Drinking a Few Things from the Cellar

In 2005 I got into wine again, after a long time away. I bought some bottles and drank all of them. In 2006 I continued to buy wine to drink but I also bought some wines with the intention of cellaring them. According to my records I still have 18 of those bottles. I still have over 50 bottles of wine that I purchased in 2007.

There are bottles in that group that I hope to hold onto for a good while longer, and there are others that seem like great candidates for drinking over the next year or two. I think it was the VLM who once wrote that the beautiful thing about collecting wine is not necessarily the trophies you can open on a grand night with fellow wine lovers. It's that you get to a point when you can go into your own cellar and open a mature bottle, and you can do so on a Monday night, just because you feel like it.

For this to really work, though, I have to still like, or at least be interested in the wines I bought 6, 7, and 8 years ago. Have your tastes changed in the past 7 years? Mine have. But as I look through my cellar I see that there really aren't too many things that I am no longer interested in. That would be a great theme actually - a "bring-a-bottle-you-purchased-years-ago-but-no-longer-care-about" wine dinner.

As I look through my remaining purchases from 2006 and 2007, I see that the wines are mostly Loire Valley and Burgundy wines, and that I did better with the Loire selections. Huet, Chidaine, Clos Rougeard, Baudry, Foreau...hard to argue with that. The Burgundy wines are mostly villages and "lesser" 1er cru wines, and I bet they will be delicious. But they are not things I would buy today, for the most part. It's just a matter of price - there are many wines today I would prefer to buy with my  $45 than Voillot villages Volnay or Pommard, for example. That said, I am the proud owner of both wines and look forward to trying them.

So, I've started to dig in lately. In each of the past two weeks I've opened a bottle that I purchased a few years ago. Last Monday I made a simple dinner of skirt steak and vegetables and opened the 2005 Terrebrune Bandol. Yes, yes, I know, this sort of Bandol wine can take 20 years before it hits a true window of maturity. Here was my thinking - 2005 was a ripe year and the wine might be more generous than is typical. And before investing another 10 years in this wine (I have more than 1 bottle), why not check in to see how it's progressing?

I am a fan of Terrebrune - the wines can be great. I've had excellent examples from the '80s and early '90s. I love the rosé too. When they're good they are intensely powerful and sturdy wines but they're also graceful wines, not heavy. And they faithfully express the animale wildness of Mourvedre grown in this hot southern clime. This bottle was not so great, though. On the first night it was exuberant and pleasing in its ripe, deep, dark, and spicy fruit. But there was not a great deal of complexity and the finish tailed off in a rather drastic way, leaving not much more than an impression of tannins. On the second night the wine is more harmonious, the fruit and the tannins better integrated. But still, the wine did not speak so clearly of Bandol to me. Where is the musk, the leather, the soil? Maybe the wine is closed down, or maybe I'm just not going to be a fan of this sort of wine in the warm vintages.

I had much better luck this week. On Monday night the daughters helped me make a bunch of gray sole fillets for dinner. They seasoned some flour, dredged the fillets, kind of wiped their hands before touching everything else on the counter top, and we sauteed the fillets in butter. Ate them with a heap of rice and vegetables.

I opened a bottle of Muscadet, one of the great wines from that place - the 2004 Domaine de la Louvetrie Muscadet le Fief du Breil. I loved this particular wine when it was young and saved a bottle to see what would happen when it turned 10 years old. I made it past 9 years old, so that's close. The aromas were pure and clean, and pungent in that way that happens as wine ages. It smelled of preserved lemons and saltwater, and tasted predominantly of rocks, finished briny and long. If it sounds a bit austere, it was, but that can be a good thing, and this wine was compelling and delicious. And it seems as though it will continue to develop, and perhaps improve, for another decade. This is solid stuff. I spent $13.50 on it 6 years ago.

This is going to be fun, digging into some of the things I bought.

The BLT and Fried Green Tomatoes - End of Summer Tomato Gluttony

Amazing that it's happened so quickly, but summer is basically over. The good news is that fall happens fast too, and after Thanksgiving it's just a few winter months, and then it's almost summer again. So yes, it's almost next summer already, and that is exciting.

This time of year I eat tomatoes shamelessly. Tomatoes of all colors, shapes, and sizes, at any time of day, with any combination of foods, and prepared in all sorts of ways. I try to be creative and still, some of my favorite late summer tomato dishes are the classics. Really, I ask you, could you turn down a well-made BLT? Could you refuse a plate of fried green tomatoes? I should think not.

The BLT, just in case you require a little tomato inspiration. I like mine on good white bread.

And high quality thick-cut bacon is a must. I'm using Lou's Natural bacon these days, and it's very delicious and not too fatty.

But in the end, this sandwich is about the tomato. It has to be flavorful enough so that it actually offers contrast to the smokey bacon. I've used heirlooms of various colors on a BLT and while I wouldn't kick any of them off my plate,  it is the classic orange variety that gets me on a BLT.

This is a Ramapo tomato grown by star New Jersey farmer Bill Maxwell and it is not to be trifled with. It isn't as firm as some others and therefore gets a little sloppy when in sandwich, but it is well worth it for its wonderful fresh essence-of-tomato flavor. Really though, this is a messy tomato and is better eaten at home where you can get all sloppy with it.

Fried green tomatoes require a little more time but not much more effort. You are slicing green tomatoes to about a half inch thick, coating them in flour, dipping them in a mixture of buttermilk and egg, then dredging in seasoned cornmeal. There are many variations here and all work fine. I like to use breadcrumbs as a solid third of my cornmeal mixture because the crust stays together better after cooking. And I season with salt and pepper, nothing more. I'm sure there are at least 146 correct ways to do this, so do what feels right to you.

After the coating, the dipping, the dredging, and the frying, the hard part of your work is done. Now it's about choosing a vehicle. Fried green tomatoes are delicious as a side dish, but I like them to get top billing. Last week I served them as a first course, interspersed with slices of a beautiful ripe Green Cherokee tomato and topped with green goddess dressing. Green goddess dressing is ridiculously delicious and pretty easy to make, but that's for another time. This was a good dish, by the way. My friend asked for seconds and happily cleaned his plate.

What to drink with this sort of late summer tomato goodness? Anything really, from an acidic white wine to a light red wine. 

I've been enjoying rosé with these dishes. A good Bandol rosé, the 2011 Terrebrune Bandol Rosé, $32, for example, imported by Kermit Lynch, has the complexity, depth of flavor, and the body to stand up to this hearty food, and also the acidity and fresh fruit to cleanse the palate. And there is something about the way Mourvedre rosé works with bacon...But I drank the leftover half of the less ambitious 2011 Domaine Les Fouques Côtes de Provence Rosé Cuvée de L'Aubigue, $14, David Lillie/Chambers Street direct import, with a BLT today and it was great. Then again, I don't need much of an excuse to drink good rosé, especially now that it is almost next summer. 

What a Difference a Year Makes

Cellar space is at a premium in NYC. I can't save all of the different wines I would like to age. There are many different wines in my "cellar" (read: wine fridge), things that most anyone would agree should be left alone for years before drinking. It's the little wines that I never seem to make room for, and we drink them up when they're young.

There's nothing at all wrong with that - if a wine is expressive and delicious young, why not drink it? Some humble little wines, though, can improve dramatically with even short-term cellaring, and I wish that I had more space/self control to give them that extra year or two in the bottle.

A couple examples. I never manage to hold any Coudert Fleurie. The old vines Cuvée Tardive I'm good about, but the regular wine...as much as I'd like to sock a few bottles away, the wine is always delicious young, and so we drink it. Another example - all Bandol rosés. As committed as I am to holding a bottle or two, I seem to find excuses to open them.

This is all too common with me. There are so many wines that I'd love to put away, but don't. Such is life - there are choices to make and one cannot cellar every interesting bottle of wine. I drank a few things recently that reminded me of the rewards of storing the humble wines even for just a year or two.

2006 Bernard Baudry Chinon Cuvée Domaine, $18, Louis/Dressner Selections. I've always enjoyed this wine but I never managed to store any until the 2006 vintage. It's just so good, even right out of the gates. Some folk, like the Vulgar Little Monkey, figured out long ago that there are several Baudry wines worth cellaring, the humble Cuvée Domaine included. It's not Baudry's top wine and it will never be earth shattering, but Cuvée Domaine is a great wine that in most vintages is even better with a few years in the cellar. The tannins have rounded a bit in the 2006 and the wine flows freely across the palate. The fruit is rich and the body lean and muscular, the sensibilities of gravel and flower coexisting harmoniously. You will be proud of me when I tell you that I still have another bottle of this. And a few of the 2007's too. I need an underground cave.

2006 Jacques Puffeney Arbois Trousseau Cuvée les Bérangères, $30, Imported by Neal Rosenthal Wine Merchant. Again, this was always an attractive wine. But I managed to hold this last bottle for merely one year and the payoff was huge. The slight astringency that I was always happy to work with is gone now, and so is whatever else that is not essential to the purest of cool red currant and leafy raspberry, the gamy undercurrent, and the stony finish. So agile and energetic, such a compelling example of cool climate mountain wine from the Jura. I hereby renew my commitment to the 2007's.

2007 Domaine de Terrebrune Bandol Rosé, $25, Kermit Lynch Imports. I won't lie to you - I didn't cellar this wine. I drank all mine last summer and loved all of it. But Chambers Street came across a small bit recently and I bought a bottle from them. Wow - the wine is even better. It takes a while to open up, but when it does it really sings. Peach juice, spices, metal, and stone, pure as can be and perfectly balanced. The gamy streak that was there in its youth was not here a year later, but I loved how there is a new dimension to the texture. There are layers on the palate now, and there is a tactile sense to each flavor. I bet that this is just the beginning for this wine, actually. Bert Celce of Wine Terroirs has written about the aging potential of Bandol rosé, Terrebrune's in particular.

Getting Started with 2010

If you look at the left side-bar of this blog you'll see that with 2010, this blog enters its fifth calendar year. This is misleading, as I have been doing this for only three and a half years. In any case, enough time has passed so that I think it's worth stepping back for a minute. And I'll use the beginning of the new year as an excuse to do this.

I am not in the wine business. I write this blog anonymously in an attempt to maintain some sort of privacy for my family and for myself in my "real" life. I started blogging as a way to record my learning about wine, and that's basically still what it is for me. Some things have changed, of course. I get to do much more than I did back then, as the New York City wine community has, luckily for me, welcomed me into it's folds. And when I write a post now I am conscious of that fact that there are people who will actually read it. But other than that, everything is the same.

I'm still not in the wine business. I've still not had a bottle of 91 Rousseau Chambertin with dinner (or any vintage of any Chambertin with dinner, for that matter), I've never tasted DRC, I've never had anyone's Montrachet with dinner. Don't mistake me for some guy who has tasted and drunk the best wines of the world, because I haven't, and I never claim to be that kind of guy. I do drink a lot of wine, I like to think that I have a decent palate, and I'm learning as much as I can. I'm having an absolute ball doing so, and I'll continue to share whatever interests me with you here on this blog.

Now that that's out of the way, I want to share a bit about something exciting from 2009. I haven't written about this yet because I couldn't figure out a graceful way to do so. And I still can't, but it was really exciting, and so this will have to do - Eric Asimov came to our house for dinner! Why did he come to dinner at my house? My mother would have you believe that he's mulling over some sort of fantastic job to offer me, and he needed to meet to check me out first. That's kind of cute in its own only-your-mother-could-be-that-patently-absurd way, isn't it?

He came over for dinner because he loves to drink wine and eat (hopefully) good food, and because he probably gets mostly business invites, and this invite was personal. He came over because I have a blog and he does too, and because I invited him.

What would you serve Eric Asimov if he came over for dinner? I decided that I wouldn't try to impress him with Grand Cru Burgundy and things like that. He has access to that kind of thing through his work, and that's not what I drink at home and write about anyway. I decided to serve some of the things that I know and love. Here's what we had:

(2005) Cédric Bouchard Roses de Jeanne Les Ursules Brut Blanc de Noirs - solo. This Champagne is delicate enough that I prefer to drink it on its own - no almonds, no nibbles, nothing. It was delicious.

NV Equipos Navazos La Bota de Fino "Macharnudo Alto" Nº 15 with pickled herring. I love this Sherry, but it was the only wine that didn't show at its best that night. Three days later it was great, but at our dinner it was just good. And I'm still not sure if there really is a wine that pairs harmoniously with pickled herring. Sherry comes close.

2002 Luneau-Papin Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Excelsior Clos des Noelles with fish soup. We decanted this wine and it was lovely. Young, but lovely, and to my taste, a harmonious pairing. Is there a better value in wine than Muscadet? I don't think so.

1993 Domaine Tempier Bandol La Migoua with steak, mushrooms, and winter radishes. When mature Tempier is good, it's really good. We got lucky with this one - it was really good. From another era, literally and figuratively.

2001 Dirler Gewurztraminer Grand Cru Kessler with a stinky Bavarian Muenster cheese. Although there is plenty of residual sugar in this wine, the vibrant acidity brings it into perfect balance and the wine doesn't seem sweet. It's not just about spicy exotic fruit - there are herbal and mineral flavors here too. I loved this wine, and there is a reason that the pairing of great Gewurz and Muenster is a classic.

Anyway, he's a very nice guy, that Eric Asimov, and it was a thrill to have him over. I know what you're thinking - "how can Brooklynguy top that in 2010?" Well, I've invited Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner over (both big into Cali Cabs), and hopefully they'll get back to me soon. If they can make it, I really need to get started thinking about what wines to serve.

Wine of the Week - Terrebrune Rosé and Tapenade

I've lived in New York essentially for my whole life (there were four years of college in the mid-west and a year in Southeast Asia and India). I've never seen a June like the one we just had, with rain almost every day, skies overcast. We had 18 days straight of rain at one stretch.

But you know what - it's still summer, and I'm taking every chance I get to treat it as such. For example, the other day while my daughters were both down for their mid-day nap, even though the sky was white, and the air thick and humid, I found myself thinking of rosé and tapenade. Probably because Bert of Wine Terroirs and I had been emailing recently about the glory of Bandol wine, and I recently re-read his post about this classic Provence pairing.

Bert says that it is easy to make tapenade - all you need is some olives, garlic, anchovies, capers, and lemon juice. A food processor helps, although a mortar and pestle is fine too. My kids nap for about two hours in the middle of the day. Could I make tapenade, enjoy it under gray skies on our deck, and still get some work done while they sleep? The answer, I'm happy to tell you, is yes.

Not a bad lunch on a humid and gray day. A food processor would help.

I used just over 6 ounces of pitted kalamata olives, one large garlic clove, two anchovy filets, about two tablespoons of capers, and the juice from half a lemon. I don't have a food processor, although we've been meaning to buy one for months. The mortar and pestle was fine though. Start by pounding the garlic with the anchovies and capers. I buy capers packed in salt usually, but for this dish it seemed better to buy a jar of large capers packed in water. Put the creamy garlic/caper mash in a bowl, then pound the olives - I had to do this in two batches. Add the olives to the caper/garlic/anchovy mash, and add the lemon juice. Stir well, and spread on slices of a baguette. My tapenade was not as creamy as Bert's, but there's only so much you can do with olives in a mortar and pestle. And coarse tapenade tastes great too.

The sun poked through the clouds as I was choosing a rosé, and I realized that celestial forces were telling me to open the very best Provençal rosé that we have. There are many fine rosés from Bandol, and every Bandol lover has his or her own favorite. Right now, mine is Terrebrune, and so I opened a bottle of the 2007 Domaine de Terrebrune Bandol Rosé, $25, Kermit Lynch Imports. Bert wrote a truly great profile of Terrebrune, and I won't waste space paraphrasing him.

Just look at that gorgeous orange color.

Terrebrune's rosé is made from the same low-yield, top quality Mourvèdre as is the estate's famous red wine. It offers rich and delicious fruit, and also a strong sense of the mineral soils that make up Terrbrune's vineyards near the sea. It is a rosé that typically benefits from cellaring. In fact, in its youth it can be quite wound up and intense, even difficult to drink. It has the classic and beautiful color that many Bandol Mourvèdre based rosés have, a deep coppery orange.The 2007 Terrebrune rosé is 50% Mourvèdre, 30% Grenache, and 20% Cinsault. The nose is tense with minerals at first, and opens up to to reveal herb-infused fruit, 7 hours later the lavender is quite clear. The oxidative nature of this wine gives the fruit an orangey character that contrasts nicely with the tension of the minerals and herbs. I saved two-thirds of this bottle to enjoy with BrooklynLady that evening, and I don't think the nose ever finished opening, although it certainly was lovely. This wine really glides across the palate with great textural richness. It is not heavy or sweet, but it is an intense and big rosé, with sunny seaside fruit flavors, a metallic mineral frame, and a nostril-filling fragrance. It demands food, and it worked perfectly with the assertive flavors of the tapenade. I hope I have the self control to cellar one or both of my remaining bottles of this wine. I would love to see how it evolves with say, 10 years. But it's just so good now, this will not be an easy task.

By the way, one thing that I particularly love about Terrebrune's wines is that they defy the trend towards higher alcohol in Provence. Not just the rosé, the red Bandol too. The 2005, the current vintage on NYC shelves, is a completely reasonable 13% alcohol. Perhaps wine maker Reynald Delille is using modern equipment to de-alcohol-ize the wine? Unlikely. But I would love to attend a presentation in which he and other Bandol producers discuss vineyard work, cellar work, and alcohol levels in Bandol over the past 15 years.

Two Kinds of Ripe

Lars Carlberg recently left another informative and interesting comment on this blog, this time to the post on Domaine Tempier's 1994 Bandol. Lars, Mosel wine exporter, wine lover, and wine thinker extraordinaire, lamented the fact that alcohol levels are consistently higher now in so many wines from Bandol and Châteauneuf du Pape.

Alcohol levels are typically at least 14% now in wines from those places, regularly hitting 15%. Until a decade ago, alcohol levels were typically about 13%. That increase of 1-2% represents 10-15% more alcohol in the wine, a significant increase. Why has this happened? I do not have a definitive answer for you, but Lars talked about phenolic ripeness and I want to explain what I think he meant - it's an interesting and counter intuitive idea.

First of all, the amount of sugar (measured in Brix) contained within grapes determines the potential alcohol level of the resulting wine. Bandol reds and also those from Châteauneuf du Pape, like most red wines, are fermented until dry. If alcohol levels are higher now, then it seems clear that grapes are now picked at sugar levels that are higher than they used to be.

Why would there now be more sugar in Bandol and Châteauneuf du Pape grapes? Perhaps it was a collective decision to pick later, encouraging maximum ripeness. But I don't think that's the answer. There are wine regions in which the prevailing style is to leave the grapes hanging as long as is safe to do so, producing ultra-ripe grapes that in turn produce huge, fruity, high alcohol wines. I don't think that's what they're going for in Bandol or in Châteauneuf du Pape.

So what's else could be behind the increase in alcohol levels if it's not a conscious decision to pick later? Well, it turns out that there are two types of ripeness. Sugar ripeness, but also something called phenolic ripeness. As Jamie Goode's describes in an excellent article that goes into far greater detail than I do here:

Phenolic ripeness (also referred to as physiological ripeness) refers to the changes in the tannins that occur in grape skins, seeds and stems. Sugar ripeness refers to the breakdown of acids and accumulation of sugars.

The tannins in grape skins, stems, and seeds have to be ripe in order for wine to taste and feel right in your mouth. Under-ripe tannins can taste green and astringent, unpleasant. But sugar ripeness happens earlier than phenolic ripeness. So grapes that hang for a long time and achieve ultra-ripe sugars also achieve very good phenolic ripeness. Think of that California fruit bomb that exhibits loads of fruit and almost no structure.

It's warmer than it used to be, so shouldn't ripeness occur earlier? Sugar ripeness - yes. Phenolic ripeness, not necessarily. What if grapes achieve sugar ripeness before phenolic ripeness is achieved? The grower must then either pick early, perhaps making wine with astringent tannins and a green streak, or must allow the grapes to hang longer, achieving higher sugars and wines of potentially higher alcohol. This is what I imagine is happening in Bandol and in Châteauneuf du Pape, and in other hot weather wine regions too.

Global warming, as GW Bush said, is a load of hogwash spread around by environmentalist pagans. That wisdom notwithstanding, harvests that used to happen in late September and into October are now complete by mid September. In Bandol they're getting the right sugars, but they cannot pick grapes with unripe tannins. The wines are already notoriously tannic - imagine a big Bandol with unripe tannins. So they have to leave the grapes for longer than they'd like, and the wines are higher in alcohol.

Perhaps they will start making off-dry wines in Bandol and Châteauneuf du Pape, in order to bring the alcohol levels back down. Or perhaps they will plant different grapes that require more sun in order to ripen. Or perhaps, truly fine red wines made from Mourvèdre, Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, and the other southern grapes, will in 30 years be coming from the more northerly climes of Beaujolais and Burgundy. Or perhaps producers in Bandol and Châteauneuf du Pape will be forced to start de-alcoholizing their wines, and using all sorts of other unnatural processes in order to make balanced wine.

None of this seems good. I'm buying hillside land with good exposure in Scotland and Greenland. Anyone want in?

Wine of the Week - 1994 Tempier Bandol

1994 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rouge, Kermit Lynch Imports, current vintage is 2006 and price is about $50. Sometimes you just have to open a special bottle of wine. We had one of those nights this week. BrooklynLady has been dealing with all kinds of stressful changes at work, the same for me, and our 5 month old has decided to wake up each night between 2 -3 AM, and start screaming. We're tired and we're stressed, and we need a vacation that we're not going to be able to take. And to top it off, the Yankees seem to turn into little league players every time they face the Boston Red Sox.

So, we opened a phenomenal bottle of wine on a humid and rainy night, and wow, did we feel better. Actually, I've been looking for a reason to open this wine for a while now, and our collective mood along with a beautifully marinated set of beef kabobs turned out to be just the thing.

I don't want to overdo it with the lavish praise, but this wine is a beautiful thing, and a great example of why aging wine is so rewarding. It was stunning on its own, a wonderful partner to our dinner, and totally and completely delicious. And it's only the Domaine's basic red, and from what is considered to be one of the more forgettable vintages in recent Provence history.

Domaine Tempier is widely considered to be among the finest producers in Bandol, and therefore in all of Provence. The Peyraud family, the family that is credited with defining the modern Bandol AOC in the 1940's, continues to run the estate and make the wines. For more on this, check out Bert Celce's profile on the estate on Wine Terroirs - full of excellent photographs and information.

Tempier, as with most of the top estates in Bandol, farms with the most minimal of chemical interventions, and uses natural yeasts to ferment the red wines - these are natural wines through and through. The Bandol Rouge is made of grapes from all of the Tempier parcels and reflects a blend of all of the terroirs. The blend is typically 75% Mourvèdre (appellation rules require that a Bandol rouge contain a minimum of 50% Mourvèdre), the rest Grenache and Cinsault.

This wine was fantastic right upon opening, with a vivid perfume of tobacco and earth, fruit liquor, and something very animal, like horses. A beautifully mature and rewarding nose, the primary fruit long gone, and it got deeper and deeper over the course of the three hours it was open. The palate is sweet and ripe, and there is great balance. The acidity is still vibrant, and here there is the memory of sweet strawberries. The finish is an encapsulation of everything that happens in the wine, the soil, the echo of ripe fruit, the tobacco, the acidic snap. But the most impressive and memorable thing about this wine is that thing that is so prized in mature Bandol - the texture. It is absolute velvet, the tannins present and providing structure but so smooth and sweet. Truly memorable, what a wine! makes me feel so good about the other Bandol sleeping in the cellar.

A Few Mature Wines

I only began cellaring wine a few years ago, so if I drink a mature wine at home it means that I bought a wine that some one else cellared for me. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to taste a mature wine at a tasting, which can be a special experience also, especially if the wine is very expensive or difficult to find at stores. Here are a few recent experiences with mature wine:

2001 Adelsheim Pinot Noir Quarter Mile Lane Vineyard, $40. BrooklynLady and I loved this wine when we visited Adelsheim Winery. We toured the estate, wandered through the sleeping oak barrels, smelled the fermenting grapes in the big steel tanks. We brought home two bottles of this, their top wine (in my opinion). BrooklynLady had a birthday recently and we opened this to compliment our marjoram-crusted rack of lamb. When you see 2001 you might not think of this as mature wine, but '01 was a "classic" vintage in Oregon, a normal year in which some great wines were made, some bad ones, and everything in between. Because in most micro climates the weather never really got hot enough for long enough, the wines do not typically have the stuffing that requires long term cellaring in order to tame. Not that they're sub-par, they are not. But they are different from the same wine in 2002, for example, in that they might mature more quickly. Just like in Burgundy - they say you should drink your 2001's and 2004's while waiting for your 2002s to mature. I might compare 2001 in Oregon to 2001 in Burgundy. Many of the reds from both places are mature and drinking beautifully right now.

This wine from the Quarter Mile Lane Vineyard was excellent. Some rusty orange color was showing near the rim. The nose was mostly secondary with earthy damp wood and leaves, cinnamon, and a hint of red cherry to remind you of youthful days gone by. Lovely flavors including stewed cherries, lively spices, and something like the smell of moist potting soil. A lingering juicy finish with fleeting floral mouth aromas - this was complex and delicious wine, and it made me resolve to hold onto some of my newer Oregon Pinots, as they clearly become quite graceful with a few years of age.

2000 Domaine des Roches Neuves Saumur-Champigny La Marginale, $12 (secondary market). Deetrane bought some of this a few years ago in an internet auction and I graciously took a few bottles off his hands. This is wine maker Thierry Germain's top wine in the sense that it takes a longer fermentation and ages in oak. I always enjoy his entry level Saumur-Champigny, by the way, a good value, and much easier drinking. This wine was a monster, incredibly taut muscles, everything still flexed. The nose was secondary, with lots of tobacco and a bit of funk at first too. The palate is still fairly ripe, with mushy black plums and lots of tobacco again, some leather too. This was nice wine, but lacking in dimension. It certainly went well with steak, but it was not memorable, didn't inspire me to buy the 2005 version ($35) and lay it down.

1987 Domaine Terrebrune Bandol Rouge - IPO Trade Tasting. Now THIS, this is mature wine. Heartbreakingly beautiful, this wine. And this is just from a few swirls and sniffs at a trade tasting. This wine was perfectly translucent deep purple still. Wine maker Reynald Delille said that 1987 was "nothing special" as a vintage, which makes this all the more exciting. He smiled when he saw my face after sticking my nose in the glass - the nose is so beautiful! It's not only the tobacco, the resin, the soil that is so beautiful on the nose, but the clarity of those smells, the harmony they create together. And the palate - these aromas followed through in a simple and elegant way, still absolutely transparent and clear, still working well together, absolutely harmonious. I was completely taken by this wine, and the IPO guide says it will arrive in September and should cost just over $100 a bottle retail. This honestly is a very good deal, in that a bottle of perfectly mature wine from a top producer from other wine regions usually costs much more. You can read more about Terrebrune in Bert's excellent profile. Not sure yet if I will buy a bottle of the 1987 (assuming a retail outlet in NYC buys it first) or instead buy a few of the 2004's at about $30, and lay them down myself.

1947 Domaine du Viking Vouvray - IPO Trade Tasting. After tasting through and thoroughly enjoying Lionel Gauthier's off-dry and sweet wines from the 2002 and 2005 vintages, the woman whose name I have forgotten but who also makes and lives these wines asked me in her beautifully accented English "Would you like to taste something a bit older?" Yes, yes I would. She pulled a bottle from under the table, a bottle of chestnut honey colored wine. The label said 1947 but there was no other identifying information regarding the designation. She said it was most probably sec-tendre (the name "Viking" is new, only since the late '80s). Whatever it was, it was stunning. Still very fresh and alive, even though there were some sherry notes mixed in with the petrol, tar, caramel, and honey. This was an amazing experience, and clearly speaks to the value of a well regulated cellar. Inspiring.

I wonder...does my wine fridge have the right humidity to perform this kind of alchemy on a bottle of the newly released 2005 Sec Tendre? Is it better to simply purchase an old bottle like this, as opposed to risking the time, space, and money attempting this at home?

An Imaginary Wine Vacation in Bandol

The dollar sucks and my daughter is only 1 year old. These are the major issues that make it seem too difficult for BrooklynLady and me to go to France in the next few months. But I have an active imagination and lately I've been thinking about the south of France, Provence in particular. Wouldn't it be great to spend a few days wandering amidst the fields of lavender, biking on narrow roads on cliffs, eating lunch on a terrace by the sea and sipping a beautiful old rosé?

I'll answer for you - yes, it would be nice.

But that ain't happenin' for me anytime soon. So instead we decided to spend a couple of days drinking the wines of Provence, specifically the Bandol appellation. Why Bandol? Wrong weather for rosé, for one. Wintry red wine kind of nights. Bandol is quietly known for making some of the finer red wines in Provence. And Bandol is the only appellation in France, I believe, where the Mourvèdre grape must comprise at least 50% of the wine. Mourvèdre is a late ripening thick skinned variety that does very well in this hot former fishing village, now fancy resort area. It is commonly blended in many southern Rhône wines and in the Languedoc-Roussillon region directly to the west of Provence. But in Bandol, Mourvèdre is the star, and that's unique.

If you look at this map and zoom in one level, you'll see the town of Bandol on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about 15 KM west of Toulon and maybe 50 KM east of Marseille. This is a hot weather place folks, seaside resort cities abound. This is a place for growing thick-skinned grapes that can withstand high temperatures. In addition to Mourvèdre, Cinsaut and Grenache are also widely used, and Syrah and Carignan can be included in smaller amounts, up to 10% individually or up to 15% when they're both included.

Want to learn more about Provence wine - take a look at some of Bert's wonderful posts on Provence on Wine Terroirs. It's the next best thing to visiting the region.

Bandol reds are not really meant for drinking young. Although they can show some nice fruit when young, from what I read, it is with age that they exhibit their true character - deeply pitched and loaded with animal and leather. These are high alcohol wines, which makes sense. The grapes get very ripe in such a hot climate, and fermenting the wine dry means eating up a lot of sugar, creating lots of alcohol.

We roasted a leg of lamb rubbed with Herbs de Provence and went to town tasting four wines. We re-tasted each of them over several days - what, you thought we would polish off 4 bottles between the two of us in one night? This ain't college, pal.

What struck me most was this - the wines have an incredible sense of place, a dusty, hot, clay, rustic, county town sort of feel, and if you can let yourself roll with it, the wines are very romantic. They feel positively out of place in my chilly Brooklyn apartment. They belong in a cottage with lavender fields and garrique outside and raspberry patches and the Mediterranean sea in the distance. They needed food, and didn't do as well on their own.

1999 Galantin Longue Gard, $36. This was all animal fur and brett on the nose when first opened, and in a really serious way - lots of dung happening here. Then some beef blood, some iron, some soft underside of leather belt. The fruit is gone, this is secondary. The palate is earthy and warm with an animal/herbal persistence and a dusty feel to the whole thing. Very funky, very intense, not for the faint of heart. Naturally made and conveys a real sense of place. I'm still not sure whether I liked it or was afraid of it.

2001 Chateau de Pibarnon, $18, half bottle. Altogether different nose. I guessed that there was less Mourvèdre in the blend, and I was dead wrong - 90% Mourvèdre here. Lighter, brighter, lots of raspberries and roasted earth. But with some air time this wine smelled like the panther cage at the Bronx zoo - pheromones all over the place. The palate is berries and cocoa powder and funky earth. In the end, very complex and interesting wine, and at 14%, relatively low in alcohol and drinkable.

2004 Domaine du Gros' Noré, $32. Raspy and rough red raspberry on the nose. Primary fruit still, but framed by wet clay earth. The palate is juicy and red with good acids but lots of alcohol heat too - it's 15% after all. On the third day open, probably a good proxy for cellaring 10 years, the wine has lovely floral and black licorice notes.

2004 Domaine de la Tour du Bon, $29. Great nose, very deep with lavender, ripe plums, and earth. Maybe even some black olives in there, but that could be wishful thinking. Smooth dark berries on the palate and a very dusty finish. This is an awkward teenager.