The Wine Importer

Puzelat

I've mentioned several times that vintage 2000 is the year of Pineau d'Aunis.

50 cases of Thierry Puzelat's La Tesnière Pineau d'Aunis 2000 just popped
into our New Jersey warehouse. We are not sure how they got there but someone will certainly bill us for the transport.

Wow! What a delicious wine!

La Tesnière is a vineyard near the Clos Roche Blanche. The owner, whose
first name is Michel but whose last name escapes me (although I could call France tomorrow morning and find out), is the president of a small cooperative that is entirely in biodynamie. What an oddity!

He is also a childhood friend of Catherine Roussel from the Clos Roche
Blanche. Anyhow, Michel has a great vineyard site. He sold some of his grapes to Thierry Puzelat from the Clos du Tue Boeuf.

Thierry and his brother Jean-Marie are known by every French hipster for their micro-vinifications of Cheverny and Touraines. It is rare that they get the AOC because there is always something atypical about their wines. Thankfully there is still some non-conformist wine out there!

Anyhow, Jean-Marie Puzelat is single and Thierry is married with children. Money is tight and Jean-Marie doesn't want to expand Tue Boeuf, so Jean-Marie gave his blessing for Thierry to start a small négoce business on the side. The current bottling of La Tesnière Pineau d'Aunis comes from this négoce.

One word describes this wine:

Wow!

We also got in the Tue-Boeuf Brin de Chevre Ménu Pineau 2000. Concentration, fullness and length. By the way, this is a white wine.

We also got in the Tue-Boeuf Chevery Rouge. As everyone knows, this is 60% Pinot Noir and 40% Gamay. It is light, almost troubled. It looks like some grapes dropped off a vine, somehow got pressed, then somehow got vinified without any human intervention. Lovely, delicious stuff. Cloudy because it ain't filtered or stabilized, but luscious. Numbskulls will complain it is short. Wine lovers will be delighted out of their minds.

Although it ain't that Pineau d'Aunis.

Congratulations to Jean-Marie and Theirry! Great work in the vines and great work in the cuvérie!

Oh, and I forgot the Clos du Tue-Boeuf Buisson Poilleux. As everyone knows, this comes from old vines. Old, old vines. And is all Sauvignon Blanc. Although you might not guess so. It doesn't have gooseberries and it doesn't have cat pee.

I'm off to Detroit this week. May not have time to write here. Happy trails!

A horrible picture of Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat taken by an incompetent photographer

Good News from the Beaujolais!
Vendange Part III

I just got off the phone with Jean-Paul Brun.

The harvest in the Beaujolais started on September 5th in the rain. It continued in the rain.

Jean-Paul Brun at the Domaine des Terres Dorées waited. Even though he could start, he decided to wait until the grapes ripened. Brun is a stubborn fellow.

So, he started with a small team of harvesters on the 18th. By Monday, the 21st, they were up to about 80 harvesters and the sun was out. No rot and ripe grapes.

Brun hopes to finish in a few days. Everyone else in the area finished a long time ago. But sometimes it pays well to work well in the vineyards and to have some patience. The other advantage is that the initally high levels of acidity have lowered considerably.

The bulk of this year's Nouveau will be made from underripe grapes brought in at 9 or 10 degrees. It will be chaptalized and then deacidified.

Look for Domaine des Terres Dorées. It will cost you more money because it is not crappy, industrial wine picked at the first possible date, even if the grapes were not ready.

Time, risk and expense will have gone into the making of the Terres Dorées 2001 Nouveau.

Circulating E-Mails

Like everyone else, I've received endless e-mails from friends and colleagues since September 11th. Many of these have included quotes from important writers, including the 23 separate e-mails I received with the full text of a Canadian journalist''s reflections on the world's ingratitude toward America. This article, written some years ago by a right-wing crank, broke all records for e-mail repackaging and circulation.

The New Yorker had some compelling reports from the New York barricades in last week's issues. I was especially struck by Rebecca Mead's small piece in Talk of the Town. I hope I am not sued for copyright infringement and Mead's words follow:

The sawhorses erected across Fourteenth Street last week reinstated a conceptual category of New York life that has, in recent years, become almost entirely meaningless: the uptown-downtown divide. It's been a while since the mere possession of a downtown address has been grounds for a conviction that you're in on anything that's really worth being in on, now that the artists and hipsters have been replaced by day-trippers bearing Prada shopping bags and millionaires buying apartments—the kind of people who, in their search for edge, have erased any remaining traces of it. Last week, though, as traffic to lower Manhattan was cut off and cops manned barricades at Fourteenth, Houston, Canal, and below, preventing pedestrians without a photo I.D. proving residential status from entering each neighborhood, an unsettling sense of exclusivity was restored to downtown. If the National Guardsmen in their Army fatigues standing at the intersections of the avenues brought to mind images of Checkpoint Charlie, a cop lifting the slender line of yellow tape to allow card-carrying residents downtown was reminiscent of that more familiar form of New York exclusion: the velvet rope at the night-club door.

By midweek, at Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, lower Manhattan still looked like the kind of night club you might actually want to get into. Uptowners who had been turned back by cops at the barricade stood and watched while downtown residents ambled down an avenue that was nearly empty of traffic. In this stretch of the West Village, there were blocks that were almost celebratory: at the intersection of Christopher and West Streets, rollerbladers and drag queens and other young boulevardiers cheered passing rescue vehicles, submitting to a post-traumatic instinct to congregate. In SoHo, things became more sombre. On Sixth Avenue from Houston to Canal, Mack trucks from New Jersey, as yet empty of drivers and of loads, were parked two and three abreast, facing downtown, against traffic, of which there was none. The streets belonged to dog walkers and to the homeless, who had become suddenly more visible in the absence of other pedestrians, their shuffling walks and haunted faces seeming less the signs of mental illness and more like the mood of the city. West Broadway was mostly shuttered, but the French doors of the Italian restaurant Barolo were open to the street, and the flattering lights were turned on for the few diners who sat and ate ravioli, surgical masks pulled down around their necks. Darkened, gated warehouses looked like warehouses instead of boutiques or day spas. It was possible to remember how SoHo was when downtown was still downtown, before the bridge-and-tunnel crowd started snarling the streets and turning the bookstores into shoe stores—and then to think of the bridges closed and the tunnels empty, and, with some surprise, to wish that the sidewalks were clogged with chattering shoppers, and to wish to heaven they had never gone away.

—Rebecca Mead

Links to Charities

If you are comfortable enough surfing to have arrived at this ridiculous site, then you should know where to find endless links to the many charities that are supporting people in need after the attacks of September 11th.

I won't repeat all those links here.

But give some money.

Please.

From the Desk of Mayor Guliani

Yeah, he's done a great job. He was a divisive, nasty, mean-spirited mayor until September 11th. He has been admirable since.

Mayor Guliani wants to reduce traffic in town. Starting tomorrow, only cars with two or more people will be allowed into Manhattan. This measure is long overdue. People in New Jersey and Long Island have private beaches, private parks, private clubs and then drive into Manhattan and clog up our public streets. The worst time of year is usually before Christmas when they come to shop in Manhattan even though their horrible suburbs are filled with malls with ample parking spots. These people seem to take sadistic pleasure in making Manhattan movement impossible.

Given the emergency situation still facing New York, limiting auto traffic is essential. Hopefully, these limitations will stay in place after we get over this crisis.

Mayor Guliani has also pleaded with New Yorkers to get back to normal routines and back to the realm of the living. An important memo yesterday encouraged New Yorkers to return to the consumption of Muscadet. There are some great 2000 Muscadets out there and the market is primed to explode. Grab them while they are still available!

Chambers Street and Afghanistan

Rumors floating around 56th Street tonight include the imminent reopening of Chambers Street Wines and the imminent bombing of whoever is still alive and moving in Afghanistan.

Let's hope that the two events are unrelated.

What to drink in these hard times?

I spent last week drinking hard booze to go to sleep. I need a break.

I suggest non-chaptalized Beaujolais. 10.8 degrees would be about right.

Jean-Paul Brun's lovely 2000 Cuvée l'Ancien just got an 82 rating from James Molesworth in the Wine Spectator. Molesworth is well-known for his vast experience and knowledge in the Beaujolais. Stock up before the buying panic begins!

The Wine Spectator will be giving 94 points to the Mas des Chimères 1998 next week. It is good wine. Buy a bottle if you can find one. Frankly, I wouldn't give it more then a 91 if I was in the ratings racket. 94 makes it the highest ranked Languedoc wine in the history of the Wine Spectator. The 1998 Chimères is good but I would not argue it is the greatest wine that ever came out of the region.

Vendange Part 2

Life goes on and there are grapes to pick.

I spoke with Eric Texier.

Eric is wildly enthusiastic with his 2001 vintage. He had projected harvesting around September 5th in the Southern Rhône and the potential alcohol degrees seemed ready. But, after further analysis he decided to postpone picking. The grapes were not yet ripe.

So he went into full swing on September 14th. From Côte Rotie through Brézème, Cairanne, Seguret and Châteauneuf, Eric is delighted with the concentration of the crop. Eric has now acquired an important holding in Condrieu and there will probably be three different cuvées corresponding to different terroir.

Texier has promised to write-up his evaluation of the vintage and I will translate his text and place it here as soon as I receive the text. Then again, maybe I'll just post it in French.

Reports from Burgundy sound fairly gloomy. Bad weather.

Several areas report good alcohol degrees and high acidities. Too high.

We were going to start a Chablis project with Texier this year, but the harvest sounded disastrous there and Eric decided to put it off until next year.

Silence

I've received quite a few e-mails asking me to blog on. Mayor Guliani's office called yesterday and asked me to get back to normal and to write more blogs. Blog is both a verb and noun here in cyberspace.

I'm still in shock two weeks after the World Trade Center attack. I find it difficult to be my usual wise-guy internet personna.

I'll call around today and get a better idea of how the harvest is going in France. I'll post some notes about that.

Otherwise, I'm trying hard and promise that I will be back soon with some more Wacky Internet Wine Posts.

Vendange

I should not mix politics with business.

My firm has heard from almost every one of our French and Portuguese vignerons since the attack on Tuesday. Anne Lignères, at the Château la Baronne, got through on the day of the attack, and told me that her Spanish harvesters were all talking about the events as they gathered grenache blanc. That the attacks were the only thing on everyone's mind. All our suppliers wanted to know if we were ok, but also had a need to talk to someone, anyone in New York to express their outrage. Yesterday, there were three minutes of silence at noon throughout France. Not just in Paris but also in the small villages that make-up the French viticultural world.

What is apparent is that these were not simply attacks on New York, Washington or America. These were attacks on the world and this is an opportunity for America to be a world leader if it takes the time to stop chanting "USA, USA" and decides to act as the pre-eminent democracy of the industrial world.

Not only does America need to find and bring to justice those who attacked us, it also needs to seize the opportunity to pressure all sides of every crazy, sectarian conflict around the world. To use the leverage of American power to say it is time to stop! Because the destruction of lower Manhattan shows where the logic of all these sectarian conflicts inevitably leads.

The world is still bogged down in the religious/racial/national conflicts of the middle ages. But now, the madmen who centuries ago would destroy their neighbor's villages, can rent homes in Delray Beach and take flying courses to learn how to commandeer jets to destroy Manhattan's skyline. Somewhere out there are other lunatics with homemade or purchased nuclear bombs ready to avenge their nation for the indignities their people have suffered over the past few decades or since their nation lost a battle in the 13th century, or to defend claims to land they populated 2000 years, or to fight over whatever collective indignities they have suffered. These people live outside the norms of western civilization (even if their origins are based in western civilization) but can now profit from modern civilization’s technology to kill thousands and to potentially push the world toward global conflict.

It is time to call a halt to all this lunacy. And this is why the attacks are being perceived as an attack on the world. Because the winemakers in Verdigny, Meursault, Oupia, Viré, Maisdon-sur-Sèvre and so many small villages who gathered at 12 noon yesterday for three minutes of silence understood that the attack on the World Trade Center was also targeted for their villages, their homes and their loved ones. They understand that if the world does not change that, we all face the prospect of an escalated conflict that threatens humanity's collective existence. That this is a time for revenge but more importantly a time to stamp out all all the ugliness that led to Tuesday's attacks. Enough is enough. And this is a task that is more difficult than finding and destroying the thousand crazy lunatics who conspired on Tuesday to attack America. A task with no easy solution.

A note on technology: phone service has been problematic in New York this past week. This was a crisis where the Internet truly kept the world in contact. Several of our vignerons have e-mail and were able to contact us immediately, even though phone lines were down. Our office has a T-1 connection through a company named Elias Consulting that is based on our floor in our building. Michael Elias slept in his office through yesterday morning to keep his connections working. Elias was at his office on Tuesday morning when the first tower was hit by a plane. He rushed onto the roof of our building and watched the second plane ram the second tower. He decided to stay at work and do whatever was necessary to maintain his company and networking services.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I wanted to fax all our suppliers to reassure them that we were well, but international calls were not going through. I used a service called j2 (www.j2.com) to route faxes over the Internet. Several of our growers used web connections at friends or at home to contact us to make sure we were alive and kicking.

And the best thing we can possibly do is get back to our banal lifes and go forward. I have children, a wife, friends, a business, suppliers in France who depend on our sales and the best thing I can do to honor those killed this week is to get back to work. To get back to life.

Lastly, the harvest has started in parts of France and more regions will begin this coming week. The overall picture is uncertain but it appears that the vintage will follow the cliché of all vintages that start with the number 1. They tend to be difficult, a word those of us in the wine trade are unfortunately fond of using.

There seems to a problem of maturation above Lyon, even if there is not a problem of degree, and of overacidity. Several regions are putting back their harvest a week or 10 days in the hopes or getting ripe fruit. This is always risky as you want to avoid rain. We shall see....there is still plenty of time and the weather can turn.

Eric Texier is picking in the Côtes-du-Rhônes and he faxed this morning: "Small yields, ideal maturity, good weather, a potentially great vintage."

I also heard this morning from the Puzelat brothers in the Loire (Clos du Tue Boeuf). They plan on starting in the middle of next week. The grapes are already big and there is the beginning of some rot.

Nature's cycles continue.

The View South from Our Office -- Day 2

Without the Twin Towers.

Many of you have faxed and e-mailed us to find out if we are all well.

We are. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same for all our fellow New Yorkers.

We thank you for all your expressions of concern.

Franck Peillot Joins the 25 Hectos/Hectare Club

You've loved his Mondeuse. You've loved his Altesse. His Altesse Cuvée Buster 1999 was sublime.

Yes, now Franck Peillot has agreed to joint the 25 Hectolitres/Hectare club. He's shooting for 20. Franck is planning to do special pruning and viticultural work to limit yields in one of his parcels to between 10 and 20 hectolitres an hectare. The first result will be in vintage 2002.

More to come.

Attention Retailers -- Shelf Talkers!

Louis/Dressner Selections has formed a strategic alliance with The Jeff Connell Quarterly Wine Review and Agricultural Digest (TJCQWRAD) to enhance the marketing of our wines.

Below, is the first in a series of exciting shelf-talkers:

Why You Should Pay More for Your Beaujolais Nouveau -- l'Ancien Nouveau Now Available!

OK, it's a boring, commodity item that is never any good anyhow, you are thinking to yourself. Why pay more? Why even bother to buy in the first place?.

Allright, I agree that it has become a cynical affair. But I still find the first day of Nouveau exciting. I may be a New Yorker, but I am always happy to celebrate the new harvest and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the grapes go from the vineyard to the bottle.

Of course, most Nouveau stink. Something fierce. Too much SO2, too much spoofalation (my thanks here to Mike Wheeler, inventor of the word spoofalation), too little wine. But those of us in the trade have a responsibility to get someting better to our customers. And now, we can.

For the first time, we are offering a bottling of Nouveau from the old vines at Domaine des Terres Dorées. This bottling will be more expensive, will come from lower yields, will be low in SO2, will be unyeasted, will be destemmed, will be vinified in a Burgundian fashion (no carbonic maceration), will be young, juicy and delicious.

Lots of people talk about how Beaujolais used to be low in alcohol, lighter in color, easy to drink, and perfect for celebration.

The Domaine des Terres Dorées l'Ancien Nouveau will be exactly that.

25 Hectolitres Per Hectare

It's my newest project. A joint project with several vignerons.

I want to find the sweet zone for low yields in several appellations where the vignerons are not used to doing extremely low yields. Small yields produced by a conscious pruning and a conscious vineyard regiment, not small yields due to frost, hail or sickness. What does a Muscadet at 25 hectolitres/hectare in a great vineyard site taste like? Does the reduced yields make a qualitative difference in the wine?

These parcels will be vinified exactly as their surrounding parcels at more normal yields. We want to eliminate vinification techniques as a variable.

So far, I have Domaine de la Pépière in Muscadet for 2002 and Domaine des Terres Dorées for 2001. I'm making calls around France these days, before the harvest starts, trying to get more recruits.

These wines, if they are successful, will cost more then the normal bottlings. But they will be worth the extra expense. Maybe they will be Cuvée Busters, maybe they will be the first step toward the $35.00 bottle of Muscadet.

Because, in my mind, many of the "smaller" appellations of France are making world class wines at ridiculously low prices. Some slob of a proprietor in a "big-name" appellation gets a big price no matter how horrible his wine happens to be. Someone will always pay for the appellations. At least in America, you can plant vines in former potato fields in Long Island and get $35.00 a bottle.

This little project of ours is an attempt to reverse the limitations of the AOC system. Because, in my mind, someone in the smaller appellations would do everyone a great service if they made the $35.00 bottle. Unfortunately, the market only responds to pricing and a $35.00 bottle of Muscadet or Beaujolais or Minervois will make everyone notice. But not a $35.00 bottle based on gobs of smoky oak, but a $35.00 bottle based on tiny yields and scrupulous vineyard work that showcases the greatness of each terroir.

Because, in my mind....

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