17 Reasons The Wine Importer Likes Being a Wine Importer
I've been altogether too negative lately about being a wine importer.Here I am, on a ATA flight to Chicago, packed into the plane like a sardine, adjacent to a passenger reading a book on successful, inspired salesmanship. To the casual onlooker there is nothing that really seperates me from my neighbor. Both of us are peddling product.
Happily, we sell different products. It is nearly a year since I had four heart bypasses and I am feeling sentimental. Here are 17 reasons I am sometimes delighted to be The Wine Importer. They are in random order, except for number one:
1. Working with my wife - It is not always easy to separate the business from the private but I love my wife and am delighted that by working together I get to see her more often. Twenty years ago I learned that the student next to me in Graduate Journalism school had vineyards in some town called St -Gengoux-de-Scissé in the Maconnais. I was off on both a personal adventure that would lead to two children and a new profession where I would get to meet some of the most impassioned artisans in the world. I have to thank Denyse, the love of my life, for all that. I forgive her the schnooks (see blog entry last week).
2. Tasting in the Clos Rougeard Cellar - Dominique Derain, our grower in St. Aubin, recently visited the Foucault. Derain is certain the cellar itself, where wine has been made for centuries, adds an unquantifiable something to the wine. In a sense, there is a biological environment here that is every bit as much of the 'terroir' of the Foucault's Saumur-Champigny as the limestone that the cellar is carved into. A beautiful cellar that is laced with bacteria throughout.
3. Tasting Henri Goyard's Macons in February -- Goyard's wines often have noble rot and are usually at a fairly elevated level of sugar when I first taste the wines in mid-February. Jean Thevenet has done considerable research on the history of Vire and Clesse and the wines here were often sold raw, in plain fermentation, to Lyon bistros (known as Bouchons). The wines would still have sugar and gas and you can get the approximation of this delicacy if you taste at Thevenet or Goyard before the wines are finished. Thevenet and the late restaurant owner Alain Chapelle tried to revive this tradition before Chapelle died. Goyard has officially retired after the 2000 harvest and I will now have this pleasure at Florent Thevenet's cellar. Florent is Jean Thevenet's son and is the new proprietor of Domaine de Roally.
4. The Annual Domaine de la Pepiere Muscadet Jeebus -- Marc Ollivier throws this affair every year in February. Tons of oysters, pates, cheeses and vintages and vintages of Marc's Muscadets. Truly one of the great pleasures of being in the wine trade for me. Some of Marc's older treasures will soon be for sale at Virot Restaurant in New York. Don't miss them!
5. Any Visit to Clos Roche Blanche -- There is something magical about this vineyard. Catherine Roussel lives in a totally bizarre home, a cross between a haunted house and something out of Lewis Carroll, that overlooks one of the greatest parcel in the Touraine. Roussel and Didier Barouillet work this land with rare intelligence and charm - running an organic exploitation that always looks vigorous and healthy and almost joyful. Even the 104-year-old Cot vines. Being in the wine trade was worth it just to get to know these two vignerons and the Clos.
5. Tasting with Fernand and Alain Coudert -
this is often a marathon affair that rivals a tasting at the Foucault. In February, before the bottling, there are numerous cuves and foudres to taste in an effort to approimate the final blend of the Clos de la Roilette Fleurie. It is always incredible to taste truly great wine coming from the much-maligned Gamay grape. We then get down to the serious business of tasting endless vintages to see how they have aged and for the pure pleasure of enjoyng the Coudert's work. Fernand, the father, is retired but has all the intensity of a wily vigneron bon-vivant who likes drinking his metier as much as he enjoyed the actual work. His son Alain is far more reflective and less gregarious, but if anything the quality of the wine has improved since Alain took over.
6. Learning About Wild Yeasts from Jean-Paul Brun at Domaine des Terres Dorées -- The first vintage we tasted here was the 1989 and it was all a revelation to us. We had already been in the wine business for a few years, but Jean-Paul was the first vigneron we met who talked with passion about how innoculated yeasts were being used all over France to create industrial monsters rather than wine. Tasting the 1991 in tank here during the winter of 1992, was one of the most thrilling experiences of my wine career. The wines were so fragant, so concentrated and yet so light there was something truly ethereal about that great vintage. Every year I hope to replicate that experience, but I have yet to drink a wine of such grandeur, such a perfect match of grape, terroir, vintage and winemaker.
7. I'm selling wine in Chicago and writing this on a tlny Casio PocketPC. No time. More to come.
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