The Beaujolais Challenge - Beaujolais

First time checking out the Beaujolais Challenge? Don't worry, you haven't missed anything. Last time I made a pledge to taste wines from all 12 appellations in the region and to share what I learn with you. A couple of tidbits before we get into our real business, just to make sure that we're all on the same page:

• Gamay is the grape used to make red wine in Beaujolais. Yes, there is some white wine (Chardonnay) made in Beaujolais, but almost 99% of production is red wine, and it's all about Gamay. Gamay is used to make wine outside of Beaujolais, but not enough so that you'd notice. If you are really into wine from the Loire Valley you know that Gamay appears in some Touraine wines. There are also a few producers in Oregon (Brick House, notably) making Gamay wines. But Beaujolais is special in the wine world and one of the main reasons is Gamay, its hometown grape.

• Aside from the granite rich sandy soils that give the wines terroir, or their sense of place, the other thing that makes wine from Beaujolais special is carbonic maceration. This is an interesting vinification technique in which grapes are piled into a fermentation vat and the pressure on the bottom-most grapes gradually crushes them, releasing the juice. The presence of natural yeasts on the grape (if the wine is made "naturally") or added yeasts start the fermentation process, creating carbon dioxide gas. The grapes higher up in the vat begin to ferment too, but while the juice is still inside the skin of the grape - fermentation in individual un-crushed grapes! After pressing, the resulting juice is low in tannin and high in fresh fruit flavor.

• Beaujolais Nouveau, the sweet and pleasant kool-aid with a kick that is so celebrated in France - that is not what I will be tasting and discussing. Same grape, same carbonic maceration technique used, but entirely different goals for the wine, and entirely different results. The river of often insipid and always cheap Beaujolais Nouveau might be exactly the thing that dragged down the reputation of Beaujolais in general. Too bad, because Beaujolais is serious wine.

• The kind of wine I will be talking about is usually called Cru Beaujolais, referring to one of 12 Crus or growths. To use the Burgundy analogy, there is regional wine (called Bourgougne, Cotes de Beaune, or Cotes de Nuits), village level wine (Vosne-Romanee, Auxey-Durresses, Pommard, etc.), and then 1er Cru and Grand Cru classified growth from some of those villages. Beaujolais is the name of the "lowest" Cru, followed by Beaujolais-Villages, and then the village Crus, such as Morgon, Chenas, Fleurie, and so on.

• Louis Jadot, Georges Duboeuf, and a few other negociants (people who buy and sell grapes and sometimes make wine from grapes they buy) have been making good Cru Beaujolais for a while now. I'm going to try to stick to wines made by growers simply out of personal preference, not because I tasted and did not like Duboeuf's or any other negociant's wines. In general, I try to buy wine made by growers, that's all.

Okay, that's it. Now, the wine. Let's start with Beaujolais, the "lowest" of the Crus. About half of all of the wine coming out of the region is this wine. Alcohol levels are allowed to be low, as low as 9%. It is generally held that you should chill these wines, as with other Cru Beaujolais. I enjoy them chilled (chilled, not cold), but I also enjoy them at room temperature.

2005 in Burgundy is the mother of all vintages, apparently, and Beaujolais is part of the Burgundy region, so the wines, even those from the "lowly" Beaujolais appellation should be high quality. Based on the two I enjoyed recently, I would heartily agree.

The setting: a warm Sunday afternoon on the deck, kids splashing around in the little kiddie pool, babies on laps, skewers of spice-rubbed beef and chicken on the grill, potato salad, candy striped beets and baby lettuces relaxing in their chilled salad bowl...The wines:

2005 Domaine du Vissoux Pierre-Marie Chermette Beaujolais, $13.50 (Chambers Street Wines). The label says this wine is made naturally, fermented with yeasts on the grape skins. It is light purple in color and fully translucent. The nose is seductive, with bright red berries and a little bit of underbrush. Fresh and clean on the palate, this is just yummy, with raspberry and strawberry flavors and a bit of dried banana that stays in the nostrils after swallowing. This wine is lip smacking a delicious and was a great pairing for our somewhat spicy outdoor food. Our crew drained the bottle over lunch, while the next one still had about a glass and a half remaining when we closed up shop.

2005 Jean-Paul Brun Domaine des Terres Dorees Cuvee L'AncienVieille Vignes, $15 (Chambers Street Wines). Lots of people are drinking this wine right now, as Wine Spadvocator scored it a 90, and it was included in one of Eric Asimov's "homework cases" of wine. It was so different from the Vissoux, completely different wine. Deetrane said that he might not have guessed Beaujolais if he had tasted it blind. Maybe it's the old vines, maybe its the lush 2005 vintage, but this is dark and intense wine for Beaujolais. We all liked it, but it didn't seem to have the Vissoux's carefree attitude. This one is darker purple, almost opaque at the core, with intense aromas of dried banana, some strawberry, and some underbrush. The palate is very nice, with redberries and a pomegranite type of intensity. This might be deeper and more serious wine compared with the Vissoux, but I preferred the Vissoux overall - better with our food and fresher tasting. This is good stuff too though, don't get me wrong. This one seems like it might tolerate, enjoy even, a year or so in the bottle. Luckily, I have a few more bottles to use in that experiment...

Two from the Loire Valley

There is so much great wine out there waiting to be tasted! I recently had two wines, both excellent, a Vouvray and a Chinon, made by a couple of producers whose wines I had never before tasted. No matter how familiar (so-so, at best actually) I start to feel with the Loire Valley, I taste something new and remember how many skilled producers there are making wine. And I have tasted so little of it. I need to make another trip out there...

Bernard Fouquet makes white wines at Domaine des Aubuisieres in Vouvray. The Wine Doctor profiled this estate here. When I first read this piece I got excited about the sweete wines - I have a serious thing for Loire sweet wines. Those have proven to be elusive here in NYC, but I saw a bottle of 2005 Vouvray Cuvee Silex a little while ago at Chambers Street and grabbed it. At $15 I was not expecting much, but that was my mistake - there are plenty of reasonably priced great wines coming out of the Loire. Turns out, this is one of them.

2005 Domaine des Aubuisieres Vouvray Cuvee Silex, $15 (Chambers Street Wines).

Made from grapes from several vineyards with flinty (silex means flint) soil. This is pale yellow in color with a very reserved nose. The palate is dominated by minerals. We were not so impressed on the first day. But the second day...so much better. This wine, like many sec (dry) wines from Vouvray, benefits greatly from cellaring. On the second day the nose picked up some citrus and floral aromas to balance out the minerality, and the palate broadened, with some melon and citrus to compliment the minerals. Good acidity too. The wine was light in texture, yet mouth filling with bright flavors and great purity. An excellent wine, and clearly a steal at $15. No more at Chambers Street, sadly, but this is clearly a $15 beauty and you should buy it if you see it.

Philippe Alliet is another producer I have been meaning to try, and I finally got around to it the other night after reading another helpful piece by the Wine Doctor. I brought home a bottle of the 2004 Chinon and gave it a whirl with our beef roast and it was YUM.

2004 Philippe Alliet Chinon, $17 (Chambers Street Wines).

Dark dense purple with enticing dark fruit and woodsy smells, along with leather and green pepper. Lots of lush, sweet fruit on the palate, some leather and earth too. Very drinkable, excellent with food, simply high quality wine. Makes me curious to try the Vieille Vignes wine for $7 more.

Chablis Splurge

A Chablis completely rocked my world last time I went to a Sotheby's pre-auction tasting. It was my first real Chablis, and what a way to start. Domaine William Fevre is among the very top producers in Chablis, and the Grand Cru designated Le Clos vineyard produces what many feel are his top wines each year.

Although it's not difficult to find Fevre's village Chablis, or even some of the Premier Cru wines, I have been looking for Le Clos since that tasting, and I haven't seen it on the shelves of any of the wine stores I frequent. But the other day while wandering around TriBeCa Wine Merchants, my first time in the store, I spotted it. Way in the back, innocently sitting there with a few white Burgundies, a few bottles of 2005 Le Clos waited patiently for the right person to adopt them.

6 bottles remained in the store that day, "the last in the city" according to the proprietor. At $75 a bottle, this wine is out of my league, but MAN, did I want some. I walked out of there empty handed wishing that I was an investment banker.

Over the weekend I somehow convinced myself that I could buy two bottles of this wine. You know, the whole "2005-vintage-of-the-century" thing, the whole "it's-impossible-to-find-this-wine" thing, the whole "I-have-so-very-little-self-control-when-it-comes-to-wine" thing. So I raced back to the store after the weekend, positive that there would be zero bottles remaining. Glee - there were in fact four beautiful bottles still sitting there.

I am now the proud owner of two bottles of 2005 Domaine William Fevre Chablis Grand Cru Le Clos, and I'm also $150 poorer. I must be insane to spend that kind of dough on fermented grape juice. But talk to me in 10 years when I open one of these puppies...then we'll see who is crazy, and it won't be me!

2005 Oregon Pinot - Two More Bottles

I am so happy to find that I might be a big fan of the 2005 vintage in the Willamette Valley. Like '04, '05 was another tough one in which yields were low. It's interesting, though, that although yields were reduced in both years, the wines of '04 are quite different from those in '05. The '04 wines I've tasted tend to be lush and fruit forward, concentrated and dark, new world in style. Those I have tasted from '05 are much lighter with prominent acidity, and seem to be showing a more Burgundian variety of aroma and flavors like forest and dried leaves, flowers, leather or animal, and earthy characteristics.

I heartily recommend both of these wines. They are not as good a value as you will find in Burgundy - there are plenty of utterly delicious '05s to be found for about $30, sometimes less. These are both hovering at about $40. Be that as it may, they are yummy and will reward your patience. Prominent acidity like this bodes well for aging. They are both made from young vines, so if patience is not your strong suit, these are delicious now too.

2005 Adelsheim Pinot Noir Ribbon Springs Vineyard, $44 (Winery).

A nice surprise because Adelsheim' 2004 wines have been disappointing so far. This is a return to form - light and graceful wines with some complexity. From vines planted in 1996. Aromas are not only about the pretty red fruit, there are dried leaves and underbrush too. The palate is light and acidic, but not too tannic. Sweet cherries and pine on the finish. This wine is young and should benefit from aging, in that the various flavors are still a bit disjointed. When things balance out and the acidity integrates a bit more, this could be beautiful wine. I like the alcohol level too - at 12.8% this is similar to Burgundy. At $44, you might do better in Burgundy, but that's your call...and in the spirit of full disclosure, BrooklynLady really didn't like this wine. She said "it sucks." rarely do we disagree so much about a wine, so if you find yourself aligned with her palate, you should skip this wine.

2005 St Innocent Pinot Noir Justice Vineyard, $38. (Great Wine Buys). From young vines of about 5 years of age. Light ruby color gives this wine a "thin" appearance, but don't be fooled. Bright and fresh nose of red cherries with distinct baking spices - cloves, cinnamon. The palate is exuberant with young red fruit, dried leaves, spices, and flowers. At 13.5%, the alcohol this is not at all overwhelming. This is an elegant and lovely wine, once that would be a great compliment to salmon or duck, one that will gain complexity and balance in the bottle over the next 5-7 years.

Raspberry Lime Rickey

A cocktail moment: this is a refreshing and delicious drink for the summer weather. A riff on the classic Gin Rickey, adding raspberry syrup. I came up with this last summer when, after a visit to the Russian groceries of Brighton Beach, BrooklynLady and I had to find many uses for raspberry syrup.

I like Marco Polo raspberry syrup. Ingredients: raspberry juice, sugar. Made in Slovenia. I also like Hendrick's Gin, although it is strongly flavoured (I add the "u" when discussing gin) and that gets lost here. You could use Gordon's or any gin, and it would be fine.

Here is the recipe:

- Two fingers of gin over ice cubes in a rocks glass.

- Squeeze the juice of half a lime into the glass.

- Add about an ounce of raspberry syrup.

- Pour contents of glass, including ice, into cocktail shaker.

- Shake it like you mean it.

- Pour back into glass, top with club soda, stir.

- Drink up.




(Before the shaking, left.)




(Before the drinking, below.)

The Beaujolais Challenge

I love Beaujolais. There, I said it. And now that I said it, I feel free, like dancing in the streets. Okay, an exaggeration maybe, but I do love the wines of Beaujolais. I'm not the only one, either. Many wine people hold these inexpensive and maligned wines in high esteem. These are lively and lovely wines that go great with all kinds of food, and if you spend $20 on a bottle you're buying the top of the line.

Some people just don't get it when it comes to Beaujolais. You know why - the whole Beaujolais Nouveau thing - the sweet, inexpensive, and often plonky wine that some people immediately think about when they hear "Beaujolais." When this kind of person walks into a wine store and asks for help selecting a wine for $15 or less to bring to a friend's house for dinner, and the staffer suggests a Beaujolais Villages for $12, this person says "really, a Beaujolais, huh?" and instead buys a J. Lohr Cabernet or something. We can't protect everyone from themselves, can we?

But that person is most likely not reading this blog (unless they are my parents, and they're forgiven). you are, and you already know how great Beaujolais can be. So what can I, a Brooklynguy, add to our collective understanding? Well, I got to thinking...if I had the $$$$ I would do a full tasting tour of Burgundy. I would really delve into the terroir, see how Auxey-Durresses differs from Monthelie, and that from Puligny. I would buy wines made by a few producers in Vosne-Romanee, Chambolle-Musigny, and Morey St Denis and open them all at the same time to understand something about the character of those soils.

That would cost a fortune. So I instead read Burgundy Report and whatever else I can get my hands on that talks about that sort of thing, and I catalog the Burgundy wine I do get to sample in this blog.

But I COULD do that extensive type of tasting tour in Beaujolais. I can afford that. And as far as I can tell, no one else has done anything like that and written about it online.

So here goes, The Beaujolais Challenge, a la Brooklynguy. I hereby pledge to you to taste at least two examples (I would say more, but it ain't easy to find a Saint Amour!) of wine from each of the 12 appellations of Beaujolais:

Beaujolais Beaujolais Villages, Brouilly, Cotes de Brouilly, Chiroubles, Chenas, Fleurie, Julienas, Morgon, Moulin a Vent, Regnie, and Saint Amour.

I will give tasting notes, sure, but I will also try to learn something about the appellation and think about the wine in that context, and in the overall context of the Beaujolais region. I am thinking that I will try to choose a producer who makes wine from every appellation, if such a producer (not a negociant) exists, so as to be better able to focus on variation of location, not of wine maker. But I will taste more than one wine per appellation in order to think about wine maker variation too.

And I pledge to you to do this by the end of summer, 2007. So I have three months exactly - summer starts tomorrow people. This is going to be fun. I hope to enlist some of my wine drinking pals in this endeavor. Wish me luck!

An Old Rioja

The other night I was drowning and who came to the rescue? Deetrane, that’s who. He’s sort of like a wine superhero. Wine Man, if you will. He rescues flailing wines from the murky depths of the secondary market, whisks them off to the safety of the dinner table, just when you need them the most.

When BrooklynLady and I had Deetrane, his wife PJ, and their friend from LA over for dinner on a recent Wednesday night we served the following menu (and PJ is vegetarian, hence the distinct lack of animal):

Red lentil soup with mint
BrooklynLady’s Portobello lasagna
Greens with fresh goat cheese
BrooklynLady’s home made ice cream sandwiches (she baked molasses cookies and used them to sandwich ginger and green tea ice cream. Utterly ridiculous. I could have eaten 17 of them).

We went with a Bisol Prosecco with the soup – bubbly seemed like a good match for the earthiness of the soup. Plus, it’s fun to drink sparkling wine. So far so good. I wanted to open a 2005 Burgundy with the mushroom lasagna, made with béchamel, somehow rich and light at the same time. I decided on the new Bourgogne from Voillot, a wine I LOVED last year. Shouldn’t 2005 be even better?

Maybe, but the wine was completely green and unpleasant. Decent enough on the nose, with some fleeting raspberry fruit, but all wrong on the palate. Off bottle? I don’t think so, cause it wasn't corked or cooked. It was just bad. It happens sometimes - wines that are great some years are not as good in other years. Confusing that in a great vintage this wine would be so much worse than it was in a so-so year. Anyway...

So we’re having a very nice evening, great company and delicious dinner, but no one can stomach the wine. BrooklynLady has discreetly placed her glass out of arm's reach, everyone else was sipping and literally wincing in pain. A cruel wind began to blow. Hark…is that Wine Man I see? Yes, Deetrane happened to bring a bottle of well aged Rioja with him that evening, tucked into his utility belt. Out came the cork and our evening was saved!

Deetrane and PJ visited La Rioja Alta on their honeymoon and loved the whole experience. La Rioja Alta is an old school producer, cellaring their wine for many years until they feel it’s ready for release. They make many wines, including the Reserva 890 and 904, their top bottles. The Vina Ardanza Reserva shoul cost between $25-30 upon release (but I’m sure Deetrane got a good deal).

I am a neophyte in Rioja in general and certainly with La Rioja Alta, this was the first time I tasted their wine. But based on this bottle, I will definitely be back. And by the way, the Wine Doctor recently reviewed this same wine the other day, but the 1999 vintage, and enjoyed it very much.

1996 La Rioja Alta Vina Ardanza Reserva, price unknown.
Pretty dark garnet color. Aromas literally burst from the glass upon pouring. Vibrant and rich smells of black cherry with a bit of chocolate, something herbal underneath. Very enticing – demands that you take a sip. The wine is just delicious – juicy, rich and mouth-filling, but light and lively on the palate. Black cherries with undertones of chocolate, earth, and herbs. I loved this wineand it pared perfectly with the lasagna.

I found a few bottles of the 1999 vintage at a store I don’t usually go to, and I’m deciding whether or not to dive in…