Marius Gentaz Côte-Rôtie - a Dinner for the Ages.

The other night I did something that I have never done before, and most likely will never do again. I drank a Marius Gentaz Côte-Rôtie. Gentaz is the revered traditionalist farmer and wine maker whose Côte-Rôties are considered by many Rhône cognoscenti as the greatest of all the Northern Rhône wines, the greatest Syrah in existence. Gentaz never made large quantities of wine, and he stopped making wine after the 1993 vintage - he retired and his nephew René Rostaing took over the vines. From what I hear, Rostaing immediately ripped them up and started over, which is a tragedy of epic proportions.

There simply isn't a lot of Gentaz Côte-Rôtie out there, and whoever has the wine is jealously guarding it. I've never seen a bottle on any of the auction sites or on restaurant lists - I've never seen a bottle, period. And for the past few years, I've been keeping my eyes open. Honestly, fugedaboudit, it's not going to happen. The wines have skyrocketed in price and become more rare every year as people drink what they have. I remember a few years ago a friend told me that he was going to have dinner at some place in Manhattan where Gentaz was on the list at the bargain price of $800. Sounds like a lot, right? What would a bottle of 1993 DRC Echezeaux cost at a restaurant? That is a bottle that you will never have a problem finding, if you want it - there is nothing rare about DRC. But Gentaz Côte-Rôtie, an incredibly rare and superlative wine? Maybe $800 is not such a terrible price. Get 8 people together and you each get a glass each for 100, a glass of something that will never again exist on the planet, something truly glorious.

I've wanted to drink Gentaz for years, ever since hearing my friend Peter talk about the wine in hushed and awed terms that he uses only for only a few wines. Well, the other night I was incredibly privileged to drink Gentaz. Ten bottles actually - an embarrassment of riches. This is what happens when a few generous collectors decide to hold a Gentaz tasting and dinner. Why did I get to go to this dinner, you might be wondering. Because I discarded any sense of decorum and I begged, pleaded, and begged some more, that's why.

Wow, what a night. The wines and the food were absolutely amazing, and that's an understatement. We drank 10 vintages of Gentaz, but we were many people and we drank the wines slowly over several courses of food. I took notes but they don't come close to the experience of drinking the wines. I'll try to share some notes and experiences, but maybe before you read on, take a look at this lovely article by Eric Asimov from this week's Dining section - he writes about Gentaz and offers more context for the wines.

The first wine we drank was the last Gentaz vintage, the 1993. May I tell you that I was rather excited as the wine was poured into my glass? My first sniff of a Gentaz wine, and it was thrilling. It reminded me of a wonderful wine I drank a little over a year ago at a ridiculous lunch at Neal Rosenthal's house, the 1985 Ferraton Hermitage. The '93 Gentaz was pale in the glass, but it offered such intense and crystal clear aromas, it was such a vivid and electric wine. My notes say "black peppercorns, very spicy, rose petals, iodine, broth, flowers, so complex and lovely." All of that is true, and more. The wine was the epitome of grace and detail on the palate and its incredible harmoniousness made it seem less potent at times than it actually is. I loved this wine, as much as I loved any of the wines we drank. Some of that has to be because it was my first, but I also think it was legitimately a great wine.

The 1992 was corked, alas. The 1990 was not. It was more dense, with musky notes mingling with the flowers, pungent and gorgeous. The wine was very different from the 1993 in character, but they shared the same incredible grace and harmony, something that apparently is the hallmark of Gentaz. The wines are seamless, so much so that it can be shocking.

The 1977 I thought was absurd in its harmony and grace, its perfect mingling of spices and rocks and flowers, and hints of bloody meat. My notes say "there is no way to improve this wine." The 1987 was delicious and very drinkable, but not as memorable to me as many of the other wines. The 1989 seems like it will be as memorable as many, but it was still hard and tannic on this night, a wine that probably needs another 10 years of relaxation.

And then there was the 1988. Utterly gorgeous. Wide open, seamless, complex, as delicious as anything I can remember drinking. I felt like a 15 year old at the high school dance with this wine in my glass, hard to know what to do with myself, awkward, in love but not understanding the object of my desire, mystified and elated, covered with pimples and just a total mess.

And after that the 1985! Just as good! Spicier, more meaty and of the bacon, and still perfectly harmonious. How did this guy do it? These wines are perfect. Some people loved the 1983, others thought there was something off, not TCA, but some sort of cork taint. I appreciated the wine but definitely sensed the taint. That's okay, because then we drank the 1978, the most exalted of Gentaz vintages, from what I am told. The wine was mature and perfect, gamy and pungent, finely grained, meaty, fresh as a daisy, just ridiculous. Wine for a time capsule.

Then we did an interesting thing. We drank the 1991 Gentaz Côte-Rôtie with two other 1991's, also made by great producers, you know, just to compare. The 1991 Noel Verset Cornas was not showing so well, there was volatile acidity. The 1991 Chave Hermitage, though, was truly excellent, and taught me something very important. The Chave had such an effortless power and it was so very refined on the nose. I cannot say that it was better than the Gentaz wines, but it was most certainly playing at that level. It was different, in the end. More of some things, like power and richness, and firmness of structure. I remember thinking about how the Chave wine seemed to effortlessly do what the Gentaz wines had to struggle to do, if that makes any sense. There is plenty of beauty in the struggle, it's just a different kind of beauty, one that it a bit more raw. Peter said it was the grandiosity of the Hermitage terroir shining through. That, to me, is something to ponder.

This was an incredible experience, once that would be near impossible to repeat. I am so grateful to have had the chance to experience these wines, this bit of history.

Comparing the 2008 and 2009 Vintages in Burgundy via Domaine Fourrier

Following my interview with Jean-Marie Fourrier, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend a Domaine Fourrier tasting that featured several wines from the 2008 and 2009 vintages.

Fourrier's importer Neal Rosenthal organized the event. It was great on several levels - first of all, Fourrier's wines are fascinatingly terroir expressive and it is so instructive to taste them next to each other. Equally instructive is tasting the same wines from 2008 and 2009. The vintages couldn't be more different in character and it was my first chance to compare them in this way (my first bottles, period, from 2009).

If you are categorizing, I think that 2009 is a vintage that can be grouped with 2005 - growers achieved high levels of ripeness and did so without having to sort out a lot of grapes. Not as perfect as 2005, but this is a vintage of big wines that should age well. 2008, on the other hand, was very difficult, without prolonged periods of good weather during the growing season. Many producers had trouble achieving adequate ripeness and I assume that many wines are chaptalized in 2008. Perhaps if phenolic ripeness is not as high as one would hope for, there may be some wines with a green taste to the tannins, or perhaps the wines will not be as long lived. I might include 2008 in the same category as 2007, or 2004 - classic vintages, vintages with the typical array of problems.

Will the 2009's be as detailed and expressive of specific terroir as Burgundy lovers want them to be? Will the 2008's be delicious wines that offer the pleasure that Burgundy lovers want? I have no idea yet, but this tasting helped me form some initial ideas.

Jean-Marie Fourrier had a few things to say as we tasted, and I'll share some of this with you before sharing my notes on the wines. He said that 09 is similar to 1999, and that it is his second favorite vintage behind 1999. He said that there were "very specific aromas above each vat." Regarding his two villages wines, he said they are meant to show variation in terroir at the villages level. Aux Echézeaux at the southern border of Gevrey where it meets Morey Saint Denis is "very Chambolle-like in its purity and body, very different from the wines from the northern border of Gevrey." Fourrier's other villages wine comes from a vineyard called Champerrier in Brochon. Fourrier said that Aux Echézeaux is better with white meats and his Gevrey-Chambertin Vieille Vignes is better with dark meat.

2009 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Aux Echézeaux. This is one of those wines in which the fruit really does leap out from the glass. The perfume is alluring and broad and the wine is soft and supple, delicious. Could be the power of suggestion, but I felt that if I tasted this blind I might have guessed Chambolle.

2008 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Aux Echézeaux. So different from the 2009. This wine is classic - pure, elegant, and spare. Well balanced with strong acidity, the wine leaves a stony and floral perfume on the palate. I enjoyed the 2009 and it is very high quality, but I would prefer to drink this wine now, as it is more articulate and complex.

2009 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Vieille Vignes. First of all, the difference in terroir here is immediately apparent, as the wines from here show an earthier, gamier personality. This wine is dark and the fruit is infused with animale notes. The purity is striking and there is a clear sense of the stone underneath the fruit. This wine is layered and deep, and is very intense without sacrificing any detail. Very impressive wine.

2008 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin Vieille Vignes. My personal favorite of the four villages wines. The nose is truly lovely - pure and airy, stony, herbal, and a pretty blend of red and black fruit. The palate is focused with acid-driven red fruit flavors and a mineral finish that is quite pungent. This one will definitely have a place in my cellar.

About Clos Saint-Jacques, Jean-Marie said "Each row is 400 meters long. Vineyards were sold in ouvrees, a plot that is approximately the size that one person can work in one day. An ouvree is 400 square meters, so long time ago when Clos Saint-Jacques was auctioned off, the question wasn't how many ouvrees do you want to buy, it was how many rows." Clos Saint-Jacques is the only vineyard, according to Jean-Marie, in which every owner owns entire rows of vines from the top of the slope to the bottom.

2009 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos Saint-Jacques. An iconic vineyard, and Fourrier is unquestionably, with Rousseau, the reference standard producer. Fourrier's vines here are 100 years old. Yes, 100 year old. This wine is very potent, and I found it very difficult to understand, never mind evaluate. It's as if it hasn't really been born yet. Smoke infuses the fruit, very ripe, and the palate finishes with something herbal, like eucalyptus. Lots of grip here. Seems like there is an enormous amount of raw material, and it needs lots of time to fully harmonize.

2008 Domaine Fourrier Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos Saint-Jacques. I loved this wine. The nose is incredible, and I could sense the tiny berries, all dry extract, hard spices, and stone. The nose is so detailed and expressive, and the palate is very powerful with fruit and spice, a bit meaty. Depth, complexity, balance, and the wine has only just begun. To me, wines like this justify the common claim that Clos Saint-Jacques should be elevated to Grand Cru status.

In the end, this tasting reinforced for me the fact that I personally prefer leaner red Burgundy wines from vintages that may not be as ripe, but instead offer a very detailed articulation of aroma and flavor against a more spare core of fruit. Not that I'd ever pass on a chance to drink Fourrier's 09's. Just saying that stylistically, the 2008's are more exciting to me.

Sunday Lunch for the Ages - A Guided Tour of the Early Days of Rosenthal Wine Merchant

This past weekend I participated in one of the greatest wine events of my life. Neal Rosenthal and his wife Kerry Madigan made lunch for a group of people and opened a slew of wines to share. This was not a business lunch. The only wine business people in attendance were people who work for Neal and Kerry. Well, one wine business guy was there, Levi Dalton, but he was there to celebrate the wines and the company. His post about the event is far more poetic than mine, by the way.

This lunch happened in part because Neal genuinely loves to share his old wines with people who will share his delight in them. For the lucky guests, it was a guided tour of the early days of Rosenthal Wine Mechant's French portfolio. Neal served the wines and we talked about them as we ate, thought about them, heard stories about the people who created them, about the different time in which they were made. The wines were very special. Old vintages, stored undisturbed in Neal's underground cellar. They showed what great wine is capable of when taken care of properly for 20-plus years.

It is tempting to list the wines and to share notes with you - these are some of the greatest wines I've had. But that just doesn't feel like it's in keeping with the spirit of the event. Here's the thing - we crammed into several cars and drove from NYC where the snow was in gray and black piles against the parked cars, to the hilly horse farm country of mid-state New York. To an oasis of perfectly cellared wine and delicious wholesome food. Everything was covered in a pristine white blanket. The sun shone brightly, and the collective mood was high. We truly enjoyed each others' company and everyone there recognized how special of an experience it was. There was no note taking, point scoring, chest thumping, one-upping, well-I-once-drank-a-1952 recounting, check listing but not truly drinking and understanding, nonsense.

Here are a few of the things that I took with me:

We drank a mature Blanc de Blancs Champagne out of magnum, and it showed how majestic Champagne can be in the large format. The wine felt fresh and vibrant, as if it was still expanding. Amidst the honeyed tones there was a palpable richness in flavor and texture, not the elegant chalky sense one might expect. This is because the wine is from a place that actually favors and specializes in Pinot Noir, not Chardonnay. The terroir left a stamp here that after 25 years continues to speak as loudly as the grape.

We drank several outstanding wines from the 1983 vintage, considered to be very difficult, an off year.

The wines, though, were spectacular. A reminder to buy wines from the producers that you love, even if from the off vintages. Who knows what they will turn into when they're fully mature?

We drank three mature white Burgundy wines, one from Meursault, one from Puligny, and one Corton-Charlemagne. In the hands of these producers, and after their long sleep in a proper cellar, they could not have spoken more clearly about their places of origin. Here is what they said to me: Meursault is a little bit oily in texture and smells a bit like hazlenuts, and the Perrieres vineyard is all about stones.

Puligny is more elegant, lighter in body, but firmly structured, and can take on complex mushroom and incense aromas when mature. Corton Charlemagne takes a long time to come around, but then shows amazingly complex aromas, and minerality and acidity that seem never to fade.

We drank a wine from the Gaudichots vineyard, the great vineyard that decades ago was carved up to create La Tâche. The aromatics were amazing, and reminded me of why if I had to take one and only one wine with me to a desert island, it would be something from Vosne-Romanée.

We drank one wine blind and talked about it a bit. I thought it was an early '80s Barolo or Barbaresco. Someone else agreed that it was Italian. Another fellow disagreed, saying that the wine didn't have the mouth feel of Nebbiolo, that this was more Burgundy. Everyone enjoyed the wine, and everyone was surprised when it was revealed to be a California Pinot Noir from 1976, a time when a lot of great wine was being made in California in the gently extracted and low alcohol old-world style.

We drank a first-growth Bordeaux from the 1978 vintage that Neal purchased upon release. The wine was delicious and it was fascinating for me to drink, as I had never before drunk a first growth Bordeaux with that kind of age. And no one felt guilty for saying that although it was undeniably excellent wine, it didn't make our hearts leap the way the nose on the 1983 Clos de la Roche did. Or any of the Burgundy wines did.

We drank a wine from Hermitage from a producer I was unfamiliar with, and although I hesitate to make superlative statements, this was without question the finest northern Rhône wine that I have ever tasted in my life. It was the color of Poulsard, not really much more than rosé. This wine had the structural phenotype of Burgundy, but with entirely different aromatics. Such intensity - rose petals, peppercorns, herbs, and all infused with this persistent animale tone. An inspiring wine that made me feel a bit sad about the rather uninspiring state of the nothern Rhône today.

We ate wonderful cheeses, various fruit tarts, and talked some more. Daylight slipped away and the sky turned a dusky cobalt blue. We drank strong coffee and found some or other excuse not to find our coats and shoes, not to leave this place and this magical afternoon. But leave we did, and we left grateful and elated. And we will see each other again.

Thank you for a truly memorable afternoon Neal and Kerry, and everyone else too.

The wines:

1985 Lassalle Brut Blanc de Blancs
1996 Bitouzet-Prieur Meursault 1er Cru Perrières
1990 Carillon Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Champs-Canet
1983 Rollin Père et Fils Corton-Charlemagne
1992 Domaine Forey Père et Fils Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Gaudichots
1989 Domaine Faurois Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Chaumes
1983 Hubert Lignier Clos de la Roche
1976 Tulocay Napa Valley Pinot Noir Heinz Vineyard
1978 Château Latour
1985 Ferraton Père et Fils Hermitage La Cuvée des Miaux
1983 Bernard Levet Côte-Rôtie La Chavaroche

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part 3

This is the final post about my conversation with Neal Rosenthal. It was a great experience for me to spend time with him, and I hope that you've enjoyed reading about it.

We talked a bit more as we finished our lunch.

BG: So if you don't do trade tastings, how do you get the word out about your wines? How do you grow your business?

NR: The best publicity is word of mouth and longevity. I've been doing this for over 30 years and I've hung around by doing a really good job, and by respecting the customer, by the quality of service that I offer. I've been able to make a nice living doing something that I adore, and without compromising my principles.

BG: Aren't there a load of new restaurants opening all the time, places with local and artisinal sensibilities? How do you draw new venues into the fold?

NR: That's why we added Clarke (Boehling), the first new sales rep I've hired in seven years. We realized that we wanted to get everywhere that we should be, and Clarke is helping us do that.

BG: I don't know how anyone can keep up with all of the changes.

NR: You know, I think that young consumers and young people in the wine trade have been cheated out of opportunities to drink old wine. I remember when the great old restaurants in the city like Lutece and La Caravelle would buy their bottles of Bordeaux, and they would put it directly into their cellars. They bought the wine but they had no intention of selling it for years. They wouldn't even put it on the list! That's not happening anymore and it's really a shame. And it's part of why wine is made differently now. Wine is made to drink young now, to gobble down. They relax the tannins, keep the acids low, bring the fruit forward. There's no point in aging those wines, and now it's hard to find old wine that's been stored properly.

BG: Do you keep old bottles of your wines?

NR: Yeah, we can go down and have a look in my cellar in a little while.

BG: (Wiping drool from mouth) That would be awesome. So have you ever had experiences where you like a wine and want to import it, but you think that people won't buy it?

NR: Of course, but I usually buy the wines anyway. You go out and find an audience for the wine. Especially now that my customers are so savvy, so experienced. My Swiss wines, for example. It's hard to sell a $30 bottle of Swiss wine. How many Swiss restaurants are there to sell it to?

BG: Are you successful with those wines?

NR: Not yet, but we will be. It's exciting to work with a group of people growing those grapes and making those unique wines. Eventually people will drink them and find joy in them. And listen, you can have convictions, and still be wrong. I believe in these wines and I enjoy the challenge, so I do it.

BG: I want to ask your opinion on a few hot-button issues, of late. What's your take on the Natural Wine phenomenon?

NR: To become obsessive is bad. What point does it make when you open a Lapierre Morgon without sulfur and the wine is undrinkable? What's the purpose of that? If my sense is that the vineyards are taken care of, if I know the person who grows the grapes and I like them, I'm satisfied. You can go too far with these things...

BG: What about the debate over shipping wines over state lines?

NR: I think it's a phony issue. There is a viability to the three-tier system. Distributors have a role to play because they get out on the street. They're the ones who open the wines for potential customers, they make sure the wines are placed, they take the re-order.

BG: But if I were to move to a state that doesn't allow out of state shipping, I couldn't buy your wines, for example.

NR: Yes, there should be a more open market, but access to wines happens because one person in Memphis demands a wine, other people too, and then a distributor buys the wines.

BG: I guess so. What are the things that you still want to accomplish in your business?

NR: Hmmm. (Thinks for a moment). I'd like to fine tune the portfolio, to ensure that our growers are making wine the way we're used to, that they're not compromising.

And with that, we started walking through the house to the stairs that lead to Neal's underground personal wine cellar.

ND: By the way, what are your hobbies outside of wine?

NR: I'm a long distance runner and I'm quite serious about it. I'm an age-group winner in a half-marathon and I've run several marathons. I've been politically involved, but I'm giving that up in frustration. I still love to write, and farming - I spend a lot of time on that now. And I love to follow my daughter's career, she's the editor of the National Interest journal. Her name is Justine Rosenthal.

BG: How did you get into beekeeping?

NR: Some of the winemakers I work with keep bees and I always found it fascinating. A few years ago I decided to try it myself.

BG: What's your take on the mass bee die-off a few years ago?

NR: There are lots of scientific theories about that, but I think it's pretty simple, actually. Here's what's actually happening with the bees. There are people who keep bees and they travel around the country with the seasons, and sell their services to farms all along the way. We are overworking them, plain and simple. They travel all the time and work all the time, and that's not the way it was meant to be. The more they work, the weaker they become, and the more susceptible to disease.

We walked into the wine cellar, a large room with two aisles, gravel floors, and cement slabs for shelves. there are boxes piled up and piles of wine in the shelves. It's a beautiful thing. And it is not temperature controlled - Neal says that because it's underground, it's not necessary to regulate the temperature.

BG: Oh, so those are just some magnums of Carillon Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet.

NR: That's very good wine.

BG: Man, nice Gaudichots!

NR: Do you know about Gaudichots? It was part of La Tâche, but then DRC bought most of it up and had it re-classified as Grand Cru. Gaudichots is a great vineyard.

BG: It must be so much fun to have a cellar like this.

NR: Yes, it really is.

Thanks for reading.

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part 2

More conversation with Neal Rosenthal:

Finished with our tour of the grounds, we went inside the house for a look around. Neal showed me his root cellar, where he grabbed a bunch of his potatoes for our lunch. There were rows of jarred tomato sauce and other preserves, made from the fruits of his farm.

Also many rows of Italian food products - anchovies, honeys, olive oils, and more.

NR: These are food and cooking products that we import from Italy. I haven't figured out how to sell them yet (he shrugs).

BG: (picking up a jar of utterly beautiful rosy pink anchovy fillets) These look beautiful! Are they for cooking or for eating?

NR: I cook with them, but you could just eat them.

Then we passed a large shelf where 50 or more bottles of wine stood.

NR: These are wines that we'll drink soon.

BG: Nice! I have a bottle of that wine, the 2004 Pradeaux.

NR: The Longue Garde?

BG: Yup. I have the regular wine too.

NR: The Longue Garde is a very special wine. It's made only in the best vintages, and it's old vines pure Mourvedre. It's a spectacular wine (he smiles).

At that moment, and via that exchange, I felt like I understood something about Neal Rosenthal that cannot come through simply by reading this dialogue. He was genuinely happy. Perhaps because I have the wine, perhaps because he enjoys telling people about his wine, but it seemed to me, that he was happy just because the wine exists.

BG: You'll taste these all in the next few weeks?

NR: Kerry and I drink a bottle of wine with dinner every night. We have to drink our wines in order to see where they go, to keep up with them. They are evolving constantly and I need to understand them. I've made a career on tasting wines young and having a sense of whether they will age well, or be better young, but I have to check on them to follow their development.

BG: Do you drink wines from outside of your own portfolio?

NR: Of course. It is the height of hubris to think that your own wines are the best or among the best wines if you don't drink the other wines.

Now we walked upstairs and through the living room, into the kitchen. Neal told me to sit down at the table, and he began to make lunch.

He opened a bottle of wine for us to share, the 2005 François Gaunoux Meursault 1er Cru La Goutte D'Or. He began washing and cutting potatoes, and cooking them in a cast iron pan. He seasoned them simply with salt, pepper, and a bit of dried red chili flakes. Neal made the egg batter for our omelets, and we talked some more while he cooked.

I noticed that there were no lights on in the house. There was no need - it was a sunny day and the windows allowed in a lot of natural light. We didn't discuss this, but I'm sure that he enjoys not having to turn on the lights.

BG: So, do you read about wine on the internet?

NR: I do, but not so much. The thing is, I'd rather read online than read the boring repetitive useless stuff that the critics write in those magazines, you know the ones, they come out every three months or so. Their wine vocabulary encompasses 20 descriptors and a point score. That is useless. Wines shouldn't be written about that way. They write only about the physical characteristics of a wine, but they don't discuss the exuberance and joy of drinking the wine.

BG: So what are the internet sites that you like?

NR: There are a few, but you know, on the other hand, a lot of what's online can be fairly uneducated and that can be dangerous. I'm occasionally tempted to write a response when I think that some one is misunderstanding a wine, misinterpreting it. But I don't because once you do that, it becomes argumentative and that's not where I want to be.

BG: So how do you keep building your wine knowledge?

NR: By tasting and drinking. I cannot spend as much time tasting as I used to, there's just not a lot of time. Most of the tasting I do is in Europe with growers, the growers I work with and others who I don't work with too.

BG: I know that you don't do trade tastings. Can you tell me your thoughts about that?

NR: The only way to understand what we do is face to face, not in a mass group tasting experience. We like to get 10-12 people together and drink wine, talk about it. If you have hundreds of people in a room sipping and spitting hundreds of wines, what's the point of that? You cannot understand our wines that way. Not only don't I need to do tastings like that, I despise them. They reduce wine to the most base commercial level.

Neal stopped cooking and looked at me.

NR: We have to protect what's best about wine. It is ancient in our civilization, it is a perfect mix of the intellectual and the sensual, it enriches our lives. The beauty of great wine is that it lives inside of you after you've had it. It's a stimulus for memory. What it tasted like, but more importantly, what it made you feel, why you drank it, what you talked about while drinking it, and with whom. Wine is a social event, not fodder for criticism.

We sat down to lunch. There is no yellow or orange food coloring in that omelet - the eggs were very fresh.

NR: Do you like the wine?

BG: I really do. When you opened it I could smell it before you even poured it.

NR: It's very old-school.


To be continued...

A Conversation with Neal Rosenthal - Part I

Almost a year ago now, I interviewed Becky and Peter Wasserman. It was a great experience - I learned a tremendous amount and I feel like I helped to share a tiny bit of an interesting story. Recently I had a similar opportunity. I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon at Mad Rose Ranch, the domain of wine importer Neal Rosenthal. He kindly opened his home to me and we walked around, ate, drank, and talked.

I did my very best to record everything faithfully. I did not use a tape recorder, instead taking careful notes. What follows is a paraphrasing of his comments during our conversation (and sometimes a paraphrasing of myself, for the sake of condensation).

Before I get into our talk, though, I want to share a few preliminaries. Neal Rosenthal has worked in the wine business for 34 years. He shared the story of those 34 years in his book, Reflections of a Wine Merchant. He has been interviewed before too - many times.

My point is, although I'm very excited to share with you the things I learned, I'm not trying to suggest that I can condense 34 years of bold work into three blog posts. So take this as what it is - I spent a few hours talking with the guy in his home. We got along really well, and I'm going to try to paint a picture of him as I understand him to be.

It was a gorgeous fall day and the countryside near Neal's ranch looked impossibly lovely. We walked through a few of his 57 acres together before we began the interview. He met me outside of his house, a former barn that he and his life/work partner Kerry renovated and built onto.

I wanted to meet him at his house instead of calling him or meeting him during one of his NYC visits, because Neal Rosenthal's home is interesting, and it's a big part of who he is. He is an old school and iconic wine importer who lives on a ranch somewhere in mid-state New York.

He keeps bees and chickens. He grows a lot of his own food. He has strong opinions about things and knows exactly how he wants to live, how he wants to interact with the world.

Neal is comfortable with himself and seems not to be interested in whether or not other people share his opinions. He emits what I can honestly describe as a child-like joy in showing the visitor around his home and property. "We try to grow everything from seed," he says. "Here is where we do a lot of it," pointing out a small greenhouse.

He wasn't always a country boy, however. Neal is 65 years old, and he spent the first 9 years of his life in Manhattan, in the eastern part of the upper east side, away from Madison and Park avenues, east of the third avenue elevated subway line. His father owned and worked at a pharmacy on Lexington Avenue off 72nd Street and his mother worked there also. The family moved to Teaneck, New Jersey when Neal was 9, and he grew up there, attending high school and college nearby. His parents kept the pharmacy, and his father commuted to Manhattan.

BG: What did you do before you were in the wine business?

NR: When I was in college I thought I'd be in government. I was a politically aware guy - I come from a classic eastern European Jewish family and I had socialist ideas. I majored in history and I thought I'd be a history professor. Then, for reasons that I still don't fully understand, I went to Columbia University for law school. I did exceptionally well - I was on the law review. After school I worked at a big corporate firm doing corporate international tax law.

BG: Why did you leave that work?

NR: The theory was challenging but the practice wasn't so interesting. I didn't have the feeling that I was serving a bigger purpose. I worked for 7 years in that job, got married, had a daughter. But I was miserable and in the end I spent more time daydreaming than doing my work. I knew I wouldn't make partner, and one day they told me "Neal, you're not going to make partner," so I decided it was time to leave.

BG: And what happened?

NR: I left my job, got divorced around the same time, and wanted to write fiction. But I had to pay alimony and I had to find a way to make a couple of bucks because I knew that you couldn't make money writing fiction.

BG: So you got into the wine business to make money.

NR: Not at all, I never got into this to make money. I never could have imagined this, what I have now. My father had a pharmacy, and in those days a pharmacy had a luncheonette, a long counter and you could eat lunch there or have a soda at the fountain. At some point my father sold the pharmacy and kept the luncheonette, which he then converted into a liquor store because he thought it would be easier to make money. I bought it from him and tried to make a couple of bucks while making it as a writer. We never drank wine at home, but the upper east side was a high class neighborhood and we had to sell wine.

BG: How long was it before you fell in love with wine?

NR: Not long at all. Working retail, everyone wants to sell to you. You see lots of wine, you make choices, you see all of the crap that's out there, you see some of the good stuff. This was when wine was much cheaper than it is now and I could drink some of the greatest wines in the world.

BG: And so how did you go from selling wine out of an old pharmacy on the upper east side to becoming an importer?

NR: I'd read these wonderful things that Frank Schoonmaker wrote about an appellation and its wines, I'd find the wines, and they didn't move me. Have you read Frank Schoonmaker?

BG: No.

NR: You really should read him. AJ Liebling too. These guys weren't describing how wines taste. They wrote about their travels, and what they were doing and thinking about when they drank a wine, who they drank it with and why it meant something to them. You really ought to read these guys.

BG: Okay (makes a note in little book).

NR: Anyway, the wines I tasted in NYC didn't move me, so I went to Europe to find the wines that moved those guys. In January of 1980 I went to Piedmonte and I drank the wines of Luigi Ferrando and DeForville, and I brought the wines back to America. Now 34 years later I am still working with both of these families, and I am very proud of our long and loyal relationship.

BG: That is a long working relationship.

NR: It is. You don't see a lot of this anymore. There are a couple of other folks, like Kermit Lynch and Bob Chadderdon, who are old school like this, who started the way I did. They have a real identity, they know who they are, they're not trying to be something to everyone, they buy the wines they want to put their names on, the wines they like to drink.

BG: So, what do you do that works, how do you run your business?

NR: I buy the wine, ship it, store it, and sell it. That's what I do. It's a capital intensive business, but it's the right way to do business. You have to pay your bills on time. You have to...are you Jewish?

BG: And how!

NR: You have to be a mensch.

BG: So what's the other model? How are other people doing it?

NR: They ask a producer to hold 50 cases for them, to reserve the wine. They don't commit to buying it. They try to sell the wine, and once it's sold they pay for it. That's not what I do. I buy wine up front, and then I bring it here and store it and sell it. I have a big warehouse in Queens where I store wine. I pay to store wine while I sell it, and if something doesn't sell, so what? If I have some great Burgundies that wait three or four years in the warehouse before I sell them, so what? They get better.

BG: But you're taking a risk buying the wine up front, right? You have to be very careful in picking which wines you buy.

NR: Yes, of course. I cannot have three thousand cases of cheap white wine hanging around, that's a big loss. I have to buy carefully. When you put your hand in your pocket and spend that money, you have to be disciplined, to know what you're buying.

BG: Come to think of it, you don't really have many cheap whites in your portfolio...

NR: You have to understand, I've never had a contract in my life - ever. It's all handshakes. I started by buying 25 cases of Sancerre from Lucien Crochet - that's 300 bottles of wine. I took the wine and 90 days later, I paid him. That's the way I do business, and I have to know what I'm buying.


To be continued...