The Wine Importer

Back from Machhu Pichhu

A changed, mystical and kinder man.

A firm believer in the impossible and inexplicable.

Astounded by the miracles of ancient architecture and farming. Mind been boggled.

Then again, it could be the combination of too much time at high altitude and all the coca leaves I have been chewing the past 10 days.

Denyse Louis on Cosmoculture at Domaine Viret

Just got back from the Peruvian Andes and am thinking about the cosmos. Coincidentally, Denyse Louis, one of my business partners, has written a wonderful explanation of the viticultural work being done at Domaine Viret. Read on....

Cosmoculture: qu’est-ce-que c’est ?

The word sounded suspicious, too solemn not to be serious, or too pretentious not to be crazy? Joe thought there was a cult behind it, or, at least, some voodoo involved, and he was a little nervous when we visited our first (and only) cosmoculturist estate.

All fears and misgivings evaporated when we met the Viret family: Alain, the father, and the theorist behind cosmoculture, his wife, who seems to be the catalyst of the experiment, and Philippe, their son and the winemaker just out of oenology school. This is an extraordinary group of people, and, after discovering the site, walking the vineyards, visiting the cathedral-winery and tasting the wines, it became easy to believe that, at the very least, there is some magic at work at Domaine Viret. Alain Viret has designed his method by mixing practices he has followed in the vineyards for several years, to great results, and his belief that our environment is influenced by flows of energy from the planets and constellations. He has named this philosophy "cosmoculture", because it is based on his own experience and common sense, but also on his studies of the Mayas and Incas, the greatest early farmers in the world.

The name sounds intimidating, and there is a fair amount of mystery to it, especially for those of us who are not farmers. The briefest of description could be: a form of viticulture based on the principles and practices of bio-dynamie, with the addition of other energizing media, like standing stones and cosmic posts, which capture the planets and constellations' energy and bring it to the vines and soil; the same beneficial flows of energy are at work in the vinification process.

Joe's first contact with the estate occurred last March, when he went to the Rhône valley for a week of tastings organized by the region. He wasn't much impressed with a lot of what he tasted, and came to the conclusion that it was better to stick to the well-known estates, because most others did not deserve to be known. Nevertheless, at a Côtes-du-Rhône tasting, he was steered to a table by a French wine professional, who assured him that here was a superstar in the making, and that Joe would be glad to have been there early.

The estate, Domaine Viret, was new, located in the village of St-Maurice-sur-Eygues, a name Joe had never heard mentioned before, the labels were odd, but attractive, and the young owner was nice and intelligent. There were several cuvées of a single vintage, 1999, their first, and the wines (all bruts de cuve) were ripe, big and impressive in a young, massive kind of way.

What was truly intriguing, though, was their brochure, filled with fantastic pictures of a monument seen at different stages of contruction, then completed, that the estate had just built for its winery. As another local grower later stated, there was something Californian about the building, and the philosophy and practices followed by the owners were so New-Age that they had had to coin a name to describe the concept.

Anyway, something was in the air, last March, could it have been a cosmic influence? A few days before tasting the wines of Domaine Viret, Joe had met Georges Prat, a retired architect, author of a big book entitled "Invisible Architecture", who had just treated some of Eric Texier's vineyards with acupuncture needles of his own design. Over dinner, Prat "levitated" Joe (please ask Joe for details) and cured the bad Feng Shui he had detected in our New York office. Prat's interest is in the principles of ancient architecture, the Golden Rule, the precise orientation and choice of sites of all great monuments in the world, whatever the place or time of their construction. His book is devoted to several sites in Europe, nowadays mainly occupied by medieval cathedrals, but bearing traces of sanctuaries built over millenia of human presence. These sites were chosen, in a very distant past, for their particular, beneficial and mystical qualities. Prat explains that the sites are at the confluence of lines: telluric, aquatic, geologic, and that our ancestors used their knowledge of the world and the forces at work to determine the optimum spot, or vortex, to build a sacred monument.

It's easy to believe that Domaine Viret could be one of those auspicious spots: 50 hectares of land, of which 20 hectares of vines in the village of St-Maurice-sur-Eygues, at the lieu-dit Clos du Paradis. Above the family house, the vines grow on slopes in the shape of an amphitheater, in one single plot looking southeast over the river Aygues to the Rasteau and Cairanne hills. Above the vineyards, forests of oak-trees, and, among them, apricot and other fruit trees, are reminders of the times when no one in the area lived on vineyards and wine only. At mid-slope, and what seems to be the heart of the estate, stands the most prominent feature of Domaine Viret: their winery. This is the visible side of cosmoculture, a building designed by Alain Viret, with the help of an architect, who took into account all the factors that Prat cites as defining sacred architecture: ancient Egyptian measurements, precise orientation (the front opens full south, the choir is partially buried into the hill, full north), alignment with a "magnetic line" defined by standing basaltic rocks higher on the hill, full and surbased arches, thirteen pillars, and, most importantly, the vein of water that made the whole project possible.

Alain Viret is a sourcier, who, for 30 years, looked without success for water on his estate. Lack of water had made life very difficult for the three generations that had lived and worked in Clos du Paradis. Then, in 1998, he found a spring, and this "miracle" made everything possible. "It takes a lot of water to make good wine", goes the vigneron's saying. Alain Viret was able to take the estate away from the village growers' coop (of which he had been director for several years) and the winery was built in three months, of 6 metric tons' sandstones, the same size and from the same quarry as the stones of the Roman aqueduct known as "Pont du Gard". The stones are ajusted to each other, not cemented, and laid down in the same alignment they were in the quarry. The building is designed to foster harmony in its proportion and materials and it is also totally functional: the grapes and the juice go down by gravity, from the roof to the press, into the cement vats and oak barrels, as the case is. The spring water flows in the very center of the choir, where the vinification vats form a half-circle, right under an opening in the domed roof.

We have been working with winemakers who tend their vines following organic or bio-dynamic methods for years now. Although we still don't know or understand everything these entail, we like the wines they make, a great deal. We have often received, from some of our French growers and from many of our American customers, sceptical comments on our interest in organic viticulture, and on the quality of the wines made from such grapes. It seems little more than a gimmick to proponents of "modern" agriculture, a way to capitalize on the public's taste for anything organic or natural. We want to sell wines we like, but we also need to admire the people who make those wines, and share their passion for their vines and their work. So, we end up with an odd assortment of green-leaning growers, steinerites and young turks, but also a lot of pragmatists. At any rate, we do not dictate, we do not impose, we let the winemakers do their job in the vineyards and the cellar, and we focus on the results, the wines.

So, cosmoculture….

Beaujolais Nouveau from Domaine des Terres Dorées

Yes, it is on sale today. 2001 Beaujolais Nouveau.

I was able to illegally acquire and consume a bottle of Brun's Beaujolais yesterday. There are two Brun bottlings available this year -- for the first time, we are offering an old vines bottling. This is what I drank last night. The vines are all over 50 years old, there is no chaptalization (the wine is a tad under 11 degrees of alcohol, making this the less alcoholic Nouveau in the market).

The wine is what everyone would like Nouveau to be. There are all sorts of berries in the mouth -- is it strawberry, is it blackberry, is it blueberry -- it seems to change all the time. There are more than aromatics, the wine wine actually has a middle and a finish. Most importantly, it is damned easy to drink and to drink several glassfuls of the stuff. Nothing too serious but a lot of fun. A job well done.

There is also a bottling of younger vines. I have not tasted that wine and will not have the time to do so before leaving today for Vinitaly.

Off to Vinitaly

I will be away from this spot for about 10 days, as I am off to Vinitaly. That's right -- Louis/Dressner is planning an expansion into Italian wine!

Vinitaly is is an exciting wine trade shows where big shots like myself walk around several large pavillons filled with Italian wines and make big deals. If I can't find any wine, I'll leave early and go to Peru.

I'll try to connect here, but it might be difficult.

More E-Mails

People often ask how The Wine Importer sources all the fabulous wines he imports. Basically, we receive and respond to e-mail offerings. Just today, we received the following e-mail offer:

From: NV
To: NV
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 12:31 PM
Subject: Brilliant Bordeaux 2000

Good Afternoon,

Before I head off back home this evening, I thought I'd send you an offer for what I consider to be a fantastic wine from the 2000 vintage. This is a wine which:

a) proves once again that the 2000s are superb not just for top growths, but also for 'petits chateaux', where you can find amazing fruit-driven wines with amazing depth of flavour and concentration

b) will astound your customers thanks to its great value for money

and last but by no means least:

c) will make you a very honest dollar or two:

Domaine Zede 2000 @ 50 FF Margaux AOC

The 2nd wine of Labegorce Zede, owned and run by the Thienpont family.This is what all 2nd wines should be like: fruity, well-made, balanced, early-drinking and dare I say better-value alternatives to the classed growths.

This wine is offered at its opening price, inclusive of US strip labels and although I don't want to send you a sample because you should believe me when I say this wine is great, I can if need be.

I look forward to hearing from you

Best Regards

Neil Vasey
Maison Michel Querre, St-Emilion

Tel +33 5 57 55 51 67 (direct)
Fax +33 5 57 55 51 61
Mobile +33 6 15 46 39 46
Email nvasey@cidwines.com

Meet The Wine Importer on Saturday, November 10th

I will be making two rare guest appearances this Saturday and would love to meet some of my readership.

The first appearance will be at the Chelsea Wine Vault from 11 am to about 2:30 pm. I will be teaching a seminar on Crappy Industrial Wines, making people drink Crappy Industrial Wines, explaining to people what makes the Crappy Industrial Wine they are drinking crappy industrial wine, and finishing it off with a presentation of fabulous artisan wines that will leave you breathless and thankful.

The second appearance will be at Chambers Street Wines from 4 pm to who knows when. This tasting will include only fabulous wines from the Louis/Dressner portfolio. It is also Fan Appreciation Night, and the first 100 tasters to attend will receive a Louis/Dressner poster.

Fabulous Portugese Wines Arrive in New York

Kudos to Kevin McKenna and Denyse Louis of Louis/Dressner Selections. I had the privilege today to attend the inaugral tasting of their latest imports from Portugal. The wines are in America, horribly expensive, and almost atypically concentrated for Louis/Dressner. They are also delicious.

Highlights included 2000s from Alvaro Castro's Quinta da Pellada from Portugal's Dão region. The first wine is the Pellada Tinta Roriz. Incredible richness and density for an 'entry' wine. Stewed fruits, apricots swirling all around. Just lovely stuff.

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Then the 2000 Quinta da Pellada Touriga Nacional -- this wine is almost a witches stew, there is so much going on at once. Spicy and charming, with a finish that lasts forever. Wine writer Jeff Connell, of The Jeff Connell Quarterly Wine Review and Agricultural Digest has written of this wine:

A wine of delicacy and depth, lightness and strength, violets and wild strawberries.

Last from Pellada is the Reserve Blend 2000. No one at the Louis/Dressner tasting knew exactly what the blend was, but who cared. This was the tighter of the three wines, but seemed the most harmonious and potentially greatest of the lot.

I've personnaly met Castro a couple of times and found him to be a model vigneron. The wines are made with indigenous yeasts, non-filtered and are a superb expression of the best the Dão has to offer. Truly world class stuff.

The other major showing at the Louis/Dressner tasting were two new wines from Miguel Viegas Louro of the Quinta do Mouro from the Alentejo region. The Louis/Dressner press people pushed into my hands quotes from Jancis Robinson about this producer: ""this is a harmonious blend of ripe, almost sweet, fruit flavours within a corset of oak. This wine strikes me as outside the norm. The winemaker seems to be following his own path without blowing to the winds of fashion, which is in itself admirable in my mind."

The first wine was the Quinta do Mouro 1998, which was massive and as all these wines just arrived from Portugal in the past few days, I would like to retry this in a few weeks. The wine is so dense as to be unexpressive, but there is no mistaking the rich material here.

The big surprise was the Casa dos Zagalos 1999. This is the second wine from Mouro and was just juicy, lucious and gob-like. Although the gobs were nicely balanced by the wine's acidity. One of the Louis/Dressner press people told me this was made without any sulphur.

How much do all these wines cost? They are all very expensive and are going to set you back lots of money. But it was very exciting to taste these world-class wines and the quality is well worth the expense.

Again Kudos to Kevin McKenna and Denyse Louis. Everyone is looking to Portugal to find cheap and crappy industrial wines that can sell for nothing, even though the importers will keep objectionable profits in their pockets. It takes courage to go out and find fabulous wines that are too expensive for anyone to want to buy and then try to market them without any mega-scores from Robert Parker, Bob Franken or The Wine Spectator.

Hats off to Kevin and Denyse!

E-Mails

Getting e-mail from you, my readership, is so gratifying. Please keep them coming....no request is too small, no request is too large.

Today's highlight:

Dressner....Joe...

I have a six bottle sample of artist label Domaine de Roueire wine that I am trying to get released from Customs and into my art exhibition for the same artist (Neville Paine working in Villasavary, France). One of the paintings on exhibition is the very subject of the wine label, so it's very important that I get these wines over to the art exhibit to help promote the artist's work.

Here's the problem.....my business L.G. Sanchez Fine Arts does not have an Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) permit to give to Customs to release the wines for final shipment.

My question is, would you, or someone you know in the wine import business, be willing to accept the shipment for L.G. Sanchez Fine Arts?? A sample of the shipment would be yours for evaluation.

For further information, please see the Domaine de Roueire des Trois Terroirs web site: www.roueire.com/v3t/index.html

The proprietor that the artist dealt with there is Xavier-Luc Linglin, whose telephone number is listed on the above webpage.

P.S. This is rather urgent since Customs has stated that they will send the wine back to Europe (Fedex) tomorrow at noon, if I don't present them with an agent with an ATF license willing to receive the wine.

A Passionate Defense of Nicolas Joly from Dean "The Loire Schnauzer" Delahanty

Dean Delahanty's November/December newsletter is out and it is creating quite a controversy. "The Loire Schnauzer" organized a Coulée de Serrant vertical ranging back to the 1949s! The idea was to see what effect Joly's practice and advocacy of biodynamie has meant in the bottle.

Delahanty writes:

"It has become almost predictable to take cheap shots at Nicolas Joly. Jacqueline Friedrich did this in her book and now Bob Franken attacks Joly in his internet newsletter. Maybe Joly is pedantic, maybe the suits he wears are too slick. Agreed, he doesn't seem to be the model of a farmer spreading homeopathic treatments in his vineyards late at night. Joly can be faulted for not appearing to be a paysan-vigneron, but his stewardship of this estate has been beyond reproach."

"I had the great privilege to taste through a mind-boggling vertical from the Coulée de Serrant last September, before the harvest 2001 took place. The trace of a grand terroir is apparent, even in the vintages before Joly returned to the estate. But starting with 1983 and going from strength-to-strength, each vintage brought a new level of complexity, a staggering representation in wine of a blessed spot, a privileged terroir.

"The progression was almost linear, as if the climatic conditions of the harvest did not matter. For what we were tasting was the adaptation of Joly's vines to biodynamic techniques, techniques that were making them even more expressive and profound. More than an adaptation, we were tasting a rebirth.

"Yes, the truth was in the bottle and we can all thank Nicolas Joly for making this truth known to wine lovers all over the world."

Official Wine of The New Yankees

Rumor has it that cases of Renardat-Fache Cerdon du Bugey have travelled with The New York Yankees to whichever city in Arizona the Diamondbacks call home.

I am not at liberty to confirm this rumor. The Yankees still have to win one more game before there are any celebrations. The entire New York Yankee organization and its vendors are proud of the exemplary performances of the past three evenings, but we have a great deal of respect for the entire Diamondhead organization and their players. We will not be uncorking Renardat-Fache's Cerdon du Bugey until the last out of the last inning (no matter how late the game goes) in the deciding game of this marvelous World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondjacks.

The Cerdon du Bugey, a naturally sparkling wine from the popular Cerdon region, will just have to wait!

A side point about this wine: I have seen shelf talkers recently at various retailers that describe how this wine is 90% Gamay and 10% Cerdon. This was true but is no longer the case -- the current bottling is 75% Gamay and 25% Poulsard. It gives the wine a bit more finesse.

Plaudits from Dean "The Loire Schnauzer" Delahanty

Yes, Dean Delahanty's November/December issue just came out! One small excerpt:

"I was totally blown away by the entire range at Domaine de Bellivière. Eric Nicolas' 2000s go from strength to strength and I cannot recommend these wines highly enough."

"I was shocked and pleased to learn that Nicolas' Janières and Coteaux du Loir wines will be available in America. I assumed that these appellations were too esoteric for American importers looking to cash-in on Merlots, Cabernets and Chardonnays.

My congratulations to Kevin McKenna and Denyse Louis of Louis/Dressner Selections in New York for importing these excellent wines."

In New Relief Effort, Vast Quantities of First-Rate Muscadet to be Parachuted into Chicago -- Operation Mineral Meltdown Begins!

My employer, Louis/Dressner Selections, has been selling wine in Chicago for about 10 years now. We are on our second wholesaler, a well-regarded firm, as was our first wholesaler. We switched wholesalers when I got sick of the first wholesaler telling me that it was impossible to sell first-rate Muscadet in Chicago. How could this be?

At first, I was discouraged by the new wholesaler. They also insisted that it was impossible to sell first-rate Muscadet in Chicago. They also argued that retailers and restaurants look for high doses of sulphur, dilution, greeness and low prices.

Finally though, Direct Imports has come around to my point of view and is ordering an industrial quantity of Marc Ollivier's 2000 Clos des Briords from the Domaine de la Pépière. The wine should be in Chicago shortly after the new year.

Louis/Dressner Selections Praised by Wine Writer Bob Franken!

The latest issue of The Fine Wine Quarterly Review says the following of my employer:

"Louis/Dressner is to be applauded for all their hard work and originality. At a time when everyone is playing it safe with the same old same old, this firm is importing Mënu Pineau's, Pineau d'Aunis', Cerdon du Bugeys and God knows what other obscurities from the remote vineyards of France. Kudos to Kevin McKenna and Denyse Louis."

Beaujolais Cult Winemaker Lauded by French Wine Writer Guru

France's Michel Bettane, the leader wine writer in France, has just published his annual wine guide. Beaujolais Cult Winemaker Jean-Paul Brun has been awarded one star, the first guy in the Beauolais AOC to get this ranking. Bettane's text is below:

Le Classement des Meilleurs Vins de France 2002
By Michel Bettane et Thierry Desseauve
Editions de la Revue du vin de France
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Domaine des Terres Dorées * Beaujolais
Red: 17 hectares, Gamay 90%, Pinot noir 10%
White: 3 hectares, Chardonnay
Average yearly production: 200,000 bottles

Jean-Paul Brun is one of the rare artists-winemakers in the Beaujolais. His estate stands at the confluence of granite and clay/limestone veins in the pays des terres dorées ("land of golden stones", so named because the limestone is strongly colored by ferrous oxides, NT). This situation allows him to use Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, in addition to Gamay. Of course, his talents as a winemaker and his taste for experiments are apposite to his colleagues' notions, and they often take revenge by refusing to give his wines the AOC label. The local INAO bureau (National Institute for Appellations of Origins), with its usual lack of guts, piteously goes along with them.

Fortunately, wine lovers rave, and with good reason, about the red Beaujolais from his estate and négoce business (i.e., some grapes are bought elsewhere and vinified at the estate). These are vinified with total destemming of the grapes, and have an absolutely unique delicacy and finesse. The white wines easily surpass anything produced in the area, with fat, finesse and fabulous purity, in 1999 as well as 2000. The Pinot Noir wine has to be declassified into Bourgogne-Grand-Ordinaire (i.e., cannot be labelled Beaujolais Pinot noir), and it gets better with each passing vintage with the aging of the vines. Its finesse, its natural class, belies its humble origins, and sets a new ideal for all clay/limestone plots of the Southern Beaujolais, an economic disaster zone in viticulture. Labeur d'Octobre is a cuvée of late harvested Chardonnay grapes, with noble rot, which ressemble Jean Thévenet's best wines. (Jean Thévenet of Domaine de la Bongran, in the Mâconnais, is the best -and only, almost-- winemaker of botrytised Chardonnay wines, NT)

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