Sophie's Glass

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to collect my thoughts after my trip to Champagne. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been busy drinking Champagne. I came back from the region with an unquenchable thirst for this bubbly beverage. Perhaps it’s writers block, or the difficulty of deciding which of the growers I visited to begin with. I think the truth, though, is that while Champagne, the wine, is unparalleled (in my opinion), Champagne, the region, can be unappetizing to those of us who value organic viticulture and associate the Right Kind of wine with the lives of bucolic country farmers.

Champagne – like Bordeaux, I imagine – is inherently a little bit spoofilated, thus it’s all the more necessary and all the more difficult to seek out growers who farm well and make Real Wine. Not everyone thinks this is a crucial pursuit. Many of my peers who care about Real Wine would prefer to write off Champagne the way we generally write off Bordeaux. I can’t do that because I love to drink Champagne, which means that finding good growers in the region isn’t just a matter of my integrity as a wine buyer; it’s a matter of satisfying my own wine needs.

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As you may know, dear reader, I just came back from France, where I spent six days visiting winemakers in Champagne. This was the second time I had been to Champagne and my first visit was just a day and a half. There will be more on Champagne, but I need to process the barrage of information I took in over a short period of time and in a foreign language. At the end of my six days in Champagne, I loaded my bag – heavy with Champagne samples – into my rental car, and headed for the Jura.

It’s about three and a half hours from Champagne to Poligny. This was the third time I’d been to the Jura and it felt fantastic to be back. A smile spread across my face as I sped by the brown highway sign: “Vous êtes dans la Région du Jura” or it might welcome the driver to Franche-Comté; I don’t remember the exact wording. I pondered this particular joy as I hummed along with horrendous club hits issuing forth from the ubiquitous French radio station, Skyrock. I likened the feeling to returning to the Adirondacks, where I went every summer with my parents as a kid, a twinge of familiarity heightening the happiness.

Within minutes of having de-bagged at Ludwig and Nathalie’s (these are the lovely people behind Domaine les Chais de Vieux Bourg), I was back in the car with Ludwig. He wanted to take me to see his vineyards. First we drove up and up to the top of a plateau between Poligny and Château-Chalon. At the top of the plateau, there was green all around us and an icy wind from the north blew steadily. Ludwig told me that the cool, dry wind is a savior for growers who don’t want to use chemicals to fight rot. We stopped at an overlook and stared into the depths, a straight drop down to a tiny cluster of very old houses beneath. As we draw similarities between Burgundy and the Jura, it’s important to note that these breath-taking geological formations that display three distinct types of soil do not occur in Burgundy.  It’s true that both regions are characterized by Jurassic limestone soil, but the Jura is more drastic, more marginal. “This is where I come to forage for mushrooms. We will have some with dinner tonight,” said Ludwig as we climbed back into the car.

Our next stop was Château-Chalon, where Ludwig purchased .35 hectares of land last year. I did not bring my camera with me on this vital excursion, so I will have to try to make words do justice to the landscape. Château-Chalon, the village, perches at the top of a steep, south-facing ravine, planted entirely to vines, many of the plots terraced because they are too steep to be worked otherwise. For me, places like this give rise to one specific thought: ‘God came down and said “let’s put vines here.”’ The limestone heavy vineyards are peppered with blue marl and little flat stones like the gallets of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that reflect heat back to the vines at night. We tramped around on Ludwig’s plot, me with my mouth agape, marveling at the incredible beauty of it all, Ludwig telling me what a pain in the ass it had been to remove all the large stones last spring in order to plant vines.

Next we went to see the vineyard that gives us Ludwig’s Chardonnay “Sous les Cerisiers,” “BB1,” a blend of Savagnin and Chardonnay, Poulsard, and Savagnin Noir. Close to Étoile, Château-Chalon, and Arlay, all, it’s a small, basically co-planted vineyard with ancient, calcareous oyster shells in the soil. (I brought home two in my suitcase, but Ludwig confessed that the best calcareous oysters had been snapped up by visiting Japanese clients the week before. Drat.) Ludwig bought the vineyard from an older gentleman looking to retire, who had so much antipathy toward his neighbors that he preferred to sell the vineyard to a foreigner. There have been many fortunate stories in Ludwig’s career as a vigneron, including the circumstances that brought him his tiny piece of Château-Chalon: again, a gentleman looking to sell gave Ludwig a ridiculously low price on the land telling him “I can see that you need to make Château-Chalon.”

This tale of Ludwig’s acquisition of a piece of Château-Chalon brings me to the fact that I really like the people of the Jura. In my (albeit limited) experience, Jurassians are rarely motivated by either money or fame; they live in a beautiful place, capable of yielding remarkable wines; they have un-spoofilated lives; they sell the majority of their production locally; for the most part they don’t care whether their bottles are sold in fancy shops and restaurants; they are often really nice, generous people. In short, they are the antithesis of New Yorkers. And, in fact, I have never spent time in a place as diametrically opposed to New York as the Jura. Now, this is a clear oversimplification, a case of “the Poulsard is always fresher on the other side of the pond,” as well as a window into my feelings about New York. I’m reconciled to New York, but there must be contrast and the Jura as contrast is pretty unparalleled.

I also found the Jura to be a welcome contrast to Champagne, where the evidence of money is all around and it must be a colossal battle for a vigneron to choose making good wine over the often more lucrative alternative: selling grapes to a négociant. Furthermore, and growers in Champagne will tell you this, the soil in Champagne is dead from decades of treatment with herbicides, fertilizers, systemic antibiotic sprays, roundup, etc…, meaning that the region is kind of an agricultural bummer, even though the wines it yeilds are some of my favorites on the planet. Where Champagne is somewhat bleak and desolate, the Jura is green, vibrant, very much alive, full of growers with a deep regard for the earth beneath them and the relationship between its health and the creation of good wine. I digress.

The sun had set chez Bindernagel and Ludwig and I headed to the cellar, a funny, vast old cellar with room for way more wine than Ludwig makes at this point. Often he only harvests about 25 hectoliters/hectare. With a little over two hectares, this makes the production microscopic. We tasted 2010 wines out of barrel. The Poulsard was ethereally light, gleaming orange-y red, tangy, and full of the acidity found in sour plums, blood oranges, and pomegranates. The Savagnin Noir was much richer and darker, very savory, and full of crushed raspberries and flowers on the palate. The wines were compelling, each in its own way. “BB1” was a bit quiet out of the barrel. It was dark and cold and the wine was hard to read.

With dinner we tasted the current releases of Ludwig’s wines out of bottle. We ate shaved fennel dressed in citrus juice and olive oil, garnished with fennel fronds. We tried 2009 “BB1” and 2009 “Sous les Cerisiers.” Both had only been in bottle for a week and were shocked from the turbulence of the bottling process. Both also showed the characteristic lack of acidity of the vintage, but I find one of the most appealing aspects of Ludwig’s wines to be their transparency to vintage. “Cerisiers” was more open than “BB1,” but “BB1” had the stuffing of a good wine lurking below the surface; it would emerge on day two. Ludwig added a touch more sulfur than he usually does at bottling: 2 grams. The reason, he told me, was that it had been remarkably cold and he needed the stability of an extra gram of sulfur to get the wine into bottle successfully in the cold. I would like to make further inquiries on this subject.

We moved on to Ludwig’s Étoile, which we will never see in the states because the demand in France is high and the production is tiny. He owns a third of a hectare in Étoile, a “Grand Cru” of the Jura with only about 15 or so vignerons. This shell-y, lightly oxidative yet chiseled Chardonnay was delicious alongside trout topped with a quenelle of whipped cream, wasabi, and green sesame seeds.  Nathalie’s food is experimental yet traditional. She makes heavenly gougères and about twenty types of jam that are served at breakfast. She also works in the vineyards, doing much of the vine training herself. Stop me if I’m painting too idyllic a portrait of life chez Bindernagel.

Ludwig had prepared the entrée: roast chicken with trumpet mushrooms in cream, potatoes (he’s German; there must always be potatoes at the table), and delicately steamed root vegetables. We drank 2009 Savagnin Noir and Poulsard, generally rich because of the vintage, but good partners for the rich food in front of us. Afterward an array of cheese was presented, Comté for the 2004 Vin Jaune, an easy-going rendition of the regional specialty, and blue cheese for the Macvin. Ludwig and Nathalie wanted me to try the Vin Jaune with almond cookies, essentially pulverized nuts with a touch of sugar held together by egg whites. Always anxious to find a new harmony between food and wine, a lively debate ensued between Ludwig and Nathalie about the merits of various sweets with Vin Jaune. (I prefer cheese.) Before I knew it, we were discussing Nature versus Nurture over sips of Gentian, a bracing digestive, and – let me tell you – if you haven’t argued “Nature V. Nurture” in a foreign language at the end of a long meal, you haven’t lived.

I’m obliged to keep many of the details of the following day’s adventure in Franche-Comté to myself for the moment. Suffice it to say, I had the good fortune to see several growers of whom I am quite fond: Alice and Charles of Domaine l’Octavin, whose wines seem to become more and more delicious with each passing vintage, Stéphane Tissot, whose 2011 Poulsards are to die for, Fan-fan Ganevat, one of the region’s stars, Jean-François Bourdy, whose family has been making Château-Chalon since the 16^th Century. Then, and for this I must thank Stéphane Tissot, who made it a point to introduce me, I met Pierre Overnoy. Words fail me here. His effect on me was somewhat like Jacques Puffeney’s several years ago: that of provoking a tear of overwhelmed happiness. I told him that I use his interviews to practice my French. It was as much as I could muster.

In the early evening, I joined two new friends for a stroll in the village of Baume-les-Messieurs, a town in which everything is quaint and pretty, from the old Abbey to the babbling brook to the cat sunning herself on a rock staircase. We strolled and chatted and took pictures and sometimes just walked in reflective silence, individually thankful for the place, its people and its wines. A frisky baby goat captivated us and before long we were smitten with the whole goat family. We found ourselves cooing and making inconsequential little observations about the goats, stalling and not returning to our cars. We didn’t want the day to end.

Creatively using things in the fridge without anything additional or the help of a recipe is a favorite pass-time of mine. Some of my favorite culinary inspirations have been the result of this. (Fennel, carrot, and onion with paprika on couscous topped with poached egg and feta, for one. If you make this dish, by the way, pair it with a white wine from the Roussillon such as Loic Roure’s “Cours Toujours.”)

Last Sunday – Sundays being nights I often lose myself in the creation of a meal just for me – I undertook a round of use-those-ingredients. The majority of the ingredients on hand had been destined for an Ed Behr’s chicken legs braised in wine project that had been abandoned. The chicken legs had been relegated to the freezer, but the other ingredients were still in my fridge. I decided to make a leek and potato omelet, structurally along the lines of a Spanish tortilla but with the comforting flavors of potato leek soup, and grated carrot salad (“carotte rapée”).

The most onerous task in the preparation of this simple repast is the grating of the carrots; I’m proud to say I tackled it first and without procrastination. As I grated, my mind began to wander. Specifically, I started to think about my mother, who departed the planet nearly four years ago… very sad for me, also for the planet, a dull place without her.

My mother – a woman who never used a recipe to make a savory dish yet never attempted a desert without one – was a remarkable cook. I’ll never refer to her as a “chef” because she wasn’t. She was a professional baker for years, then she was a housewife who cooked for papa and me, then, when I reached middle school, she became a teacher who worked with Hispanic immigrant families in rural North Carolina. I spent much of my young life watching and emulating my mom in the kitchen.

I was not very old at all when she taught me how to roll out pastry dough (pate sucrée), one quarter turn for each sweep with the rolling pin, so the dough thins and stretches evenly. I was slightly older when she taught me how to kneed bread, fold, push down in the center with a well-floured palm. There were so many little tips to gather and remember: egg whites whip better in a copper bowl, cream in a chilled stainless steel one, use finely diced vegetables in a tomato sauce to give the textural impression of meat, throw sliced, hard-scrambled egg into a stir-fry to add protein, seal the rice pot closed with a sheet of waxed paper to keep the rice from turning soggy, no sudden moves or jumping when the soufflé or sponge cake is in the oven, the list goes on and on and on… Today, I consider that my culinary instincts are inherited from my mother; my instincts are, in fact, nothing more than a compilation of tidbits gleaned from her and stored away.

We ate a lot of carotte rapée when I was a kid, which is why the act of grating a carrot reminds me of my mom, though her carrot salad was not quite like mine. Hers was simply carrots and Italian parsley dressed with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I spoofilate my carrot salad a bit by adding some thinly sliced celery and dressing the whole business in shallot and grainy mustard vinaigrette. (Sometimes I have even been known to add a touch of mayonnaise; she’s turning in the grave.)

By the time I’d put the finishing touches on my carrot salad, I’d unintentionally accessed another mental file of memories of my mother. When I was a teenager, we began talking about wine. We’d traverse the isles at the local co-op, Weaver Street Market, which had a far better wine selection than the grocery store. Her wine proclivities presented themselves in a stream of consciousness fashion and were often paired with a facial expression. Comments about “a good Bordeaux” were accompanied by a grinding and bearing of the teeth. I later realized this face was evocative of Bordeaux’s firm tannins. “Mmmm Mor-GON” with emphasis heavily on the second syllable implied the superiority of Morgon to any other Beaujolais. “Cahors” was uttered in a wild, throaty undertone.

She liked solid, rustic red wine, high in acidity, tannic, not fruity. She liked wines that went with food and dining was the only context in which she drank wine. Long before I developed a taste for it, I asked what she found to like in the sour-tasting Chianti she would often buy for dinner. Her explanation wasn’t satisfactory, but I’d come to understand down the road that acidity in wine is always needed at the table to enliven the palate and contrast fat in the food.

New world wine never darkened the doors of my home growing up, and when I went through a brief affinity for Shiraz at the tender age of nineteen, she was plainly disgusted: “Yuck. How can you drink that sweet shit?” Oh! And she loved bubbles, even the ordinary Gruet Blanc de Noirs that became the family go-to when she discovered it was drier than comparably priced European bubbles. In a sense, even my wine instincts were heavily shaped by her. I’m fortunate, and I feel fortunate even when my memories inevitably lead me to her death and I recall feeding her little spoonfuls of Fromager d’Affinois washed down with sips of Pepière Muscadet a few days before the end of her life. Sigh.

Moving on, for the leek and potato omelet, I started with diced potatoes, sliced washed leeks, and half an onion also in small dice. Again, I thought of my mom telling me that a mixture of butter and olive oil works well for sautéing. The butter imparts its hedonistic flavor; olive oil raises the burning temperature. Season the whole business with salt and white pepper; black pepper not only tastes slightly different, it makes black splotches in a pan full of spring-like whites, pale greens, and (eventually) yellows. Never use garlic with potatoes and leeks; its pungency will take over and stifle the expression of the leeks. Once the base ingredients were cooked, I added beaten eggs, topped the whole business with a layer of Parmesan, and threw the pan in the oven to finish cooking.  Results were good.

I usually dine alone; often, these days with a New Yorker open at the table. To be honest, I was very happy with this meal and I had just opened a bottle of 2010 Sauvignon Blanc “Le Roussignoux” from Christophe Foucher of La Lunotte, which put the finishing touches on my enjoyment of the moment.

La Lunotte is a small Domaine (5.5 hectares, some rented) in the Loire, on a south-facing bank of the Cher, to be more specific, close to Chinon and Touraine. Christophe Foucher came to winemaking because his wife’s family owned a few vineyards here; he began by helping his father-in-law in the vines. Then, as Bert from “Wine Terroirs” writes, he “got the virus.” As with many of my favorite vignerons, he went to winemaking school, where he was taught to use chemicals and inoculate with cultured yeast. He rejected these indoctrinations and sought to make wine more naturally. About half of Christophe’s vineyards are planted to Sauvignon Blanc, the rest to Menu Pineau, Gamay, Cot, and Cabernet Franc.

The first wine I loved from Christophe was his blend of Sauvignon and Menu Pineau called “Trio,” a mystifying name given that there are only two varieties in the blend. “Le Roussignoux,” from one of Christophe’s Sauvignon vineyards, shows some of the qualities of “Trio,” bracing acidity and minerality in an almost creamy, silken frame. I often think that Loire wines attain this type of balance from lack of filtration; there’s richness in part because there are – literally – very fine particles in the wine. The wine has a slight golden hue and is clearly allowed to come into contact with oxygen during the winemaking, in this case because Christophe uses old barrels for the élèvage. There is no sulfur added at any stage of the winemaking, but Christophe, like a number of Loire Valley vignerons, uses a sulfurous candle to cleanse the barrels between racking. (At the end of the day, I’d prefer barrels cleansed with a sulfur wick to wine with liquid sulfur added.) In a recent email, Christophe told us that 2010 “Le Roussignoux” had 29 milligrams total sulfur per liter. This is basically nothing. The wine has great character, the character of Sauvignon, also of terroir, also a bit of the character of the man and his style.

For the hundredth time, Proustian reflections led me through a series of ups and downs: the joy of creating a meal, the nostalgia brought about by memory, the sadness at the loss of a loved one… to a delicious glass of wine harmonizing with two simple dishes. I thought about instinct and the events that have made me a person who cares about the minutiae of food and wine. It sounds cheesy, but I was glad that these events had put me in contact with Christophe Foucher through his wine. Who knows? Perhaps my instincts in the kitchen are a bit like Christophe’s in the cellar…

When I applied to work at Chambers Street Wines, I listed the Languedoc and Roussillon as regions of particular interest to me, meaning that I hoped to take part in the placement of wines from Corbières, Faugères, Saint-Chinian, Côtes Catalanes, etc… on our shelves. There were numerous reasons this detail found its way onto my resume, not the least significant of which was that it seemed unlikely that I’d get to take part in the buying decisions related to Burgundy, Champagne, Loire, Beaujolais, all of Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria… The more prestigious European buying sections were taken and, heaven forbid, I’d become a new world wine buyer.

I’d been drinking a lot of southern French wine because I could afford to. (The arrival of carbonic maceration and low sulfur wine-making to the south of France meant that I could find juicy, easy drinking Carignan, Grenache, Syrah type blends that didn’t pummel me with tannins and made good companions to Tuesday nights with some cheese and a few episodes of Gossip Girl on DVD.) Furthermore, my oldest friend’s mother owns a house in the south of France, close to Uzès, where the Rhône, Provence, and the Languedoc run together; consequently I’d spent a fair amount of time there. It seemed logical to make myself a specialist on the wines of southern France. Once enrolled at Chambers, this wine buying position soon morphed into that of “miscellaneous” French wine buyer and encompassed the southwest and Provence as well as the Jura and the Savoie in the far east (not to be discussed here). Continue reading →

At the risk of discrediting myself as a Serious Wine Professional, I like to seek out frivolous occasions to enjoy wine, from chugging cold Tissot Trousseau from the bottle in front of a grill fire, to sipping Barral Faugères out of a cut open Badoit bottle in front of the Sacre Coeur. I believe that we wine pros often take ourselves too seriously; we take the conditions surrounding our wine experiences too seriously. Was the bottle treated properly, aged properly, decanted properly? Was the glassware the correct shape? Was the food pairing perfect? This is not to underrate the majesty of those transcendental moments, few and far between, when the wine has been open just the right amount of time, its flavors humming synergistic-ally with the dish in front of you. I recently enjoyed a ’74 F. Rinaldi Barolo under such ideal conditions, a mushroom risotto in front of me, the wine having been open for about five hours. This is a particular type of memorable wine encounter. Then there’s the lighthearted wine encounter, in which the conditions, the temperature, the glassware, the food pairing aren’t perfect, but you have uncomplicated fun drinking the wine.

I can’t quite recall the first time I brought wine into a movie theater. It’s definitely a young tradition, one that only dates back to my move to New York. The tradition began when I was working at Astor Wines and Spirits on 4^th and Lafayette, just a few short blocks from two big theaters: Union Square and East Village Cinemas on 2^nd Avenue and 12^th Street. It didn’t occur to me to sneak wine into North Carolina theaters, perhaps because they are generally smaller, more intimate, less anonymous, and less crowded. Maybe I was less of a drunk then, more able to withstand a three hour long film without a glass of wine in my hand. Regardless of the catalyst for the onset of this tradition, I quickly realized that wine introduces an additional element of relaxation and enjoyment to the experience of a movie. Here are some tips for drinking wine at the movies.

1) Bubbly. If you’re like me (which 0bservation tells me few people actually are in this particular regard), you’ll have brought your own snacks to the theater: sandwiches, cheese, chips, but you won’t be enjoying a full-on meal, which means you’ll need something that’s good on its own. Leave the Bordeaux, the Grand Cru Burgundy (as if anyone would actually lug their Musigny to the movie theater), the Barolo, basically any complex, structured wine at home and opt for something bubbly (white wine and rosé are also fine choices, but bubbly is best). By the same token, that bone-dry, stainless steel raised Champagne you’ve been curious about is not the best choice. You’ll want something that’s relatively easy and, should you have forgotten to bring snacks, generous bubbly wines can prove remarkably well-suited to popcorn.

2) Open your bottle in advance. I first brought wine into the movies in 2008. The movie, ironically, was “Bottle Shock,” a fairly lowbrow flick about Bo Barrett, the history of Chateau Montelena, and the famous mid ‘70s tasting at which California wines beat French wines at a blind tasting featuring French judges. Without dwelling on the movie, which most people hated but I enjoyed for the sake of the banal entertainment it offered, I learned a valuable lesson: open your bottle ahead of time, especially if it’s sealed with a crown cap. My good friend, Curtis, from Montreal was in town for the weekend and we decided to celebrate his visit to New York as well as our epic morning run from Bushwick to the west village with a movie and a bottle of Rosé Cava from a forgettable producer in the Jorge Ordoñez portfolio. The lights dimmed and the previews began. How were we going to open the bottle without the celebratory pop of News Years Eve ringing out through the theater, disturbing our neighbors, and possibly arousing the attention of the theater attendants? I proposed to take the wine to the bathroom to open it. Curtis scoffed: “It’s a movie about wine! No one is going to care if we’re drinking wine; it’s appropriate. Besides other people probably are too.” After some additional dithering, I let Curtis open the wine; no one seemed to mind (at least no one turned around to give us the hairy eyeball and we didn’t get thrown out), and we had a lovely time.

3) If you’re not averse to drinking something simple, which you shouldn’t be, really, because the movie is the focus, bring a screw cap wine or a tetra pack wine. Shortly after my experience with Curtis, I brought two bottles of Astor-exclusive cheap Prosecco to “James Bond: Quantum of Solace.” Screw caps made the bottles easy to open. The wine was, of course, forgettable; the movie, however, was fun and its faint, action-packed trashiness seemed a good match for the metallic, lightly sweet, heavily yeasted and sulfured Prosecco. I learned that if the movie is long, you’ll need more than one bottle of wine for two people. In the same era, I brought Yellow and Blue Malbec to “Milk” with Sean Penn. (Before you criticize my choice, please understand that this is an inoffensive wine that is environmentally friendly, that I was poorer at that time, that the wine was a sample from a supplier, and that the tetra pack meant my load was significantly lighter than it would have been if I’d brought a bottle. The same principle that makes tetras better than bottles for the environment makes them better for movie theaters as well.) It would seem to contradict point 1) to advocate Malbec at the movies given that Malbec is generally ponderous, heavy, and tannic, and I won’t repeat this experience, but theoretically if good wine came in tetras, a tetra would be a great option for the theater.

4) Avoid collapsible plastic cups. They do not work and you’ll wind up with wine on your clothes. I gave my set of Heidsick-Monopole camping cups numerous tries and was disappointed every time. Now I use jelly jars or mustard jars, which add weight to my bag, but are more fun to drink out of than flimsy plastic cups, which, I believe, impart some of their plastic-iness to the wine. Also, you’ll lessen overall dribbling if you can screw the lid on when you’re through drinking.

5) Extreme wines can be very good with extreme movies. On one of the sweltering days this past summer (before I had an air conditioner), I went to see “X-Men.” Without time to visit one of the little wine boutiques in my neighborhood, I was limited to the contents of my fridge. I took ’09 Texier Rosé “L’Anecdot’hic,” a wine that is unusual both in story and taste. Comprising 26 grape varieties planted close to Eric’s house in Charnay, the vineyard is farmed using the Fukuaka method of non-intervention farming. The wine is deep, rich, and fruity for rosé, with a sense of cherry sweetness and a great finish. Even as James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were pitting their super powers against one another’s at the end of the film, a CGI extravaganza of epic proportions, the wine sang through with a presence all its own.

6) Special occasions call for special movies… and special wines. I have essentially one partner in crime when it comes to drinking wine in movie theaters; we’ve been doing it together for years. He picks the movie and buys the tickets; I bring the wine. The year before last, we began a meta-tradition of going to the movies on New Years Day. Aside from the fact that many people see movies on January 1^st, therefore the theaters are crowded, NYD is a perfect day for this activity. Always off work, a bit groggy from the previous night’s festivities, in search of something relaxing to do in the afternoon or evening, New Years resolutions at bay until January 2^nd , these are the conditions under which we enter the theater. NYD 2011 we saw “True Grit,” the excellent Cohen Brothers remake of an old western. To drink we had 2005 Larmandier-Bernier Grand Cru Cramant, not Pierre Larmandier’s best effort in my opinion, but an ideal wine for the theatre: soft from the vintage, slightly nutty and mushroom-y, hinting at evolution but without being a wine I’d actually want to age. The wine was good enough not to do a disservice to the movie by any means, but not so fantastic that it distracted from quirkily funny Cohen Brothers dialogue, the well-wrought Jeff Bridges character and the superb performance of Hailee Steinfield.

NYD 2012, just a few weeks ago, we saw the long-awaited remake of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” We drank Chidaine sparkling Montlouis, followed by a glass each of ’10 Luiz Rodriguez Ribeiro Blanco. The Chidaine, delightfully aromatic and soft enough to be a good match for popcorn, was delicious. Though I don’t put this sparkling Chenin in the same category as the excellent Vourvray Brut Non-Dosé from Francois Pinon, I am fond of the wine and seek it out from time to time. A field blend of Treixadura, Godello, Albariño, and Caiño Blanco from Galicia in northwestern Spain, the Rodriguez was excellent, a wine that I would advocate any white wine lover to try. Fresh and rocky on the nose, floral, honeyed, layered, this wine hints at Loire Valley Chenin as well as white Burgundy. The finish boasts the kind of minerality that is so mouth-coating, it almost feels tannic. I had the pleasure of tasting with Rodriguez last year; his higher end Blanco “Escolma,” in the price range of a Puligny-Montrachet, is the best Spanish white wine I’ve had to date. As for the movie, you should see it yourself while it’s still in the theaters: thrilling, thought and conversation provoking, beautiful, and possessed of a gripping story line, the movie was great. I haven’t seen the original, nor have I read the books, which meant that the villain remained a mystery until the very end; I was on the edge of my seat, a jelly jar of Ribeiro Blanco in my hand, bits of popcorn on my pants. (A vaguely ironic aside: the wines, in fact all the beverages in “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” are extremely well chosen. After the film, I recommend a warm apartment, a Grand Cru Burgundy, and a roast chicken.) Salut!

I can’t speak for the landscape of Champagne during the summer months, but driving around during the winter is depressing. There are few healthy vineyards; most we saw were desolate and brown with no green at all between the vines to indicate biodiversity. It’s hard to be organic in Champagne due to the humidity of the region, which makes most grape growers turn to anti-fungal agents. The view from the car window en route to Cauroy-lès-Hermonville, in the very north of Champagne, alternated between frigid, lifeless vineyards, and sad, highway-side trees, giant cotton balls of mistletoe impaled on them, mistletoe slowly sapping the tree’s life. We arrived chez Francis Boulard as the pale gray daytime sky became the darker gray evening sky; it was about 4:30 pm.

I have a longstanding fondness for the wines of Domaine Raymond Boulard, named after Francis’ father (Francis began making the wines at his father’s estate in the ’70s) Recently Domaine Raymond Boulard was divided and Francis set out on his own with the help of his daughter. Francis has only a few hectares spread between the Vallée de la Marne, Mailly, and the Massif de Saint Thierry. The vineyards closest to the winery – including the fabulous “Rachais” vineyard – are in the Massif de Saint Thierry. Raymond has been farming his Saint Thierry vineyards organically since 2007 and plans to convert his Marne and Mailly vineyards. He toys with biodynamism, always picking on a fruit day, perhaps more out of superstition than actual belief.  He makes a pied de cuve, which he keeps in case fermentations do not begin spontaneously. These are very British Champagnes, raised entirely in wood, the “Petraea,” a multi-vintage Champagne comprising vintages going back to ’97. In contrast to Collin’s wines, which only go through malolactic fermentation when it happens naturally, Boulard’s wines always go through malo, even if it means he has to warm the cellar to spark the process. The wines have a rich, staid, mellow feel to them. Boulard is older than Collin, more of a traditionalist, less of a trailblazer, salt of the earth. Reserved, rotund and a bit gnome-like, it took him an hour to warm to our large, boisterous group.

First we tasted wines from “Les Murgiers,” Boulard’s vineyard in Vallée de la Marne. This wine is 70% Meunier and 30% Noir, a Blanc de Noirs, from 25-year-old, selection massale vines grown on clay and chalk soil. Boulard showed us two versions of this wine: one dosed with 5 grams, the other un-dosed. The dosed wine was rich, vinous, and nutty, offering some of the savory, mushroom-y notes I associate with Pinot Meunier. It was a generous wine that felt both luxurious and complex. The non-dose wine was steelier aromatically, the honey and nut tones of the dosed wine having been replaced by something greener, more earth-driven. Even the non-dosé “Murgiers” was less austere than Collin’s wines had been, with a fine, appealing mousse. My notes indicate that I preferred the dosed wine. Who knows if that would be true now? I find that my taste in Champagne has grown drier and drier. On the other hand, different wines find balance with different amounts of dosage… on none at all.

Next came Boulard’s Grand Cru Mailly from clay and limestone soil, and, again, we tasted a dosed version and an un-dosed version. From the limestone heavy eastern part of the Marne, both iterations of this wine were extremely minerally, light and laser-like in spite of their high percentage of Pinot Noir (90%), and Boulard’s heavy wood regime. In the case of Mailly, I preferred the un-dosed wine, which was ripe, toasty, focused, and well-balanced. There’s an expletive in my notes, which means either that I loved the wine, or that I had stopped spitting… or both. Here I began to speculate that there’s a connection between superior terroir and the ability to make good bone dry Champagne. Mailly is a Grand Cru; maybe the grapes are riper, more flavorful than the ones from “Murgiers,” and better able to produce a balanced wine in an extra dry style. One day I’ll ask Peter Liem about this…

At last the moment I’d been waiting for: “Petraea” and “Rachais.” “Petraea” is named for the kind of oak tree that yields the barrels, Francis told us. He uses 205 liter barrels, which are the traditional size in Champagne, slightly smaller than the typical Burgundy barrel. The wine is 60% Pinot Noir with 20% Chardonnay and 20% Meunier. The oldest vintage in this particular version of the wine is ’97 and the wine is bottled at five atmospheres, rendering a more delicate mousse. This choice to bottle with less pressure is yet another topic I’ll need to pester Peter with if I have the chance. I believe the idea is that Champagne bottled with less pressure is more wine-like; with less bubble comes more vinosity.  “Petraea” was super, if oddly marked by wood, extra dry but balanced as such. “Rachais,” a name derived from “Rachet,” the word for a new shoot that grows in after an old one has been cut, is a lieu-dit close to Boulard’s winery. The vineyard is planted to old vine Chardonnay and makes a wonderfully expressive, complex, long wine. At this point I should tip my hat to Brooklynguy, who told me about the wine years ago and convinced me to buy it for the shelf at Astor. I think the wine can age, with its old vines and time in barrel. I’d like to taste an older one some day…

Unfortunately we didn’t get much of a chance to see how Raymond’s wines complemented a meal, but we did drink a horrible bottle of Rosé de Ricey at a nearby restaurant, which confirmed for us that Olivier Horiot’s wines are exceptional examples of this appellation.

There was a time when I did not like raw oysters. There was a time when I did not like any oysters, but fried ones grew on me at a younger age than raw ones. I remember my dad eating oysters on the half shell when I was a kid; he would put the same horseradish, ketchup, lemon juice, and Tabasco concoction on them that he put on shrimp. The fact that I found this gross meant more oysters for him! The textures and flavors of raw oysters are extremely “adult,” in the same category as radicchio, dandelion greens, Chinon, and Vin Jaune. Now I love all of the aforementioned, but I especially love oysters.

Oysters have an inherent sexiness that I comprehended well before I grew to like the food. One only has to watch the famous dining scene in ‘Tom Jones’ to appreciate the aphrodisiac properties of the oyster. Along with sexiness, there’s an appealing simplicity: the food is presented au naturel; the only preparation is the cracking open of the shell. There’s complexity to a good oyster, a balance of creaminess and brininess to consider. With the oyster, we have a chance to ponder the complexity – the profundity – of an incredibly simple thing; if it makes us feel sexy at the same time, all the better!

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One of the perks of the wine business is being invited to dinner to taste an array of fun wines. These events have many forms, but essentially all are variations on a theme: mild intoxication over delicious food enjoyed with other people in or connected to the business. There are two things that distinguish a “wine dinner” from a dinner at which wine is served because it’s a better beverage with food than, say, Dr. Pepper, tequila, or Earl Grey tea. The first is the number of different bottles tasted over the course of the meal. While many of my friends have a somewhat perverse affection for Big Bottles (“I swear, Sophie, wines taste different out of magnum”), in actuality, half bottles make more sense for wine people because they allow us to taste more kinds of different wines. (I’m mostly joking, here, half bottles don’t show up at wine functions save for the odd sweet or fortified bottle.) The second variable is, of course, the number of “wine people” at the table, which heavily influences the conversation. A group comprised of only “wine people” means you’ll talk about wine: winemakers, schnooks, vintages, obscure grape varieties, old bottles, other wine dinners, pairings, etc. almost the entire time, perhaps with a departure or two into the realm of music, relationships, or other trivialities of life. If there are a few non-wine people at the table, attempts will be made to find topics of general interest, but the conversation will inevitably veer back to the fascinating topic of wine. If you’re a non-wine person who ends up at a full-on Wine Dinner, I’m sorry for you! You must be bored! I promise to try harder next time to stick to topics of general interest!

As I said in my write-up of dinner with JBT, I’m more likely to accept an invitation to dinner if it’s at someone’s home. I enjoy cooking and being cooked for. There’s a level of intimacy possible at a home that isn’t possible at restaurants, where there’s the constant interruption of the sycophant waiter, the unhappy baby at a neighboring table, the couple drinking Cabernet with their oysters (to be fair, in New York, the Cabernet-oyster pairing is rare), the couple having Champagne and chocolate cake (whence the notion that a dry, high-acidity beverage goes well with desert?).  Also – in a private setting, you can open as many bottles as you please without having to worry about a corkage fee, or ordering off the wine list as a concession to the restaurant because you’ve imported so many of your own bottles. Complicated, eh? Continue reading →

Why do we love Champagne? Or, I should say, “why do I love Champagne?” Not all wine folks get the intense Champagne jones, the lusty need for chalky bubbles and borderline painful acidity that I do. The topic of Champagne Love arises with relative frequency at my workplace, where there’s a faction that believes Champagne is overpriced, over-sulfured, over-dosaged, and generally spoofulated; these co-workers aren’t wrong! There is enough heavily manipulated Champagne in the world to intoxicate the population of a small nation, I reckon. In response to allegations of heavy manipulation, I say: “it’s our job to find the wines that speak of the land louder than they speak of the hand of man.” But what about The Art of Blending, often sited as essential to Champagne (usually by reps from big Champagne houses)? Admittedly blending is important, but at the end of the day, good wine comes from good grapes farmed on healthy soil. Period.

In response to complaints about lofty prices, I say “agreed; it’s hard to justify the price of Selosse ($160-ish/bottle), when one could purchase roughly eight (!!) bottles of François Pinon Vouvray Brut for the same amount of money.” I distinctly remember engaging in this very conversation with a good friend who works in the wine trade. My point – namely that if you want Champagne, no other sparkling wine will do – fell on deaf ears. I felt the way I feel when I argue with my older cousin, who believes (for example) that women wear jogging clothes to show off their bodies. Having never jogged a day in his life, it doesn’t occur to him that women wear these clothes because they are comfortable to jog in. This digression is merely meant to illustrate that if you’re not a Champagne lover, you may not understand choosing to spend money on Champagne; if you’re not a jogger, you may not get a jogger’s outfit choices. We spend the extra bucks on Champagne because we want Champagne. It’s not rational, then again on some level neither is jogging… Continue reading →

Moving files from an old laptop to a new one last week, I came across notes from several years ago. I wrote them up after a tasting put together by my former boss at Astor, one I’ve recalled several times as my love and understanding of Burgundy have deepened. As smitten as I am with the Jura, Champagne, Beaujolais, the Loire Valley, I find that good red Burgundy tugs at my heartstrings like no other wine. There’s an ineffable je ne sais quoi, a mingling of soil, fruit, and mineral in red Burgundy that is absolutely divine. (Obviously not all the time, but when it’s good it’s phenomenal.)

I’m also fond of white Burgundy, but it produces a different sensation. Red Burgundy is romantic, waves of incredibly pretty often petal-y textured, aromatic, seductive Pinot fruit interplaying with the most compelling scents of earth and mineral, then the incredible resonance in the cheeks from acidity, then endless finish. Red Burgundy makes me feel the way Chopin Nocturnes used to make me feel when I was playing them on the piano as a teenager. White Burgundy feels more baroque or classical, earthy but subtle, often more powerful than pretty. I find white Burgundy (though not Chablis, which I find androgenous) to be more masculine and red Burgundy to be more feminine, echoing Jura in this way (or maybe Jura is echoing Burgundy…). Perhaps white Burgundy is more like playing Bach or Mozart, but I don’t wish to overextend this dubious musical analogy. Continue reading →