March Wines - a Laundry List

Here are some wines that I drank in March that did not appear on this blog. The "excellent" group consists of wines that are truly memorable, wines that inspire me to seek out and buy these and wines like them. The "excellent" and "very good" groups are wines that I would happily buy at the given price. All other wines, even if I liked them, are not wines that I would buy today given my recent experience with them. Doesn't mean that I think they are bad wines, just means that based on the bottle I drank, there are other things I would prefer to buy with that money.

Excellent Wines
2002 Houillon/Overnoy Arbois Poulsard, $36, Louis/Dressner Selections. The best bottle of Poulsard that I've had. It was still growing as we finished it with gorgeous aromatics, so pure fresh, high toned but gentle -not primary, currant and blood orange fruit and a dominant aroma of dried rose petal. The nose is really beautiful. Resolved on the palate but still well structured and perfectly balanced, with sweet red fruit and underbrush, great acidity and length, and the finish is fragrant with dried roses. Elegant, harmonious, beautiful wine. This is why I keep buying this wine, even though many bottles do not achieve this kind of showing. The new vintage is 2009 and it costs $60 (!!!) in NYC. Not sure I can keep riding this train...

2002 Albert Boxler Riesling Grand Cru Brand, $35, Robbert Chadderdon Selections. A perfect bottle, great freshness and complexity, and it was beautiful with braised pork shoulder. Aromas of petrol and baking spice infused ripe orchard fruit. The nose becomes perfectly harmonious after a short time open. The palate is much drier than I expected, and is entirely delicious, with good acidity supporting the ripe fruit and the more mature secondary tones of petrol. Compelling and memorable.

2000 López de Heredia Rioja Rosado Gran Reserva Viña Tondonia, $24, Polaner Selections. With the 1995, this is my favorite vintage of this wine, so far. There is a kinetic energy here, a grippy texture that works perfectly for the diversity of flavors - orange oil, sherry, peach, salt...so good. Nothing else like it. And if you buy it as part of a case you're paying under $22. Kind of amazing.

Very Good Wines
Emilio Lustau (Almacenista) Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Amontillado del Puerto Jose Luis González Obregón, selected by Christopher Cannan, Imported by Europvin USA, $37. Plenty of flor character in this wine, probably includes a decent proportion of wines that were under flor not too long ago. Fresh and complex aromas of butter, roast nuts, and even some dark fruit. Fantastically harmonious on the nose, and follows through on the palate, which is silky textured and offers great depth. This is a very classy amontillado, and one to go back to again and again.

2009 Domaine Ganevat Côtes du Jura Cuvée de l'Enfant Terrible, $34, Jeffrey Alpert Selections. Another great Poulsard. This bottle showed best on day 2, after decanting the remaining half bottle. At it's best it is strikingly pure and fresh, absolutely inviting, with high toned cranberry and red currant fruit. There is a gamy undertone that also somehow seems very fresh and pure, and an unmistakable stony minerality that grounds the wine. The wine is cooling, very refreshing, and really just a beautiful drink. Perfect balance and structure, so the wine is seamless. On the first day, however, this is not the experience. It is delicious, but the structure sticks out a little, there is a rusticity that vanishes by day two, and the wine doesn't show the harmony that makes it so special. Decant a long time in advance, or really, just hang onto the wine for a while. That's what I'll do with what I have left.

Laherte Frères Champagne Brut Tradition, $39, Imported by Selection Pas Mal. A truly lovely Meunier-based blend. This bottle is based on 2007, although 40% is reserve wine from 2006. Harmonious and classy, this wine shows delicious apple and quince fruit and good acidity, and there is a pleasant chalky undertone. Just a pleasure to drink, and a very good value.

2004 Château Rayas Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc Reserve, price unknown. A fascinating bottle of wine. The nose took a while to open, and was never loud, with waxy white flower and orchard fruit aromatics. I enjoyed the slightly oily texture of this wine, and the subtle salty complexity. White wine from this region is still a mystery to me, but this is one of the better examples that I've had.

Jacques Lassaigne Champagne Les Vignes de Montgueux Blanc de Blancs, $45, Jenny & François Selections. This wine is always delicious, and this was a particularly good bottle. Broad and ample with very ripe fruit, and still firmly under control, with great acidity and freshness. Surely one of the best Blanc de Blancs from down in the Aube.

Good Wines
2006 Camille Giroud Aloxe-Corton 1er Cru Les Guérets, $36, Becky Wasserman Selections. I really appreciate the terroir expression in this wine, as the gamy and rocky earth of Aloxe is apparent. But something bugs me about what I experience to be a liberal application of oak. I have nothing against oak, as long as it doesn't jut out, and here it juts out a bit. that might change with more time in the bottle, but I'm not convinced that there is enough raw material here to absorb the wood.

Diebolt-Vallois Champagne Brut Rosé, $60, Imported by Petit Pois Corp. I think this is based on 2007 and like the Diebolt 2007-based Blanc de Blancs, I'm just not crazy about it. The fruit is juicy and bright, but the wine is pretty simple and unmemorable, disappointing.

2009 Château de Pibarnon Bandol Rosé, $27, Imported by Michael Skurnik Wines. This is good, but I've preferred the past few vintages. the fruit here veers just a bit towards candied, and although there is some mineral complexity, the wine just kind of spreads out without much structure or acidity.

2009 Michel Brégeon Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine, $12, Imported by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant. This was a bit fat and didn't offer the precision and detail that I've come to expect from this producer. 2009-itus, or perhaps like the past few vintages, the wine really just needs more time in the bottle?

These, I had Problems With
2005 Jacques Puffeney Trousseau Arbois Les Berangères, $32, Imported by Neal Rosenthal Wine Merchant. Wow, what a disappointment! As hard as it is for me to say this...not every bottle of red wine from Puffeney or from the Jura is a good bottle. Here the fruit was candied and stewed, the tannins were harsh, the wine was fundamentally out of balance. Bad bottle...perhaps. Too young...perhaps. I'm not convinced.

2007 Domaine de Chantermerle Chablis 1er Cru Fourchaume, $25, Imported by Michael Skurnik Wines. Perfectly fine in that there is apple fruit, just enough acidity to make the wine drinkable, and the flavors are pleasant. But the wine has a flabby texture and a dilute midpalate, and does not really say anything to me about Chablis. Quite underwhelming, considering that other wines I've had by this producer have been quite good.

Champagne - Some Last Tidbits

Some odds and ends to wrap up my recent trip to Champagne:

First of all, I was wrong when I said that Peter Liem hasn't yet written about single-vineyard wines in Champagne. He wrote an article that appeared in the San Fransisco Chronicle a few years back, and like everything he writes, it's worth reading.

And speaking of Peter...he was a great host. Our first night in Dizy, after a day of driving from Paris and through the Marne to visit a couple of growers, Peter whipped up quite a dinner. He likes to cook Japanese food and we ate simmered Sea Bream, age-dashi tofu, bok choy and mushrooms, miso soup with enoki mushrooms, pickles, and rice that he prepared in a clay pot.

And we drank a delicious bottle of 1999 Marie-Noëlle Ledru Brut, and then an absurdly good bottle of 1976 Diebolt-Vallois Blanc de Blancs. Amazing wine - must age more Champagne.

We also drank a fair bit of Brandy de Jerez, including the rich and concentrated Equipo Navazos La Bota de Brandy Nº 13 and the deeply satisfying Gutierrez Colosía Brandy de Jerez Juan Sebastián Elcano Solera Gran Riserva.

Peter and I drank lots of other interesting things in the late evenings, including a pair of rare Amaro that are not imported to the US. With each sip I could feel the growing outrage and resentment from my friend, the writer of the Amari file.

I got a kick out of the lunch that Alexandre Chartogne served after tasting through his wines. The terrine with the aspic ring around it was good - pork head on top, a strip of blood sausage in the middle, and other parts on the bottom. But the one that looks like a loaf of bread, the terrine with fois gras and pastry around it, that one was truly memorable. A glass jar of fois gras too, in case we wanted to sample it without the bothersome pastry around it. There was cheese too. There were no vegetables. Everything was delicious, but I hope that his diet is typically more varied. I was assured that it isn't.

I had my first taste of Bordier butter. And I got to eat it several times, actually. With sea salt, with seaweed, and plain unsalted - each one a special treat with layers of flavor and texture that I didn't know could exist in butter. It reminded me of how simple things are usually not as simple as we think they are.
I listened to Charles Philipponnat talk for a while, and he is as knowledgeable as they come. Friendly and charming, too.

I drank more Georges Laval wine in one sitting than I am likely to in the next few years.

Including his great 2009 Coteaux Champenois, from the tank.

I walked by the old vertical press at Champagne Pierre Peters. It's no longer in use, but it is a beautiful thing.

I stood mid-slope in the Clos des Goisses and looked down at the village of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ.

It was an amazing and unforgettable trip, but beyond the wine and the food and everything else, the best part was that I got to spend so much time with my good friend.

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.

Champagne Terroir - Baby Steps

It's not easy to understand terroir in Champagne. I don't understand it. I know that certain areas are better for Pinot Noir, let's say, and that some villages are known for certain characteristics. But it's much easier to understand what I read about terroir than it is to understand it while I'm drinking Champagne. After all, the wines tend to be a blend of grapes from different villages and different vintages. And then there are those distracting bubbles.

One way to learn about terroir is by drinking terroir-expressive wines with some one who really knows Champagne. I was lucky enough to do this a few times last week with Peter Liem, and I want to share a bit:

(1999) Tarlant Champagne La Vigne d'Antan Extra Brut Non-Grefée Chardonnay, $65, Imported by Jon-David Headrick Selections. Benoît Tarlant began as wine maker in 1999 and created this cuvée with that vintage. Here is what Peter writes about this wine on ChampagneGuide.net:


...a blanc de blancs from a 40-are parcel of ungrafted chardonnay vines in a vineyard called Les Sables, planted between 1951 and 1960. The soil here is very sandy and siliceous, preventing phylloxera from penetrating it, and these vines have thrived on their own rootstocks, although attempts at planting vines in other areas of the same vineyard have failed. The idea of this ungrafted cuvée is to reflect the personality of the terroir as expressed by these special vines, and it’s not necessarily intended to be a vintage wine: “The character of the site is stronger than that of the year,” says Tarlant. “This parcel isn’t always necessarily representative of the vintage.” The first release was based on the 1999 vintage, blended with roughly 25 percent of 1998, while the follow-up version was made entirely from the 2000 vintage.

The back label gives the disgorgement date - February 23, 2006, but not the vintage. We guessed while drinking that it is based on 1999, but we could be wrong. As Peter mentions in the quote above, this wine can be more about the sandy vineyard of Les Sables in the village of Oueilly than it is about vintage or grape variety. With this bottle there is fruit, but it's mostly incidental - it is ripe enough to make a balanced and delicious non-dosed wine, but it honestly fades into the background, more and more so with air time. The wine was delicious immediately, but two hours later it was in a perfect place, vibrant, focused, and completely harmonious. What stood out at that point was soil - a definite earthy, sandy tone that carried throughout the bright and savoury finish. This is a wine to get lost in.

NV Diebolt-Vallois Champagne Cuvée Prestige Brut Blanc de Blancs, $65, Imported by Petit Pois. Fellow blogger David McDuff very kindly gave me the gift of Cuvée Prestige a little over a year ago when my younger daughter was born. As you can see right above the 12.5% alcohol designation, this bottle is marked 'L.05,' which means that it is comprised of about 50% 2004, the rest 2002 and 2000 (but I am not sure of the exact percentages).

This wine comes mostly from old vines in Cramant, one of the best villages for Chardonnay in the entire Côte des Blancs. It is a big and rich wine, full in aromas, texture, and flavor, and it is completely and totally delicious. The wine changes a lot in the glass, and at times the fruit character borders on tropical. But as the wine changed, there was this definite foundation that was always present, this persistently chalky sensation on the finish. And that, Peter said, is one of the hallmarks of Cramant, richness of fruit along with this incisive chalky underpinning.

I woke up the next morning and happily discovered a nice glass of this wine left in the bottle (we had a bit of wine the night before, you see, and I didn't neaten everything up before going to bed). This warm, flat glass was the best of all. Such grace and harmony, such richness with such clarity of fruit (pineapple!), such silky texture. I want more.

One last comment: far be it from me to tell you what to spend your money on, but both of these wines represent incredible value at $65, considering the absolute top quality of the wines.

Blind Tasting 15 Champagnes

Alex Halberstadt, a Brooklyn-based writer who covers wine for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, recently invited me to his house to participate in a blind tasting of Champagne. There were 9 of us in total, and 15 wines. Not bad for a random Monday night.

The point of tasting blind is to remove information that can bias the taster during the experience of tasting. But how much information should be removed? Obviously, tasters do not know the identity of the wines they taste. But there are varying degrees of "blind." Imagine, for example, that you wanted to do a tasting of Pinot Noir with friends, and your idea is to compare new world wines to old world wines. Do you tell people the theme and ask them to categorize the wines as they taste? Do you instead tell them only that it is a Pinot tasting, and see where the discussion goes? Do you tell people that they are drinking two types of Pinot, but not tell them what types? There are many ways to do this, and each has its merits.

We knew nothing whatsoever about the Champagnes we tasted - Alex decided to share the theme of the tasting only after we discussed the wines. We went through all 15 wines and then discussed each one. As you would expect with a group of 9 people tasting of 15 wines, there were many different opinions. But there were a few things that everyone seemed to agree on: no one loved the wines as a group. Everyone found a few wines to like, but as a group, no one was overly excited. When asked what we thought of the overall quality of the wines, Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery, said "They were fine, but I drank some great Champagnes last week, and none of these stands up to any of those."

I felt the same way - there were several wines I liked, but as a group I was not terribly impressed. I felt that the wines lacked any kind of soil character. None of them were chalky. And none of them showed any real individuality. They actually resembled each other a lot in terms of character and flavor profile. Maybe this was a symptom of drinking 15 Champagnes in a row, maybe not. What had Alex done, here? What were we tasting?

I had an idea about halfway through, but I wasn't sure. At the end of the discussion, Alex said "Bloggers and wine writers all seem to be writing about grower Champagne now, and you never read anything about the other wines. I thought it would be interesting to do a tasting of the Grand Marque Champagnes, the wines you are most likely to encounter in any given store." I understood immediately why Alex kept the theme a secret. If I knew that I were tasting these 15 wines, I would have been biased. Not that I would dislike them automatically - I'm a more honest taster than that, but I would have approached them differently, with low expectations. Alex wisely allowed us to approach these with whatever expectations we as individuals bring to a tasting. I, for one, want to like the wines at a blind tasting. And I found some things to like in this tasting.

Here are the wines we tasted, all non-vintage wines, presumably disgorged and released recently:

1) Piper-Heidsieck

2) Henriot

3) Deutz

4) Pol Roger Pure (this was a mistake - Alex meant for this to be Bollinger)

5) Gosset

6) Taittinger

7) Pol Roger

8) Delamotte

9) Lanson

10) Veuve-Clicquot

11) Laurent-Perrier

12) Charles Heidsieck

13) Louis Roederer

14) Moet Brut Imperial

15) Alfred Gratien

I liked the first wine I tasted better than anything else, the Piper-Heidsieck. It felt like it had been bottled at low pressure, it had lovely dark fruit, it had finesse, and it was very expressive. I loved it. I remember thinking, "Could this be a Cedric Bouchard wine?" I wonder if this wine been the 8th wine in the lineup, whether or not I would have liked it as much. By wine #8, I understood that I wasn't crazy about whatever it was we were tasting - the "I'm about to taste 15 Champagnes, and I love Champagne" magic had worn off. But I liked it enough during this tasting so that I will make a point of drinking it again.

My other favorites included Roederer, Henriot, Pol Roger, Taittinger, and Lanson. I would gladly drink a glass of any of those wines, should they be offered to me. But I don't think that I'm ready to start using any of my already meager Champagne budget to buy these wines. Before doing that, I'd like to do a blind tasting that includes these wines and an equal number of wines from producers like Boulard, Billiot, Diebolt-Vallois, and Brigandat. That would be most interesting, especially if I didn't know the theme while tasting.

I will also confidently tell you that the worst wine of the tasting, and almost everyone agreed on this, was the Moet White Star. It was just very bad.

I'm so glad to have participated in this - it was a great idea, Alex. It's silly to dismiss wines because they're not popular (an odd thing to say about Grand Marque Champagne, but I mean popular among the wine circles I hang out in), but I think we all do it. I tend to be dismissive of exactly these Champagnes, and perhaps I shouldn't be. I really liked that Piper-Heidsieck. Maybe I'll buy one and drink it next to a comparable grower Champagne, both served blind.

Friday Night Bubbles - 2002 Diebolt-Vallois

Last night, after a night of many a Poulsard with friends (more on that soon), I wanted to open a bottle of good Champagne to close out the evening. But what to open? My companions included a guy who until recently worked at Michael Skurnik wines, so nothing from Terry Theise. A woman who works at Chambers Street Wines, so nothing that they sell. And a prominent Sommelier at a great NYC restaurant, so nothing off his list. I decided to open a bottle of 2002 Diebolt-Vallois Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs, $65, imported by Petit Pois Corp. Turns out that the Sommelier has the 1997 on his list. I did my best. I tried, okay? Why are you being so judgmental?

2002 was a great year in most of Champagne and the idea is to actually hold onto the wines to allow them to reach their true potential, not to drink them frivolously after many other bottles at the end of the evening. But I don't own any of the Diebolt-Vallois 1999's, which my good friend Peter Liem says is what we should be drinking now while we wait for the 02's and the '04's to develop. And I was in the company of people who deeply love and know wine - who better to drink this with? And I have one more bottle that I will use all of my powers to save for another 5 years. So I opened it, we drank it, and it was just excellent.

Even at the end of a night of many wines, it is immediately clear that this is a special drink. The nose is fresh and harmonious, the wine is quite full in body, silky in texture, the fruit is clean and ripe, the finish is chalky and refreshing. I loved the sheer class and elegance of this wine, its effortless depth, its resonant fragrance. What will happen with additional cellaring that could make this wine better than it is right now?

Although it is expensive in absolute terms, I now understand how huge of a bargain it is in relative terms - you can easily spend much more than this on many Champagnes that simply aren't as good.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Diebolt-Vallois Blanc de Blancs, $38, Petit Pois/Sussex Wine Merchants. There are many non-vintage Blanc de Blancs out there at higher prices that do not deliver the goods as this wine does. That said, I think the price is now in the mid $40's in NYC, anyway. Even at that price, this is one of the finer non-vintage Blanc de Blancs that I've had.

My first experience with Diebolt-Vallois was a flawed bottle and maybe because of that I've been slower to warm to this producer than I might otherwise have been. Silly me. The more I drink, the more I understand that Diebolt-Vallois makes a truly fine Blanc de Blancs. I've never tasted their top wines, the Fleur de Passion or the Prestige, but that will hopefully change when I visit the estate in a couple of weeks.

This wine is so gentle, so graceful. It has a kick, but a gentle one. It begins with racy citrus fruit and a mouth filling fragrance of lady's perfume, spreads out and reveals a fine chalky base, and finishes sparkling clean with a lingering blend of fruit and chalk. The overall effect is perfectly balanced and quite luxurious. This is a wine that can make you feel good about yourself.
The wine that this most reminds me of is José Dhont's Blanc de Blanc, and I say this understanding that Dhont is in Oger and Diebolt-Vallois uses fruit from Cramant, Cuis, Chouilly, and Epernay. Maybe if I were to taste them side by side I wouldn't think so, but my memory of the feeling of Dhont's wine is similar to this: graceful, feminine, highly perfumed and elegant, something to luxuriate in.

Buried on the lower right side of the front label, stamped and only faintly visible, there is an "06." I assume this indicates the wine was bottled in 2006 and based on the 2005 harvest, possibly with some reserve wines too. My assumption is based on Peter Liem's post about the Cuvée Prestige, and the formula he discusses might not be the same for the Blanc de Blancs. Wouldn't it be great if Champagne labels always contained information about vintage and disgorgement date?