusters’ in the sense of ‘big.’ The emphasis is not on weight, but on fruit: Beaujolais as it once was and as it should be.”

I have never tasted a wine from Brun that was not delicious and in the excellent 2005 vintage he has reached new heights. While Brun’s Beaujolais à l’Ancienne seems readily available in many markets, his Cru wines are not. If you want them I’d quickly check out Chambers Street Wines as they seem to have most of the few bottles available.

The first thing that these wines have in common is that they are absolutely alive. Not just lively, which they are, but alive. While most wines lie dead in the bottle waiting to be consumed, Brun’s wine seem coiled like a spring in the bottle waiting for the experience of your palate to complete the winemaking process. Next is a brilliant, ruby purple color that seems to radiate out of your glass. Then there is their purity. There is just something about these wines that that communicates the purity of the process that brought them to your table. You’ll not taste cleaner wines.

Brun’s 2005 Beaujolais releases:

• Beaujolais à l’Ancienne - this has been my house wine of choice for several years now. Always perfectly balanced and mouthwatering, I can think of few wines that can bring alive such a broad range of foods. You’ll need to buy this by the case as you’ll find yourself grabbing for a bottle again and again. While always delicious, this wine has reached new heights in pure pleasure in 2005. While drinkable now, it will certainly keep for a few years.
• Fleurie - a high strung, delicate flower of a wine. Electric and racy with a graceful swirl of wildflowers and spice.
• Morgon - Richer and rounder, but no less alive. Deeply zesty black fruits open into minerals, spice and lilting wisps of cassis. Weightless power.
  
• Moulin-a-Vent - The biggest, most powerful delicate wine I’ve ever tasted. With some kind of sleight of hand, this wine teases the palate with a richness that refuses to be heavy handed. A brilliant wine with amazing complexity and a balance that should inspire all winemakers.

Jean-Paul Brun is nothing less than a great winemaker.

Fresh Fish; Stale Wines

Eating seafood in Seattle is always a pleasure, but for me a meal without an equally interesting wine is always missing that ultimate note of complexity and pleasure. Etta’s, part of Tom Douglas’ mini-Northwest food empire, is one of those great seafood experiences and, like all of his enterprises, is an excellent restaurant. On a recent visit there the food was outstanding, but the wine list was not.

For dinner I selected the following courses:

• Stellar Bay Oysters (stellar indeed, some of the best I’ve tasted)
• Kasu black cod, sweet and sour vegetables with ocean salad ( a wonderful mix of flavors and textures)
• Pan seared Alaskan Halibut, beluga lentils, baby golden beets, escarole, smoked ham hock and horseradish crème fraiche ( an excellent dish mixing the smoky ham with the rich lentils and a crispy piece of very fresh halibut)

To match this delicious menu I selected from the wine list the 2005 Cedergreen Cellars Sauvignon, Columbia Valley and here the meal hit a snag. Sure this is a nice wine, but it’s just not nice enough for such thoughtfully prepared foods. A very clean wine that’s certainly acceptable, but it’s nothing more than that. This is a wine more suited to a picnic than fine dining. The notes on the wine list presented this wine as light and fresh as it was unoaked, but as it approaches 14% alcohol, light is not the word you would use to describe this wine. Perhaps this time the fault was more the wine buyer than the winemaker.

Wine With Flying Fish

A happy coincidence brought me back to the excellent Flying Fish Restaurant  twice on my last trip to Seattle. The quality of the seafood here is simply outstanding as are the creative preparations. Fortunately they have a assembled a tremendous wine list so you can rest assured what’s in your glass will excite you as much as what’s on your plate.

When it comes to food and wine matching, I usually paint with a broad brush as I find as long as the wine and food are great and the harmony close enough that pleasure  is at hand. However, sometimes you get a match that is so perfect that the qualities of both the food and wine are amplified. The Flying Fish supplied such an experience last night when their seared sea scallops with shoestring sweet potatoes, crispy prosciutto and pineapple hollandaise met a bottle of 2001 Josmeyer Riesling. I have been a fan of Jean Meyer’s deft, food-friendly winemaking for years and this lovely bottle did not disappoint. This is a wine at its peak showing enticing petrol highlights over rich aromas of honeysuckle and ripe white peaches. Substantial, but extremely well balanced on the palate, this wine walks the line between depth, complexity and balance with elan. The rich scallops with the salty prosciutto integrated with the flavors of this wine in a way that still makes me salivate just writing about it.

The Flying Fish combines the best of what I love about a restaurant these days. It is casual, but offers a better wine selection and better food than most of its more stuffy brethren. This is a restaurant focused only on actual quality, not just the appearance of it. 

Electric

I kept turning the bottle around looking for the plug. This wine had so much electricity it just had to be plugged in. The spine tingling acidity of the 2005 Grüner Veltliner, Dr. Unger, Classic Oberfeld, Kremstal sends a zesty current of almost electrical energy across your palate. Paired with the seafood wonders of Seattle’s Flying Fish restaurant, this wine was nothing short of perfection. The explosively fresh acidity broadens into layers of wonderful flavors and aromas like stone fruits, minerals and key limes. I can think of few better matches with pristine fresh fish simply prepared than this razor of a wine.

The First Three Glasses Were Fine

The restaurant had an excellent wine by the glass selection and it was with anticipation that I watched the bartender pour me a glass of a lovely Rhône rosé, the  2005 Au Petit Bonhuer, Les Pallières Rosé, out of a bottle over two thirds gone. I lifted the brilliant light salmon colored wine to my nose and deeply inhaled a noseful of dirty, moldy aromas - the wine was corked. Upon informing the bartender, she put the bottle (yes, the bottle) to her nose and made a funny face at me. After all, it had been good enough for the other three people for whom she had poured a glass. Fortunately she brought me another glass without comment and indeed this is a charming wine. Bright, racy and substantial, it was a great match with some very fresh, rare roast salmon.

Industry estimates  say that 5%+ (some say much higher) of all cork finished wines are spoiled by TCA infected corks and nowhere near that many bottles are returned to restaurants and wholesalers. That of course means that the vast majority of these faulted wines are consumed, with the drinker either not paying attention or thinking that producer makes crappy wine. Take a second to really smell a wine, which should smell of fresh clean fruit, not old moldy books.

Promises, Promises

 The story promises so much, a special vineyard in Flagey-Echezeaux that is planted with gamay instead of pinot noir because of its unique microclimate. The 2002 Domaine de La Vougeraie En Bollery Terres d’en Face sounds like an exciting and unique expression of terroir, but what you get is more like Yellow Tail than anything else.

Nice bottle, serious label, but the wine inside has little to do with the variety or vineyard. This is overripe, over extracted commercial plonk with no more appeal than Yellow Tail Shiraz. In fact, the Yellow Tail is a better deal. Avoid this pretender to terroir.

Costco: Fine Wine Merchant :)

Linda, a Wine Camp Blog reader, recently sent me this email about “corky” wines and Costco:

“Hi Craig.  I read your interesting article about corky wine on the web and I hope you will give me some advice.  I recently purchased a bottle of Cavit Pinot Grigio at Costco which turned out to be corky.  When I returned it to Costco here in Georgia (I had my receipt), the manager said that he would let me do a “one-time courtesy return” and made a notation on my account.  Here in Georgia we can return a bad bottle but only in exchange for the same brand, and that rule is fine by me.  He said that they store the wines properly and that there was cork in the bottle and that was why it was corky, implying that I had not opened the bottle properly.  I have had over 30 years as a flight attendant working in first class and am quite accustomed to opening a bottle of wine as well as recognizing a musty, corky odor.   I am quit aggravated with his “one-time courtesy return” and would ask your advice on how to return a bottle should this happen again. ”

I see two mistakes here, first buying wine at Costco and secondly buying Cavit Pinot Grigio. Fortunately your bottle of Cavit was corked, meaning it actually had a flavor - as usually it’s tasteless.

The ignorant response of the manager is inexcusable and highlights why Costco is a bad place to buy wine. The manager clearly had no idea, interest nor training on a product in his store.  People buy wine at Costco as they think they are getting good buys when all they are getting is commercial plonk that has  bribed their way onto their shelves.

I often shop at Costo for toilet paper and such, but never buy wine there becaus they sell boring wines that are bad values at any price. A trip to any real fine wine retailer will get you many more wine bargains. You may not have heard of the brand, but the wines will taste better than anything you’ll get at Costco and not cost you a penny more.