Back in the Saddle

I haven't written anything in a long time. It's hard to get started again. I've wanted to, but the longer it gets, the more inertia sets in. Perhaps the best way is simply to write something  - anything. Even just a list of recent wines I've loved. If it's fun, I'll write again another time.

The best red wine I've had in some time? A bottle of Beaujolais, but a special bottle - the 2011 Yvon Métras Moulin-à-Vent. This is not so easy to find here in the US, but whoa, it's worth looking for. Here's my note on the bottle: "Honestly, the finest red wine I've tasted in a while. A perfect bottle. Fragrant with fruit, flowers, stones, leaves. Beautifully expressive on the palate with complex fruit and mineral flavors, a structural firmness under the fruit that smacks of Moulin-à-Vent, texturally perfect, long on the finish - I'm trying to mention everything that's great about this wine which starts to feel silly. It really was just a wonderful bottle with a depth and expression of aroma and flavor that is fantastic." Métras is a cultish producer and that might turn some folks off. It turned me off, to be honest. But this bottle converted me. 

Then there's also this bottle, the 2008 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barbera d'Alba. Another one that is not easy to find here in the US. This bottle kind of blew me away. Pure and fresh, absolutely transparent in feel and the earthy minerality is pungent. The wine is so complex too - the finish is a melange of the herbal, the acidic, and the ripe but not overripe fruit (which itself is a melange of bright red raspberry and deep dark cherry). If you drink it now, save half for ay 2 - way better on day 2. I've not had too many Barberas, and I've had none that I loved except for a bottle a few years back by G. Conterno. This one, I loved, LOVED. Is this is what Barbera grown on great soils by a great wine maker is like?

The 2012 vintage of Tissot Poulsard is here and it's really good. For me, this is the Poulsard to buy and drink with impunity these days, as Overnoy is a unicorn and Ganevat costs $50. This wine needs a good decant to deal with the reduction, but it is absolutely delicious. It comes from very old vines and it has no added sulfur (which should raise alarms more than act as a selling point, in my book, but this one does it beautifully). It will greatly please Poulsard lovers but also I think would be a nice way to introduce a friend to the charms of light and weird red wine - it's accessible like that. Cranberries, blood oranges, hard spices, flowers, harmonious and beautifully textured, this wine packs a lot of interest into a very light frame. It costs about $25.

I'm still not entirely sure where I am with this wine. 2010 Weingut Günther Steinmetz Mülheimer Sonnenlay Pinot Noir Unfiltriert, as it is deftly named, might be an intense wine that offers way more complexity, terroir expression, and overall quality than its $23 price tag suggests is possible. Or it might just be an incredibly delicious and balanced Pinot from Germany. I can't tell yet. But I will tell you that I am vigorously enjoying the act of drinking the wine and further exploring this important question.

I still drink white wine. Way more than red, actually. Here are some recent whites that also wowed me:

2007 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese. You know, I look back at my notes from drinking this wine and it's not as though I loved it on paper. But the thing is, I loved it. I've thought about it a lot since drinking it. Maybe it sounds obvious to you if you drink these wines, but the purity, the delicacy, the impeccable balance...it really got to me and I must have more.

2012 Bernard Ott Grüner Veltliner Am Berg. I think this is a great vintage for this wine. It's subtle and quiet, but absolutely delicious and entirely expressive of place and of Grüner. I like to decant this wine, and then there are clean and cooling aromas of sour cream, lemongrass, and green herbs. Quiet, but arresting. And versatile at the table. And about $18.

I dipped into my small stash of the very fine La Bota de Fino Nº 35, and whoa, is it drinking beautifully. This is a Fino selected from barrels in the Valdespino Inocente solera system. The overtly powerful personality of the wine has been tempered a bit and it now thrives on this amazing harmony of aroma and flavor. Complex, savory,  and shockingly delicious.

Just to see what's what, I opened a bottle of 2008 Gilbert Picq Chablis 1er Cru Vogros. It reminded me that it's possible to drink real Chablis, truly satisfying Chablis, elegant and bantam weight Chablis that really smacks of seashells, iodine, and white flowers, for under $30. I like this wine in every vintage I've tasted. This one drinks very well right now, but takes 90 minutes to get there and seems like it will improve with another few years in the cellar. But whoa, when it got there it was rewarding.

That was kind of fun, writing this. For me, anyway.

Sausages and Beaujolais Will Make You Feel Better

You know how when you go to your parent's place out of town because your dad is getting older and doesn't feel so well these days, and you want to help out and so you offer to seal the wood on the deck before the winter sets in? And you get up there where it's a solid 10 degrees colder than it is the city, and it's very quiet? And you walk by the lake and see the gorgeous fall colors? And you light a fire in the fireplace in the evening? And you feel generally happy and at peace?

But you're a city kid so you're not an expert on applying stain or sealant to wood on decks. And so you leave a little extra time and resolve to do it right. But you know how in the country it seems to get darker a little earlier? And so all of the sudden there's not a lot of daylight left and you're rushing? And you pack up, lock the house, and throw everything back in the car before doing the sealing so that when you're done you can just get in the car and drive home?

Well, my advice to you next time you do those things is to make sure that you take your keys with you before you seal the deck, so that you don't have to walk back onto the wood to get back into the house to retrieve your keys. Because then you have to re-seal the deck and that takes a little while, in only the light of dusk, and you feel like a real idiot.

But if you happen to forget your keys then here is one thing you can do:

Make yourself a hearty plate of lentils, real sauerkraut, and a fresh Kielbasa from Jubilat Provisions. You should probably throw a few chunks of smoked pork belly in with the lentils, too. Never mind that it was a long and cold drive home, and your hands still smell like sealant. Lentils, sauerkraut, and really good Kielbasa will make you forget how dopey you were with the deck. You are allowed to feel good again.

And use good mustard. This one is so good, I recently ate a spoonful, just right out of the jar. 

Oh - and drink Beaujolais too. Preferably from a ripe year, hopefully with a few years of bottle age. See? That's not so bad. Maybe next weekend there will be leaves that need raking, or wood to chop, or something.

Guesswork in the Cellar

Recently I had the rather disturbing realization that almost half of the bottles in my cellar are wrong. They are not wines that today I would bet on to give me the pleasure that I look for in mature wine. There's nothing terrible in there, but there are plenty of wines in which today I would not make the investment of money, cellar space, or time. It got me thinking again about this whole question of aging wine. How should I decide on the wines I want to age?

Let me be clear - I am not asking about which mature wines I want to drink. That's easy, I would say. I want to taste any and all mature wines so I can learn more about what to expect from various young wines as they age. I'm asking about about selecting young wines for the cellar.

Keith Levenberg wrote something interesting about this a little while ago, telling a story about buying 6 bottles of 2001 Bernard Levet Côte-Rôtie La Chavaroche, drinking one and not being moved, and then "disposing" of the rest by bringing them to dinners with people who don't care which wine they are drinking. And then he drank a bottle of the same wine but from the 1983 vintage, and was moved. Enough to bring newer vintages of La Chavaroche back into his cellar.

I have never tasted a young version of a classically made and age-worthy wine, and then aged that wine to maturity. I simply have not been collecting wine long enough to do that. I have never tested my own ideas about which wines in time will become what I'm hoping for, and which will not. I don't know if I'm right when I drink a young wine and then think "yes, this wine should age well."

Think about it - you have to have been collecting wine for 25 years if you've tasted a great old bottle of Burgundy, Bordeaux, Barolo, or northern Rhône wine that you bought upon release. It's rare to be in the company of such a person. I only rediscovered wine about 7 years ago. Who knows if I will still care about wine in 25 years? Will I drink my 2007 Bernard Baudry Les Grezeaux with the same delight that I felt in putting it into storage, planning for that day? I'm just guessing every time I put something in my cellar. I'm more educated now with my guesses, but I am still guessing.

I actually feel pretty good about what I put into the cellar these days. Some of this is simply understanding what it is that I like in wine. For example, I cellared almost nothing from the 2009 vintage in Burgundy. 2009 was a ripe vintage that gave big wines and that is not the thing that excites me about Burgundy. I saved a few nice bottles from 2007 and 2008, though. Wines from those vintages tend to have less ripeness and body, but while very young they showed a balance, clarity, and detail that I found compelling. Will that translate to mature wines that are exquisitely balanced, thrillingly detailed, and terroir-expressive? Honestly, I have no idea. I do like the idea, though, of cellaring wines that today show some of the characteristics that I want to be amplified in maturity.

Another thing that I'm enjoying lately is thinking of all of the recent vintages I've had of wines that I actually have built some familiarity with, and trying to decide which recent vintage is the one I would cellar if I had to choose only one vintage. This is not always easy to do.

For example, I've drunk several bottles of Foillard Morgon Côte de Py each vintage since 2006. I was in love with the 2007 and felt that it would age well so I saved a few bottles in the cellar. But then one night a couple years ago I was hanging out with Joe Salamone, one of the wine buyers at Crush, a lovely guy whose thoughts on wine are always smart and well-considered. I asked him what he thought about the 2007 vintage of Foillard Côte de Py, hoping he would confirm my belief. He said that he liked the wine a lot, especially for short term drinking, but that he didn't think the 2007 was a good candidate for long term aging. Hmmm. So maybe my read is wrong on age-worthy Foillard Côte de Py. I've since drunk all of my remaining bottles except for one, and it's true - it is already showing mature notes and it feels completely harmonious. Still, I think I need to see what will happen with another 5 years or so. You know, to confirm or refute my own hypothesis. The 2010 Foillard Morgon Côte de Py, by the way, is the recent vintage that I would now bet on for best future satisfaction.

Another example is Pierre Gonon's great St. Joseph. I've had several bottles of each vintage since 2006. Hard to pick the one for the cellar. Definitely not 2008 or 2009 - too dilute and too ripe respectively. 2007? It certainly had great energy and really strong acidity. 2006? So well balanced. I would pick 2010 if I had to choose only one. I drank a bottle last week and it's just a fantastic wine that shows great clarity and detail, good acidity and structure, and although it's a bit rough and raw right now, it shows lovely balance.


It will be fun to see what happens with these wines down the road, as I have a bottle or two of each vintage in most cases. I hope I still care about this by the time they mature, and who knows, maybe the 2008 Gonon will turn out to be best in 15 years. 

2010 - The Vintage of the Century !

Okay, now that I have your attention...

From the little that I have tasted so far, I think 2010 is going to be a fantastic vintage for many of the wines that I love to drink. I'm talking about Beaujolais, Muscadet, Chinon and the other Loire Valley sites. Fantastic in the sense that the wines will be both incredibly delicious and also very much true to themselves, highly expressive of place.

Think about these wines in 2009, for a minute. The wines are very ripe, full in body, and I've often thought that they do not express terroir as well as they do in the less ripe vintages. I'm not saying they are bad wines, or that I don't like them, or anything like that. I'm just saying that the average 2009 version of a wine that I typically love turns out not to be a style of wine that I love.

2010, however, seems to be a different story. I remember in the early spring at the Bowler portfolio tasting I spoke with Mathieu Baudry while tasting through his '09s. I told him that I was surprised at how ripe they were. He agreed, and said that while they are good wines, he is extremely excited about his 2010s. He said that they will show a perfect balance of fruit and soil characteristics, great acidity and balance, and a blend of power and grace. That sounds exciting, no?

Dan Melia of Mosel Wine Merchant told me that 2010 was a crazy vintage for Mosel Riesling with the highest acidity levels in years. He said that many producers had to de-acidify, and that some of the wines, even from big name producers, might be difficult. The producers who were able to handle the various challenges made truly great wines, he said, and he is very excited about a lot of the 2010s in his portfolio, including wines by Peter Lauer, Weiser-Küntsler, and others. Yes, he imports the wines and is expected to say that he likes them. But if you know Mosel Wine Merchant or Dan Melia, you wouldn't be thinking about that conflict because for them there is no such conflict, he says what he thinks about the wines.

Peter Liem in ChampagneGuide.net talks of 2010 as a very difficult vintage with prominent rot and other dreary weather problems. He says that he doubts there will be many vintage Champagnes made. But he also expresses a clear optimism for the vintage, saying that conscientious growers were able to harvest ripe fruit, and if they employed "strict, even ruthless triage" they were able to make quality wines.

Those are just stories about wines though. I've tasted just a wee bit and I must say that I have been blown away so far by the 2010 versions of some of my favorite wines. Here are two:

2010 Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Clos des Briords, $16, Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections. I always love drinking Clos des Briords, but this is my favorite since 2007 or 2004 and I think I prefer it to them. The wine is simply great - it shows a wonderful blend of minerality, fruit, and acidity, everything in balance, and it is vibrantly expressive and intensely focused. Yes, it's a bit harsh now in its youth, but for me, it promises to be completely delicious and is absolutely and unmistakably Clos des Briords. If you like Muscadet, this is a wine to go long on.

2010 Coudert Fleurie Clos de la Roilette, $20, Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections. I hadn't even tasted the wine and I knew it was great, just the nose is enough. It is dark and meaty and herbal and cooling and completely harmonious. The palate offers great joy in its meaty and mineral-infused fruit, its slender frame, and its nuanced and detailed expression. It is grainy and tannic and still uncoiling, but this is exactly what excites me about Clos de la Roilette, and to me it is as good as young Beaujolais gets. I haven't tasted the Tardive yet and I'm excited...

I have no idea what 2010 will bring in the finished wines of Champagne, in Burgundy, in the Jura, or in the other places I love. But I have high hopes.

Coming Clean

I began writing this blog in September of 2006 and although some things about the way I write the blog have changed, some things have remained constant throughout. I try to write about what I'm learning and experiencing, and why it is important to me. I write about wine and food, not about the other things I feel passionate about. I try to tell a joke here and there. I don't cuss. I write the blog anonymously and I don't go into details about my personal life. Not out of any strong conviction, it just worked out that way.

I'm sure you can tell that I've had trouble writing lately, and I think I understand why now. You know how if you have a secret that you cannot figure out how to tell a friend, you wind up avoiding that friend? Until you finally figure out how to come clean, and then you feel normal again. Well, that's how I've been feeling about you, the group of people who read this blog. I have no idea who you are for the most part, but I know you're out there, and I am ready to share my secret with you so that I can stop avoiding you. I want to write and enjoy the blog again. This isn't easy for me to do, and I hope you will read this as therapeutic for me, nothing more than that. But I have to break my rule about sharing the boring details of my personal life.

BrooklynLady and I got separated several months ago and we are headed towards divorce. It has been the hardest, saddest, loneliest, strangest, angriest, most hopeless, scariest, most emotionally draining, and most unsettling experience of my life. And we are doing it amicably! I have my kids half the time, and everyone is healthy and doing the best they can.

I stayed in the apartment I'd been in in since before I started the blog, but I wanted to move, to have a fresh start. Not so easy, as it turns out. Prices have changed since I last looked, and I need a space that feels good enough to share with my kids, to be comfortable during this transition. I moved, it was a TOTAL debacle and had to move again a month later, but now it's been almost a week and I'm settling in, feeling better about my personal space and more confident about my ability to find balance and perhaps somewhere down the road, happiness. I'm still figuring out how to establish the rhythm for this new life, and I hope you'll be forgiving as I figure out how (and whether or not) writing the blog can be part of my new life.

Turns out that this wine pairs beautifully with unpacking a new apartment, by the way.

Some of my very best and most beloved friends are people who I know because of this blog. If I never write another post (figure of speech - I know what I want to write about tomorrow night when the kids go to sleep) I'll have that to take with me. But I hope that coming clean here, sharing something big about myself, will help me to feel normal again about writing.

Thanks for listening and for reading, and I don't feel so weird around you anymore.

Fleurie, Moulin-à-Vent, Shanghai Cuisine, and Experienced Wine Guys

The other night I met a friend in Chinatown for dinner and we both brought a bottle of wine to share. This guy is a relatively new friend. He has been in the wine business for a long while now and he has the opportunity to taste an awful lot of wine, new vintages and old. There are only a couple of people with whom I'm friendly enough to meet for dinner and who have the kind of wine experience and knowledge that this guy has.

I've noticed that they all have one thing in common - they always serve or bring one of the best versions of whatever wine it is we are drinking. In other words, if we're drinking Nuits St. Georges, he'll bring Chevillon Les Saint Georges. If we're drinking Vouvray, it's Huet. It's not bluster or anything remotely like that. It's the product of years of professional and personal drinking, thinking, tasting, visiting, and discussing. It's just a matter of knowing, with great experience and conviction, what it is that he actually wants to be drinking.

Anyway, on that night we were eating at a restaurant specializing in Shanghai food. We ate several kinds of soup dumplings and various cold appetizers. I brought a Chablis, the 2008 Gilbert Picq Chablis 1er Cru Vogros, $29, Polaner Imports. I love the Picq wines and this is my favorite of them, and 2008 is an excellent vintage in Chablis. This wine, however, was entirely shut down and way too young. I could have predicted that before bringing it, but I kind of refused to bring yet another Riesling to yet another Chinatown dinner.

My friend brought a bottle of Beaujolais. It was fantastic wine and I learned something fundamental from it about the terroir of Fleurie.

I always thought of Coudert's Clos de la Roilette when I think of Fleurie. My friend brought a bottle of 2008 Yvon Métras Fleurie, price unknown. In a way it's hard to compare the two wines because Coudert is made more in the Burgundian style and Métras is carbonic, but still, the differences in terroir are clear. You've had Coudert's Fleurie - there is a certain density that perhaps you can think past for a minute, and think of the flavor - muscular, dark, smokey, and rich with a strong mineral underpinning, like iron. As I read here, the soils the birth Clos de la Roilette Fleurie actually are adjacent to the the border of Moulin-à-Vent and as in Moulin-à-Vent, they have a lot of manganese and clay. Maybe Clos de la Roilette wines are more representative of Moulin-à-Vent than they are of Fleurie.

Yvon Métras' vineyards are more typical of Fleurie, and the 2008 Fleurie showed an entirely different character from any Coudert wine that I've ever drunk. Yes, the wines differ texturally, but that might have as much to do with wine making as with terroir. The flavors of the Métras Fleurie were entirely different, delicate, bright red, spice-inflected, faintly herbal. The overall package is one of elegance, grace, intensity, and purity of flavor, and I cannot remember drinking a more compelling and delicious Fleurie. It was particularly delicious with aromatic beef, braised with star anise, among other things, and served cold with some sort of aspic.

Maybe from now on I'll think of Coudert's as the finest Moulin-à-Vent that I've ever had.

Mid-term Cellaring Results

Not too long ago I retrieved some wine from off-site storage, things that I meant to drink at about this point in their lives (and in mine), and also a few things to check in on. The results have not been terribly impressive so far. These are wines that I liked very much several years ago, enough to send several bottles to off-site storage. It's interesting to see the way your own tastes change, to put yourself back in the mindset of making these decisions. Kind of like reading an old journal entry.

Anyway, here are the wines, along with a few notes:

2006 Marcel Lapierre Morgon, $22, Imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. This is absolutely and utterly delicious, and I only wish I had socked more away. Now there is an earthy complexity to the nose, although there is still plenty of dark fruit. There is also a pungency to the palate that is truly compelling. Great balance, vibrant acidity, lovely finishing perfume, just great wine - a joy.

2004 Éric Texier Côtes du Rhône-Brézème Domaine de Pergault, $29, Louis/Dressner Selections. I'm glad I have another because I have mixed feelings about the bottle we drank, and I want to drink it again. The nose was lovely and detailed, with lots of black olives and some floral hints, but the wine felt rather dilute on the palate. It never really filled out, although after it had been open for almost 2 hours it did put on a bit of weight. Perhaps I opened this one too young, or maybe I should have drunk it several years ago when I loved it. I have one more and I'm thinking that I should put it away again for another 5 years.

2005 Paul Pernot Beaune Clos du Dessus des Marconnets, $23, Fruit of the Vines Imports. Boy, did I love this wine a few years ago. I still like it fine, but it has not developed any kind of complexity - it's a lovely, fruity wine. There is nothing whatsoever that is exciting about it, though. Live and learn...

2004 Domaine du Closel Savennières Clos du Papillon, $26, Louis/Dressner Selections. There was a time when I loved this wine, LOVED it. And I don't think I was wrong - when it was young, this was a delicious wine. Only a few years later, though, and something is dreadfully wrong. The nose is beeswax and lots of alcohol (14.5%), and that's it. Two hours later, that's it. The palate is a disaster - way too evolved, no definition, not flawed, but unpleasant. So much so that we decided not to drink it. I think that this was good once, and has not aged well. But I have a couple more, so hopefully I'm wrong.

Isn't it interesting how things turn out?

Foillard Fleurie

I love Jean Foillard's wines. There are many great Beaujolais wines, but if I were forced to choose only one to drink (and thank goodness I am not), I would choose Foillard's wines. And I say this without even having tasted only half of the wines he makes. The Morgon wines from Côte du Py and Corcelette I've drunk many times and based on these wines, Foillard makes my favorite wines from the Beaujolais.

I've never tasted the other Morgon wine, also from Côte du Py, called Cuvée 3.14, a wine made from old vines, and I think from un-grafted rootstock. You know, 3.14 as in π, as in pie, as in franc de pied (French rootstock). But I don't know this for a fact, I'm merely speculating.

Until the other night, I'd never tasted Foillard's Fleurie either. But a good friend opened a bottle of the 2007 the other night (about $40, imported by KERMIT LYNCH), and it was absolutely lovely.

This wine opened slowly, as Foillard's wines tend to do, the nose building to a crescendo of ripe Gamay fruit and flowers, wet stone underneath. The palate is elegant and shows great intensity and focus, and without weight, exactly the kind of thing that makes Burgundy and Beaujolais lovers swoon. The wine is well structured and firm, but lighter in body and more nimble than, say, Foillard's 2007 Morgons. It has the same power, but is even wispier.

I am not someone who can speak intelligently about the soil composition in Morgon versus Fleurie, but I think that comparing Foillard's wines is helpful in trying to understand the two terroirs. As Bert Celce of Wine Terroirs writes in his excellent and informative profiles of the Foillards, "Be it Corcelette, Côte de Py, Fleurie, Morgon, they vinify all these Gamays the same way (including the "lower" cuvées), which means that whatever differences you'll find (especially when comparing similarly-old vines), it will come from the terroir particularities."

On another note altogether, did you notice in the photo that this bottle looks different from Foillard's other bottles? Yes, the label is black, as is the wax coating the capsule. But I'm talking about the prominent message on the front of the label that says "Imported by KERMIT LYNCH." I have nothing but respect for Kermit Lynch and I would not presume to criticize his decisions regarding the wines he imports, or anything of that nature. But because appearances are such trivial matters, I will nitpick a little here.

This message is apparently now on the front of all of the US-bound Foillard wines, and I don't like it. It's kind of like watching Goodfellas, but with a constant graphic on the upper right part of the screen that says "Produced by BARBARA DeFINA." She was of vital importance in bringing Goodfellas to audiences and everyone thanks her, but she wasn't the creative force behind the film, and if I want to know who produced the film, I can look. It doesn't seem all that classy to have that information front and center.

Nitpicking -- finished. Thank you.

Are the Beaujolais '05's Ready Yet?

Don't know about you, but lately I've been feeling the 2005 Beaujolais itch. The other night I finally decided to scratch. Before I tell you about that, here are the only other 2005's that I drank in the past year:

--A bottle of Desvignes Morgon Javernières, "Upper Tier," $22, Louis/Dressner Selections way back in late January was a lot less closed than I expected, showing great depth of fruit and earth, and seemed to me that it would become something great in time.

--A bottle of Diochon Moulin-à-Vent Vieilles Vignes, $20, Imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant back in late March was unresolved and lacking in clarity, almost muddy. I had this wine several years ago and it was great then, so I have to assume that we caught this one in a closed and weird phase.

Anyway, I'd been itching to check in on the 2005's. One day last weekend I put together a lunch that seemed right, and so into the "cellar" I dug.

2005 Michel Tête Juliénas Domaine du Clos du Fief "Cuvee Prestige," $23, Louis/Dressner Imports. I've probably had a half a case of this wine, but none in the past couple years. The last bottle I drank sometime in early 2008 was raspy and harsh, closed. This bottle was really great and although the wine clearly can continue to age (and probably improve), based on this bottle, I think the wine is ready. The fruit character is soft, without the vivid brightness of youth, but it is equally charming and delicious. Like stewed strawberries as opposed to freshly picked. On the nose there are subtle gamy and earthy notes. It is a soft and alluring nose, very fine. The wine shows very mineral on the palate, with a layer of iron upon which the meaty fruit rests. It is very well balanced and structured, although the tannins are much rounder and softer than they were a couple of years ago. Especially if you have multiple bottles, I think this is worth checking in on - it's drinking very well.

What was the lunch that inspired me finally to crack open another '05 (I have only a mixed half-case in total, you see)? Nothing at all complicated. A kale salad dressed with a very little bit of anchovy mashed into some olive oil and a bit of grated Parmesan cheese. And cauliflower sautéed in brown butter with caraway seeds. Thinking about the iron-y flavor of the kale made me think of Beaujolais - the mineral character of wines from Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, and Juliénas often reminds me of iron.

And so, what about you? Checked in on any of the 2005's recently? Any news to share?

Delicious and Expressive of Place...for $10

Who says there's nothing good out there for about $10? There are good wines at that price point but they're harder to find than I can ever remember. What do I mean by "good?" I don't mean just that they taste good and are well balanced wines, although they do and they are. I mean also that they show something of the place where they are from.

I drank two very good wines recently that cost me all of $10.80 apiece. Wines that I would recommend to anyone, wines that I would happily drink anytime because they are delicious and expressive of place. It doesn't hurt that both wines match beautifully with a wide array of food.

2007 Michel Brégeon Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie, $10.80 (mixed case discount price), Imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. After reading David Lillie's great Muscadet piece in the Art of Eating I had to drink some Muscadet. We cooked some meaty and sweet triggerfish with a mix of chopped late summer vegetables cooked simply in butter. Edward Schneider of the NYTimes Diner's Journal blog cooked with triggerfish this summer, by the way, from the same market where I bought mine. He didn't love it, but I think my preparation is better than the one he used (come on over and try it if you don't believe me, Ed).

I like slipping the fish through flour that has been seasoned liberally with salt and pepper, and then frying over high heat in butter. Triggerfish eat shellfish and their flesh is sweet. The flash frying in butter accents the sweetness of the fish. It might sound silly to quibble over olive oil or butter, but these things are important when you are working with fresh ingredients and cooking simply. Anyway...the Muscadet was a great match for the fish, drinking so much better than it was a year ago. It is more open now, well balanced and stony, good substance on the mid palate, and the finish fragrant with citrus and the smallest hint of fennel. This is absolutely lovely wine for the same low price as most crappy Malbec.

2009 Marcel Lapierre Vin de Pays de Gaules Raisins Gaulois, $10.80 (mixed-case discount price), imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. This is Marcel Lapierre's simple country wine, and it is utterly delicious. It is also unmistakably Gamay from Beaujolais - you could identify this blindfolded simply by smelling it. Actually, I'm not sure exactly where the grapes were grown, but you can read David McDuff's post for more information. This is 2009, a great vintage in Beaujolais, and this wine offers particularly great quality this year. It likes a little swirl after opening - it is a screwcap closure and a little reductive at first. But it blossoms quickly and shows lovely ripe and spicy fruit and that enticing sweetly snappy acidity that invites - no, requires further drinking. Regional Beaujolais from good producers used to cost about $14 a few years ago. Now it's closer to $18. This Lapierre wine is of similar quality and costs less (in NYC, sorry Philly). If you see this wine you should buy it.

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.

Eating and Drinking Briefly in New Orleans.

I was in New Orleans recently and I had the opportunity to try out some of your recommendations from a while back. Very impressive in general, the eating and drinking in the Crescent City, but you already know that. Just a couple of things to share, almost all of them great:

So many of the houses are stately and beautiful.

Breakfast at Coulis - there is no website, but here is a quick article about the place. Finer than a diner but totally casual, this is a great place to eat breakfast. Cream cheese stuffed French toast with pralines and biscuits and sausage gravy for those of us who care not about calories, and there's yogurt and granola for the rest of you. The coffee is good, the room is sunny and cheerful, and everyone is very friendly.

Dinner at The Delachaise - This place is a bar, but it is a comfortable and mature enough place to have dinner. There are at least 30 wines by the glass and some of them are very good wines. I drank 2009 Ameztoi Txakolina by the glass, which at $7 by the glass, I felt great about. So great that although I wasn't planning on it, I ordered dinner, a green salad and a grass-fed strip steak from a farm not too far away (Arkansas, I think). High quality and delicious all around, although the 2007 Trenel Fleurie I drank with the steak was not very interesting or snappy. This is a great casual spot for a a glass or two and dinner, and I would unhesitatingly go back.

Cork and Bottle Wines/Clever Wine Bar - The retail store seemed good enough. But the thing that got me about this place is the fact that I could buy a bottle of NV Diebolt-Vallois Blanc de Blancs off the shelf ($46), and walk through an archway to the aptly named Clever Wine Bar, and drink that very wine at no extra charge. No, I am not kidding. I did this at 5:30 pm on a Wednesday, and had I done it later in the evening, there would have been a corkage fee. But even if that fee was $10 or $15, that's still a pretty cheap way to enjoy Champagne of that caliber at a wine bar.

Dinner at Pascale's Manale - the woman behind the register at Coulis recommended this place to me when I asked where I should go for dinner to eat something special from New Orleans. "BBQ shrimp at Pascale's," she said. The walk was lovely, the restaurant was absolutely old school and would have been at home in New Haven or Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. But I thought that the food and drink was a bit simple, as if they decided that it is better to offend no one than to thrill anyone. My seafood gumbo was fine, but not really seasoned in any way. And those BBQ shrimp - they certainly were fresh and high quality shrimp. But they sat in a shockingly deep pool of butter. Butter, a bit of pepper and Tabasco, that's it. This is well executed food, but unimaginative and under seasoned. It made me think of someplace that my grandparents and their friends in Florida would flock to at around 4:45 each evening, if I had grandparents in Florida. Even my Sazerac cocktail was too syrupy and sweet.

Dinner at Cochon - The culinary highlight of the trip. This restaurant is as good as everyone said it would be - it exceeded all of my expectations. The space is warm and inviting. Cocktails were excellent. We ate a lot, and honestly everything was delicious. Well, I didn't love the fried Boudin, but that's it, everything else was excellent. Fried alligator with Tabasco aioli was great (and I believe one should never pass up the opportunity to eat an animal that if given the chance, would happily eat you).

Smokey pork ribs with pickled watermelon, cornmeal dusted ham hock with black eyed peas and limas, cochon (like pulled pork) with cracklins, rabbit with greens and cornmeal dumplings, sides of smothered lima beans and okra...all of these things really delivered. Thankfully I went with people so I could sample all of these different things.

I'm going back in a few weeks and my goal is to make friends with the po' boy. Perhaps even the Muffalleta.

A Couple More New Vintages

Just a couple more notes on new vintages of wines that I drink every year.

This one comes courtesy of Keith Levenberg who seems to have abandoned his blog The Picky Eater (the guy has a new baby, give him a break). I enjoyed his Cellar Tracker note on the 2009 Coudert Clos de la Roilette Fleurie Cuvée Tardive, $26, Louis/Dressner Selections, and received his permission to re-print it here:

This is my first taste of 2009 Beaujolais so I don't know if some other examples are bearing out people's speculation that the vintage may be marked by fat, overdone fruit. That is emphatically not the case here. Steve Martin had a memorable line in his novella Shopgirl: "When you work in the glove department at Neiman's, you are selling things that nobody buys anymore. These gloves aren't like the hard-working ones sold by L.L. Bean; these are so fine that a lady wearing them can still pick up a straight pin." The 2009 Clos de la Roilette Cuvee Tardive is made out of the same material as those gloves. This is the old-vine cuvée from Coudert and indeed what makes this special is that unique ability of very old vines to deliver intense flavor out of physical material that is so sheer and fine it's practically not even there. This is practically waifish with a refinement that is already very pinot noir-like in the fashion of Burgundies with an Audrey Hepburn figure, but the flavors show gamay's tart wild-berry side seasoned with something I find myself calling "mealy" for lack of a better term, kind of reminiscent of cereal and multigrain, already past the primary.

If you've ever wondered what wines available for the taking today have the potential to turn into tomorrow's sought-after collectibles that you'll kick yourself for not picking up when you had the chance, this is a pretty damn good candidate. It's an iconic Beaujolais, costs a whopping $5 more than the basic bottling, and has a production level somewhere around the quantities of Roumier Musigny. Only one of two things can happen. The first possibility is that it remains an insider's wine and the only way to experience a mature bottle will be to cellar it yourself, because the people who have them won't be selling. The other possibility is that collectors of top Burgundy realize they ought to have some top Beaujolais in their cellars, with the usual price consequences. Either way I'm glad to have stocked up.

I recently drank two newly released wines by Bernard Baudry. I love Baudry's wines in general, although I am learning that I prefer the wines from the more difficult vintages to the "great" ones. But I might be in the minority here, so please take the following with a healthy dose of "I need to drink those for myself." Just my opinion, that's all...

2009 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Granges, $17, Louis/Dressner Selections. This is Baudry's "entry level" Chinon from gravel soils. The 2009 is not a successful wine, to my taste. It borders on fruit bomb. The fruit is attractive and clean, but the wine doesn't speak to me of the gravel soils where it is grown (the way '08, '07. and '06 did, for example), and it simply is not a very interesting wine. I thought that perhaps I was catching the loud and fruity opening phase, so I left it alone for about 12 hours and very little happened to improve the wine. It's drinkable and the ripe dark fruit is very tasty. But I didn't find balance, acidity, or much beyond the fruit.

2008 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Grézeaux, $24, Louis/Dressner Selections. From hillside vineyards of clay and gravel right next to the Baudry's house. This wine rests in cement and sometimes in neutral oak, and I'm not sure what the regimen was in 2008. This wine along with the Cuvée Domaine are, to me, the value selections in the Baudry portfolio. They are consistently excellent wines and they're ridiculously inexpensive for what you get. The Cuvée Domaine is about $18 for goodness sake, and it's a great wine (inexplicably the fantastic 2007 is still available and if you haven't had it, you really should). The 2008 Grézeaux is hard to figure out right now. Upon opening it was aromatically lovely with pungent dried flowers and earthy fresh fruit. The palate shows good balance and texture - this wine is lighter than the 09 Les Granges, but there also might be a bit of a hole in the midpalate. I'm just not sure, because it drank better the next day, although the aromas had receded a bit too. Check back in perhaps 5 years and we'll see where this one goes.

New Vintages

Some of my favorite wines have just been released in new vintages. I haven't had all of them yet, but I figured I'd share the news about the group that I've had at home with dinner:

And by the way, if these wines are representative of what's happening in general, 2009 in Beaujolais really is as awesome as they say. Buy the wines and drink them. Sure, pick a few that you are most interested in and lay a couple of bottles down, but these wines are drinking beautifully right now. Don't miss it.

2009 Marcel Lapierre Morgon, $22, Imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. Ripe and enticing, pure and clean, very fresh, this is bursting with red fruit and as if to suggest what we would be eating with this wine if we were already in heaven, an undertone of earthy cured meat. This wine is not perfect - I find the alcohol to be a bit awkward, although the bottle says only 13%. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is in fact higher. And in any case, it juts out a little. The this is, the wine is still delicious. I cannot imagine cellaring it, as it tastes so good now, and doesn't seem to be holding anything in reserve.

2009 Coudert Clos de la Roilette Fleurie, $20, Louis/Dressner Selections. Ripe and aromatic, very generous, plushly textured and with good body and richness, but without crossing into the land of overdone or huge. In other words, it's a solid standard deviation away from the ripeness mean, but still within the realm of normal. Will this age well? I don't see why not. There is plenty of acidity and the wine is fundamentally in balance. In this case though, I'm having a really hard time imagining why I would try to hold it. The drinking really is just that good right now.

2009 Clos de Tue-Boeuf Cheverny, $16, Louis/Dressner Selections. Pure joy. Vivid red fruit, when served cool the texture is not entirely smooth and that is a big part of the charm, the acids are strong, the aromatics are lovely, the wine is clean and absolutely well balanced, and the finish lingers longer than it has a right to considering its humble pedigree. You blend Pinot Noir and Gamay somewhere near Touraine and you can make a decent wine. Even if you are Thierry Puzelat, the wine is not always great. This time, it's great. What else can I say - pure joy.

2008 Pierre Gonon St. Joseph, $25, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. As good as this wine is, it's a bit of a disappointment. The past several vintages have been wonderful and this wine is very tasty too, but it isn't as strong as its predecessors and this is clear. It has the dark fruit, the olives, the wet soil, the finesse that I know of Gonon and his plots in St. Joseph, but it is lacking the complexity that I have come to expect and with air, the emptiness of the midpalate really shows. The price is right and this is good drinking, but don't believe that this is the best that Gonon can show you.

2009 Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Clos des Briords, $16, Louis/Dressner Selections. This drinks differently than any young Briords that I've had, but that's okay because it's still absolutely delicious. This one is far more crowd friendly and approachable. The aromas are lovely and clear - lemon, a bit of yeast, spring water. The wine feels relaxed, as if it's already gone through that young tightly wound period. I've learned enough, however, about this wine to know that based on this one bottle, I have no idea what's really going on here. It certainly seems like it wants to be enjoyed early. And it tastes really good right now.

2008 Albert Boxler Edelzwicker Reserve, $16, Robert Chadderdon Selections. Sometimes the overall bigness and the residual sugar in Boxler's wines makes it hard for me to appreciate them on a practical level. Meaning, I respect what's going on, but I don't always want to open and drink them. Not so with this wine. This is the field blend of essentially every white grape grown by the estate. Yes, it is full bodied and big, unmistakably a Boxler wine, and there is residual sugar too. But the wine is very well balanced and actually feels lean and mineral on the finish. Herbs, pits, wildflowers, and bitter honey support and lend complexity to the wine, and it is so very satisfying. And flexible too - find something that doesn't eat well with this wine in the heat of summer, I dare you.

2000 López de Heredia Rioja Rosado Viña Tondonia Gran Riserva, $24, Imported by Polaner Selections. I haven't actually had an entire bottle of this yet, just glasses on several occasions. But I'm very excited about what I drank. This wine is perhaps more grounded than the 1998, a wine that I think is absolutely excellent, but a wine that took a year after release to show as well as it does now. That's the thing with these Lopez wines - they release them when they think they're ready, but maybe they should get a little more time in your cellar anyway. The 2000 has a darkly spicy, very focused character, and it is more attractive to me early on than the more tropical 1998 at this point in its life. Blood orange, salt, sherry, and so clean and pure. I hope I have the self-control to hold onto a few of these.

Wine Big Shots and the Wines they Share

One of the many perks of the glamorous blogger lifestyle is the fact that you get to hang out with people in the wine and restaurant business whose knowledge of wine utterly dwarfs your own. Well, maybe you know more than I, but their knowledge dwarfs mine, anyway. And if you invite these big shots to your house for a drink or for dinner they tend to bring some fantastically interesting and delicious wine.

In the past week or so two of my favorite wine big shots came by, and I got to drink great wines that were new to me. And these aren't fancy expensive bottles - these are things that we all can afford to buy and share with friends. These wine big shots...they really know how to get the best out of $20.

Jeremy Parzen, the dude behind the great Do Bianchi blog, was in town recently and he came over one afternoon with his terrifically friendly and lovely bride Tracie P. It's a rare treat for me to get to hang out with Jeremy and although we insisted that he and Tracie were our guests, they insisted upon bringing a wine to us, a dry Muscat from the Veneto. We drank Champagne and Poulsard on that sunny afternoon, but I made sure to ask Dr. P what to eat with this wine. He recommended something like a salt cod purée. I've never made that dish, although I do love to eat it. Instead of waiting until I learned how to make salt cod, BrooklynLady and I opened this bottle a few days ago with seared fluke and spring vegetables.

It was fantastic! 2007 Vignalta Muscat Sirio Veneto IGT, about $20 (don't remember the importer because I'm sitting in the airport in Charlotte, NC, but that's another story). This wine is bone dry, which is the only way I enjoy Muscat or Gewurztraminer at this point. But aromatically so satisfying, with focused exotic fruit aromas and something like bitter honey. The palate is exotic and lush, and very fresh and pure with good focus and a mineral cut. It was great with our fluke, but I can see how a more robust dish like creamed salt cod would be an even better match. Thanks Jeremy and Tracie P - we truly enjoyed this wine and will be going back for more.

And that's not all - the inimitable Levi Dalton and his terrifically friendly and lovely girlfriend Ayako came by for dinner on a recent warm and sunny evening. Levi is the head Sommelier at Alto restaurant, and he's very good at bringing wines that he knows will be interesting to whoever he is hanging out with.

On this evening he brought a magnificent bottle of Lambrusco by Vittorio Graziano, the 2005 Vittorio Graziano Lambrusco Fontana dei Boschi, about $20, (again, don't remember the importer). Levi explained that this is an unusual Lambrusco in that it does very well with a bit of bottle age. Most Lambruschi are meant to be consumed when young and fresh. He compared Graziano in his talent and uniqueness to Raveneau in Chablis. This wine was fresh as a daisy, and it achieved this while mingling aromas of aged salami with dark purple fruit. A tickle of effervescence on the palate, dusty dark fruit, and a cooling almost medicinal hint on the finish - this was simply delicious wine. The next day it was even better, by the way (we had a lot of wine that evening, which is why a wine like this made it back into the fridge). We ate speck and roast asparagus with this wine, along with fresh bread and butter. All was good, but if I have the good fortune to drink this wine again (it is barely imported and Levi snapped up everything that came into the country this year), I will most surely pair it with the funkiest of salami.

Levi also brought along a wine that is more familiar to me, although I'd never had it in the 2004 vintage. The 2004 Domaine du Vissoux Moulin a Vent Rochegrès, price unknown, Peter Weygandt Selections, was in a great place. Mellow and smooth, the aromas and flavors like a bowl of fresh strawberries on a bed of iron filings. This is the kind of Beaujolais vintage that I really like, and this wine is developing beautifully. It still has plenty of upside, as it also improved the next day. Thanks to you too Levi and Ayako for sharing these wines.

A Laundry List of Recent Wines

I try not to do laundry list posts that sound like "here's what I drank recently." But I've had some interesting wines lately, some of them great, others a bit lackluster. So this will, in fact, be a laundry list post. Feel free to change channels now if you refuse to participate.

Here's what I drank recently:

2008 Marcel Lapierre Morgon, $20, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. Sigh of relief. This wine was great. And I was starting to lose a little faith, as my 06's haven't shown so well and I had two bad bottles of the 07 for every okay one. But this, this is why I love Lapierre's wines. Graceful and with crystal clear purity, perfectly balanced, just gorgeous wine. The next two bottles could be bad - who knows? But if this is representative of his 08's, then I'm back on the wagon. Mine is from an "S" lot, which I understand to mean that it had a bit of sulfur at bottling. I've read comments on the interweb about variation again in 2008, but specifically with the "N" lots - no sulfur as I understand it. Chime in with your 08 Lapierre thoughts, please.

2008 Jean Foillard Morgon Cuvée Corcelette, $34, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. I love this wine in general, and this bottle was good, but it didn't show nearly as well as a bottle I drank a few months ago. The nose is full of fresh fruit and leafy herbs, but the palate is in a tight place right now. It felt constrained and rigid, with a lot of iron and mineral and lots of grip. I'm sure it will loosen up again in a few years.

2007 George Descombes Morgon, $20, Louis/Dressner Selections. I keep hearing about how great this wine is drinking right now, but I wasn't terribly impressed. I like it, but I wanted to love it, the way I love the 2007 Régnié. I prefer the Régnié in the end. The Morgon is very pure and there are minerals and soil, there is iron on the palate, and herbs too. What there isn't a lot of is fruit. There is some, but not a whole lot, and I'm fine with that actually. But the nose is a bit muddy - the overall effect is not as fresh as I would hope for and that kind of killed it for me. That said, I did drink this on a root day...

2009 Bernard Baudry Chinon Rosé, $18, Louis/Dressner Selections. A different animal entirely compared to the 2008. Whereas the 08 was a lean and super acidic kind of beautiful, the 2009 is much more fruit forward. This is a fun wine - there are strawberries here. Still a serious wine with great texture and balance and lots of acidity, but it is a more openly joyous wine this year, with more exuberant fruit. On a hedonistic note I'll take this wine. If I were showing Baudry's Rosé to other people who had never had it, or if I were cellaring some for the future, I'd take the 2008.

2009 Ameztoi Getariako Txakolina Rubentis, $21, De Maison Selections. Those of you who aren't familiar with this culty Basque wine might be thinking "Watch your language, fella." This is a well regarded producer working with approximately 85 year old vines of an indigenous grape called Hondarrabi Zuri. The white wines are fantastic - saline and brisk, slightly effervescent, full of character. I had one recently at my pal Bruce's house and it really sang. This wine, however, left me wanting more. I understand its appeal - the nose grows but never gets loud, and it shows this unusual and appealing mix of watermelon and savory herbs, like rosemary and thyme. And texturally it is a marvel, slightly effervescent and silky. The alcohol is under 11%, the wine is dry and full of minerals and it is definitely interesting. But in the end I just wasn't really captivated by it - it wasn't all that delicious.

2007 Domaine de Roally Viré-Clessé Tradition, $24, Louuis/Dressner Selections. This was a shimmering beauty, full of fresh and baked yellow apples. Fresh, energetic, a rich wine that is also very pure and just lovely. Good acidity and balance too - wears its residual sugar well. The remaining third of the bottle was not as good on day two though, which I found confusing. Shouldn't this wine age well? I drank a 1994 last year that was fantastic.

NV Valdespino Sherry Fino "Inocente," $20 (375 ml), Imported by Quality Wines of Spain. Now THAT is some Fino. I know the price sounds high, but I could find only one store that carries the wine, so they can charge what they like. So light and brisk, yet there is a pungent undercurrent of smokey nuts and saltiness, something almost like good coffee - it builds slowly and steadily and this one is better to sip slowly because there's a lot going on. But that's hard to do because it offers so much visceral pleasure. It was at its best on the third day out of the fridge, and it could have kept going, but I finished the bottle. This is in the very top level of Fino that I've tasted, right there with La Bota #15. And I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, because if I'm not mistaken, Equipo Vavazos selected from among the Valdespino butts to make #15. I could very easily be mistaken...

2002 Chartogne-Taillet Champagne Cuvee Fiacre, $70, Terry Theise Selections/Michael Skurnik Imports. I bought this wine because I like the producer's wines in general, and because when I tasted it as part of a blind tasting a few years back, I thought it was superb. Haven't had it since. I was warned that it is too young to drink, don't touch it for ten years. I don't know...I opened one recently at the end of a great night of wine with friends, and I thought the bottle was fantastic. Not closed at all, very approachable. Beautiful ripe fruit that showed the dark berries of Pinot and also the apples of Chardonnay, compelling richness and depth, a stout frame and firm structure. And still this wine showed grace and poise, harmony. I loved the way the minerals mingled with the fruit on the finish, very long. This is very serious stuff, worth every penny.

Okay folks, that's it. Thanks for coming out tonight. I'm here two or three times a week.

Deep Thoughts on Deliciousness

The other day I was reading an excellent article in the current issue of The World of Fine Wine, an article that makes the case for Beaujolais as a "fine wine," the same way we think about Burgundy or Barolo, for example. I cannot link directly to the article, as The World of Fine Wine doesn't publish content online, but you should subscribe anyway. Like The Art of Eating, this is a must-have. Some of the very finest wine thinkers write for WOFW - this Beaujolais piece, for example, is by Peter Liem.

It is a well considered and thoughtful article. Instead of merely talking about how great Beaujolais is, it establishes a simple framework for thinking about "fine wine," and then looks at whether or not Beaujolais meets some or all of the criteria. There are many interesting ideas in the article, but one in particular stuck with me, and for me it's less about Beaujolais than about evaluating wine in general. Here is the quote:

The expression of terroir demonstrates the intellectual side of cru Beaujolais, but another element that is often ignored, particularly in an environment driven by professional blind tastings and numeric scoring, is sheer drinkability: the capacity of a wine to compel us to keep returning to it over and over again. Somewhere along the line, the notion of deliciousness seems to have become, if not pejorative, then at least frivolous—as though we should feel guilty for delighting in a wine’s visceral pleasures.

Interesting, right?

There are many directions one could go with this idea. It makes me think of how I tend to undervalue wines if they are inexpensive, even if like Muscadet for example, I love the wines. Or the amazing and substantial $16 bottle of Ott Gruner Veltliner I recently had - why didn't I load up on that wine? I ran out and bought some $40 Hirsch Riesling after tasting those wines, why not the cheaper wine that offered little other than deliciousness? It makes me think about how complexity implies quality, and although I enjoy complexity, why does the degree of complexity correlate with the way we experience quality? It makes me think about a lot of things.

Care to share your thoughts?

A Meaty Winter Braise

Who doesn't love a nice pot of braised meat in the wintertime? I know I do. Every now and then I like to mix it up and make a Chinese-style braise. This works best, I think, with cuts of meat that have a lot of bone and gooey things like tendon. So when BrooklynLady came home the other night with several large shortribs, the braise was on.

My wife was thoughtful enough to get shortribs that had been cut lengthwise so the bones were intact, as opposed to the cross section cut that is more common. One is no better than the other, but there is something about eating meat off so large of a bone that satisfies in an atavistic way. And when my 3 year old, who these days is more of a fruit eater than a steak eater, when she saw BrooklynLady and I pulling fragrant strands of meat off of these huge bones, she wanted in.

This braise is quite easy to make, and there are no rules for the seasonings. To me, what makes it a Chinese-style braise is the use of soy and Sherry or cooking wine as the braising liquid, and a set of seasonings that can include some or all of garlic, ginger, star anise, orange peel, dried chili, scallions, brown sugar, and cloves. Here's the way I did it this time with the shortribs (we had about 2 and a half pounds):

Season the meat generously with salt and pepper 24 hours in advance of cooking. Let the meat come to room temperature before browning. Brown on all sides. Take the meat out of the pot, pour out most of the fat, lower the heat to medium and add one finely chopped large onion. Cook them well - until they're translucent. Add a glug or two of Sherry vinegar and scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Let the liquid cook off (a minute or so) and then add seasonings. This time I used two cloves of crushed but not chopped garlic, one piece of star anise that I broke into many small pieces, 6 black peppercorns, and two whole dried chilis. Then add the braising liquid. For the liquid, I combined a half cup of good soy sauce, a half cup of mirin, a cup of water, and a tablespoon and a half of dark brown sugar. When this comes to a boil, add the meat back to the pot along with four strips of tangerine peel - no pith, just the peel (orange is better, but I didn't have one). I added a few carrots this time too, just for kicks. Cover with a piece of wet parchment paper under the lid of the pot and put into a 275 degree oven. Plan on about four hours, and turn the meat halfway through. Strain the braising liquid and reduce it a bit so it becomes more of a glaze. Like any meat braise, this becomes much more flavorful with some time in the fridge. Re-heat at 275 degrees with some of the glaze, and go to town. I like simple white rice as an accompanyment, and cucumber is nice too.

Speaking of accompanyments, what to drink with this? As it was re-heating and the scents of soy, anise, and meat wafted through the apartment, I found myself wanting chilled sake. I didn't have any in the house, of course, so my thoughts drifted to Chambolle-Musigny. But I didn't have anything that's ready to drink, so we went with a 2007 Descombes Morgon Vieille Vignes, $28, Louis/Dressner Selections.

This wine was closed down, opened way too young. It had some lovely spices on the nose and the texture was right on, but the palate was clamped down tight. I decanted it, gave it an hour and it was a bit better, but the old vines still weren't giving away any secrets. I should have opened the regular Morgon instead - perhaps it is in a more conversational mood these days.

Wine of the Week - Jean Foillard Morgon

If I were putting together a Noah's Ark of wine, Jean Foillard's Morgons would represent the Beaujolais species. There are many lovable Beaujolais wines, but I love these the most. And it's funny, because Foillard's wines are not, in my experience, all that lovable upon opening. They can be a little gassy at first, also showing some reductive aromas until the wine meets up with some oxygen. But when a Foillard Morgon opens up, it can be a very beautiful thing. The fruit is joyous and lovely - this is true of most good Beaujolais wines. These are complex and well balanced wines too. But the things that defines Foillard's wines for me is the way they combine such incredible clarity with such rich intensity.

Morgon is considered by many to offer the greatest potential of the 10 Beaujolais Crus. The Côte de Py is the most renown site in Morgon. It is a large hill with soils of schist and granite, an extinct volcano actually, as I learned from Bert's post on Wine Terroirs. Foillard has plots on the Côte de Py, and also in another Morgon vineyard called Corcelette, a plot with sandy soil, as I learned from Peter Liem's post (the comments explain this). I don't know the age of Foillard's vines in Côte de Py, but his vines in Corcelette are about 80 years old. The Côte de Py is pretty easy to find in NYC each year, Corcelette is more difficult. Both wines are delicious young, but they have a reputation for aging particularly well.

A friend came for brunch last weekend and one of the wines we drank was the 2007 Corcelette. And if you have a problem with the fact that we opened several bottles with brunch, I really just don't know what to tell you. We didn't finish what we opened, but when you have the chance to drink wine with a fellow wine lover, why not explore a few bottles together? We both loved the Corcelette, and he wasn't around later that evening when the wine hit a crescendo. It was so good that I felt compelled to open the 2007 Côte de Py later in the week, just to see how it would compare. It was also fantastic, but in a different way. The wines are quite obviously sisters, but they offer a different expression of Morgon Gamay.

The fruit is vibrant in the 2007 Foillard Morgon Corcelette, $29, imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. The acidity is vibrant too, and the wine feels tactile in the mouth - crunchy almost. This is cooling and floral raspberry fruit, smooth and velvety, and there is a gorgeous fragrance on the finish. After several hours open, this wine was remarkable in its old vines intensity - the nose just builds and builds and builds, and the pure fragrance of slightly herbal ripe fruit fills every crevice in the mouth after swallowing. Such a beautiful wine! I'd rather spend my money on this than Bourgogne rouge.

The 2007 Foillard Morgon Côte de Py, also $29, wears its structure more overtly, its deep cherry fruit corralled by iron and rock. The fruit is spicier and more mineral infused than the Corcelette, meatier. The texture here is also velvety smooth, but even after a few hours the structure is still as prominent as is the fruit. This wine is more steak and potatoes, and the Corcelette is more warm raspberry pie. I suspect that the Côte de Py, although delicious now, will be more harmonious in a few years.