A Terrible Way to Die; or: A Great Way to Make Wine

“While he lay raving, bound to the camel, they dug a well-like pit, and when they had finished they lifted him off, still trussed tightly, and stood him in it. Then they filled the space around his body with sand and stones, until only his head remained above the earth’s surface. In the faint light of the new moon his shaved pate without it’s turban looked rather like a rock. And still he pleaded with them, calling upon Allah and Sidi Ahmed Ben Moussa to witness his innonence. But he may have been singing a song for all the attention they paid to his words. Presently they set off for Tessalit; in no time they were out of of hearing.
When they had gone the Moungari fell silent, to wait through the cold hours for the sun that would bring the first warmth, then heat, thirst, fire, vision. The next night he did not know where he was, did not feel the cold. The wind blew dust along the ground into his mouth as he sang.”

“The Delicate Prey”
Paul Bowles, 1950

So began the second meeting of the OWGS (Orange Wine Gathering Society), convened on the night of thursday, October 29th by sommelier Levi Dalton at his restaurant, Convivio in New York. one may wonder, of course, what burying someone up to their neck in sand at a tony New York establishment has to with wine? Well the answer is to demonstrate anfora winemaking.

If you don’t already know anfora are clay pots with a (generally) wide body and a thin neck. In ancient times these were used primarily for ease of transporting all manner of goods, from olive oil to fermented fish. Nowadays anfora are mostly relegated to being historical artifacts, but in the past few years they have been reclaimed by a small group of winemakers in Italy and Slovenia looking back into history for traditional methods of vinification as an alternative to ‘industrial” winemaking. Buried undergound up to their necks (now you’re getting it) these anfora allow for a long, slow ferment and maceration unlike anything else.

Now before you go and talk about the novelty of anachonism that seems inherent in the enterprise of making wine in something as seemingly quaint as anfora let me explain something to you. While anfora might seem novel, and hence of questionable value, they have a long history (some 5000+ years) of unbroken use in the country of Georgia, which served as the inspiration for the new generation of winemakers ready to throw off the yoke of convention. This is the proverbial “wine made like their grandfathers made” that everybody keeps talking about, except it was also made by their grandfathers father and their grandfather’s grandfather and so on and so forth until we get to the very first wines ever made (87 points Parker, “young and shrill”).

So the stage is set now, a man is buried up to his neck in sand (why not a real anfora? as you can see above, they are much too large for demonstration purposes) and the first wine is poured. A Vodopivec 2005 Vitovska “Orange Stripe.” An all star cast has shown up for the proceedings including Detroits finest Putnam Weekley and Phillip cooley of Slows Barbecue, author Alice Feiring, winemaker Eric Texier and his lovely wife Laurence, some wino from the Carolinas, Mike Steinberger and the entire east coast contigent of WineDisorder.

The night went on. Castello di Lispida 2005 Amphora was poured. Food was served and we marvelled at the number of glasses that the wait staff managed to fit on the table. Nuclear reactors and French energy policy were discussed (did you know Eric Texier was nuclear scientist?).

Verticals of Josko Gravner “anfora” and “breg” were brought out. things got interesting at this point. Orange wine (white wine with extended skin maceration, one characteristic shared by all the anfora wines) is occasionally accused of reducing terroir, variety, and vintage characteristics. Not so in this case, as each bottle showed very distinctly, some for the better, some for the worse. Discussions arose as to the specifics in each wine. Where had the anfora played a role? Was it marked by this? How much impact does this type of vinification have on the wines? Things were left undecided which is a good place to be. Even Texier had no concrete statements to this effect. More time was needed, more wines were needed to be opened.

Then the reds came out. 2006 and 2005 COS “Pithos” and 2006 Guttarolo “Anfora” Primitivo and 2007 Guttarolo “Anfora” Primitivo. The COS was revelation for me. It was remarkably fresh and bright for a wine that had shown reduced and boring in previous tastings for me. Remind me to give this wine more air time when i open it next. The Guttarolo duo was rustic and funky. VLM broke a glass and it was time to go.

Levi Dalton put together a hell of an event and should be commended. Who else puts together a wine list as esoteric and focused as him, works a starred restaurant, and still has time to organize events like these. In addition he buried a man alive for educational purposes, and let VLM dine at his establishment when no one would have.

Notes: No one was actually buried alive. Reading Paul Bowles has this effect.

I saw the Fuck Buttons live in New York. Worth checking out.

Drink more Equipo Navazos sherry. i’ll be posting about them soon.

Giant novelty bottles of wine guarantee poor quality:

Sit Down, Have a Drink

This is a story about three wines and me.

I had these wines last week at two New York wine bars. it doesn’t particularly matter the wines nor where i had them because this is me at my most subjective “i don’t really care if you agree” so i’ll leave it at that.

So.

I’m standing there, in this New York bar when a bottle appeared that had been towed along from parts unknown. It was a bottle from a very well known natural wine producer. Sans soufre, no temperature control, the whole bit. Me and the person who offered it to me smelled it, sipped it, swished it around our mouths and swallowed. Same old ritual. We discussed it, talked about the producer, the “naturalness” of his methods etc. and i danced around the most serious point about the wine. It was awful. Different reasons were thrown around as to why this was so. Bottle variation, decanting techniques etc. But the truth was i’ve had other bottles from the same producer that have been the same. Rancid, bretty, VA ridden, oxidized messes that have no business being put in anybody’s mouth. Yet there we were, defending them.

A few hours before another bottle was produced. This time from another producer who is making, again, some of the most natural wine on Earth. There was a difference however. This wine needed no apologizing for. It just was. It was vibrant and fresh and pure and quite nearly perfect. It was equal parts drinkable and thoughtful, so you would be excused no matter what pace you drank it at.

The third bottle came a few nights later when, at a different bar, i saw something that i had wanted to try due to a mention months ago. i had no idea whether it was natural or conventional or whatever. It was awful. Extracted, dull, heavy wine. Again, not something i wanted to put in my mouth. Later we discussed the wine with somebody more knowledgeable. It was a wine made with the help of a modern consultant using modern methods. We talked some generic shit about the wine, the style, consultants etc. and left it at that.

Days later something was gnawing at me. Why give a pass to one wine while condemning another so easily? Looking back i have done it before. Plenty of times. Given a bad wine a pass because it was natural, or sans soufre, or sustainable, or traditional, or honest, or whatever else label is floating around. Some wines deserve the praise, others don’t. It has nothing to do with the sensuality of the act of drinking. One wine has a philosophy and a politics attached to it and the other has another, which the winemakers most likely don’t care for one way or another.

In a way, i was putting natural before wine. Philosophy was clouding my aesthetic judgment, and the aesthetics weren’t leaving an impression on me.

i don’t believe in objectivity in aesthetic judgments, or points, or tasting notes that simplify a wine to base parts. i don’t give a shit for blind tasting or scientific evaluation of wine. This isn’t where this blog is going and i would be loathe to go that way. In fact i want it to go the other way, to go back a time when someone telling me they don’t consider Huet natural, or such and such producer innoculates on the sly doesn’t effect what i think of the wines. i don’t want to convey to you something that in the back of my mind i know is false. i also don’t want to convey something that isn’t there in the wine to begin with, some philosophy or idea i imagined.

So what does this mean for me? i’m not sure exactly except for i’d like to start really tasting wine again. i think i know what i really like, for the most part, and i’d like to get back to that kind of drinking. i want wines to hit me like lightingbolts again instead of trying to be under a lightningbolt of my own mental creation, or try to avoid potential lightingbolts because of my own preconceptions about technique, terroir, spoof, etc. i’d like to stop giving a shit about the rest right when i start drinking a bottle of wine. Sure i’ll probably fall 90% into the ‘natural” camp, but that is what it is. i still think some wines made naturally are the best wines on Earth and that fucking with wines can kill them outright. Natural wine is the wine i that got me into wine and it’s what i like, but i hope to never apologize for another bottle of shitty wine or condemn a good bottle of wine.

Do i like wines made with natural yeast?

Yes.

Do i like all wines made with natural yeast?

No

Can i safely distinguish the categories if i know all the fact?

Probably not.

Does this make me full of shit?

Somewhat.

So that is where i stand.

Fall

Ah the joys of having time off from work. For the first time in some 6 years I have not worked less than 40 hours in a single week, so i’ve taken the time to catch up on some of favorite things, mainly the pleasures of cooking and sitting over a bottle of wine for hours with my wife and friends.

last week I met some friends for dinner at Mission Street Food, which is a charity restaurant that opens two nights a week in a Chinese restaurant on mission street. The chefs change everytime, meaning the menu is constantly rotating and I’ve been impressed before, and the concept is awesome, and the causes the proceeds go to are always worthy. So i feel extra bad saying that this night, where mushrooms were the main theme, was awful. i’m not quite sure what happened but every single dish was somehow off (and the wait staff was surly to the extreme, which i attribute to starting to take reservations, which seems to not fir the concept), either tasteless to the extreme, or overseasoned to the point where any mushroom flavor was obliterated. Much of it was an oily mess, and the “tempura” mushrooms were closer to “kentucky fried” given the thick greasy texture. The taste of oily fried mushrooms followed me around for days, sticking to the roof of my mouth and roiling my stomach.

With that said i wouldn’t stop anyone from eating at Mission Street Food unless the theme was “mushrooms” because, like i said, the chef is different everytime, and the charities are great. i’ll probably get a lot of shit for this post, but o well. i’ll be back to MSF soon.

Luckily we had several good bottles of wine, from an ‘01 Huet sparkler drunk at room temperature (one of the few white wines that is rather nice this way, in my opinion) to a ‘04 St. Bris Fie Gris from the domaine of Ghislaine and Jean-Hugues Goisot that was mineral and Burgundian to an extreme degree. Fie Gris, for those unfamiliar, is an almost extinct grape variety grown in the Loire Valley and the St. Bris appelation in Burgundy. It is definitely a wine to check out, especially this one since it exhibits quite a bit of the terroir that one usually associates with Chablis I would tell you more, but just read this article instead. For reds we drank a 2006 Chandon des Briailles Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Ile des Vergelesses, and some other burgundy that escapes me at the moment. Some folks may scream “infanticide” at this one, but really, fuck ‘em. This was gorgeous wine and i’m starting to think that Pernand-Vergelesses is where it’s at in Burgundy.

Later that week i met up with Jake Skakun of Cherries and Clay who is a recent addition to the Bay Area. Having found little in the south bay in the way of wine lists i care for, i took him to Cin-Cin in Los Gatos, which always has a few interesting things to drink. Much to my surprise there was a bottle of 2004 Domaine des Tours Cotes-du-Rhone blanc for only $24, which is a fucking steal and if you ever see such a deal take it. the wine is right on that precarious edge of being too rich, but the washed stone minerality really puts the wine in a nice place. i wish more Rhone whites were like this, instead of being fatty messes of oak and perfume. Next up was a 2006 Chandon des Briailles Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Les Vergelesses. This was nice wine, but where the 2006 was showing some nervosity and freshness, this was definitely a wine for the long haul. It was much tighter and much heavier than the ‘06 and needed a lot more air to get to a nice spot.

Musical interlude from The Fuck Buttons (some name, huh):

Even later that week I had dinner at Soif in Santa Cruz with co-blogger Chris Osborn, his lovely fiancee and Oakland cider producer Arjun Mendiratta. We discussed several things from the fact that it may not be such a good idea to call your wedding blog “Just Another Fucking Wedding Blog” and letting families see it to Richie Hawtin. We also drank some 2007 A et P de Villaine Bourgogne Côte Chalonnaise Les Clous. Really nice, precise clean wine. If anyone asks me to describe what “terroir” is to them i’m going to just make them buy a bunch of burgundies and report back to me. Going from the fie gris to this to a later aligote you start to realize that some things are essential to terroir instead of grape variety. It’s something that i already knew, but it is interesting when the fact it walks up and smacks you in the face.

Continuing this long and winding post i really love the exact moment that i know it’s fall. There is no other season i associate so strongly with a specific feeling than fall. Sure summer, spring, and winter all have their own uniqueness about them, but fall, well, feels like fall. It’s like everything is contracting and becoming simpler, the light, the landscape the air. It’s all very palpable, and despite this being my 29th fall it never ceases to amaze me when i wake one morning and realize that it is fall. Fall also means two of my favorite things pop up squash and apples, which are then promptly made into a soup. that soup is then served with a 2007 Maison William Fevre Chablis “Champs Royaux.” Like the soup, this was better after sitting for a while. Really blurry and unfocused on first opening, but tightening up and becoming revealing after about an hour.
IT’S A MYSTERY
Last night i was treated to something really special (actually four things). Going out to dinner with some friends recently returned from France proved rather fruitful because i got the chance to unburden them of several things that they had hauled back. We started out with a bottle of Alice and Olivia DeMoors recently released 2008 Aligato-O, which is (i believe) their sans soufre aligote (this was actually hauled all the way from Bi-Rite market). Reminds me alot of Thierry Puzelat’s Brin de Chevre. Nicely balanced between high acidity and a little bit of fleshiness. Again, terroir rules variety. Next up was a mystery magnum of sous-voile chardonnay from 1989. Holy shit is this wine good. there is still so much freshness and vivacity left in a bottle from 20 years ago.

After that we had another mystery bottle of savagnin from the Jura at Bar Jules. One day you’ll know this producer. he’s that good. And then a bottle emerged that has become something of an internet legend, cuvee 3.14 from Jean Foillard. This is headspinningly good stuff. There are a handful of winemakers whose wines greatness come from the margins of their wines. There’s something about wines from Jean Foillard (and Paolo Bea, Phillipe Pacalet, Overnoy/Houillon amongst others) that can’t really be described. It’s like an extra bit of purity around the edges of the wine, like seeing something amazing out of the corner of your eye. This wine had that quality. Try some if you can find it no matter. Next person who throws away loads of money on crap Burgundy who compalins about the prices of Cru Beaujolais gets a Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman style dressdown.

Notes:

Good lord i need to blog more. This is simply too much text.

Me and the winedigger will be in New York next week. Hit me up if you want to grab a drink somewhere that is the Ten Bells.

Reading A Wild Sheep Chase last of Murakami’s books is a good idea.

My neighbor is sculpting giant children in his studio. There are five colossal baby heads on the floor. Quite disconcerting walking by at night.

Congratulations to my good friend Robert Cogburn, whose latest game Uncharted 2 is a fantastic piece of work. Robert worked with me when we had to grind it out last year, and he deserves the success.

Having a month off is garbage mustache time:

(The wine was good, the beer in the background was 11% alcohol on wood. Disgusting.)

La Ciccia and Vermentino

We here at saignée (i’m using the we to refer only to me, by the way), being a nervous, fidgety bunch, like wines that get under our skins and root around for a bit, forcing us to refine, focus, rerefine our aesthetic evaluations of them.

Such a wine was discovered for me last week at what has quickly become my favorite restaurant in all of San Francisco, La Ciccia in Noe Valley. La Ciccia is a true husband and wife affair, run by the friendly, charming couple Massimiliano Conti and Lorella Degan who serve up serious, hearty, thoughtful Sardinian cuisine (try the sardinian cheese/honey dessert) accompanied by one of the most focused wine lists i have yet seen. “Focus” is of course a hard word to define here. The wines are all Italian based, of course, but anyone can do that with ease. There is also a good deal of Sardinian wines on the list to further narrow it down, but again not so hard to accomplish. The list is focused because it is so food friendly, and furthermore, food friendly with the food they are serving. Any wine geek with a small amount of knowledge can look at the list and the menu and begin to swim in the pairing possibilities which is, of course (or should be), the point of any good wine list. It is not just a sidebar to the menu, something there for people who like to drink wine, but rather a part of the menu itself.

So what to do when presented with such pairing oppurtunities? Go classic. Sardines and vermentino (if you’re ever in a sardinian restaurant and don’t order sardines, consider yourself ashamed). Like muscadet and oysters, this is a pairing that you really have no business messing with because time is better spent figuring out questions that haven’t already been answered yet. So that is what i did.

Dettori Bianco 2006, IGT Sardinia: This is a wine i’d been meaning to try for a few months ever since it was recommended by Levi Dalton of Convivio fame, and re-recommended by Guilhaume Gerard of former Terroir fame. Even with these strong recommendations i was taken aback by the complexity and freshness of the wine. The color is a dark yellow, something that comes from a brief skin contact, but the wine has little of tannic seriousnessthat one associates with most orange wines. Someday soon one of the basic taste descriptors for vermentino will be “lemon pledge” because, well, it smells like lemon pledge. Not the chemical aspects of the cleaning liquid, rather the “almost lemon but not quite lemon” that you get from it. There is a fabulous clean texture to the wine and a crisp acidic aspect that really balances out the lingering finish. This is still purely vermentino, yet, so much more than what has preceded it for me. Now i have a new itch that needs to be scratched.

Notes: I also had a 1996 Cascina Morassino Barbareco Ovello the same night. It really was a good meal.

Speaking of wine lists, Eric Asimov wrote up the list of Chris Deegan at NOPA two days ago. Chris is a great guy and his wine list is worthy of the praise, so congratulations. Read it: HERE

For whatever reason my blog appeared in The Atlantic yesterday alongside better blogs: HERE. The Article is worth reading for a master sommelier being outraged over natural wines and calling them “bullshit.” Good times.

My next post is about the worst meal i’ve ever eaten. Stay tuned.

2004/1998 Fonsalette Cotes du Rhone

At some point in the past couple of years i convinced myself that i didn’t like grenache, or grenache based wines (although i think the word “grenache” is a beautifully unpretentious name for a grape). How this happened is beyond me, because, as it turns out i rather like grenache when done right (unlike sauvignon blanc which i really don’t care for much at all). Now far from being an unfortunate situation wherein i never try any grenache because of my bias, it is quite rewarding. Everytime i try good grenache i’m amazed i like it at all (“i usually don’t care for grenache, but this is good!”), and as everyone knows, it is better to be a surprised pessimist rather than a blasé optimist (something similiar happened in college when i convinced myself that i didn’t like Henry James for four years. Imagine reading the Golden Bowl with the mindset you’re going to hate it. Mindblowing.)

So if any amateur psychologists want to chime in on why i would do this to myself, please feel free, otherwise let’s get to the wine.

As you probably know, Chateau de Fonsalette is the second label for the much revered Chateau Rayas (they also make a third wine, Domaine des Tours. How they produce such quality with all their wines is a testament to, well i guess the winemaking). Fonsalette, which is half grenache with cinsault and syrah blended into it, is a strikingly feminine wine, especially for those who have it in mind that Rhone is synonymous with bruising high alcohol messes. To use an overused word the wine is “silky” (especially the ‘98 which had very light dusty tannins). The grenache spice was there, as was the syrah savory gameyness, but there was no overwhelming flavor component in either wine. Both wines had a thread of saline minerality running right through the center to put everything in order on both the fruit and savory sides.

So i guess i will continue distrusting grenache for just such wines. Seems more pleasurable that way.

Notes: I like doing notes. I will be doing more in the future.

I met Hardy Wallace of Dirty South Wine Fame. He was rocking a sweet ’stache and is a genuinely nice guy.

Terroir, my employer, will close for a month beginning monday October 5th to repair flood damage. I am going to drive to Seattle and maybe fly to New York in the meantime. Any suggestions, or if anyone wants to meet up, hit me up.

The Cupcake Belt was born on Saturday.

What to eat: Lamb with blue cheese and olives and tomatoes.

What to listen to: The XX

Three of the Best

This past week a good friend of mine and co-worker Guilhaume Gerard has decided to hang up his hat as part owner of San Francisco’s Terroir Natural Wine Merchant to move onto other things. We here at saignée wish him the very best in whatever is next.

So to send Guilhaume off we opened some bottles. But not just bottles, mind you, but bottles, the type where italics are not only nice to have, but necessary to get the point across.

We started out on wednesday of last after work with a bottle of Substance from cult Champagne maker extraordinaire Jacques Selosse. This is not the first time i had ever tasted a wine from Selosse, but it was the first time that i had believed the hype. Now i’ve tasted good champagne before, and i’ve tasted superlative champagne and a lot in between these broad categories, but never anything like this. To call it the best champagne i’ve ever tasted might be damning it with faint praise, to employee such cliched hyperbole might be damning it with bad prose. The Substance is ripe and full where most Champagne is (to borrow a phrase from Lyle Fass) “thin and dilute.” A truly fantastic Champagne that left us scratching our heads at the selosse rose opened right afterwards (a good wine, but not close to the same level).

The next night a longtime customer brought two bottles from his cellar, one 1996 Thierry Allemand “Reynard” Cornas and a 2007 Overnoy Arbois-Pupillon Poulsard. The Cornas, being a vintage wine from a good producer who produces long lasting wines, bought out the immediate question from a number of wine geek friends when i first talked to them “is it ready?” which is always a puzzling question to me since it seems to address not whether a wine is good or bad or what it evoked but rather some strange ideal of wine that exists in their head, or some perceived ideal that they have set up for themselves (i realize that those with a more philosophical bent could expound on this better than me). This happened to me some four times in the past few days and i was perplexed. “Could the wine get better?”, i was asked, or worse, “was it past it’s prime?” Who the fuck knows, really, as it was profoundly, seriously good and one of, if not the, best Cornas i’ve ever drank, ready or not.

so where to move on from here…

The last wine was the wine that i would more readily drink over any single i’ve tasted in my life, and that either says a lot about the wine, or it says a lot about me. It was a simple bottle of 2007 Overnoy Arbois-Pupillon Poulsard. It is simple not because of what it is, but rather what it costs and the ranking of the grape on the strange, invisible, hierarchical scale that seems to exist. the wine, as our customer put it, tastes like it wasn’t made by a person, but rather it sprung up fresh from the ground ready to drink. There is a quality to the wine that exists only in this wine and very few other places. call it soul, call it a weird mineral profile that you can’t quite pin down, call it exuberance, a drinkability that Leonard Maltin might call an “intellectual rollercoaster ride for the tongue.”

In other news: Read the latest Art of Eating from Edward Behr on the topic of Chablis. It will fucking shock you on how good wine writing can be when freed from the constraints of editing (as Alice Feiring pointed out to me).

If you didn’t already guess i am now employeed at Terroir. A lot of the wines i will be writing about i sell, but i would like to keep this blog my blog and mine alone, so feel free to call me out on any bullshit. This career change also should account for my low blogging frequency and general dip in (already low) quality posts. After 5 solid years of being tethered to my chair designing videogames in front of a screen, being in front of the computer for any period of time aside from some work for Terroir is not particularly welcome, but i hope to step it up soon.

Expectations

How many times have you opened a bottle of wine thinking “hey, this wine is going to blow me away” only to come away bored with what is in your glass. Or how many times have you opened a bottle of wine previously thought to be mediocre and had it blow you away? Or worse, how many times have you looked too hard for flaws in a wine that you expected to be mediocre just because you expected it to be mediocre?

Having preconceptions about a wine beforehand can be both a good and a bad thing. On one hand it is nice to open a bottle of wine and think, hey this is going to taste like Saint Joseph and having it conform to this is a pleasant feeling. It confirms things for you, it’s an ego booster, and it means you know your wines (this is one of the pillars of good old fashioned wine snobbery as well). This confirmation can also work the opposite way, you can dismiss wines out of hand because they are “just an 11$ muscadet” (another pillar). Having expecations, however, is never better than when you find a wine that manages to make you rethink everything you thought about the wine previously.

Yesterday i had three wines that ran the spectrum of expecations, from “holy shit this is Jurancon?” to “well that makes me want to fall asleep right here.”

We started out early with a bottle of 2007 Jurancon sec from Domaine de Souch that i figured was going to be thin, acidic, and dumb. Instead what i got was a bracing mineral explosion, like being hit across the teeth except instead of being sent to the hospital and enduring months of reconstructive surgery you just sort of, you know, drink more. The wine had everything that i wasn’t expecting, structure, depth, finish, balance (o lord the balance on this wine).

later we headed up to SF late night mainstay NOPA for a burger with two bottles of wine in tow. The first was a bottle of 2000 Overnoy Savagnin from Arbois-Pupillon, which is, to put it lightly, very revered in certain wine circles. The wines from Overnoy are wines that are difficult to judge in context. They are spoken of in hushed, reverential tones amongst natural wine geeks and on top of this they are very hard to find. So with all that said the wine lives up to its lofty reputation. The wine itself is puposely oxidized and sans-soufre, two things that, if done incorrectly can lead to wines that are, to say it lightly, “fucked up.” Not this wine, which is bright and fresh, a clarion call of wine.

The second bottle was a young bottle of 2006 Saint Joseph from Pierre Gonon that we wanted to test out. Both of us were expecting a collosal bottle of wine, a fresh superstructure tannins that shouldn’t be touched for years and strips the enamel off the teeth of those who dare try it (i seem to want to violence towards teeth today). Instead what we got was a flat, soft, rather boring wine. Neither racy or too young the wine didn’t offer much in the way tannins or structure (or anything else for that matter). It was swiftly dispatched to the kitchen staff when it was known that the wine was not going anywhere. Expectations don’t mean shit.

I wonder what the cooks thought of it?

2006 Leon Barral Faugeres “Jadis”

Every so often i find a wine that when drank reminds me of when i fell in love with wine. A wine that scrubs out the preconceptions that have started to build in the corners of your mind like bathtub mildew. Overthinking wines can be both interesting but it quickly turns boring. When i find myself ponderously mulling the same ounce of Burgundy for half an hour i need somthing that makes me want to drink again. I figured since i’ve been slacking on the blogging as of late i needed something to slap me out of my apathy and make me want to write again.

So last night at work we opened a bottle of 2006 Leon Barral “Jadis” from the Faugeres appelation in the Languedoc. The wine, produced by vigneron Didier Barral (Leon Barral was his grandfather) is comprised of syrah, grenache, mouvedre and carignan, is a case study in complexity. Full of stewed fruit, gravelly tannins, that south-of-france black tar thing that can overwhelm a wine easily but make it beautifully deep in moderation. This is not to say that the wine is too cerebral or geeky. It’s a wine that wants to be consumed in quantity. thinking and talking about are one thing, drinking it is quite another. One colleague quickly described it as “fucking awesome” because other words would just muddle things, and my initial reaction was “fuck” with raised eyebrows (i wish more wine professionals would talk this way).

so my final analysis is:

“fuck“

go out and find some.

‘05 Cru Beaujolais Afternoon

This late summertime is the perfect time to spend on back porches drinking good wine with good people, not blogging. I suppose, however, that since i spent last weekend doing just that, i can break my blogging hiatus to write about it.

On sunday of last my wife and i were invited to a gathering of South Bay oenophiles to drink Beaujolais. And not just any Beaujolais, multiple vintages of cru Beaujolais from the top producers (minus a few). The theme was ’05s with some younger/older stuff for comparison. We drank late into the day, had wonderful food, good company, and lovely weather. i suggest everyone do this someday soon before the summer runs out.

Beaujolais is stuck in a bad place. On one hand it has become maligned as a light, cheap, unsophisticated wine (due mostly to Beaujolais nouveau) not suitable for anyone with any sort of sophisticated palate. On the other hand it’s constantly being defended against these charges to the point of seemingly desperate apologism (“no i swear Beaujolais can be good WHY WONT YOU PEOPLE JUST TRY SOME”). Of course, as in most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, or to say it better: most Beaujolais is awful swill and the best stuff is to be found with a small group of producers who are not only seeking to make the best possible expression of Beaujolais, but to redefine what Beaujolais is known for in the public perception. (If you’re reading this blog you probably know about the famous (in natural wine terms) “Gang of Five” that is largely responsible for the now changing view of Beaujolais, but if you do not go HERE.)

Tasting notes:

Flight one was more recent vintages to get everyone warmed up.
2007 Dominique Piron Beaujolais-Villages Domaine de la Chanaise – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages
Light, velvety texture with some protein shake fruit underscored by some odd chunkiness on the mid-palate that threw the whole thing out of balance. Can’t say i’d drink this again.
2006 Domaine des Terres Dorées (Jean-Paul Brun) Beaujolais Cuvée l’Ancien Vieilles Vignes – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais
A line of clean tart red fruit acidity running right through the middle and hanging on into the finish. This was the perfect wine to get the palate ready for a long day of tasting.
2006 George Descombes Brouilly – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Brouilly
A lot of Chauvet carbonic on this right off the bat. this was the first wine to divide the table, with some people declaring the funk, well funky and others declaring it just, well, funky. Nice dusty tannins on the finish. Now we’re talking.

On a side note i was discussing how exactly to describe the taste of carbonic maceration that doesn’t just rely on “carbonic maceration” as the sole descriptor. We came up with “porous volcanic rocks” but maybe that doesn’t really work either. Thoughts?

2006 Domaine des Terres Dorées (Jean-Paul Brun) Côte de Brouilly – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Côte de Brouilly
Going from lighter to heavier this was showing a lot of structure, darker red fruits, sophisticated acid (what the fuck is sophisticated acid? i don’t know but i’m sticking with it) chalky minerality. This is a “hold” answer on the drink or hold question.

The first flight of the ’05s
2005 George Descombes Brouilly – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Brouilly
Got a lot of red apple acid flavors that i typically associate with Burgundy on this, some chalky dried raspberry, nice whiff of brett (yes i said “nice whiff of brett”). Best wine of the flight according to me.
2005 Domaine Ruet Brouilly – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Brouilly
This one had a serious dropping a stone into a well “thud” on the midpalate. Roundish at first, tastes like gamay, and then…nothing.
2005 Pavillon de Chavannes Côte de Brouilly Cuvée des Ambassades – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Côte de Brouilly
Of all the ’05s this was the most open and ready to drink right now which is always nice when you realize as you’re drinking a wine. Sweaty saline minerality on raspberry and cherries. Also wine of the flight if you can pardon my indecisiveness.
2005 Domaine du Vissoux / Pierre-Marie Chermette Moulin-à-Vent Les Deux Roches – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Moulin-à-Vent
Can i get into Chermette? Everyone else digs his stuff, but i have always felt it out of balance and “angular” (a term i’m loathe to use). This one was tight, acidic, and yes “angular.” Retry in a few years.

Second ‘05 flight killed it. Four different wines, different flavors, just add something generically wine-writerish here for “diversity of terroir/styles/etc.”
2005 Domaine Piron & Lafont Chénas Quartz – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Chénas
If anyone asks me in the future to describe minerality in red wine i’m going to run with this one as my answer. So minerally it gets right past fruit into some copper penny territory. i’m withholding judgment on this one until i try it alone as it’s a nicely singular wine.
2005 Marcel Lapierre Morgon – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon
Sprawling ranch houses made of cranberries built on loose gravelly soil. All structure and acid right now. Another “hold” wine, although it’s drinking nicely right now.
2007 Michel Guignier Morgon Cuvée Traditionelle – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon
This was a softer, juicier riper wine than the others. This reminds me of so many other beaujolais that it is way into “generic” territory.
2005 Guy Breton Morgon Vieilles Vignes – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon
This opened up with a dirty whiff of brett and carbonic but quickly opened up into blackberries dipped in mud. This was another wine that had the table divided between acceptable flaws and just flawed wine. I dig it, others don’t. Isn’t taste a great thing?

Third ‘05 flight didn’t quite do it for me…
2005 Domaine Perrachon Juliénas Château de la Bottiere Cuvée Vieilles Vignes – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Juliénas
Heat damage? Not sure, but this wine was kind of fucked up in a weird way. Calling it flawed.
2005 M.J. Vincent Juliénas Domaine Le Cotoyon – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Juliénas
Toasted wood on Beaujolais? Leave me out of this one. Vanilla-raspberry shake.
2005 Domaine du Vissoux / Pierre-Marie Chermette Fleurie Les Garants – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Fleurie
OK i’ll admit i warmed up to this wine despite my resistance to Chermette. Started out weird again but with some breathing time it opened up into nice black fruits and balanced acidity.
2005 Coudert Fleurie Clos de la Roilette – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Fleurie
Tight as a drum. Give this one time or, as a coworker likes to say, you’re gums will be bleeding.

Some older stuff wrapped up the day.
2002 Jean-Paul Thevenet Morgon Vieilles Vignes – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon
People oftentimes say not to compare wines to one another and instead focus on the wine in the glass, but seriously with a wine like this it is impossible to not use it as a reference point. Everything has integrated so nicely that the wine is telling the rest of the wines what they can become in a good vintage.
2002 Guy Breton Morgon Vieilles Vignes – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Morgon
Corked.
2002 Coudert Fleurie Clos de la Roilette – France, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Fleurie
Last wine of the day always gets the “i think it was good so i’ll go with that because i can’t remember” tasting note. Seriously assessing wine correctly at this point after a corked wine is kind of pointless for me. Call it lazy or whatever, but at least it’s honest.

Thanks to Sandy for hosting, and to Richard for the excellent photos.

“Keep tasting real wines and take care.”

i’m slowly working on a few wrap-up posts for this whole affair that i plan to post in the next couple days. i just haven’t felt like blogging at all during these lazy summer days and people are still perusing the 31 Days so i’ve kept pretty hands off.

i’ve been drinking some tremendous wines as of late that i hope to write about soon, including a Phillipe Pacalet Charmes-Chamberting Grand Cru, Vouette et Sorbée Saignée de Sorbée, and a Dard et Ribo Pe de Loup. i also met with the talented NOPA sous chef Richie Nakano and had a post planned featuring him, but it has since been discarded into the dustbin of memory due to malaise. Oh well. Do check out Richie’s blog, linecook415 as it one the best things going for anyone interested in food. We drank a bottle of 2007 Dard et Ribo Crozes Hermitage blanc. It was fucking great, light beautiful wine. None of that perfumed heaviness that dominates so many Rhone whites.

i do want to take a minute to say thanks to all the people who contributed to this project, from the people who do this professionally and felt motivated by a passion for the subject to write for free to the people who write for free and are simply passionate. the whole project went off better than i could have ever imagined and i have gotten a lot of praise that belongs to every single one of you.

i would also like to share with you a short email i received from Christine & Eric Nicolas
regarding my post about their wine that sums up my feelings abou this perfectly:

“Keep tasting real wines and take care.”

Seems about right, doesn’t it?

- Cory Cartwright

Follow day by day here: http://saignee.wordpress.com/31-days-of-natural-wine/

Up next: A wrap up post and some thoughts on responsibility; or: Lyle Fass’ 62 Days of Spoofilated Wine