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

It's natural to overlook Champagne Delamotte, as its superstar sister Salon gets most of the attention. And like many whose siblings have attention-grabbing personalities, Delamotte wines are of the quiet type. They don't show particularly well at big tastings, at least in my experience, where the loudest wines draw the crowds. But as an apértif with friends or at the table, these wines are surprisingly lovely.

This post is in part a tribute to Peter Liem and his recently deceased blog Besotted Ramblings and Other Drivel. I don't know this for sure because we've never discussed it, but I imagine that Peter would like these wines, particularly the one I drank the other night, a gift from my friend Tista (who I met through Peter), the NV Delamotte Brut Rosé, about $55, Wilson Daniels Imports.

Peter would like this wine because it smells and tastes great. Period. It is not a super-cool skateboarding and mussy-haired hipster Champagne, it doesn't appear on the list at any of the hottest Paris bars, or at Terroir or Ten Bells. The wine maker did not grow the grapes or spray them with biodynamic treatments, and there are no former-bankers turned hippie horse farmers involved in any way with the production, importing, or distribution of this wine. Many of the wine cool-cats would say, then, that Delamotte Rosé isn't worth drinking, or at best would simply ignore it. And this is one of my favorite things about Peter Liem as a wine writer - he thinks about and writes about wine based on merits, not based on hipster caché. Some of the wines he loves are cool-cat wines, like Overnoy/Houillon, La Bota Sherries, and Vouette et Sorbée, but he also likes decidedly un-hip big house wines, négoce wines, and anything else that speaks to him. And if you don't think that's cool, that's your problem. I'll miss his blog very much, but there are other ways to follow Peter's wine writing, praise be.

The NV Delamotte Brut Rosé is a saignée wine. That's cool, isn't it? So is Vouette et Sorbée, so they have that in common. It is 80% Pinot Noir, the rest Chardonnay. It needs a half hour or so to open up, and then the fresh red berry aromas become quite vivid, the nose airy and fresh. It is elegant and balanced on the palate, without sacrificing the energetic exuberance of a good saignée. The fruit is ripe and there is a tender chalky and floral fragrance on the finish. We loved it, and I look forward to serving it blind the next time I am hosting a Champagne-loving uber-hipster.

Wine of the Week - Selosse Champagne

I'm sorry to do this, to ask you to read about a wine that it so awfully difficult to find, and if you can find it, so terribly expensive. But this is a special wine, one that I may well never have the chance to drink again, one that has inspired much debate, a rare wine from an iconic producer. The other night Peter Liem came over for dinner, and so I had my first Selosse experience. It was pretty amazing, and I want to share a bit about it.


NV Jacques Selosse Champagne Substance, about $250, Imported by the Rare Wine Company. This is a Blanc de Blancs from the Grand Cru village of Avize. Substance is a solera wine, meaning that it is composed of wines from all vintages since the creation of the solera, which in this case was 1986. Wine is removed and new wine is added each year. Because they contain so much old wine, solera wines tend to offer a mature richness of aroma and flavor. And as Peter explained, Selosse's idea when he created the solera (and Selosse was the one to begin this practice in Champagne) was to eliminate the effect of vintage and to amplify the effect of the terroir. When the barrel contains wines dating back to 1986, the impact of the individual year is lost. Peter discusses Selosse and terroir a bit more in this post.

The bottle we drank was disgorged in October of 2008, and I think the most recent vintage in this bottle should therefore be 2004. The wine is a strikingly deep amber color. The nose is expressive and intense, full of ginger and exotic fruit. Broad and rich but finely focused, and with incredible detail on the palate, this is a complete wine. And after about 90 minutes it was truly amazing - the things that stuck out previously, the intensity, the ginger, the richness - those things had blended so seamlessly with each other by this time that none of them on its own was evident. The wine had become a real thing of beauty, the kind of wine that can ruin you. Evocative of old libraries filled with leather-bound books and half-drunk glasses of sherry, and of attractive young couples riding motorcycles, rushing past you in a fleeting glimpse of what you wish you could be.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Champagne Raymond Boulard Mailly Grand Cru Brut Nature, $42, Imported by Selected Estates of Europe. This wine is an outstanding example of a Brut Nature, a Champagne with no sugar or other sweetener added to the dosage. If you aren't familiar with this sort of thing, it is extremely fashionable among the wine hipsters of the world to drink Brut Nature or Extra Brut Champagne right now. Perhaps because some of these wine hipsters claim that the expression of terroir in Champagne is possible only in non-dosé wines. Perhaps because the people with the coolest haircuts and iPhone apps drink non-dosé Champagne, and others simply follow along. Whatever the reason, non-dosé Champagne is very popular now, and many producers now offer a non-dosé Champagne amidst their portfolio of wines.

But it is not easy to make a good non-dosé Champagne. As Peter Liem of ChampagneGuide.net has said, "You cannot just take your regular Brut NV and decide that you will not add any sugar to it." Skilled and dedicated work in the vineyard is required in order to yield fruit that is ripe and flavorful enough to make good non-dosé wine. There are several in the group of young and hip Champagne vignerons who are making great non-dosé wines, and for more on that you should consult ChampagneGuide.net. I will say this - Francis Boulard's Mailly Grand Cru is a very fine non-dosé Champagne. And this bottling is particularly exceptional. It was disgorged in February of 2008, which leads me to assume that it is based on grapes from 2005, and bottled in 2006. '05 was warm in Champagne, as in most of France, and so Boulard had a cooperative climate to work with for this style of wine.

I last drank this wine about a year ago, and I decanted it, to everyone's horror. That one was a great version of the wine, more soil and mineral driven. The new version is overtly fruity and joyous on the nose, with an intensely vinous character. It is, as it will always be, a wine that is defined by minerals. According to ChampagneGuide.net the grapes for this wine are grown on a plot that has "only about five to ten centimeters of topsoil, under which the roots descend immediately into the chalk and limestone bedrock." But in this iteration, the ripe and lovely fruit competes for your attention. It is vivid red fruit, and it is juicy, and it is relaxing in a warm bath of chalk. The wine is perfectly balanced with excellent acidity, and it has a beautiful fragrant length that lingers long after swallowing. Perhaps the most impressive thing to me, though, is that this wine, which is about 90% Pinot Noir, is wonderfully elegant. It really has grace and delicacy to compliment its vibrant fruit and minerality. It is just outstanding wine, and although the price has risen since I last drank it, it continues to be a great value in the world of Champagne.

By the way, when I opened this bottle the other night, I again decanted it. But this time I decanted only half the bottle, so my friend and I could compare the decanted wine to the wine out of the bottle. My friend perfectly described the difference after about 15 minutes of air time: "The decanted wine is more powerful, and the wine from the bottle is more elegant."

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Champagne Raymond Boulard Petraea XCVII - MMIII, $38, Imported by Selected Estates of Europe. Thank goodness that wine is not priced strictly according to quality (or my sense of it, anyway). If it were, Boulard's Petraea would cost far more than $38. Think of all of the insipid Champagne out there that costs way more than $38. I prefer this to any other Champagne of equal price that I've tasted, and it's better than many vintage wines that cost twice as much money. And I'm not even crazy about this particular version of the wine! Raymond Boulard's wines (now made by Francis Boulard) are a truly fantastic value in Champagne.

The Boulard estate is located in Cauroy-lès-Hermonville, even further north than Chartogne-Taillet in the Montagne de Reims. It would not be unfair to say that Boulard is in the middle of nowhere. Just goes to show that skill and dedication in the vineyards and winery are every bit as important as prime real estate when it comes to making great wine.

ChampagneGuide.net offers a complete description of Boulard's history, vineyard and cellar work, and you should subscribe if you haven't already done so, and check it out. I will, with Peter's permission, re-print his explanation of Petraea from the Boulard producer page:

Petraea is an unusual wine made in a “perpetual cuvée” (a term that Boulard prefers to “solera”), begun in 1997. The name Petraea refers to the type of oak that the barrels used for this wine are made from, and the final blend contains about 60 percent pinot noir, with the remainder equally divided between chardonnay and meunier. It’s neither filtered nor fined, and it’s bottled at a slightly lower pressure (five bars rather than six), “due to its vinous character,” says Boulard.

I drank Petraea XCVII - MMII last summer and loved it, as I have loved every Boulard wine I've tried so far. And so I decided not to be frightened by MMIII, even though it features grapes from the roasting-hot 2003 vintage. But as usual, only 25% of the current vintage's grapes are blended in Petraea, the balance being a blend of wines from 1997 through, in this case, 2002.

MMIII most definitely showed the hot muscle-car character of 2003, although it retained it's elegant side too. It is not as good as MMII, and I imagine that it is not as good as MMIV, which I have not tasted. But it is very good wine, with a broad and rich marzipan fragrance and a deliciously juicy palate that remains mostly in control, with ripe fruit, rhubarb, more marzipan, and decent acidity. This is not an elegant wine, but it has a mature and refined character on the nose, and although the palate feels overly exuberant at times, it is always tasty and a pleasure to drink. Perhaps not a wine to go deep on in the cellar, but without question a wine to buy if you see it, and one to enjoy in the next few years. This is a wine that I think would pair well with the boldest of foods in unorthodox ways. I'm thinking...wait for it...herbed roast leg of lamb. Lamb and white bean soup with grilled buttered bread. Lamb, at a minimum.

Friday Night Bubbles

2007 Latitude 50 Spätburgunder Sekt Brut Rosé, $17, Savio Soares Selections. For some reason, this is the third Latitude 50 wine I've drank in just over a week. I had the Dornfelder at the Obscure Wine Dinner, the Riesling with Szechuan food the other night, and now this. Latitude 50 refers to the northern locale of these vineyards in the Rheingau, Germany.

It's not easy for grapes to ripen that far north. The fruit in this wine feels somewhat ripe, but perhaps not as ripe as would be necessary to avoid high dosage, and I suspect that the dosage is high in this wine. It tastes sweet, as opposed to ripe. I'm guessing that this is not a macerated rosé, that still red wine is instead added to the blend.

The nose is creamy and a bit yeasty, with nice soil character and shy dark fruit. Later on there is something like red zinger tea or rose hips. The palate is straightforward with tasty fruit and more of that creamy character. There is enough acidity to make this wine fresh and it's very drinkable, a good sparkling rosé of higher quality than any other I can think of at this price.

I could quibble about things like complexity and intensity, find little faults here and there, but what would be the point? This wine costs $17, and for serious sparkling wine, that's cheap. This is a genuinely nice wine, and a good value at this price.

On another note...I'm convinced that although there are many great still wines available for less than $20, there are far fewer great sparkling wines available for less than $20. Instead of continuing to buy them and write luke-warm reviews for Friday Night Bubbles, I'm going to move to another format, something like a wine of the week. I'd rather drink great wine for $17 than pretty good sparkling wine for $17. It's been over a year on the Friday Night Bubbles thing. Change is a good thing. There will still be Champs, but there will be other wines too. We'll see how it goes.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Domaine Parigot & Richard Crémant de Bourgogne Blanc de Blancs, $20, Becky Wasserman Selections. This is a blend of mostly Chardonnay and some Aligoté made in Savigny-lès-Beaune by a producer that makes only Crémant, highly unusual for a Burgundy producer. Parigot & Richard make a range of sparkling wines, including L'Or de Parigot, a rosé with edible gold flakes floating in it. Is that tacky? Can we take this producer's other wines seriously knowing that they put gold flakes in one of their wines? I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but I do not.

I feel confused by this Blanc de Blancs, and confused about the producer in general. I knew nothing of the producer when I purchased the bottle. I bought it based solely on the fact that Becky Wasserman selected it. We drank the wine as an aperitif and then with a simple dish of pan-fried pork chops with mustard greens, carrots, and brussels sprouts. It was fine, certainly not bad, but nothing special. The aromas are bit yeasty and there is no soil or mineral character on the nose at all - just yeasty fruit. It is ripe enough, but not at all complex,and there is not enough acidity to make the wine feel energetic. But it tastes fine, not too sweet, inoffensive. And with about a half hour open, I realized that it actually tastes like still Chardonnay from Savigny-lès-Beaune, which is a good thing - it tastes good. Except the bubbles add nothing to the experience. I think this wine would be better as a still wine.

Okay, no more negative comments about the wine. I found it not to be memorable, that's it. But it does bother me that there is no way to tell the composition of the wine - how much Aligoté is in there anyway? What is the base year? When was it disgorged? The website tells you nothing, neither does Wasserman's site, neither does the importer. This is what the producer's website has to say about this wine:

The harmonious marriage of the two white grape varieties in Burgundy, Chardonnay and Aligoté, give this crémant its uniqueness and nobility. The Chardonnay, by far the majority, supplies it with all the traits of its character. The Aligoté gives it the gift of vivacity. Its robe, wheat-like in color, evokes freshness and delicateness. Its bewitching aromas are completed by enjoyable fruity notes. Well balanced, this cremant's vitality and youthfulness will know how to seduce the palate of amateur connoisseurs of cremant Blanc de Blancs.

Read that three times and see if you can help falling asleep. Anyway, this is perfectly decent wine from a producer that may or may not be the Perrier-Jouët of Burgundy. Sorry if I sound bitter, but I feel duped. Becky Wasserman selected this?!? With all due respect, and I have nothing but respect for Becky Wasserman, what am I missing here?

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Benoît Lahaye Brut, $40, Jeffrey Alpert Selections. Last summer I was in Portland with my wife on a quick vacation and we had dinner with Peter Liem and some of his friends. He brought a few truly special bottles of wine from France for this dinner, one of which was the 2002 Benoît Lahaye Brut Champagne Millésime. This wine was so delicious that I made a promise to myself to buy Lahaye's wines whenever I could find them.

Turns out that finding them is no small feat. I do not mean to say this rudely, but have you ever heard of Jeffrey Alpert Selections? I haven't. There is no website for the importer that I could find - an interweb search turned up more Herb Alpert (the genius musician behind, among other things, the cantina scene music from Star Wars, at the bar in Mos Eisley) than Jeffrey Alpert. But I finally found a NYC store that sells the NV Brut and I pounced. The vintage wine, the Brut Nature, and the other cuvées - nope, not to be found around here, which is such a shame.

Benoît Lahaye's estate is located in the village of Bouzy in the Montagne de Reims, in Pinot Noir country. There are some great growers and producers in Bouzy, such as Andre Clouet, Camille Saves, and Paul Bara. Among wines that I've had at home with dinner (where you can linger over a meal and watch the wine grow up over the course of an evening), this NV Brut from Lahaye is the finest Bouzy wine that I've ever tasted. I've never had a Paul Bara wine, and I haven't tasted the entire lineup of wines from Saves or Clouet, but I've drank some of their wines, and I think that Lahaye's NV Brut is just better. This version is, anyway, which I am guessing is based on 2005 grapes, bottled in 2006, and disgorged in August of 2008 based on the hard-to-spot code on the back label that reads "08 2008." Again - give us more info on the labels please...

The best description of Benoît Lahaye is again on Peter Liem's website, but I will summarize: Benoît Lahaye's vineyards are farmed organically and his wines are made naturally with minimal intervention. The estate is small at under 5 hectares, and yet Lahaye vinifies individual parcels seperately in order to produce the best possible blends. This wine is 85% Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay, using 30% reserve wines. It is such a beautiful wine, really stunning. The nose is airy and pure, very gentle, and reveals layers of ripe fruit, roast nuts, and minerals. It is vinous and intense, round and rich, ever so slightly smokey. This is one to get lost in, and I refused to drink the last bit so I could keep smelling it. The fruit is generous and ripe on the palate - anyone who thinks that grapes don't ripen in Champagne should drink this wine. The fruit is completely infused with chalk, and there is a racy streak of acidity that cuts through and cleanses the palate. The finish is fragrant and long, and tickles the cheeks. And it's clear that I opened it too young, as there is ample structure and acidity and although the wine is completely delicious, it seems like it hasn't fully discovered its inner harmony.
If it sounds like I'm waxing rhapsodic about this wine, I am. It's a true beauty, one of the best NV Pinot Noir based Champs that I've had. And it's interesting to compare this to, say the NV Billiot Brut from the neighboring village of Ambonnay, also a grand cru village. I love Billiot's wines, but whereas they seem more exuberant and muscular to me, Lahaye's wine seems more controlled, with more finesse, yet equally intense. I'll have to test that theory one day by drinking them together.

Friday Night Bubbles

2004 Audrey et Christian Binner Crémant d'Alsace Extra Brut, $28, Jenny & François Selections. I'm a big fan of the wines from this Alsace estate. They are pure expressions of Alsace grape varieties and Alsace terroir. And more importantly, they are absolutely delicious. I tasted through Binner's wines at the recent Jenny & François portfolio tasting and my favorite wine in the current lineup is the Gewurtztraminer. 2005 is the current vintage, and it sings out with fresh flowers and bitter herbs. Like all the wines, it is fresh and pure, and eminently drinkable.

Why am I telling you all this, if this post is supposed to be about Binner's Crémant d'Alsace? I guess I wanted to make it clear how great I think this producer is, and how special their still wines are before telling you that I am not crazy about their Crémant. I've tried it before at one tasting or another and never loved it, but the other day at the tasting it impressed me. So I purchased a bottle on my way home to drink with the BrooklynLady. Tastings are a great way to learn about wine, but for me the only way to discover my own truth about a wine is to drink it at home, slowly, with a meal. Not a novel concept, but I'm telling you anyway.

This Crémant is mostly Riesling at about 70%, with some Auxerrois and Pinot Gris in the blend too. It is aged for three years on the lees, it was disgorged in May of 2008 and topped up with more Riesling - no sugar or concentrated must in the dosage, hence the Extra Brut status. There are some lovely things about this wine. It has nice texture and there is a telltale Riesling bitter fruit pit character. The flavors are round and clean, and the wine has a pleasant lightness to it. But as I drank it I thought of something that Peter Liem said about extra Brut wines:

Non-dosé Champagne is highly fashionable in the Champagne region right now, but few people really do it right. The problem is that in order to make good non-dosé Champagne, you have to work exceptionally well in the vineyards, to achieve fruit that is ripe enough and complete enough to stand on its own. You can't just take your regular brut NV and decide that you won't add any sugar to it.

The Binners without question work exceptionally well in the vineyards - they craft gorgeous still wines year after year. And reasonably priced wines too, by the way. But the 2004 Binner Crémant lacks resonance and depth, and it feels a bit stunted. I gave it the old "how does the wine taste after you leave it out all night" test, and it didn't do so well. I think that it would benefit from a few grams of sugar in the dosage, as un-hip as that may sound. Or maybe it is a lesser selection of grapes used to make the Crémant, who knows. Or maybe this is great wine and I don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyone had this wine and care to share their opinion?

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Moutard Père & Fils Brut Brut Rosé Cuvaison, $34, Polaner Selections. Some of the best values in Champagne are coming out of the Côte des Bar in the Aube, the southern most region that's closer to north-east Chablis than it is to Reims. With some exceptions, these tend to be red grape dominant wines. The whole area was until somewhat recently summarily dismissed and the grapes and/or juice sold to the négoce houses. More and more growers in the Aube now bottle their own wine, often times with fantastic results.

Perhaps the biggest star currently is Cedric Bouchard, and although his wines are a value in the sense that they are phenomenal wines, they are not cheap. Some producers, however, are making wines that are priced at the low end of the grower Champagne spectrum, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how great they can be. One of them, Pierre Brigandat, was featured here a few weeks ago. Another leader in the area is Moutard. Moutard is technically a négoce in that at least 5% of the grapes used to make their wines are purchased from other growers. I don't know exactly how much they purchase, but I don't believe it's much more than that.

Moutard makes a superb non-vintage Brut that retails for no more than $35, less than that if you're in the right store. They also make two highly unusual wines that feature the three "other" Champagne grapes: Arbanne, Pinot Blanc, and Petit Meslier. Check out Peter Liem's post for more on these. There are two rosés, the Prestige which is produced by adding still red wine to the blend, and this wine, the Cuvaison, which is made using the saignée method by which the wine stays in contact with the skins for a period of time before the juice is bled off. Peter tells me that Cuvaison is more of a rosé de macération than a saignée, but he would have to explain the difference to you. I find that I prefer rosés of Champagne that are made using the saignée method. They just feel more alive to me, more vibrant. And this wine is no exception.

This wine is truly lovely, such a fantastic value at this price. It has rich mineral-infused fruit aromas, quite vinous and intense. The nose is fresh and pretty, not overly exuberant, more about elegance and finesse. Same on the palate - it is ripe and delicious with mineral and earthy fruit, good acidity and balance, and the finish leaves a gently spicy fruit fragrance. The overall effect is one of poise and restraint, which might be atypical among rosés de saignée, but I think it works perfectly here. This wine is an absolute pleasure, one that I would buy again and pour for anyone. And it has a great photo on the cork-top.
Although there is no disgorgement date listed, there is a small code that reads "LBR 06 - 05/08." I interpret that to mean it was based on the 2005 vintage, bottled in 2006, and disgorged in May of 2008. But I could be wrong, and it would be great if Polaner and the other importers out there would demand that the producers include this information on their labels.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Julien Frémont Cidre Pays d'Auge Brut par Nature, $12, Louis/Dressner Selections. The recession has officially hit Brooklynguy's blog folks - it just doesn't feel right to drink a bottle of Champagne every week - I need to be a bit more conservative with the family finances. But there are sparkling wines made all over the world, many of them inexpensive, and some of them interesting and delicious. I'll share them here as I find them.

Found one for this week, and it's not even made from grapes. Normandy is France's apple country. Calvados, the potent apple brandy, is the most well known drink to emerge from the region, but the ciders (French spelling - cidre) can be delicious too. They can also be quite sweet and lacking in character, often enough so that I've given up on trying random bottles. But this year the Dressners decided to import Julien Frémont's two cidres, and that makes them anything but random.

Frémont farms cows and apples on 45 hectares of land. The drawing on the label depicts the eternal struggle between apple and cow. I don't know the apple varieties used, but I doubt we're talking about Red Delicious and MacIntosh. Dressner's site says "the trees are a mix of old local varieties of acidic, late ripening apples." Frémont makes two cidres - a non-vintage Brut and a single-orchard cidre (yes, you read that right) from particularly old trees. The single-orchard cidre is sweet - the apples undergo passerillage, the process by which the fruit dries out and the sugars concentrate.

The cidre we drank, the NV Brut, is absolutely bone-dry, with a round and generous nose of fresh apples. There is a hint of the ocean underneath, BrooklynLady says. The palate is shockingly dry, although it rounds out a bit and shows a sweeter character with a half hour open. See if you can make it last that long. The overall effect is the purest essence of fresh apple, and that's a lovely thing. The texture is super smooth, with the barest spritz of a mousse. This is only 5.5% alcohol, less than half that of most wine, so drink away - open two bottles.

We drank ours on its own, but in December Eric Asimov wrote about drinking one of his favorite ciders with dosas, the Southern Indian fermented rice and lentil flour wraps. An inspired combination! Drinking this cider we imagined eating take-out Chinese food, specifically moo-shoo pork. I can think of only a couple sparkling wines at this price point that I think are as good a drink as this cider. It's worth a try, if your shoppe carries the Dressner goods.

What about you...do you like the ciders?

Friday Night Bubbles

I don't usually write about a wine for Friday Night Bubbles if I drink it at restaurants or at friends' houses. I can't be as attentive to the nuances of aroma or flavor that way, I can't track the wine's progress over the course of the evening the same way I can in my own house. And I like to be able to photograph the Champs myself - it's just something I've grown accustomed to.

This week is an exception, as I had a wine at a restaurant recently that really moved me. I have no photos to share, and I didn't make notes at the restaurant so my tasting notes will be of a general nature, but there is something worth sharing here.

My in-laws were in town for my daughter's 2nd birthday, and we went to dinner at one of my favorite local places, Rosewater. We celebrated with a very fine bottle of Champagne, the 1996 Pierre Gimonnet Blanc de Blancs Cuvée Gastronome. The 2002 vintage of this wine was featured just a few weeks ago in another Friday Night Bubbles post, by the way. And while we very much enjoyed the 2002, the 1996 is an entirely different animal. A more formidable animal. Maybe an animal that might hunt and eat the 2002, should it be hungry.

Cuvée Gastronome is a low pressure Champagne, at 4 bars instead of the typical 6. The idea here is for the wine to get along more easily with food - less mousse to interfere, or something like that. I don't think I agree, thusfar, that this makes the wines more food friendly. Quite the opposite, actually. Of the low pressure Champagne I've drank, including a couple of vintages of Cuvée Gastronome, Cedric Bouchard's wines, and a Doyard wine, all of them seem to me best consumed alone, as food would so easily overwhelm their delicacy. But that's just me, maybe you've experienced something entirely different, and do share.

1996 is one of those super-vintages, one that carries with it very high expectation. But there are questions as to whether or not the some of the wines will be balanced, as they are so high in acidity. This wine was, to me, a great example of what a 1996 should be - a perfect amalgam of delicacy and grace, with richness and power. The nose is immediately more mature, as would be expected, and it offers several layers. There are lower register rich notes of toffee that blend seamlessly with upper register notes of bright citrus fruit, the whole of the thing encased in a delicate mineral shell. Really a beautiful nose, and by the end of the 30-45 minutes I spent with this wine all of the parts were in perfect harmony. And I have no doubt that it wasn't finished unwinding at that point - this wine clearly has more to reveal. On the palate it was a delicate blend of roast nuts and ultra-clean fruit, with a strong vein of acidity to ground everything. This is a wine that defies the temptation to list flavors and aromas because ultimately it was in perfect harmony and nothing stood out. It was just simply beautiful wine. I would love to drink it again in 5 years to see how it evolves.

I need to put more Champagne in the cellar.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Pierre Brigandat Champagne Brut, $30, Bonhomie Wine Imports. I've been meaning to try this wine since November when it showed up at every retail shop that I frequent. It's cheaper than most grower Champagne, and it's from the Pinot Noir land of the Aube. That's the southern island of the Champagne region whose wines are, in my opinion, much better than the region gets credit for. I'm talking about Cedric Bouchard, Fleury, Lassaigne, and others.

How could a wine like this, a naturally made grower Champagne, a little wine that most people haven't heard of, how could this show up in so many fine NYC wine shops? Firstly, it honestly is a delicious wine. Secondly, compared to the low-mid $40's that most quality non-vintage grower Champs will run you, this is a bargain. Most places charge $35, but Chambers Street charges only $30, by the way.
Although it doesn't say so on the label, this is a Blanc de Noirs. Brigandat vinifies entirely in tank, so even though the Pinot fruit is ripe and boisterous, this is a nervy and racy wine that shows just as much mineral and soil character as it does fruit. This bottling is based on the 2005 vintage and it is a ripe wine, although I wouldn't call it especially rich. The nose shows spicy red fruit and a buzzing metallic celery note. Ripe fruit on the palate with earthy undertones, and plenty of acidity. The finish is gentle with spiced orange peel and chalky metallic minerals, and it is very refreshing. This is just a charming wine and again, a great value. And we need value in these times, as you well know. I think they were able to achieve this price because Bonhomie successfully petitioned Congress for a bailout. Get it while you can.

Corrections

There are two errors (that I know of) in my recent Friday Night Bubbles post on Robert Doyard's Champagne Extra Brut.

This Champagne is a blend of wines from 2000, 1999, and 1998; not 1998 and 1997 as I wrote in the original post.

In the original post I wrote that the wine is not imported to the United States. Happily, this is not true. Pacific Estates imports the wine and it has been/is available on both the east and the west coasts. One major east coast retailer, Wine Library, sells the Brut Premier Cru (not this wine - this is the Extra Brut) for the laughably low sale price of $28.33.

Thanks for your emails (Jon and Peter) and comments (Gene) alerting me to these mistakes.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Champagne Robert Doyard Cuvée Vendémiaire Extra Brut, price unknown, not imported to the US. For reasons that I still do not entirely understand, Peter Liem thought that it wasn't enough to let me tag along on his recent Burgundy trip. He felt he should also give me a bottle of very fine Champagne to take home, something that I would not be able to buy in the US. I know that it can be annoying to read about wine that you cannot purchase, but please bear with me this time. There are some interesting things about this wine that make it worth sharing, and eventually, I'm sure some one will bring it into the US, so you can try it then if you like.

I really don't know much about Doyard so I'll share some tasting notes first in the hopes of distracting you from my lack of contextual knowledge. There are fine and delicate aromas of citrus fruit and minerals in a way that reminds me of Larmandier-Bernier's Terre de Vertus. Not surprising, given the similarities between the two wines. The Doyard estate is located in Vertus, and at least some of the grapes in this wine come from vineyards there. Both are non-dosé Blanc de Blancs that rely on clean vineyard work and ripe fruit, and that are aged long enough to qualify for vintage status, but instead are blended with reserve wines. With some airtime the aromas become more defined and nuanced, and there is a lovely honeycomb character lurking in the background (and this is a non-dosé wine!) .

The foreground, however, is a wall of granite and chalk with almost painfully intense minerals. There is fruit, but in the end this, to me, is not a fruit driven wine. I liked the way this wine is not terribly delicate, yet it is not very rich either. It floats somewhere in the middle. This is a Blanc de Blancs of great purity and expression of place, and it delivers pleasure, but I wouldn't bother pouring it for someone who isn't already in love with Champagne - they might not make it past the rocky wall. This is an intensely vinous Champagne and I think, a challenging Champagne. In a good way.
Here is the little bit of context I can offer. Yannick Doyard selects only the best grapes for the Doyard wines and sells the rest to the négoce. The wine is vinified in barrel, blended with reserve wines, and aged for a long time before disgorgement. This bottle, for example, I believe is a blend of the 1997 and 1998 vintages. Less sugar than is typically used for fermentation is added in order to create a wine of lower pressure.

This is a wine that I would love to drink again, preferably in France, preferably on a sunny and breezy day on the Normandy coast with exactly two other people (so that we each get a bit more than one glass), and preferably with a plate of raw oysters. If ever there were a Champagne that is a perfect match for oysters, it is this one.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Françoise Bedel Champagne Brut Entre Ciel et Terre, $54, Jon-David Headrick Selections. It seems like forever since I last drank this wine, but it turns out it was just last April. And I'm recycling the photograph.

When Peter Liem came through New York and stopped by for dinner, I decided that it was time to check in on this wine. It's not easy to open Champagne for someone like Peter - he drinks Champagne all the time, more often than not the very finest wines. Hard to serve something that can compete, but Françoise Bedel's Entre Ciel et Terre is off the beaten track, anyway. Literally. The estate and vineyards are technically located in the Vallée de Marne, but Crouttes-sur-Marne is closer to Paris than it is to Aÿ, for example. From Paris to Bedel's estate by car is only about 45 minutes. Remember, Champagne is by far the largest single appellation in all of France. We're talking about a wine region the size of Massachusetts. I made that up, but it sounds right. Work with me, people.

Françoise Bedel was one of the first (modern growers, that is) to farm biodynamically in Champagne. This wine is mostly black grapes, but there is about 10% Chardonnay in the blend. The wine is then aged for a long time on its lees and takes on a particular richness. Sometimes this style of wine making can sacrifice freshness, Peter says, but it really depends on the wine maker and then on the individual bottle. Probably also on the vintage of the base wine. In America we cannot discern the vintage or the disgorgement date of Entre Ciel et Terre, as the back label does not disclose this information the way it does in France.

This bottle, most likely based on the 1999 vintage, was a beautiful bottle, "a particularly great bottle," Peter said. And that's just the way I do things - I try to keep only particularly outstanding bottles on hand. The nose is just beautiful with a pronounced sherry character, saline, oxidized, and very rich, but also with great freshness and vibrancy, especially with 15 minutes of air. The perfume achieves a lovely delicacy, which is no small feat considering the richness of the wine. There are precise flavors of leesy brioche, raw almonds, creamy citrus, and a lively salty mineral finish. This is absolutely delicious wine, one of my favorites.

Friday Night Bubbles

2000 Gatinois Brut, about $45, Polaner Imports. The millennium vintage in Champagne was not a great one, in the end. It was a ripe vintage, strange as that may sound for Champagne, and apparently many of the wines lack precision and focus. Most producers made a vintage wine anyway - if you were a wine maker would you skip the chance to make a wine from the year 2000? really, how bad would your fruit have to be to voluntarily miss out? All your colleagues are making a 2000, shouldn't you?

I've had the chance to drink several 2000's in the past few weeks, and I must say that I have not been impressed. Even with a rock solid producer like Jacques Lassaigne in Montgueux, whose non vintage wines are cut and precise, the 2000 was sort of fuzzy and all over the place. I know there are great wines from the 2000 vintage, but I haven't had them. Well, I did taste the 2000 Cuvée Fiacre from Chartogne Taillet and that was wonderful. They're out there, but they're not the norm.

This one, the 2000 Gatinois Brut, is one of the good ones. Gatinois is located in Aÿ in the Vallée de Marne, right near Bollinger, to whom Pierre Cheval-Gatinois sells about half of his harvest each year. Aÿ is Grand Cru Pinot Noir territory, and as you would therefore expect, Gatinois wines are almost entirely Pinot. In the case of the vintage wines, they are 100% Pinot Noir. Gatinois bottles under 3,000 cases of wine each year, and this is inclusive of all five wines (Tradition Brut, Réserve Brut, Rosé, Millésime, and Demi-sec), so it's not an easy bottle to find. But if you are a fan of red grape Champagne, and of a full bodied style in general, try a bottle if you see one.
The color is somewhat striking, golden, almost amber in color. The nose is first and foremost clean and fresh, almost airy, and this balances the ripeness and richness of the aromas so that the wine in the end transcends the problems of the vintage. Sweet and rich aromas of berry fruit, orange peel and marzipan are infused with a chalky essence. The nose is broad and round, but mostly under control. The wine is texturally lovely with a very fine mousse and the palate is surprisingly mineral driven. The fruit is front and center, and it's juicy and ripe, but the fineness of texture and the definite mineral floor grounds the wine. With air time it puts on weight, but maintains somewhat strong focus in part because of the tangy acidity, and also because of the strong and narrow finish that resonates with orange zest. This is a very big wine with great depth of fragrance and flavor, and it maintains an elegant, if exuberant posture.

Friday Night Bubbles

Most of this post already appeared on Jeremy Parzon's Do Bianchi. Sorry to repeat, but whaddaya want from me?!? I have a five-day old and a 2 year old. I'm like a walking dead man.

1999 Henri Billiot Brut, $56, Terry Theise Selections / Michael Skurnik Imports. Billiot's wines are really a treat. Laetitia (Henri's granddaughter, I believe) is in charge now, and there are still fewer than 4,000 cases per year of the 5 wines Billiot makes. Located in the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay in the Montagne de Reims, Billiot's wines are comprised mostly of Pinot Noir, and the fruit is rich and joyous .The basic non-vintage Brut is typically excellent, although not cheap at almost $50. The rosé is one of the better ones I know of that is not made in the saignée method. Billiot adds still 15+ year old solera Pinot Noir to the blend to create the rosé, and it's absolutely complex and delicious. Cuvée Laetitia is the house's top wine (along with the newer and in my opinion, less successful Cuvée Julie), also a solera wine, and is oddly, mostly Chardonnay.

Billiot adds little or no dosage, achieving sufficient ripeness on the vine to do without. These are wines, like most good Champagnes, that really show better if you wait a while after disgorgement to open them. The bottle we drank was disgorged in October of 2007, and I'm glad we gave it a year. I've had the NV Brut earlier in it's post-disgorgement life and it was a bit disjointed, the fruit in particular just fell off at the end.

I think that when buying Billiot's wines, it's worth it to spend a couple more bucks to buy Billiot's vintage wines as opposed to the basic NV Brut. This one, the 1999, is the wine we opened as an aperitif with friends before Christmas dinner, the night before our daughter was born. It exceeded expectations - so graceful and controlled, such exuberant fruit, so rich and broad, yet with refined elegance. the texture is lush and fine, there is good acidity, and the finish really lingers with a chalk-infused fruit fragrance. This wine has a great inner core of energetic fruit, and it's just delicious. It will probably continue to improve with a few more years in a cold cellar. You might not be able to find the '99 on shelves now, but the 2002 is the new release and it may well surpass the '99 once it is ready to drink, in about 5-8 years.

Friday Night Bubbles

2002 Pierre Gimonnet Blanc de Blancs Cuvée Gastronome, $40, Terry Theise Selections / Michael Skurnik Wines. With 25 hectares of vineyards in the Côte de Blancs, the Gimonnet estate in Cuis might be considered rather large for a grower/producer. And there are indeed quite a handful of wines in the lineup representing blends from many parcels in Cramant, Chouilly, and Cuis. There is a NV Blanc de Blancs and an interesting series of vintage Cuvées including the non-dosage Oenophile, Fleuron, and Paradoxe - so named because it includes 50% Pinot Noir, the only Gimonnet wine that includes Pinot. There are also Special Club and "Vintage Collection" wines that tend to be old vines cuvées.

The wine we drank is another vintage wine called Cuvée Gastronome. As you might guess from its name, this wine is crafted with an eye towards eating. In its finished state is it only around 4 bars of pressure, whereas most Champagne is about 6 bars. This is achieved by adding less sugar (maybe 20 grams instead of the traditional 24) to the bottle for the secondary fermentation. This wine has less mousse than most Champagne - although it is unquestionably sparkling wine, it is less sparkling than most. It should theoretically have less of a "bubble attack" on the palate, making it easier to harmonize with food.
This wine was disgorged in May of 2007. There are rich roast nuts on the nose, very linear and controlled aromas. The nose expands to include floral notes, delicate and with great finesse. Good acidity supports the delicate flavors of toasty nuts, vanilla cream, and chalky minerals that extend through the finish, with lingering fragrance. Funny though - the light fish soup that we had with the wine basically overpowered the delicate flavors. Low pressure or no, this wine is a delicate beauty, and might be overwhelmed by all but the simplest of white fish dishes, or the freshest of young goat cheeses. I think it works best as an aperitif. You could wait on it if you have some, as it will probably improve with a few more years in the bottle. The current release is the 2004 vintage, which I thought was quite nice at the Terry Theise tasting this past fall.

Friday Night Bubbles

I have a special treat for us all to share this week. Peter Liem, the finest Champagne blogger there is (and his other writing isn't bad either), has most graciously written today's Friday Night Bubbles installment. The good news is, you'll learn far more about wine by reading Peter's post than you do when you read typical Friday Night Bubbles posts. The bad news is, I have not yet been able to convince Peter that he should simply assume command of the ship over here on Fridays. He makes it sound as though he has better things to do. Anyway, check this out: Peter Liem doing Friday Night Bubbles.

NV Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus Blanc de Blancs, $55, Louis/Dressner Selections. Non-dosé champagne is highly fashionable in the Champagne region right now, but few people really do it right. The problem is that in order to make good non-dosé champagne, you have to work exceptionally well in the vineyards, to achieve fruit that is ripe enough and complete enough in feel to stand on its own. You can't just take your regular brut NV and decide that you won't add any sugar to it. One producer who knows how to consistently get it right is Pierre Larmandier of Larmandier-Bernier, with his Terre de Vertus blanc de blancs.

This wine is a monocru champagne, coming entirely from the village of Vertus, but even beyond this, it's all grown in a very specific area in Vertus: the chalky heart of the gentle, east-facing slope on the northern side of the village, in the direction of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. This area makes the most overtly minerally wines of the village, wines that can echo those of Mesnil in their racy, focused structures but that carry less overt weight, making them feel even more linear and energetic, with an intensely pronounced chalkiness. Comparing the wines of Vertus to his wines from Cramant, farther north, Pierre Larmandier says, "It's the same minerality, but Cramant has more power and more body. In Vertus the minerality is a little more naked."

The Terre de Vertus is not technically a single-vineyard wine, as it comes from three adjacent parcels: Les Barillées, Les Faucherets and La Vieille Voie. However, the terroir remains fairly homogenous over Larmandier's 2.5 hectares in these three plots, so for all intensive purposes this functions identically to single-vineyard champagne, expressing the particular characteristics of a highly specific site. As with all of Larmandier's wines, this is grown biodynamically, picked at an elevated degree of ripeness and fermented with indigenous yeasts. A portion of it is fermented in barrique, another portion in large oak foudre and another in stainless steel tank—Larmandier likes the respiration that wood provides, but doesn't want the wine to be influenced by the flavor of oak, so he adds some tank-fermented wine into the blend. He's been very pleased with his foudres so far in the way that they allow the wine to breathe without imparting too much of a flavor imprint, so if he can solve the problem of physical space (those suckers are big), look for Larmandier's champagnes to involve more wine vinified in foudre in the future.

Although the Terre de Vertus has always come entirely from a single year (the first was 1995), it cannot be vintage-dated as it's released too early to qualify for a vintage champagne. The bottle that Brooklynguy and I drank together this week was from 2004, disgorged in April of 2007, meaning that it spent about two years on the lees. I always think that Larmandier's wines need a lot of post-disgorgement aging to show their best, and even tasting this one, 20 months after disgorgement, I felt that it could still use a little more time to put itself together. It started off very compressed and austere, taking about half an hour for the nose to unwind and reveal its fruit, although the palate was more generous, with aromas of sweet apple and citrus peel, infused by fragrant chalkiness and finishing with light notes of clear honey. Silky in texture and tone, it felt driven by the taut, lively character of the terroir, and while it demonstrated a good deal of depth and concentration on the mid-palate, the overall impression was one of raciness and energy. We didn't decant it, but I don't see why it wouldn't have benefited from decanting—after drinking about two-thirds of the bottle, I told Brooklynguy to put it in the fridge and save it for the next day, when it would likely be showing even better (and he confirmed later that this was indeed the case). While it's not a wine to age for a tremendously long time, I would be interested in seeing how it develops over the next three to five years, at least. Back in February of 2007, I wrote in my notebook that the 2004 "will vie with the 2002 as the greatest Terre de Vertus that Larmandier has made so far." I see no reason to amend this statement, and I suspect that there is even more complexity and character contained within this wine, waiting to emerge.