Burgundy Wine Club 2012 - Pommard

Seven friends and I pool our money every year to buy about 8 bottles of Burgundy wine, wine that we wouldn't buy individually because of the high cost and the risk of bad bottles. Every year at around this time we get together over dinner and share the wines. This year the theme of our dinner was the great vineyards and producers of Pommard.

Pommard is not the most glorious of Burgundy appellations, not by a long shot. In my somewhat limited experience, the wines can be rustic and are not as pretty as the wines from neighboring Volnay, for example, or even compared with wines from "lesser" appellations such as Savigny-Lès Beaune. To continue with Pommard generalizations, the wines do not offer much value or particularly high quality at the villages level, unless the wine comes from a specific vineyard. For example, although I would not buy a straight villages Pommard, I might buy a bottle of Pommard La Chanière by Maréchale or Pommard Chanlins by Lafouge (although I don't buy those wine anymore either, but that's more about my own buying strategy than about the quality of those wines).

People sometimes compare Pommard with Volnay, its neighbor to the south, and they say things like "Pommard is muscular and brawny, and Volnay is elegant and pretty." This is probably true as a generalization, although there are of course exceptions. People also say, when they talk about 1er Cru vineyards in Burgundy that should be elevated to Grand Cru status, that both Clos des Epenots and Rugiens in Pommard are deserving. For me, this is part of the point of selecting Pommard as the theme for our dinner. I wanted to drink wines that are considered to be among the very finest of the appellation, to experience Pommard at its best, to build the foundation of my own understanding of the character and potential of Pommard.

Any list of the finest wines of Pommard would include Comte Armand's Clos des Epeneaux. Epeneaux is a monopole of the Domaine, a walled vineyard of over 5 hectares within the larger 1er Cru vineyard called Epenots. There are two climats that make up Epenots - Grands Epenots and Petits Epenots, and Clos des Epeneaux is almost all within Les Grands Epenots. It's interesting to think about the fact that the previous owner of Clos des Epeneaux, the Marey-Monge family, actually owned all 30 plus hectares of Epenots in the early 1700's, and sold all of it off except for the Clos des Epeneaux, around which they built an 8 foot high wall and kept. Obviously they must have thought that it gave the best wines within the larger vineyard. Clos des Epeneaux wines comes mostly from old vines and, according to what I've read, need more time than most 1er Crus to arrive at maturity. We were all excited to have three examples of this wine to drink at our dinner, wines that could not be considered old, but would hopefully be mature.

I also wanted to drink wines from the Rugiens vineyard at this dinner, and there are several producers who make good examples - Domaine de Courcel, Domaine de Montille, Aleth Girardin, Joseph Voillot, François Gaunoux, and Michel Gaunoux all come to mind. I chose two bottles from the late 1990's by de Montille. I've read that Rugiens is the richest, the most muscular of the Pommard wines, and that Clos des Epeneaux would be more mineral driven and elegant (although one experienced drinker at our dinner raised an eyebrow suspiciously when I mentioned this, saying that he would hardly call Clos des Epeneaux a wine of elegance, that is is still brawny Pommard).

We rounded out our lineup by including bottles by two other producers whose wines I wanted to drink, as I read that they are made in a style that I would appreciate - Clos des Epenots by Domaine de Courcel and 1er Cru Pezerolles by Domaine Billard-Gonnet.

First, the good news: we had a great night and I love Burgundy Wine Club. Such a great group of people, a pleasure to be with them and to look forward to this experience each year. We had a wonderful long dinner at the very lovely Rosewater in Brooklyn, where owner John Tucker serves thoughtfully sourced and prepared food, and has a very well selected wine list.

Now, the bad news: the theme of this dinner was Pommard, and everyone agreed that the wine of the night was the 1989 François Jobard Meursault 1er Cru Charmes. The reds were absolutely underwhelming as a group - I was very much uninspired. That said, the one that perhaps on paper should have been the best, was corked. Another that should have been great was probably flawed. Still, this dinner was not a great advertisement for Pommard. Some notes and thoughts (I'll share the prices I paid when I bought the wines last year - none were purchased upon release):

1989 François Jobard Meursault 1er Cru Charmes, $100. We drank this with a salad of grilled calamari with frisée, clementine, and bacon. The wine of the night without any question whatsoever. A fabulous showing for a wine that is drinking perfectly right now. Pungent and fresh at the peak of maturity. The nose at first has a roasted sense to the pear fruit, but the roastiness vanishes after a half hour and the wine becomes linear and focused with a perfect melange of fruit and mineral. Elegant, plush while remaining entirely in control, and great acidity - just a mouthwatering wine that reminded everyone at the table to drink more old white Burgundy.

With sautéed wild mushrooms and a fried quail egg on toast we drank 1996 Domaine de Courcel Pommard Grand Clos des Epenots, $54 and 1999 Domaine Billard-Gonnet Pommard 1er Cru Les Pezerolles, $48. The Courcel was very tight still, constricted, the acidity almost too much, but still pretty, with dark fruit and floral aromas. In the mouth the stony mineral streak prominent. The wine is very good, but probably needs another five years or so to unwind. The Billard-Gonnet wine was just not good. Rich and ripe to the point of being syrupy, maple on the nose. The acidity is raspy, the wine is rustic and just doesn't seem very well made. Not harmonious, not complex, straight forward fruit that is borders on syrup. Not a good advertizement for this producer...

With grilled pork belly, apple, and pickled cabbage we drank a magnum of 1993 Comte Armand Pommard Clos des Epeneaux, $325. Oh, how I wanted this wine to be great. I knew that it would probably need a couple hours to open up, and we opened it at least 90 minutes before we began to drink it. It was dense and impenetrable for most of four hours, and never really opened up. There are hints of something lovely, but the wine is simply not ready, in the magnum format anyway. Some perfume emerges after while, but the wine is tight, inward. Time brings some animale undertones, but this bottle was in a disjointed state, with acid and alcohol not well integrated. There were questions from some drinkers about whether or not the wine was too cloudy. Some one poured a glass through a filter and the wine brightened some, but to me the smell and taste was unchanged. If I had another magnum I would leave it alone, honestly for another 10 years.

With smoked quail, grilled radicchio, pinenuts, and currants we drank 1989 and 1991 Comte Armand Clos des Epeneaux, $200 and $168 respectively. The 1989 was corked, and this was crushing - on paper this wine should have been great. The 1991 could also have been flawed. There were clear signs of rot or mildew on the nose, which was musty and inexpressive. The wine was better with food, but the finish was cropped, stifled. Unsatisfying, not delicious, a big disappointment.

With braised shortribs, parsnips, shitakes, and mustard greens we drank 1998 and 1999 de Montille Pommard 1er Cru Rugiens, $133 and $185 respectively. The 1999 was delicious, but a bit too simple to be intriguing. It showed the ripe character of the vintage (one that I am learning to be skeptical of) with plush sweet fruit, not entirely enough structure, and very little complexity. Not compelling, I'm sorry to say, and a very poor value at that price. The 1998, however, was a very lovely wine. There were complex aromas of dark fruit, brown sugar, musk, and flowers. Lovely on the palate with pretty fruit and complex secondary flavors, and a long finish that pauses and then sneaks back up. In this wine I could feel the muscularity that people speak of regarding Pommard. To me, this wine was exactly what it should be - complex, muscular, mineral driven, and it was delicious.

Okay, not every bottle and not every wine dinner will live up to expectations. Still, it was a great night with friends. And there's always next year. I have some ideas for an interesting lineup of wines...

Here is an article about Pommard from Burgundy Report.
And here is the report from last year's BWC dinner, if you're interested.

How to Open and Enjoy an Old Bottle of Wine

I was given an amazing birthday gift in November, an old bottle of wine by Produttori del Barbaresco, the 1959 Riserva. This is very exciting - how often does one get to drink a bottle that old? In my case, not very often. I've had a few old wines, but with the exception of a few cases, I haven't opened them myself. A more experienced friend or a sommelier typically has handled that part.

How do you open an old bottle of wine?

I knew that I wanted to drink the '59 Barbaresco over the holidays with friends. I asked Jamie Wolff, partner at Chambers Street Wines, what to do with the bottle (which was purchased at his shoppe). He told me to stand it up a week in advance, not to move it at all during that time if I could help it, as it would probably have a lot of sediment.

"But my wine fridge won't accommodate a standing bottle," I said. "How do I keep it at the proper temperature?" Jamie suggested finding the coolest spot in the house and standing it there. "And when you serve it," he said, "open it up four or five hours in advance and decant it carefully off the sediment."

As the Barbaresco evening approached, I began to wonder if an old wine like this would die with four or five hours in the decanter, so I asked another friend about how to deal with it, and his answer was entirely different.

That's when I realized that there are a lot of way to do this: to handle, open, and drink an old bottle of wine. And I don't know what I'm doing in this area at all. So I thought I would ask a few friends who are wine professionals what they do with old bottles. I wanted opinions from a variety of viewpoints, so I asked a great sommelier, a great wine buyer, and a great wine thinker and writer with a load of personal experience opening old wine. I'm talking about Levi Dalton the great sommelier, Joe Salamone the great wine buyer at Crush, and Peter Liem of broad and varied greatness. I wrote to them with the following questions:

1. How do you prepare an old bottle for drinking?
2. How far in advance of serving do you open the bottle?
3. Do you decant or not, and why?
4. How do you open an old bottle when the cork might be likely to crumble or break?
5. What should we look for when the bottle is first open - how can we tell if the wine is good or not?
6. Any general thoughts on evaluating an old wine - for those of us who don't often drink old wine, it can be confusing.
7. Do your ideas about pairing wine with food change if the wine is old?
8. Any other advice most appreciated.

And now, patient reader, I will share their thoughts with you (and I hope you're sitting comfortably, because this is a long post):

1. How do you prepare an old bottle for drinking?

Levi - Bottles should be left alone for as long as possible before opening. If you know in advance that you will be opening a bottle of wine a few days from now, I suggest standing it up vertically in the cellar to let the sediment fall to the bottom of the bottle. If you are storing the wine horizontally, I recommend not moving the bottle much while it is in storage. This usually becomes more of a problem with double deep bottle racking, where you have to move one bottle to get to another. Bottles can get moved a lot. I recommend putting the older wines in the back, so that they bottles that are getting jostled in the front are the younger wines.

If you are removing a bottle from horizontal racking, I recommend either using a bottle cradle or I recommend holding the bottle near horizontal, keeping the bottle in the same way as it was in the rack. In other words, don't spin the bottle around as you move it. The aim is to keep the sediment in the same place without moving it around into the liquid. I also recommend taking an elevator, if available, rather then walking with a bottle up stairs.

Joe - Stand it up in the morning if you’re drinking it at night. Let the sediment sink to the bottom.

Peter - It depends on what it is. If it's an old red wine with sediment, you ideally want to stand it up for several days, sometimes even a week, before opening it, to allow the sediment to settle. It's not just an aesthetic issue—the sediment can be bitter, and its presence definitely changes the flavors of the wine. You can decant a wine that's stored on its side if you need to (in a restaurant setting, for example), but you have to be careful. (I'll always remember drinking a 1964 Bartolo Mascarello at Valentino in Santa Monica that was virtually opaque with sediment due to utterly incompetent wine service.) If it's an old white wine or champagne, you need to chill it, of course. I have no scientific basis for it, but for whatever reason, I don't like shocking an old wine in an ice bath or the freezer or whatnot. I prefer to bring it down to temperature slowly in the fridge, which takes time. Maybe it's just a question of respect.

2. How far in advance of serving do you open the bottle?

Levi - Some cowboys, especially in the Nebbiolo set, open bottles way far ahead. I generally don't. I like to see how the wine changes in the glass.

Joe - It really depends on the bottle. A few years ago I had a 71 DRC Grands Echezeaux with questionable storage. It was popped and poured and it was glorious for fifteen minutes. After that, it faded hard. Someone at the table was smart enough to say that we should pop and pour. Otherwise, we would have missed out on it totally.

Peter - This is a tricky question, and one with no right answers. I've seen old wines continue to develop for three days, and others that have crashed within 15 minutes. It's true that old wines need time to emerge (you'd be out of sorts too if you'd been trapped in a bottle for 50 years), but personally, I tend to err on the side of caution, not because I'm afraid that the wine will die, but because I like to experience the evolution of the wine from start to finish. For a grand old bottle, I prefer to open it, take a small glass, and decide from there what to do with it. Having said that, I tend to do this in the afternoon, if I'm serving old red wines at dinner. But then afterwards, I'm always the guy who has like 12 glasses in front of him at the end of a dinner party, because I've been saving all these wines to watch how they grow over the course of several hours.

3. Do you decant or not, and why?

Levi - Old wines are candidates for decanting when they have thrown a good deal of sediment. But if you are dealing with a low tannin grape, I usually don't decant, even if they are throwing sediment. That is to say, I generally don't decant old Red Burgundy, I pour carefully from the bottle instead. Pouring into a decanter should be low, slow, and steady. This is not the "splash decant" that you might use for a younger wine. Do the decanting all in one go, with no fits, starts, or interruptions. Hopefully you won't sneeze during the operation. If you do stop and start the liquid will become muddy with sediment before it leaves the bottle. That being said, it is a great idea to "season" the decanter you intend to use with some of the wine in advance of pouring the rest in. Do this by pouring in a bit of the wine, swirling it around in the decanter, and then discarding. You can taste the discarded wine and test for TCA before pouring out the bottle as well. When you do decant the bottle, keep your light source behind the bottle neck, not behind the decanter lip. You want to stop pouring before the sediment leaves the bottle. Keep in mind that with sediment, there are many variations of the beast. Some are sludge like, some are flaky, some are like fine pebbles at the seashore. Each will move differently as you pour the bottle out.

In practice, I usually do not double decant old bottles of wine. Some people do this however, especially if they are attending a BYOB dinner. They double decant the bottle in their home beforehand and then bring the decanted wine in the original bottle to the dinner. If you do want to double decant a bottle, I recommend using hot water to clean out the sediment in the bottle. This is because hot water, unlike cold water, evaporates. Thus you will have less water to drain out of the bottle later, before you add the original wine back into the bottle. It is worth keeping in mind that hot water will make the bottle's glass warm, and that you should wait until it cools down before adding the wine back in. Also, very old bottles of wine may have thinner glass than is common today. In which case you might be careful about extremely hot water and the possibility of cracking glass as well as fragile bottle lips.

Say you don't decant the bottle of wine, but it has sediment on the bottle, what then? Well I recommend either pouring from a cradle, or holding the bottle by the bottom, with your fingers underneath. When you go around to the different glasses to pour, don't move the bottle up and down a lot. Try to keep the bottle neck at the same level. This is counter to what usually happens when pouring at a table, where the bottle gets raised back vertically a lot, and generally requires going slow and being careful. Sometimes it is easiest to pour all of the glasses away from the seated table, and then to hand the glasses out once poured. This eliminates moving the bottle between people at the table. If you are pouring from a cradle, which can be helpful, just remember that it is easy to bump someone with the cradle when you are pouring. Which defeats the purpose, really. Keep in mind that "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" was a scary movie.

Joe - There are no hard and fast rules, but typically I would only decant to avoid sentiment. Otherwise, I have a sense that decanting is too aggressive for many old wines and would prefer to just pull the cork and let them aerate slowly. If I tasted an old wine that felt particularly tight, I would decant.

Peter - I decant less and less now. I almost think I decant more young wine than old wine nowadays, which is sort of ironic. But it depends. You decant for two reasons, right? It's to give the wine air and to take it off of its sediment. In the first case, as I said before, I prefer to watch the wine evolve slowly, so I don't really care. I'm patient. With regards to the second, it depends on the situation. If we're serving an old bottle in a restaurant to eight people, then yeah, it needs to be decanted. If it's just two of us drinking it at home, maybe, or maybe not. A friend and I have been thinking over the last few years that we like opening old bottles, say a 50-year-old Barolo, hours ahead of time but not decanting, just pouring a small glass at first to taste it, then letting it hang out all day until it's time to drink it. I feel that it preserves a silkier texture and better clarity of flavor than if you subject it to the oxidative shock of decanting. But that could just be my imagination.

Corkscrew worms vary in length (photo courtesy of Levi).

4. How do you open an old bottle when the cork might be likely to crumble or break?

Levi - When you decide that you want to open up the bottle, you should do it on a flat, sturdy surface. Don't be a clown and try to open an old bottle of wine in the air. Not a good idea. You want to move the bottle as little as possible while opening it. One problem with this is that people in the room might want to see the label of the fantastically old wine and pick up the bottle from where you have it. That is a bad move. The less bottle movement the better, until the bottle is empty.

Sunken corks, that is, corks that are not flush with the bottle lip, present a problem. It is hard to get the right leverage with your corkscrew on sunken corks. This is especially a problem for single pull corkscrews. It is very easy to chip the glass around the lip in this instance, and that can lead to safety concerns. It is best to use a double pull corkscrew, and start with lifting when the worm is halfway in, and then drive the worm in further when you have lifted the cork a bit.

Another possibility is that a sunken cork might also slide right down the bottle neck when you start to press it with the corkscrew worm, which is usually a phenomenon that can accompany heat damage or oxidation. If the cork slides into the liquid, you can find yourself with a problem, because your first instinct may be to decant the wine, but the cork inside the liquid still covers the bottle neck at the bottom, and doesn't allow the liquid out steadily or at all. If this happens I recommend taking something long like a plastic straw and pushing the cork down with the straw while you decant. This will allow the wine out of the bottle.

Try not to pierce the bottom of the cork as you are getting it out of the bottle. If you go through a cork all the way with your worm, your will have better leverage for removal, but piercing an old cork will throw a lot of cork dust into the liquid.

Extracting cork fragments that are stuck flat on the bottleneck works better if you put tension on the corkscrew worm by holding it with two fingers against the bottle top as you turn the worm in. This also keeps the worm straight. If instead you are dealing with a cork that has hollowed out in the middle, but stuck to the walls of the bottle neck as you tried to remove it, then you are going to have to angle your corkscrew and pin the cork that is against with glass with the corkscrew worm, then pull up. You might have to do this a couple of times to get all the cork fragments out. You might think that something else besides a corkscrew will help you get those last bits of cork out of the bottle neck. I don't recommend experimenting with anything, like an oyster fork, unless it has an extremely long handle.

The Durand opener (photo courtesy of Levi).

Bottle openers vary a lot. For very old bottles, the best thing you can do is purchase a combination Ah-So and corkscrew worm, such as The Durand, which is available for sale at www.thedurand.com. These things really are genius, and will save you all kinds of problems.

Pieces of the Durand (photo courtesy of Levi).

It is also possible to make your own such combination, using a standard Ah-so and a separate T-Bar corkscrew worm. As far as stand alone corkscrews, I personally find that opening an older bottle is easier with a double pull corkscrew than a single pull. I usually use the Pulltaps corkscrew brand for double pulls. The problem with that is that the Pulltaps worm is not particularly long, and some old corks are. Also, the knife on a Pulltaps is pretty basic. You will often find a longer worm and a better knife, on a Laguiole or Chateau Laguiole. For this reason I try to keep a few different types of opener around, to help in different situations. Whatever you purchase it is very important to get a corkscrew without any kind of coating (besides paint) on the worm. You want a metal worm. The other types destroy old corks in a fashion that is fantastically disheartening.

Joe - Personally, I’ve had so many disasters with using a cork screw that I go straight for the Ah-So.

An Ah-So opener.

Peter - High dexterity score is key. And an Ah-So. Last year, one of my friends bought this thing, which is awesome.

5. What should we look for when the bottle is first open - how can we tell if the wine is good or not?

Levi - How you handle the bottle can have a lot to do this. Murky, dull, and light colored red wine is a bad sign. But ultimately the test is the taste.

Joe - Check out the color and smell, especially to see if it’s maderized. Also, a lot of turbidity is usually a bad sign. Often wines will seem older when first poured and then will liven up. Wines, especially red Burgundy, can change color in the glass. Sometimes they can look more faded, but an old wine can actually becoming more youthful in appearance in the glass. They brighten up and darken.

Peter - Old wines are funny things—they don't necessarily reveal themselves right away. Sometimes with a very old wine it's even difficult to tell whether or not the wine is corked, as it can be musty and weird at first but then develop into something amazing later. You're looking first for flaws (i.e. TCA) and then for oxidation, but on the subject of the latter, it often pays to be patient. Many old wines actually feel fresher and more primary in flavor after 15 or 30 minutes than they do when they're first opened.

6. Any general thoughts on evaluating an old wine - for those of us who don't often drink old wine, it can be confusing.

Levi - The condition of a cork can tell you a lot about storage. First of all, once you get a cork out, it is worth checking to make sure what it says matches what the label of the bottle says. If not, that can mean that you a forgery on your hands. More generally, if the cork has a muffin top and flares out above the bottle lip, that can indicate that this wine has seen poor storage. Similarly if there is a visible line of dried wine stain down the cork length. Often enough, an very old cork will be completely soaked with wine stains, so this isn't a terrible, terrible thing, but neither is it desirable. On the other hand, a too perfect, pristine cork in a very old bottle often raises about possible recorking that might have taken place with this bottle. It is worth considering if the bottle is a recent release (however old the wine's vintage may be) from the winery, as the corks should then look pretty great.

Joe - Basics like looking at the fill and looking for seepage and things like the cork pushing up or receding are usually very helpful. Clumps of caked on sentiment in one area of the bottle can be a bad sign (but this isn’t always the case.) Also, look at the color in the light to see if whites look oxidized or reds look turbid and brownish. It really depends on the wine: Auslesen and old sweet Chenin Blanc can appear really dark and be perfectly fine, for instance.

Peter - There should have been a reason for aging it. Is it better in some way than a young version of that wine would be? Ideally, an old wine would have developed an inimitable complexity and character while fusing its components together into a more seamless harmony—the disparate parts of a young wine are now integrated into a complete whole. But just because it's old doesn't necessarily mean that it's better. Old wines can be mediocre too. And everybody has a different sort of threshold as far as maturity goes. I like mature flavors, and I tend to prefer my wines a little older than most people do. A wine should definitely retain vibrancy and energy—it shouldn't be dead or overly oxidized. But I don't always care about things like primary fruit. You drink old wine because you can't get the same experiences that you do in young wine, and drinking a grand wine in maturity is one of life's greatest pleasures.

7. Do your ideas about pairing wine with food change if the wine is old?

Levi - The adage is true: simple food is better with old wines. Steak. Squab. Mushrooms. Risotto. They are all on my old wine team.

Joe - The hope is that aging wines results in them stretching out, having integrated flavors and becoming more nuanced and complex. I want the wine to shine and take center stage without much interference. I like to keep things simple with straight forward, uncomplicated dishes. There’s nothing wrong with a perfectly roasted chicken (or guinea hen), leg of lamb, or fish. I try to avoid overly pungent and bright flavors that have the potential to cripple to the mature fruit on an old wine.

Peter - I generally think that the older the wine is, the simpler your food ought to be. I don't necessarily believe that the best setting for a great mature wine is a Michelin three-star restaurant. My favorite way to experience an old bottle is to drink it at home, making some food that complements it but that doesn't compete with its complexity.

8. Any other advice most appreciated.

Levi - Keep in mind that the kind of capsules you find on older bottles, say of Bordeaux before 1990, had lead in them. They are firm, often stick closely to the bottle neck, and tend to come off in long strips if you unwind them from a cut in the side of one. These kinds of capsules tend to leave a nasty cut on the finger if you aren't careful with their removal. You can always tell a sommelier who deals with a lot of older Bordeaux: they will have a bunch of small cuts on their index finger. It can be helpful to angle your corkscrew knife about 45 degrees into the groove underneath the top part of the capsule, cutting upwards. This will result in a clean line cut into the capsule, and also encourage the top part of the capsule to flair out at the cut edge, allowing for easier removal. When lead capsules are involved, I think that it becomes especially important to wipe with a wet, clean cloth the bottle top after the capsule has been removed (and before the cork is extracted). This prevents small particles of lead from getting into the liquid later as you pour. Older bottles may often have a bit of fungal growth under the capsule anyway, which should be removed in the same way, with a wet cloth.

If instead of a lead capsule you encounter a wax capsule, I recommend placing a napkin underneath the bottle before you open it. That way, the small bits of wax will fall onto the napkin instead of your table surface, and you can collect them all easily at the end of the process by gathering the napkin up. Some people scrap or bang away wax from the top of a bottle before opening. I think that in the case of older bottles, this only encourages the kind of vibration that moves the sediment around, so I don't encourage it. Rather, I drive my corkscrew worm directly into the bottle's cork, through the wax, and the wax comes away from the top as the cork is extracted. The only time you don't want to do this is when you might be dealing with a half-cork stopper, like in the case of certain Cognacs, for instance. In those instances there is no driven cork, for the corkscrew worm to meet when it goes in the bottle top.

(Photo courtesy of Levi).

There are broadly speaking, two kinds of wax that you will encounter, the hard flaky kind and the soft, pliable kind. If you want to remove the soft kind from the bottle neck side (to prevent pouring liquid over it), you can run your corkscrew lever up and down the side of the bottle, creating two long groves in the wax. You will find it easier to remove the soft kind of wax from the bottle if you then start pulling from where the grooves are.

Joe - Aged wine often seems like a fetish for people. People associate quality with ageability. They immediately want to know how long a wine can age, and the longer the better. Not all wines benefit from aging; and not all people enjoy mature flavors in wine. There’s something to be said for drinking wine in its sprightly youth. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy old wine, but I often worry that people are lead astray by thinking that older is better. Like people, there’s more that can go wrong with wine as it ages.

Peter - Always have a good alterations tailor. Don't use Microsoft products. Never trust a guy who doesn't look you in the eye when he's shaking your hand.

-----

By the way, I should have asked these guys before drinking my 1959 Barbaresco. I did not decant, but opened the wine at noon on the day I would serve it at about 9 in the evening. I used a double pull corkscrew, but the cork broke in half. When I tried to get in there again with the corkscrew, I just pushed what remained of the cork into the bottle, and there it sat, broken and dusty, in my lovely old wine. I tasted it about every two hours until we drank it. It was great to drink such an old wine, and it was very delicious, but not mind-blowing. In fact, one experienced taster suggested that it might have been better about 10 years ago.

Memorable Pairings of 2011

Well, of the last few months anyway. There have been a few truly memorable drinks and eats in the past months that I never found a way to write about here. So I'll compile them in a best-of-the-unposted list from the last part of 2011.

I was in Jerez in October, and one night I had dinner at La Carbona with Peter Liem and Eduardo Ojeda, the cellar master at La Guita and Valdespino. Eduardo brought several ridiculous bottles to this dinner, one of which was a bottle of La Guita Manzanilla Pasada...but from the mid 1970's! That's right, a Manzanilla Pasada that had spent the past 40 years in bottle. I'm telling you, the idea that Fino wines cannot age is simply wrong. When they are well made and stored properly they can be wonderful. This wine was stunning in its complexity, and also in its freshness.

We drank it with a perfectly grilled bone-in strip steak (I think that's the cut, anyway - you butchers out there can correct me based on the photo if need be). This steak would fare well against anything served at steak temples in NYC - seriously. And La Carbona is by not even a steakhouse. The pairing was fantastic - the umami depth of the wine complimented the meat and the freshness of the wine enlivened and cleansed the palate. An experience I must repeat at some point.

And more Sherry...Joe Salamone was also in Jerez in October, and he returned with a very fine bottle that as of now is unavailable in the States, a special Palo Cortado from Gutierrez Colosía, the very fine producer in El Puerto de Santa María. The average age of these wines is at least 40 years and the wine is a complexly concentrated elegant thing of finesse and beauty.

We drank this wine with home-cooking style Japanese food. It was great with everything, but drinking it with these fried oysters with miso and seaweed was among the most thrilling and delicious pairings I experienced all year. Savory briny sweet complex harmony.

I ate dinner with a few friends at Prune in the fall, and one of them drove in from Rhode Island with several absurd bottles in tow, one of which was the 1972 Leroy Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Lavaut St Jacques. The wine was closed down hard at first, not so unusual for a wine that's been under cork for the past 40 years. But it opened up and showed beautifully, with savory earthy tones and even a bit of very gently stewed fruit. Such a great treat, to be able to drink a majestic old wine like this. We ate all sorts of good things at Prune, and I am not sure, but I think we drank this wine with lamb sausages and all of us were swooning.

Peter generously brought a bottle of Selosse Champagne from France for my birthday in the fall. It is a new release called La Bout du Clos, a wine made entirely from that same vineyard in Ambonnay, from the 2004 vintage. This wine was a bit more quiet than other bottles of Selosse that I've experienced, the oxidative streak not as strong, the supple fruit and saline minerality of the wine doing the talking. It was a special treat.

Peter made a lovely dish of Champignon mushrooms and daikon radish simmered in dashi to go with it - a perfect harmony of savory flavors and aromas. And a concrete reminder, if we needed one, that Champagne is a great table wine.

Why, on Christmas eve my friend Dan Melia opened an absolutely gorgeous bottle of 2006 Marie-Noëlle Ledru Saignée Rosé, and we drank it with excellent grilled cheese sandwiches and various pickles. An unusual pairing, maybe, but Champagne is great with fried food, and the pickles didn't intrude at all. Ledru's Saignée is so very vinous, it's like drinking red wine that happens to have a few bubbles. The wine unfolded slowly and gracefully and was best right as it vanished, a compelling merging of fruit and mineral concentration with textural finesse and grace. Note to self: buy everything Marie-Noëlle Ledru makes before she stops making Champagne.

I've never had Violane before, the sans-soufre cuvée by Benoît Lahaye. This bottle comes entirely from 2008 and is a blend of equal parts Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. I love Lahaye's wines, I love their clarity and focus, their delicate yet powerful expression of Pinot Noir from Bouzy. I loved this wine too, although it is definitely different from the other Lahaye wines I've had. First of all, there is no sulfur, and the wine shows an oxidative undertone that frankly reminded me of some of the Selosse wines I've had (yes, the wine is that good). There is an intense concentration of fruit aroma and flavor and the finish never really ends. We drank this wine on its own, and it was a wonderful pairing. I am drinking the dregs on day two as I write this, and gnawing on a piece of country wheat bread, and it is good.

I haven't had a wine from Santorini in over a year now, as after an initial love affair, I had a group of wines that showed too much sulfur and not enough deliciousness, and I kind of retreated. Not sure what I will do now, after this wine. Peter and I were trying to decide what to drink the other night with a dinner of breaded and fried veal cutlets, cauliflower with cumin, king oyster mushrooms, and garlicky greens. He saw a bottle of 2007 Sigalas Barrel Fermented Assyrtiko in my wine fridge and asked that we open it. I would never have picked that wine, and wow, was it a great pairing.

We decanted the wine about two hours before drinking it, and it was fantastic. The aromas were clear and fresh, vibrant. The wine has a unique aromatic profile, and now that it is maturing, it is articulate and detailed. For me the primary aroma is pumice - the volcanic rock. There is citrus fruit too, something floral, a Burgundian barrel-influenced sweetness, and all infused with this lovely slightly smoky savory-ness. Great freshness and acidity on the palate, balanced, and expressive. Simply delicious wine, and seems like its only beginning to grow into itself. The wine went so well with the veal cutlets, which I topped with a little deglaze of butter, lemon and chopped salted capers. It worked with the earthy cumin notes of the cauliflower and the savour of the mushrooms too. It was surprising to me how this wine offered enough richness to pair with everything on the plate, but also the brightness and refreshment to balance the meal.

This last one reminds me, as a new year approaches, of the value of being open minded, of welcoming new experiences, of being informed by and considerate of what I've learned to be true, but also of wanting to be wrong about things - of learning continuously. I hope that your 2011 ends in a lovely way, and that our 2012 is filled with happiness and learning and many exciting new pairings.

Babyback Ribs - Made Easy

Some recipes and techniques I like to keep to myself. I have to have something to impress you with if you come over for dinner, right? But some are so simple and so great that it becomes my civic duty to share. Here is one, a new one for me - a technique for cooking babyback ribs without a smoker or a grill. Honestly, it's as simple as it gets and total time is under two hours. Please address appreciative correspondence to: Brooklynguy@thankyouribsBrooklynguy.gov.

The technique is this: because you are not going to cook the ribs in a smoker, or otherwise low and slow to tenderize the meat, you need an alternative for tenderizing. Boiling. Yes, boiling the ribs first. I was quite skeptical at first too. When I think of boiled meat I think of my great-uncle's holiday dinner in the Gulag. But boiling is merely to tenderize here, the ribs are finished in the oven, preferably with a glaze of some sort. Here's how:

Start with good quality ribs. I've tried both spare ribs and babyback and both come out great, but my kids can handle the smaller babybacks more easily, so that's what I go with.

Put the ribs in a pot and just cover with water. You are going to bring the water to a boil and then cover and reduce to a simmer for at least 45 minutes. This will tenderize the meat, and I like to think that some of the fat is removed too. I find that the smell is not appealing, so I add a little soy sauce to the water, and some aromatics like garlic, star anise, and black peppercorns. Honestly, I don't think this makes a bit of difference as far as the flavor of the meat, but it does make the house smell savory and spicy, instead of porky.

You can put the boiled ribs in the fridge until you're ready to use them, or glaze them and put them in the oven immediately. Glaze...whatever you like works. I've been enjoying a Chinese-style glaze of Chinkiang vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and a bit of chili paste. You can do anything you like here for a glaze, though. I want to try a ponzu glaze, and some sort of BBQ sauce. I imagine that in a pinch, you could use BBQ sauce from a jar, although you would first have to shave your beard and take off your worn-looking wool cap.

If you glaze and put in the oven right after simmering, as little as 20 minutes in a 325 oven is fine. But I've found that I get the texture I'm looking for after about an hour. I take the ribs out of the oven and apply more glaze every 20 minutes or so.

Ribs are rich and fatty. I like to serve mine with lots of greens, hopefully involving vinegar. This is not a new idea - this is the same idea behind cole slaw. Tatsoi is a healthy and very delicious green vegetable that does well cooked quickly in a wok. I did mine this time with a little Sherry vinegar and garlic.

On this night, my kids and I rolled some vinegared sushi rice in nori and that completed our plates. These ribs are delicious, and anyone who eats meat will love them. It's hard to describe the delight a parent feels when their young kids go to town on some protein, and that's exactly what happens every time I make this dish.

Beer would be good, Riesling, Sherry, there are many nice options. As crazy as it sounds, on this night I drank red wine with these ribs. Michel Lafarge makes one of my favorite Bourgognes. It is a regional wine, but it is very serious stuff. It comes from vines that were formerly classified as Volnay villages, and the wine typically needs a few years to fully express itself. The 2008 is in a place now where the meatiness and richness of the fruit is strong, but so is the sense of stoney minerality. The structure is firm but the texture is velvet - this is such a lovely vintage for this wine. And it was great with the Chinkiang-glazed ribs.

You be the Sommelier

I thought it would be fun to do one more of these before the year ends. The other night, after picking up my kids and bringing them home to begin their week with me, I made a simple and quick dinner that we could eat together before bed time. Hamburgers, mashed potatoes, a few vegetables.

I like to use ground turkey when I make hamburgers, but ground turkey that has plenty of dark meat in it, meat that stays juicy and rich. The daughters' burgers were topped with cheddar, mine with Jasper Hills Bayley Hazen blue cheese, my favorite blue cheese. Mashed potatoes were made with russets, butter, cream, and salt - that's it. Orange bell peppers and Persian cucumbers marinated in a bit of Sherry vinegar finished everyone's plate. This is one of those dinners that makes everyone happy - kids and grownups alike.

What would you open with this meal? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and I'll leave a comment in a few days telling what I drank (and my younger daughter took a tiny sip of) with our dinner.

In Defense of Red Wine

I've been having a hard time with red wine lately. Okay, I never have a problem with mature Burgundy, or mature red wine in general. But when I'm alone and I feel like opening something to drink with dinner, or to just have a glass, I almost always reach for white wine these days. White wine is so much more versatile with food, so much easier to drink on its own. I'm speaking in broad terms, obviously, but I looked through what I've been drinking for the past few months and it's almost always white wine, unless some sort of special mature red is involved.

There could be many reasons for my bias. I did just go to Jerez, and I have been drinking a lot of Sherry. But I think it's more than that. I think that it's about easy drinking - I want to drink wines that clearly say what they are about, where they are from, that do not distract me with excess fruit or tannin, or any kind of excess. Lately, white wine just makes this happen for me far more often than red.

But of course there are red wines that continue to fit the bill. I've noticed that there are a few things that unite the everyday red wines that I reach for lately. They are lighter wines, wines that achieve balance above all else, and also express themselves with finesse and grace. Here are a few current favorites:

2007 Muhr-van de Niepoort Carnuntum Blaufrankisch, $20, Imported by Martine's Wines. This is definitely a wine that showcases ripe dark fruit, but that's only a part of the package. There is an unmistakable white pepper scent (I guess white pepper is more about Austrian soils than it is about Gruner Veltliner), and the nose is entirely graceful and expressive. The wine is perfectly balanced and feels great in the mouth. It satisfies on many levels - there is fruit, soil and mineral, and a pleasant leafy undertone. I must say, I've not been as impressed with a red wine in a while, as far as quality-to-price ratio goes. This is absolutely top notch wine, I bet it would improve with time in the cellar, and it sells for $20 before a mixed case discount. It isn't too hard to find in NYC (Blanc y Rouge in Brooklyn, Chambers Street Wines in Manhattan, among others), but if you're having trouble, try a wine by Moric - more expensive, but also great.

2008 Julien Labet Côtes du Jura, $36, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. Joe Salamone at Crush brings this wine to NYC and it's worth asking about. Objectively speaking, I think that Overnoy/Houillon's is the finest Poulsard out there, but that wine is basically impossible to find and it's gotten quite expensive. Labet's is excellent too. So light and graceful that it seems strange how well structured it is. This wine smacks of dried leaves and blood oranges and herbs and it's completely delicious. But what moves me about it now is how impossibly weightless and light it is, and still how clearly and pungently it expresses itself. If Labet's Poulsard proves to be too hard to find, there are several others out there. They should all be similar in their graceful delivery of Jura-ness.

2010 Clos de Tue-Boeuf Cheverny, $19, Louis/Dressner Selections. Red wines from Cheverny in the Loire Valley can include a variety of grapes. This one is made of Gamay and Pinot Noir. It is a lovely wine - high toned and bright red in fruit, a bit of forest underneath and a genuine crackle of energy that can be mistaken for effervescence - decant or otherwise aerate the wine and the energy is still there. This wine isn't for everyone - it's light and bright and flirts with volatility, and it doesn't offer anything in the way of power. It's not really about fruit either, although there most certainly is fruit. It's a refreshing and light wine that really is an expression of this place and this winemaker. If you try it, aerate the wine before you drink it.

2010 Domaine Guion Bourgueil Cuvée Domaine, $12, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. David Lillie at Chambers Street Wines is responsible for bringing this wine to NYC. This is the lighter of the two Guion Bourgueils, and I prefer it to the Prestige Cuvée, in general. The 2010 is a wine that I really like, although again, it's not for everyone. It is not a fruity wine, except for the first 10 minutes or so after opening. It's only $12 but it is a complete wine - a perfect balance of iron minerals, bloody dark fruit, and acidity, and the structure is firm but doesn't intrude in any way. This is an easy drinking wine that I think faithfully expresses terroir.

Matt Kramer's Making Sense of Burgundy - Some Quotes

I had a birthday in November and a friend gave me a fantastic gift - Matt Kramer's "Making Sense of Burgundy." This book was published in 1990 and it continues to be on most shortlists of great wine books. I actually have read almost no wine books, so my entire list is a short list. But I must say, this book is wonderful. It offers plenty of fun for the obsessive among us, listing every owner of every Grand and 1er Cru vineyard in the Côte d'Or, as of the late '80s, anyway. There is apparently no other published source of this information. Kramer also describes in matter-of-fact prose the characteristics of these vineyards and the wines they are capable of producing. There are discussions of value in Burgundy and the relative achievements of individual producers (and it's fascinating to compare his predictions about rising stars with the producers today who are making waves).

The section of the book that I find myself thinking abut the most, so far, is the chapter called "The Notion of Terroir." Kramer talks about all sorts of things here - you'll read about acupuncture, abstract expressionist painting, and the feudal ages in Europe, among other things. In this chapter are several passages that have really captured my attention and I find myself reading them over and over. Kramer shares his thoughts on terroir, and it's as compelling as anything I've read on that rather wide subject.

From page 39-40:

"Although it is derived from soil or land (terre), terroir is not just an investigation of soil and subsoil. It is everything that contributes to the distinction of a vineyard plot. As such, it also embraces 'microclimate': precipitation, air and water drainage, elevation, sunlight, and temperature. But terroir holds yet another dimension: It sanctions what cannot be measured, yet still located and savored. Terroir prospects for differences. In this it is at odds with science, which demand proof by replication rather than in shining uniqueness."

Hard to imagine a simpler and more effective notion of terroir, no?

And how about this, from page 42-43:

"The supreme concern of Burgundy is - or should be - making terroir manifest. In outline, this is easily accomplished: small berried clones; low yields, selective sorting of the grapes; and, trickiest of all, fermenting and cellaring the wine in such a way as to allow the terroir to come through with no distracting stylistic flourishes. This is where terroir comes smack up against ego, the modern demand for self-expression at any cost, which, too often, has come at the expense of terroir."

And this too, from page 45:

"The ideal is to amplify terroir without distorting it. Terroir should be transmitted as free as possible of extraneous elements of style or taste. Ideally, one should not be able to find the hand of the wine-maker. That said, it must be acknowledged that some signature always can be detected, although it can be very faint indeed when you reach the level of Robert Chevillon in Nuits-Saint-Georges; Bernard Serveau in Morey-Saint-Denis; or the marquis d'Angerville or Gérard Potel, both in Volnay, to name a few. The self-effacement of these producers in their wines is very nearly Zen-like: their signature is an absence of signature."

Fascinating ideas, I would say. So many things to think about in there. I wonder about some of the ideas in the final quote. Is it physically possible for there to be no signature? Wine is made, after all, and this handling of grapes leaves some trace behind. Or does it? And who is this Bernard Serveau, and I feel like a schmuck for never having tasted one of his wines. What do you think about when you read the above quotes? Were you as blown away as I am when you first read Making Sense of Burgundy?

I think I should read some more about wine. So, what are some of your favorite wine books? Not novels, I mean. Reference books, books that offer this sort of illumination about a place or certain wines.