Tidbits

Been busy and not able to write as often, but please don't think that means I've been starving and not drinking anything interesting. Oh no, my friends, I've been a very lucky Brooklynguy lately, in large part due to the generosity of friends. Here are some tidbits, things from the past few weeks that are worth mentioning:

Slope Farms sells pork now. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. Ken and Linda Jaffe (former Brooklynites who moved to the Catskills) are dedicated to farming healthy cows, and theirs is my absolute favorite beef. I'm not sure of the details on this new pork venture, but I hear they have an elder and respected neighbor who advised them as they set up their farm. This neighbor raises pigs. The Jaffes now sell their neighbor's pork. Look at the marbling on the meat, and the beautiful color. I've tried the chops and a rib roast so far, and WHOA, this is very very good pork.

And on the other end of the food spectrum, processed food, I've discovered what I now believe to be one of the finest canned food products - Heinz baked beans, the kind they sell in England. These are done in tomato sauce, not in that cloying brown sugary sauce that our baked beans swim in. If you see these, try them. Okay, they're canned, but they're actually not that bad for you. And they taste so very good.

Some wine too...

2001 was not a very good vintage in Champagne. Not many vintage wines from that year - it was rainy, especially in the weeks leading up to harvest, there was a lot of rot, and it was a challenge for the grapes to ripen. I know from reading ChampagneGuide.net that this is considered to be one of the most challenging vintages of the past 20 years. So it was fascinating to have the opportunity to try a vintage wine from 2001, Jean Vesselle's Brut Prestige. This wine is all Bouzy, a blend of 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay, but it reminded me of a wine I tasted a few years ago by Moutard that is made with the obscure grapes of Champagne, things like Arbanne and Petit Meslier. The wine had overt notes of green herbs and leafy vegetables, and I think it would have benefited from a few grams more of dosage (it was dosed at 3 grams, I believe). But really, it was good wine, well balanced and particularly lovely on the nose. I cannot say that it is what I dream of when I want Champagne, but it was a very good wine, and a reminder that it is possible to enjoy well-made wine from bad vintages.

I had dinner with a few friends and we each brought wine to the restaurant. These were good wines, on paper anyway. We arrived at 7:00, opened everything, and it was clear that nothing was showing very well. After a little while, I don't know how long exactly, but probably an hour or so, all of the sudden everything was fantastic.

I'm talking about a bottle of 2000 Vincent Dauvissat Chablis Les Clos that was butterscotch pudding for a while, and then turned into this detailed and focused thing of beauty. Some caramel notes, but also a bunch of freshly picked white honeysuckle. Pungent, long, and intense with a saline edge to the finish, this was a beautiful wine, a very special treat.

And the 1990 Robert Ampeau Volnay Santenots, a wine that began better than the others, but still was a tangled mess. And an hour later it was gorgeous - a complex and beguiling nose that had that vibrant mature-wine-pungency thing. Flowers, musky and gamy, but in the end, very much about stone. And it is the texture that gets you - the wine couldn't be more silky, and this silk surrounds what essentially is a wine about rock. Textbook Volnay, and a truly compelling and lovely wine.

And the 2002 Paul Bara Bouzy Rouge Coteaux Champenois, a wine that was probably the messiest of all when we first opened it, all bramble and pitch black fruit and very disjointed. But later on, I swear this wine was the freshest and most detailed wet stone basket of ripe strawberries, so pure and elegant, light as a feather. And the 1999 Eric Texier Côte-Rôtie, a wine that fooled all of us. It was a red fruit mash at first - I would have guessed a Grenache heavy wine from further south had I tasted it blind. This one took the longest to come around, but when it did it was a classic old school bloody, meaty, black olivey, and very mineral northern Rhône Syrah.

Can I tell you that the next day I learned that our dinner occurred on a flower day...but only after 8:00 PM. Why do these annoying coincidences keep happening with the confounded biodynamic calendar and the way wines taste?

At a restaurant in Boston I drank a bottle of 2007 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly. The wine was beautiful, a perfect mingling of freshness, tension, elegance, and quiet intensity. It was not in any way showy, and was amazing in its perfect harmony, not for any one particular characteristic of aroma or flavor. Wow, I wish I had more experience with Dagueneau's wines. They are awfully expensive now.

I recently drank an Emidio Pepe wine for the first time, the 2001 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It had been open for hours before we drank it with dinner. I loved it, really loved it. Such interesting and delicious wine. Jet black fruit, very brawny, but detailed and fresh, with cooling herbal aromas, and a streak of something like tar and leather. It was lovely with the aforementioned Slope Farms pork roast, and I must find a way to drink this iconic (and expensive, and apparently very variable) wine again.

Lastly, look at this nice list of white wines by the glass. This is at the restaurant Herbsainte in New Orleans. I was down there recently for work, and stopped in to have a cocktail before retiring to my hotel room. But before I could order, I overheard the bartender telling another man that there was a buttermilk fried Louisiana frog legs special that evening. Hmmm.

Forget the cocktail - I ordered a glass of El Maetsro Sierra Fino (!) and the frog legs. Well that whole situation was so delicious, that I decided to keep going, and drank a glass of the 2010 Domaine du Closel Savennières La Jalousie with a little plate of Gulf shrimp and grits with okra. Even more delicious! You know, I used to love Closel but I kind of gave up on the wines after not liking anything after 2002 (and after the last of my 2002's showed oxidized). I told friends that I was done with the wines. Well, I have no idea what's really going on with Closel, but honestly, this 2010 was just excellent - fresh, pure, balanced, showing typical wooly and waxy notes and lots of minerality. A reminder to me not to make pronouncements about wine. I just don't have the years of drinking experience to make pronouncements.

A Coteaux Champenois Tasting

Not all Champagne is sparkling wine. Peter Liem, many of whose comments and ideas are paraphrased within this post, told me that the modern history of sparkling Champagne is only 300 or so years old, and that Champagne used to be a still wine. Many Champagne producers continue to make small amounts of still wine, called Coteaux Champenois. If you've never heard of these wines or never tasted one, you are most certainly not alone. Not a lot is made, and most of what is made is consumed in Champagne. The grapes used to make Coteaux Champenois are the same highly valuable grapes that could be used to make Champagne - it just doesn't make good financial sense to divert production from a highly profitable wine that is in demand all over the world to a little known wine that is harder to sell at the same prices.

So why is Coteaux Champenois made at all, given that logic? Well, producers need still red wine if they make a rosé of Champagne by blending still red wine into sparkling wine. Also, people in Champagne enjoy drinking red wine from time to time and from what I gather, in much of France, you drink the local wine. Perhaps most importantly, Coteaux Champenois continues to be made because some producers want to honor the tradition and history of Champagne. "Take Larmandier-Bernier, for example," Peter said. "Pierre Larmandier wants to make red wine from Vertus Pinot Noir because he wants to preserve the history of Vertus."

Coteaux Champenois can be red, white, or rosé, although the red wines are by far the most common. The wines can be released as vintage wines or non-vintage wines, and do not need to be aged in bottle for three years, as sparkling Champagne does, in order to be labeled as vintage wines. The villages where Pinot Noir thrives are also the villages that make highly regarded Coteaux Champenois. Bouzy and Ambonnay are perhaps considered as the sources of the finest wines, but there are excellent wines made elsewhere too.

There are very few examples of Coteaux Champenois available at retail stores. Importers have trouble selling the wines, and so they don't bring them in. "I have trouble selling them, especially a non-vintage still red wine from Champagne that would retail for $50," said Kevin Pike, Director of National Sales and Marketing at Michael Skurnik Wines. There are retailers, however, who believe in these wines enough to keep them in stock. Joe Salamone at Crush in Manhattan, for example, has been selling Coteaux Champenois for years, when he can get his hands on it.

Last summer I drank a bottle of 2002 Larmandier-Bernier Coteaux Champenois with a few friends and absolutely loved it. I knew I needed to try more. A few friends agreed, and we decided to buy whatever we could and to hit up a few importers for bottles that are not (yet?) available in stores. We recently got together over a completely fantastic dinner at Prune and drank the wines. It was quite a crew, including the aforementioned Peter Liem, Joe Salamone, and Kevin Pike, and also Levi Dalton of Alto (where at least one Coteaux Champenois is on the wine list), Dan Melia, Clarke Boehling, and Keith Levenberg.

The results were mixed, I would say. The two wines that I have previously loved didn't show well on this night. Other wines were disconcertingly big and concentrated - stylistic decisions by top quality wine makers. But there were a few true gems. Here are the wines we drank in the order in which we drank them, along with a few notes:

2008 Roger Coulon Coteaux Champenois Blanc, $40-50, Rosenthal Wine Merchant. I found myself saying "this wine smells just like Champagne!" It really does, just like a Blanc de Blancs. Tastes just like one too. Feels entirely different, obviously, and it was a strange sensation. This was the very first Coteaux Champenois Blanc I've ever tasted, I think I need more experience before saying much.

2008 Léclapart Coteaux Champenois Trépail Rouge, $55, Imported by Jandell Selections. Very fragrant, fresh red berries and flowers with woodsy undertones, very persistent. There is a "natural streak" here, as there often is in Thierry Puzelat's wines, for example. Bottle variation is significantwith this wine, apparently. This was a good bottle, the one I drank a few months ago was not as good.

2008 Egly-Ouriet Coteaux Champenois Ambonnay Rouge, $95, Imported by Michael Skurnik Wines. The nose is dominated by oak right now, and I found it hard to enjoy at this early stage, even harder to evaluate. Peter Liem told us that among many people in Champagne, this wine is considered to be the best Coteaux Champenois. I'd love to taste the '08 again in 5 or 10 years.

2001 Marie-Noëlle Ledru Coteaux Champenois Ambonnay Rouge, not imported (kindly donated for this tasting by Charlie Woods, whose company Bonhomie Wine imports Ledru's sparkling Champagnes). Still shows freshness, there is complexity on the nose, which becomes more layered and detailed with air, perfectly harmonious on the palate. Delicious, and one of my favorites of the tasting.

2004 René Geoffroy Coteaux Champenois Cumières Rouge, $55, imported by Michael Skurnik Wines. The nose is spicy, rich, voluptuous, and also energetic with dark fresh fruit. This is a powerful wine that doesn't lack for concentration, but still offers god detail and balance. I like Geoffroy's wines very much, and this was no exception.


2003 Benoît Lahaye Coteaux Champenois Bouzy Rouge, not imported (kindly donated for this tasting by Jeffrey Alpert, whose company Jeffrey Alpert Selections imports Lahaye's sparkling Champagne). "Bouzy Rouge" has got to be one of the best names in the world of wine. My favorite wine of the tasting. The nose opens slowly (as with all of Lahaye's wines) but shows real elegance, especially in light of the very warm 2003 vintage. Mineral infused spicy red fruit on the nose, and a harmonious palate whose delicate red fruit shows a bit of maturity and although reflects some of the opulence of the vintage, for me didn't cross into over-done territory. Delicious wine, and Lahaye is an absolute star, in my book.

2000 Jean Vesselle Coteaux Champenois Bouzy Rouge, $41, Dionysos Imports. This wine showed a candied aspect that I didn't care for, and I found it to be a bit one-dimensional, uninspiring. But there were others who enjoyed it, so grain of salt here.

2002 Paul Bara Coteaux Champenois Bouzy Rouge, $40, Imported by Jandell Selections, although bara's sparkling Champagne is imported by Kermit Lynch. This wine was corked, which is a shame because in an odd coincidence I happened to drink a glass the night before this tasting, and it is wonderful wine, very intense but also very light in body, a truly excellent Coteaux Champenois.

2002 Larmandier-Bernier Coteaux Champenois Vertus Rouge, $40, Louis/Dressner Selections. This bottle did not show as well as the others that I've had. It was very reduced, even after an hour open, so we decanted it and it was much better. Similar in style to the Bara wine - purity, finesse, freshness, lightness in body. The fruit is rich and vibrant and the wine is well balanced, but it never became as good as other bottles that I've had. This bottle notwithstanding, this particular wine is the finest Coteaux Champenois that I've had.

2002 Bollinger Coteaux Champenois La Cote aux Enfants, $120, Imported by Terlato Wines International. Shows nothing of what makes Coteaux Champenois appealing. Overripe grapes, rasiny, too concentrated, chunky and not graceful, jut not enjoyable wine. I normally wouldn't condemn a wine like that, but I believe that everyone at the table felt approximately the same way, and so it's safe to say that my take on the wine is not an outlier. Bollinger is so great too, so this wine was quite confusing.