Friday Night Bubbles

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

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

Shameless Self Promotion

I am going to be the "guest sommelier" at what should be an excellent wine tasting on Sunday February 22nd. I was invited to do this by Andrew, the manager of the West Village wine car called Lelabar. Andrew hosts a tasting series on Sundays and sometimes he likes to have a guest host. On the 22nd, I'm it.

I'm not going to lie to you - I think most NYC wine bars kind of suck, so I wasn't all that enthused until I went to visit the place. Lelabar is actually a wine bar - most are simply restaurants that offer a few wines by the glass. At Lelabar every single wine, and there are many, is available by the glass. The space is sleek and minimally designed and rather intimate - there is a serious neighborhood vibe going on. And this is a lovely neighborhood.

Andrew reads and apparently enjoys my blog (to each his own, I guess), and he's given me full license to choose a theme and select the wines. I will be pouring 6 of my favorite reds from the Loire Valley - 2 wines each from Chinon, Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny to be exact. I'm not going to tell you all of them because that would ruin the surprise. But I'll share one right now, just to whet your appetite. The 2006 Bernard Baudry Chinon Cuvée Domaine will be poured, the gorgeous and terroir expressive beauty I wrote about the other day.

Lelabar will provide a food pairing for each wine. That's right - 6 great Loire reds, 6 food pairings, a little bit of Brooklynguy live instead of on this confounded interweb, and all for the ridiculously low price of $60. You'll drink almost a bottle of wine yourself and eat what amounts to a meal, and hang out with a load of other nice people in a great space in a great neighborhood, for $60. From 4-6pm on a Sunday - I mean really, what else are you doing then?

And yes, I will be compensated for my participation in this event, just to be clear. But again, I'm choosing the wines and I'm a nice guy in person, and this is the kind of place I would go myself, so I can stand behind this with pride. I hope you'll come out for the tasting if you live in the area - check out a cool wine bar and support your local Brooklynguy. To reserve your space (and they do limit spaces - this is an intimate spot) contact Andrew via email at Andrew@Lelabar.com. And tell him Brooklynguy sent you.

By the Glass - 2007 Beaujolais Edition

2007 was difficult in Beaujolais as the summer was mostly overcast and rainy. Not easy to achieve ripeness under those conditions, but September was sunny and dry and the vintage was saved. Saved for those growers who worked carefully in the vineyards to avoid mildew and rot, which generally means spraying a lot. Or possibly getting lucky and not being his by mildew because of favorable wind currents or something.

I've drank almost my fair share of 2007 Beaujolais over the past few months and I very much like the wines in general. They are not as concentrated as the 2006's - these are lighter in color and in body, and when they're good they're fresh and bright with great purity of fruit. And they are terroir expressive, which is something that I always enjoy. But this also means that little problems can make a lot more noise than they might in a vintage like 2006. For example, a bit of rusticity on the finish or volatile acidity - these are problems that become very noticeable. Bottle variation seems to be more of an issue than in the past few vintages.

2007 in Beaujolais has so far for me been about finding the wines that I want to drink now and over the next year or so. It is a vintage for drinking young. In fact, it might be best to stick with the simpler wines like Vissoux's Cuvée Traditionnelle and Brun's Cuvée L'Ancien (aka Vin de Table this year). They are quite tasty and compliment many types of food, and there is a lot of variability, sometimes disappointment, in the higher level wines.

There are wines yet to be released and others that I haven't yet had at home with dinner (Coudert Fleurie Cuvée Tardive, Diochon's Moulin a Vent, to name but two), so this is not an exhaustive report. It may prove impossible to drink some wines. Yields were down (although not as much as in 2008, from what I hear) and the economy stinks, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the wines we're used to seeing simply do not appear on retail shelves.

Here are some notes on the wines I've had at home with dinner, in order of preference, loosely speaking. Prices are east coast.

2007 Jean Foillard Morgon Cuvée Corcelette, $29, Kermit Lynch Imports. This is an old vines cuvée, I believe the vines average about 70 years old. This so far for me is the wine of the vintage, without anything coming all that close. I've had it several times now and once it was incredible, fresh and pure all the way, with lively sour cherry and herbs on the nose, and a crackling kind of energy. So refined and smooth on the palate with great density of fruit. It glides across the palate and is very well balanced, with a nice finish that really lingers. It still has a lot to reveal and I think will be best beginning in about 4 years. The second time I drank this wine I still thought it was great, but there was a bit of volatile acidity that detracted, but the purity and density of fruit was still compelling. I have a few more bottles and probably will not be cellaring much of anything else from 2007.

2007 Georges Descombes Régnié, Louis/Dressner Selections, $22. If I had to pick one wine from this vintage for drinking over the next 3 years it would be this one. Highly perfumed and just delicious with slightly rustic but sweet fruit, and there is great snappy acidity. Great balance and some complexity with air time as the mineral and earthy sides show themselves. There is plenty of grip too, actually, and this should be great for quite a few years.

2007 Coudert Fleurie Clos de la Roilette, Louis/Dressner Selections, $22. When this was good it was great, with lovely fruit on the nose, a fruit-filled punch on the palate, great balance and ample structure to hold everything together. But I drank a lesser bottle too that was very rustic and unappealing.

2007 Domaine du Vissoux Beaujolais Vieilles Vignes Cuvée Traditionnelle, $17, Weygandt-Metzler. One of my favorite under $15 wines every year, when it was nder $15. Now at $17 I feel like for a few buck more I can take a very large step up to any of the above wines. Be that as it may, this is still quite lovely, with good ripe fruit, snappy acidity, an herbal undercurrent, and only 11.5% alcohol this year.

2007 Terres Dorées Beaujolais Cuvée L'Ancien Vieille Vignes, $17, Louis/Dressner Selections. I haven't had this in a few months now, but I liked it a lot when I drank it. Lots of herbal character, almost resiny on the nose. Well defined and high toned red currant, herbal, and tomato leaf/potting soil flavors, kind of disjointed. On day two much more integrated. Every year I drink this too early. By the way, this is the wine that lost the appellation status for 2/3 of production due to "rubber, mushrooms, and volatile acidity." Whatever, It's very good, as it always is.

2007 Marcel Lapierre Morgon, $21, Kermit Lynch Imports. I've had two great bottles of this wine. It does well with a good decant, as usual. Light and somewhat delicate, although the floral and fruit aromas are pungent and heady. Striking for its purity, this is fresh and snappy wine, a classic Beaujolais feel to it. But I've also had to return three bottles that were undrinkable because of volatile acidity. As much as I liked it when it was good, I wouldn't buy any more of this wine. Too volatile.

2007 Terres Dorées Fleurie, $21, Louis/Dressner Selections. Lovely perfume of dark flowers, ripe fruit, and wet stones. Nice texture and zippy acidity makes this absolutely gulpable, but only for 20 minutes, and then it becomes a vat of raging acidity. Like the red sauce at a bad Italian restaurant, I'm sorry to say. And it's so funny because the nose is lovely all the while.

Please let us know if you've had something good that's not mentioned here. Or something to avoid.

Corrections

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

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

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

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

Friday Night Bubbles

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

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

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

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

Back on Planet Earth

I've been up on a Burgundy high horse for a while. It's been almost 2 months since I've written about anything other than the Burgundy trip, except for Friday Night Bubbles posts. After almost 2 months of nothing but Burgundy and Champagne, anything I do now may seem like a letdown.

But watch this - I'm coming back to planet earth, and I'm coming with value and style. I've had some wine in the past two months, you know. I haven't just been sitting here writing about my trip. And as an inaugural (Hooray Obama!) "back to normal at Brooklynguy" post, I want to highlight a daily drinker of a wine that performs way above its $18 price point. A wine that you can feel responsible while drinking, as it is farmed and vinified organically and with minimal interventions of any kind. And best of all, in my opinion, it is a wine that offers an open window to its underlying terroir.

Bernard Baudry is probably at the head of the class in Chinon right now. His wines are pure and clean and well balanced, and they are unmistakably Chinon. And they are affordable, even at the top of the range. Terrible dollar notwithstanding, the barrel-aged Croix Boisée is $32, the very old vines Les Grézeaux is a silly $25. And the wine I want to talk about, the 2006 Cuvée Domaine, is merely $18. That's $16.20 with the mixed case discount, for you non-mathematicians out there. But please do not be fooled by the price. This is a serious wine, an old vines cuvée (35 years average) that offers great pleasure in young drinking, but will also improve with several years in the cellar.

The 2006 Bernard Baudry Cuvée Domaine, $18, Louis Dressner Selections, is so transparent that it really should be embarrassed. On the nose it shows gravelly earth and beautifully ripe and intense dark fruit, absolutely clean and pure. This wine is quite concentrated and it shows better after an hour open, when the aromas get to know each other a bit and settle into friendly conversation. On the palate, this wine tastes like Baudry's back yard - there is earth with lots of gravel and clay, there is plentiful fruit, there are flowers and trees, there is a river nearby, and in the evenings there is smoke in the air from the fireplaces. This is a delicious wine with great character and depth of fruit, and it's even better on the second day. I imagine that it will be at its peak in about 4 years, although it may be difficult to keep your hands off until then. That's why it's probably a good idea to buy several bottles. If you live in New York City, this wine (for some reason) is available only at Chambers Street Wines. Wherever you live, if you like wine, this is one worth seeking out.

Final Burgundy Trip Tidbits

I'm having fun with these but I'm guessing that you've had your fill. I'll wrap it up with a few random tidbits. Here are some interesting quotes by Mounir Saouma, wine maker at Lucien Le Moine:

On his wine making style - "I'm trying to make wine with no defects."

On minerality - "Minerality in wine begins with water on rocks."

On whether or not I could photograph him in his cellar - "What are you, Japanese?"

On his 2007 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Amoureuses - "Amoureuses is one of the finest Crus in Burgundy. This wine is nowhere, this wine is everywhere."

On Chambertin Clos de Beze - "If you close your eyes, this is like a white wine. Clos de Beze is all limestone, like in Puligny."

On Le Montrachet - "There is no acid, there is low alcohol, yet Montrachet ages forever. This is one of the mysteries of wine. Montrachet doesn't need these things, that's just the way it is."

On the uniqueness of terroir, even if vineyards are adjacent to one another, separated by only a few meters - "Please do not make me tell you a most vulgar story about two things that are incredibly close to each other, yet smell and taste entirely different."

Thanks Mounir! Check out the "About us" page on Le Moine's website for some genuinely interesting facts about the wine making.

Here are a few photos that haven't made it into the other posts:

Château de Chambolle-Musigny, home of Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier.

The photo below depicts some of what we drank with dinner at Jeremy Seysses' house. There is no label on the 1978 Domaine Dujac Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Aux Combottes. Behind it on the left is the unlabeled 1975 Sigolas-Rabaud Sauternes. To the right is the 1992 Pousse D'Or Pommard Jarolières. To the left is the 2001 Bernard Moreau Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Grand Ruchottes. That unlabeled half bottle behind the decanter is the 2005 Domaine Dujac Clos St. Denis, and the 1996 Noël Verset Cornas is sitting up in the front decanter, trying to open up a bit. By this time the 2001 Domaine Dujac Morey Saint Denis 1er Cru Monts-Luisants was drained and gone. Maybe we're not such lushes as you think - each of these bottles and decanters still has wine remaining, and dinner is over.
Magnums gathering mold in the cellars of Pierre Morey.


Alright, that's it. Thanks for reading through these Burgundy 2008 posts, I hope you enjoyed them. One day I'll go back and you may have to do this all over again...