Dr Vino's wine blog

Okay, there was no shootout. Sort of a duel, but without the guns, wounds or Aaron Burr.

In honor of Australia Day last week, and because I think syrah is most seasonally apt in the winter, I tried a Northern Rhone syrah against an Aussie shiraz. Normally you’d think this would be a no-brainer since although it is the same grape by a different name, the stylistic differences can be oceans apart (literally).

But I did try to raise the degree of difficulty by picking a “European-style” shiraz, the Leeuwin Art Series 2005 from the Western Australia region of Margaret River with an alcohol level of rolling in at a mere 13% (find this wine). Against it, I poured a Saint-Joseph ’06 from the small producer Pierre Gonon (find this wine).

I found the Gonon to be excellent, with notes of characteristic black olives that I really dig in a good St. Joseph. It has a mouth-filling character thanks to some gentle oak but has a minerally, ashy core that gives it great poise and balance. The Leeuwin, by contrast, has much more fruit-driven aromas–think raspberry, cherry, and blackberry–as well as a dash of eucalyptus freshness. The palate was bigger than the Gonon and more New World but not to the point of being jammy or extracted. And the lighter alcohol was a relief from many a shiraz.

I was with three other people and although the Gonon edged ahead in my view, the group split with two for each. So the showdown saw both participants walk away unscathed. If only Hamilton had been so lucky.

Everybody always wants a good wine under $10. And that’s never been more true than now. The sad thing is that it’s so hard to find good wines under $10. But here are three reds from the South of France!

Montirius, Le Cadet, vin de pays de Vaucluse, 2005 ($9.99; find this wine)
This blend of 50% Grenache – 30% Syrah – 20% Cinsault comes from a couple in the Southern Rhone who make their wines biodynamically. This particular cuvee is fermented in cement (!) tanks. When I met Christine and Eric Saurel, the owners and winemakers, a few years ago at a trade show, they told me that cement is more “alive” than stainless steel but doesn’t impart the flavors of oak. It is a great value with good acidity, fun dark berry notes, and tannic poise. I need to restock, probably by the case.

Les Hérétiques, vin de pays de l’Hérault, 2007 ($9; find this wine)
Made from Carginan grapes, this wine hails from the Languedoc region. It has a whiff of that bretty barnyard thing, which some might find off-putting and others alluring. But on the palate there’s not much to argue with since the wine has good fruit and tannins. It’s not as smooth or rewarding as the Chateau d’Oupia, from the same producer, but this one would make a solid party wine. Importer: Louis/Dressner.

Domaine de Fenouillet, vin de pays de Vaucluse, 2007. ($9; find this wine)
Marcelan? Yeah, I hadn’t had that one either. But it’s the main grape in this wine, also from the Vaucluse like the Montirius. The wine is a little less structured more tannic than the other two so I would use this wine as “ballast,” i.e. when there are four of you and two bottles are already empty and you need to crack open a third bottle of something decent that’s not too expensive. Importer: Neal Rosenthal.

We’re back with Part Deux of our interview with John Gilman, author of the newsletter A View from the Cellar (part one is here). John has offered a free issue from his backlist to any Dr. Vino reader so surf on over to his site and check it out. In this part of the Q&A, I had intended John to give a quick thumbs up or thumbs down on a number of hot-button issues in the wine world today as well as some things that I’ve heard him express unusual views about. In case you thought you were done gorging during the holidays, you can now feast on John’s 7,000+ words in this second part. So buckle up and get ready to hear his thoughts on what’s wrong with Riesling from Austria and Australia, screwcaps and their problems, the Loire, California cab then and now, indigenous yeasts, roto-fermenters, small oak barrels, wines over 14% alcohol and why he uses scores!

German Riesling
To my mind this is clearly the most singularly misunderstood and underappreciated region for great wines in the world. Read more…

On Wednesday I went on Fox Business–for the second time in a week! The video for this segment is available (see it by clicking on the image at right).

We continued the discussion of “trading down” that we started last week, this time with a focus on bubbly, as the day demanded. Since I didn’t get a chance to actually mention the Dibon cava brut reserve (about $11; find this wine) on the show, I’ll do so here: it’s some really easy drinking stuff, great for parties, or to accompany coconut fried shrimp, as I did recently (it sure beat Lipitor, which could have also worked for that dish). I brought the tasty Roederer Estate brut NV on the show as well (find this wine). And for those who really didn’t want to trade down–or simply prefer fine Champagne in the winter, as I do, economic climate be somewhat damned–I brought the Larmandier-Bernier, brut, premier cru, blanc de blancs (about $45; find this wine). It’s a fantastic example of a grower Champagne and one of my favorites.

So here’s the big mystery question: since they didn’t allow us to pour wine on the set, what bubbly was actually in our glasses at the end?

If you had to guess, where would you find a third of the population doesn’t drink any alcohol: the USA, founded by Puritans, or Europe, largest producer of wine?

Well, if you guessed either (or both), you’d be right according to a comprehensive survey undertaken by market-research firm GfK for the Wall Street Journal and reported there on Friday.

But even more eyebrow-raising than the overall number of teetotalers in Europe is wine’s relative unpopularity, particularly among younger cohorts in wine producing countries. Consider Spain, the third largest wine producer in the world by volume. There, of respondents who drink alcohol, beer outstripped wine by a two to one margin.

But if you break it down by age, 48% of the youngest cohort (14-29 year olds) favors beer as their “preferred” alcoholic drink, with distilled spirits coming in second with 28%, cocktails third with 14%, and wine a distant fourth with only eight percent. Overall, the preferred drinks youngest Western Europeans in the survey are beer (44%), wine (22%), cocktails (17%), and distilled spirits (14%). The 14-29 year olds respondents in France and Italy, the two largest wine producing countries, both preferred beer to wine but the percentages preferring wine (24 and 29% respectively) were above the Western European average.

Interestingly, to round out what might be termed a rebellion effect, 14-29 year olds in the UK, a country that has historically had no wine production and taxes it particularly heavily when compared to beer, preferred beer and wine just the same with each drink getting 28%.

The next oldest group like wine more but it’s not until the 50+ year olds that wine comes out as the drink of choice at the Western European level. Overall, wine was the preferred drink of of those who drink alcohol 43 to 34 over beer, with spirits and cocktails getting nine and eight percent respectively.

European wine producers must love the Swiss who, along with the Italians, say the prefer wine the most with 62 percent of respondents in those countries favoring wine.

Of course surveys of attitudes toward drink can be fickle as the annual Gallup drinks survey has shown here in the US the past few years, but this one provides a lot of fine grained data with 17,000 respondents and and excel file available with detailed responses. Check it out and let us know what you find most surprising.

Eric Asimov had a thoughtful column on Wednesday. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, he interviews a leading violinist and discusses, among other things, the difficulty of describing both wine and music in words. “A great piece of music, and a great wine, holds your attention and has more than you can say in words,” says the musician, David Chan. And somehow “sluicing a mouthful of pebbles” doesn’t quite capture the whole grandeur of a fifteen year old Puligny Montrachet either, Eric says. Indeed.

But one point that Eric does not bring up so I will: if words can’t even cut it, then how on earth can scores even pretend to be satisfactory in evaluating a wine?

I met with a Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger yesterday who is not wild about the thought of reducing a wine to a score. He wondered, how can you say which is better, Brigitte Bardot or Marilyn Monroe? Rembrandt or Renoir? Indeed. He made the point that, in an evening, wine is a part of the whole with his ratio running at 10 percent food, 10 percent wine, and 80 percent company. Three cheers for context!

Over the course of the tasting of four of his excellent tetes de cuvee, the superlative blanc de blanc Comtes de Champagne, he offered his tasting notes for the wines. Usually vintners offer cautious notes, if any, but Pierre-Emmanuel’s ebullient side shone through in his notes, which were:

1998: A young Brazilian woman running on the beach (find this wine)
1993: A monk who has led a pure life and suddenly the fruit comes alive and he is running on a beach in Brazil too (find this wine)
1989: Like a beautiful, elegant 55 year-old Italian woman with no “lifting” (find this wine)
1988: Sunlight streaming in a stained glass window, spirits mixed with light, a lot of transparency in the wine mixed with a gentle breeze (find this wine)

Come on, would you really prefer to see those wines with scores?

A few quick things about cru Beaujolais, the smaller, distinctive growing areas of Beaujolais.

1. The Burgundy producers are coming!
Prices are relatively low for grapes and real estate. That fact has attracted investment to the region from producers looking to expand: Earlier this year the Champagne (and Burgundy) house Henriot purchased the Chateau de Poncie, a key property in Fleurie. When I asked Joseph Henriot earlier this year about the motivation for the purchase, he pointed to the distinctive terroir (he loves Moulin-a-Vent and Morgon as well as Fleurie) but also the tremendous discount the property had compared to land in Burgundy.

2. Cru Beaujolais can age, maybe even longer than you think
Louis Jadot was one of the earliest notable Burgundy producers to acquire property in the Beaujolais region, notably in Moulin-A-Vent. I tried their Chateau des Jacques 1996 a few months ago and was wildly impressed. Jacques Lardiere, the winemaker (pictured right), told me that the best wines can last decades!

3. I’ve got a cru Beaujolais vertical going–in magnum
Magnums, twice the size of regular bottles, are generally baubles for captains of industry. But you can get a top cru Beaujolais in magnum for less than a lot of second label Bordeaux. Combine this price appeal with the age-worthiness and you can understand why I have several magnums of Deccombes, Desvignes, and a mini-vertical (three vintages!) of Clos de la Roilette cuvee tardive. Cru Beaujolais magnums also make great gifts; to wit, I just got a magnum of Lapierre Morgon 07 at Appellation Wine and Spirits yesterday.

4. Gamay is wildly food friendly!
And at 12.5 percent alcohol, you can have a couple of glasses too and still be able to function after dinner.

5. It’s mostly less expensive than red Burgundy!

6. How would you change the region?
In 1395, Duke Philip the Bold outlawed the humble gamay grape from Burgundy, protecting the premium pinot noir by fiat. What would you do differently if you were the Duke of Beaujolais? I asked Jacques Lardiere what he would do differently if he made his wine in Moulin-a-Vent outside of the appellation system, which mandates certain controls, such as planting the grape gamay. He said, “I would plant pinot noir.”

Don’t forget to join us tonight at 8 PM on Twitter Taste Live raising a glass of local wine or a cru Beaujolais! use #ttl in your comments or follow me.

I caught up with winemaker Yves Cuilleron today at a tasting of fourteen youngish and noteworthy French producers dubbed “Les Gobeloteurs” at the Tribeca Grill. Yves makes highly regarded red and white wines from the Northern Rhone appellations of Condrieu, Cote Rotie, Saint Joseph, Cornas, and Saint Peray. I really liked his ’06 Saint Joseph, “Les Serrines,” which is made from small berry Syrah and has great aromas of tar and black olives on the nose. (find this wine)

He paused from his pouring to answer three quick questions:

What’s your favorite Northern Rhone appellation that’s not Hermitage? Condrieu (and Saint Joseph for reds).

New oak, good or bad? It’s a good thing when it’s well done but it depends how it is done. It’s very difficult to work with new oak.

How was the 2008 vintage for you? It was a very good vintage for the whites, which have very good acidity. The wines have high intensity but without too much alcohol. Vintages 2006 and 2007 were nearly 15%. But 2008 was a very late harvest. There was good, slow maturation and they ended up 13.5 percent.

The reds were mixed; there was lots of rain in early September, which caused problems in the early-ripening areas. But in the late ripening areas, there were six weeks of beautiful weather after September 13 and I harvested those in October.

A list of all the “Gobeloteurs” follows after the jump. Read more…