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Come Celebrate the Sixth Anniversary of this Blog at the Gala Louis/Dressner October 24th Tasting!
That's right! I've had this blog for nearly six years! In fact, I was the 24th person in America to launch a personal/professional blog!
Which goes to show....despite running a business, having two children, a dog, a heart condition, ill parents, arthritic joints and an ovoid yeast infection.....I have a lot of free time on my hands!
This is a busy time here at The Wine Importer blog. I'm feverishly working on the final draft of my Byron Bates biography, along with a major opus on dry white wines. Yes, a major opus on mineral and dry white wines.
Thinking of how it all started out years ago has made me feel nostalgic. I remember the old dial-up connection and the Osborne 25 pound portable running on the CP/M operating system with two 5 1/4" floppy disks and 64K of memory.
Below is my first blog, dating from November 24th, 2000. Then again, maybe it was my second blog. It was so long ago, it's hard to remember.
Charles McCabe, My Favorite Critic
I get so sick of Parker, The Wine Spectator and all the various other wine journalists that I often think of Charles McCabe, my favorite critic.I should note here that I do like Steve Tanzer, who I know personally, for being somewhat more tentative then the rest of the bunch. And of course, Steve is a helluva-a-guy! (Editor's Note: The Burghound and the Loire Schauzer did not exist when I wrote these words.)
McCabe was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle along with Herb Caen -- a powerful one-two morning punch for City residents. I lived in San Francisco from 1975 to 1980 and greatly enjoyed both columnists, McCabe was perhaps best know for his motto Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art, but I always remember him for his muckraking columns against America's razor blade manufacturers.
McCabe's theory was that America's razor manufacturers were intentionally making blades that required weekly replacement. Periodically, they would develop new shaving technologies that were seemingly superior -- the twin-edged and then triple-edged blade come to mind, although McCabe did not live to see the triple-edged. At product launch, these new blades would be extremely-sharp and last weeks. But as months and years went by, the razor companies would purposely lower the level of razor quality, ensuring that once again the shaver had to replace the blade on a weekly basis. This would create a perceived market need for an even newer technology and a new product would be introduced yet again that would work fine for several months and then once again degrade in quality. Ad infinitim.
I was very happy with Gilette's entry into the triple-edged market and was perhaps one of the first consumers to buy the Mach III when it was introduced. In fact, I was so overwhelmed with the performance of this machine, I was enthusiastically converted to Gillette's contention that this was the most important shaving innovation since the 1960s (although I was too young to shave until about 1968). But two years have gone by and I note that the blade cartridge, which seemed almost immortal at product introduction, now requires constant replacement. And those hard to get smooth spots are becoming the impossible to get smooth spots.
Happily, Alyce Dressner, my 12 1/2 year old daughter (Editor's note, Alyce is now 18 and will kill me if she finds out I've used her name on my blog....it is very embarassing for teenagers and young adults to have a father who blogs), constantly peruses the Drugstore.com site and I learned that the Schick company has now come up with its own triple-bladed system, the XTreme III (Schick XTreme III Site). Of course I immediately seized the opportunity to order these new razors and found the overall experience to be qualitatively superior to the Mach III. But still, it lacked the excitement that was there when the Mach III first came into the market. The XTreme III is incrementally better than the Mach III, but nothing more than that.
During this time of disappointment, I accidentally tried out another Schick blade. I am currently going to a physical therapist three times a week to remobilize my chest. My chest, which was once mobile, was recently cracked open to make way for four heart bypasses. Or quadruples bypasses, as they say in the medical trade.My physical therapist turns out of a luxury gym and oddly my insurance pays for the whole shebang, including the luxury showers outfitted with luxury cosmetics and razor blades. Just this week, they changed blades from an uninteresting Gillette disposable to a fascinating ergonomic Schick twin blade that I had never seen and that I decided to try out. What a shave!
It is not principally the ergonomic design of the razor that makes it so interesting as it is the inclusion of the One-Push Cleaning System. The shaver pushes this button during the shave and a clever mechanism pushes a small plastic strip between the twin blades, quickly dislodging any dirt or whiskers that might lead to clogging and eventual blade dulling. Again, I cannot recommend this blade highly enough and hope all interested readers will take the time to look at Schick's inspired web site dealing with this new technology: The Schick ST Disposable. Not only is this the best blade in the marketplace but it is also one of cheapest -- I bought a 15-pack today at Rite-Aid Drugs for only $5.99! Of course, there is always the possibility that the razor will go dull in several months or in a year. But until then I'm convinced.
There is a lesson here for wine lovers. They've been making twin-blades and disposables for some time now. Finally, it is an incremental improvement to an old and tested design that qualitatively advances the shaving experience. Not fancy new shavers or elaborate blades. The market always come back to the tried and true and demonstrably effective. Novelty, for the sake of novelty, eventually fatigues.
There is a lesson here for wine lovers.....
(Editor's Addendum: Nearly six years later I no longer shave. I have become totally indifferent about my personal appearance and hygiene. It is horrible getting old.)
posted on Friday, November 24, 2000
Don't Miss the Gala Louis/Dressner Fall Tasting On Tuesday, October 24th!
Mark your calendar! The big day is Tuesday, October 24th. The place is Noho. The time is after 11:25 am. We haven't decided yet if we'll have a VIP pre-tasting at 10:25 am.
Last year's Gala Louis/Dressner Tasting
Eric Texier will be coming! Lots of industry big shots will be there! There will be a cigar room!
Monique and Pierre Luneau will be attending this year, the first time they have travelled from the Muscadet to Noho. We will be showing a broad range of wines from them that are not available, but which will give everyone an idea of how great Muscadet can age and develop. These wines will include:
Le L d' Or from 1982, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005
Terroir Schistes Semper Excelsior Les Noelles from 2001, 2002 and 2003
Terroir Schistes Semper Excelsior Le Poyet from 2002
We'll also have exquisite snacks and stemware.
Call our office for details about time and location. But don't get there before 11:25 am.
2005 Beaujolais l'Ancien Rouge Rocks!
There has been a lot of anticipation for the 2005 Beaujolais vintage.
I just drank a bottle of the 2005 Rouge from Jean-Paul Brun. What a knockout wine!
There is insane color, insane concentration and insane Gamay fruit. You don't find the excesses of the 2003 Beaujolais, but you do find a recognizable l'Ancien but one that is notched up on every level.
Progress in Poil Rouge?
I've been coming to Poil Rouge for the past 23 years. Poil Rouge is a hamlet in beautiful St-Gengoux-de-Scissé, strategically located in the Northern Mâconnais.
The Famous Louis/Dressner Compound in Poil Rouge Sud
Everything here is changing rapidly as Poil Rouge is being dragged into modern times. Just this week, I was able to install a DSL connection, along with a Wi-Fi connection. Strangely, my neighbors also have Wi-Fi! I found out when I installed my router and Wi-Fi card and noticed there was another network available!
When I first started coming to this region, we didn't have Wi-Fi. We had Citroën Deux Chevaux's everywhere. These beautiful cars were symbols of the French countryside and blended in with the local vineyards, Charollais cows and goats. I used to think that every 2 CV had a mind, memory and soul that I, as an American, would never be able to understand. The 2 CV's are now gone and instead we have Wi-FI.
My neighbors are a charming young couple who strangely enough are wine geeks. They bought their house from the inheritors of the Fongey family. When I first came to Poil Rouge, Madame Fongey was still alive and over 100-years-old. Madame Fongey would sing at local gatherings in the local dialect, the local patois, a language that is long gone. The local dinners and gatherings are also long gone. We're all too busy surfing the internet.
Madame Fongy had been the village seamstress and her husband had been the town cryer. In the old days, before my time, Monsieur Fongy would travel from hamlet to hamlet in his 2 CV, stop and blow on his trumpet, and make important civic announcements afftecting the population at large. Soon, the City Hall will probably have a blog where we will be kept abreast of all breaking municipal developments.
While we've gained DSL and WiFi, we've lost other aspects of daily life:
- Nobody harvests grapes by hand anymore. Everyone uses machines. You can find pictures of people harvesting our local vineyards by doing a Google search under St-Gengoux-de-Scissé and Vendange. Everyone uses herbicide and the vineyards look like the desert. Hopefully, the local cooperative will rethink their work ethic in the next few years. At least, one can hope. I find the look of the vineyards depressing and every so often surf to a virtual vineyard site to reassure myself that someone is still doing good work.
- We used to have three bakers pass by every days in their small trucks. They would honk their horns and you would run out and buy your baguette. Those of us with good credit ratings could hang a bag on our walls and the baker would leave bread for us. We used to have the baker from Cruzille (retired eight years ago), the baker from Perrone (long gone) and the delicious bread from the organic baker from Blanot (retired two years ago). Now, there is a truck that comes by only four times a week from Azé, where the quality of the bread is standard. Downtown St-Gengoux has a small grocery which serves as a bread depot for the competent baker in Lugny. But, home delivery is but a memory and the quality of bread has gone down. I can still get good bread if I travel 25 Kilometers to Mâcon where there is a great organic baker, who unfortunately does not have a web site.
- We used to have three butchers coming by every day in their small trucks. There was our local guy, Monsieur Metra and Monsieur Bataillard from Azé. Monsieur Metra retired over a dozen years ago and no one took over his store. Monsieur Bataillard retired two years ago and no one took over his store. Luckily there is still Monsieur Aubertin in Lugny, who has great meat, but I have to get into my car to travel to Lugny since he doesn't drive from village to village. Now that the DSL has penetrated the area, maybe we'll have something like Fresh Direct in the near future.
- There used to be goats all over the area and dozens of goat cheese producers. Blanot, a beautiful village in the hillsides toward Cluny, used to have over 500 goats. There are not about 75. Thankfully, the best goat cheese producer in the Mâconnais, Marc Grozellier, is still in business, churning out delicious cheese from organically farmed goats.
- St-Gengoux-de-Scissé used to have a Hotel-Bar-Restaurant. It is now empty. We can get a meal in Azé or drive to Mâcon. There are no current home delivery options, but who knows what the future will bring? The Mâcon tourism web site has an excellent listing of local eateries.
- Lotissements are springing up in our village and every adjoining village. Lotissements are plots of new prefabricated houses which are ugly as sin and which ruin the look of the area. Unfortunately, the local authorities make no effort to control the architecture and standards of these homes and future generations will have no memory of how charming this area used to be. Unfortunately, there are strict restrictions if you buy an old stone home and do renovations. But, if you build a new home, you are free to construct whatever monstrosity fits your budget and desires.
- Everyone is getting older and I'm slowly watching the village die off. Who can forget how beautifully the Paillard used to dance at the Bal Populaire on July 13th? Now the village authorities play bad disco music and French rap songs. I'll probably die soon myself, before I have the chance to learn how to tango.
- We no longer have the Brioche du Dimanche. This was a local specialty, whose finest practioner was the the baker in Aze who retired years ago. The Sunday Brioche was like a large, fat tarte and absolutely delicious. We would eat it every week with some butter and confiture. Mmmm.
- American wine importers spend their summers here, staying in old farmhouses, crowding out the local residents who are forced to build new homes in lotissements.
- Global warming leads to hotter and hotter summers here and local bloggers, equipped with DSL and Wi-Fi connections have to take a break from blogging and take their Sunday afternoon nap.
Comments are Back!
I spent the day tasting the new vintages at Jean-Paul Brun and Eric Texier.
I received an exciting e-mail from the Joe Dressner The Wine Importer Technical Support Staff (the JDTWITSS) while tasting the fabulous 2004 Brezeme Vieilles Vignes.
This site has been plagued by spam in the comments section over the past few months. Our Technical Support Staff has worked night and day to surmount these problems and we are now working with a software system which should filter spam.
So, yes, the comments section is back.
Has anyone seen the sheriff?
Congratulations to Jim Bassett and entire team in San Antonio!
Back in Poil Rouge!
Denyse and I have returned to the Mâconnais from our exhaustive and exhausting trip through the Loire Valley.
Much to my surprise, we now have both a DSL and Wifi here in Poil Rouge! Up to now, I have connected to the internet using a dial-up connection at the slowest rate imaginable. All of a sudden, we've been launched into the 21st Century!
Now that I'm equipped with enormous and rapid bandwidth, I hope to find something interesting to write about in the next few days.
One things that was clear during my trip through the Loire is that 2006 will be the vintage of the century!
Off to the Loire Valley!
Denyse and I are feverishly packing and are off to the Loire Valley today.
We'll be back in a week after touring some of our old favorites and some of the new estates we've added over the past year. Unfortunately, we have a very short summer here in France and will not be able to see everyone.
We had a fabulous meal the other day at La Table de Chaintré in the Mâconnais. Gérard et Josette Alonso have a fixed menu for the evening with delicious, fresh and innovative food and one of the greatest wine lists in France. We drank a 1987 Savignin from Overnoy which was made like a Vin Jaune but bottled only two years ago. This was one of the most delicious wines I've had in years. Next a 2000 Morgon from Marcel Lapierre which was all groseilles, animal, gamey, in evolution and complete. Last, a 2002 Longues Vignes from Domaine le Briseau which was bordering on refermentation but which was still intact, lively (if not over-lively) and steely Chenin throughout. A great mean and stategically located near Poil Rouge.
Other highlights of our stay in the Mâconnais include suffering unbearable heat, watching Floyd Landis win the Tour de France, reading novels from obscure Albanian writers, suffering unbearable heat and receiving the latest issue of The Art of Eating. Ed Behr's coverage of the Jura is so intelligent, well-writen, observant and spot-on that it is almost embarassing. This journal continues to put out some of the best material on wine and food in the English language.
Call me on my French cell phone if you want to stay in touch! See you soon!
I am ha ving technical problems with my comments section and hopefully it will be fixed soon. My apologies to all you commentors.
Why do Larmandier-Bernier Champagnes Taste so Good?
I visited Larmandier-Bernier a week ago and had a great tasting ranging back to 1976, although the highlight for me was the 1989 Cramant.
There is a purity to these wines and visiting the vineyards, tasting the wines and talking with Sophie and Pierre Larmandier made clear to me why these wines are so good:
- The vines are older and overwhelmingly are sélection masale. Very few clones means very good wines.
- Yields are kept below the allowable quotas and the work in the vineyard is intensive and constant.
- The entire estate is now being worked in biodyamie, although they describe themselves as bio-réalistes, that is they view biodyamie as a way of making better wines, not as end in of itself.
- The vines are plowed, as they have been for several generations. The vines are alive and maintained, rather than killed off by herbicides like their neighbors.
- All this work in the vines leads to a minerality which allows the Larmandier to work in low or no dosage.
This appears to be the norm in the area. Much of Champagne is picked from 8 to 9 degrees of Alcohol. Given the high yields, it is difficult to reach ripeness and the 9 degrees is the legally allowable limit. The wines are then chaptalized a couple of degrees legally, or more with a sleight of hand, and an additional degree is added by the second fermentations.
Larmandier looks to pick at ripeness. I tasted a series of still Chardonnay wines in cask from 2005 which were absolutely delicious. It was almost regretable that these wines are not bottled as they are. The wines were picked at above 11 degrees, which is almost aberrant for the area, and it was great fun to taste Chardonnay at such a low degree which still had roundness, depth and character. Another degree will come with the secondary fermentation, but these are natural wines with no chaptalization. Pierre has had to chaptalize on rare occasion, but in general he looks for a natural degree. To get this level of ripeness, yields must low and you must wait.
One of the myths of Champagne is the quality of the still wines doesn't matter, but in tasting through the cellar, the minerality shines in each cuvée. This minerality is transformed into Champagne, but the terroir continues to dominate, rather than the process of vinification. The Champagne is made without innoculated yeasts and without enzymes and retains its purity throughout.
The other interesting thing I learned is that it is common not to harvest the entirety of your property. That is, if you have a portion of your vines at high yields, you just let a few hectares go without picking them. So, for instance, if you have 10 hectares of vines and are allowed to pick at 75 hectolitres/hectare, then you are allowed to legally produce 750 hectolitres. If you overproduce, you just leave a few hectares unpicked and reach the legally acceptable output. Of course, the 7 hectares you pick are still the product of huge yields and the fact you don't pick three hectares doesn't make the wine you do put in bottle any better. But, this is a common practice throughout the region.
This practice is now being challenged by recent legislation of the INAO which was enacted before the death of Réné Rénou. This legislation required the entirety of one's vineyards to be picked if you are to be granted the AOC. This ruling has created a furor in Champagne, where it goes against the dominant harvesting practices outlined above.
Growers like Larmandier and Anselme Selosse are to be applauded for the great work they are doing in their vineyards and their cellars to renew the quality of Champagne. Champagne as a region has had no trouble positioning itself as a luxury good. Unfortunately, the quality in the bottle is so often a disappointment.
Allez-pas les Bleues
It is Sunday evening and I should be watching the World Cup but instead I'm writing this on my Tmobile SDA Windows Mobile phone connected to my Think Outside Bluetooth keyboard.
Saturday night, I had an 8:40 pm Air France flight which was scheduled to get into Paris at 10 am on Sunday. More than enough time to take a nap, change and go out to watch the match.
Unfortunately, my flight was delayed several hours last night for a "technical verification," as they kept announcing. Finally, they were not able to verify the technicality and flight was cancelled sometime after 11 pm. We then went down to domestic luggage and had to reclaim our baggage. A couple from Virginia who had taken a connecting flight to JFK were horrified to discover they in fact no longer had any luggage due to another technical verification, I suppose.
We then were herded to the outside of the terminal where shuttle buses converged out of nowhere to take us to hotels near the airport. My driver announced we were going to the Hamptons Inn, but left our group off at something called the Double Tree Hotel. I asked the driver if he was certain this was the right hotel and he assured me that the Hampton Inn had changed its name to the Double Tree. In the world of generic Hotel Chains, this seemed perfectly plausible.
After waiting on line for about 20 mintues to check-in at the Double Tree, we were told that they had no booking for an Air France group. They called the Hampton Inn, which turned out was another hotel, and we were in fact expected there along with the couple of hundred other people who had been bumped off our flight.
Another van came to get us 30 minutes later and I went up to my luxuriously appointed room with two queen beds, a wi-fi connection, a beautiful view of South Jamaica and a Bible strategically placed in the top draw of the night table.
By now it was 1 am and I was able to get about five hours sleep before being woken up to be driven back to the airport. Spare parts had been found for our plane during my Hampton Inn stay and the plane was slated to take off at about 11 am on Sunday. This meant, of course, I was not only going to miss the gala reception of winners of the Ordre de Merite Agricole, but I was also going to totally miss the soccer match.
The one good thing about the flight is that it is nearly empty. I fly in Economy as our small profits on wines don't allow me to mingle with the big shots in business class. But I'm perfectly fine today with empty four seats in a row and no one in front of me. Generally, I get someone who militantly insists on pushing their seat all the way back, but today I'm at ease.
I have had an Ambien crisis. I was planning to use Ambien to sleep last night and arrive fresh in Paris on Sunday morning. The problem if I sleep during this flight is that I will arrive at about midnight and not be tired. So, I'm holding off for a beautiful Ambien induced sleep on Sunday night. I have to be in Champagne at 2 pm, so I'm in no rush.
I want to apologize to the readership for the personal character of this blog entry. I often hear the criticism that for a wine blog my blog has very little about wine. I suppose I should be tasting wine daily and writing fabulous notes here about how they smell like tobacoo and are smoky in the mouth.
Of course, I wouldn't have been able to write tasting notes today on the plane, as the only wine available on board was a Syrah from Castel and a Merlot from Fortant de France. I stuck with sparkling water, which I found very user-friendly.
I never quite manage to write those sort of wine notes. To me, being a wine importer is almost like being on a mission and its a mission that is filled with circuitous routes, missed flights, turbulence and discomfort. Simultaneously, I have the privilege of being associated with an enormously gifted group of vignerons who bring the earth to life and into the bottle. Even a night in South Jamaica's Hampton's Inn can't ruin that.
I don't enjoy sleeping alone in a hotel room. I find sleeping alone in a hotel room to be preparation for what death will probably be like. As a non-Catholic atheist who, in general, figures the Catholic Church is probably right because of all the great artwork they've left humanity, the best I can hope for is purgatory or limbo. Spend a night at the South Jamaica Hamptons Inn and you'll have a taste of what that might be like. It is not an alluring prospect.
Plus they didn't even have HBO!
They had a lot of pay channels for movies and porn. I wondered if I used them, and they were billed to my room, would Air France pick up the tab or would Air France hunt me down to make me pay.
Instead, I read the New Testament to put myself to sleep. I always enjoy The Sermon on the Mount and found it particularly inspirational last night. There is much to be said about humility and happily Mary Magdalene didn't figure into the sermon. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of all this Mary Magdalene fuss.
One highlight of the trip was that Harmon Skurnik of Michael Skurnik Wines was also on this flight, along with his wife. I didn't see him this morning, so I assume he rebooked on another flight though.
The other nice thing is that on Tuesday I will be in Poil Rouge with my whole family. We haven't all been together for several months now, as my son was off in Italy working at Cascina degli Ulivi.
I fell in love with wine in the Maconnais and fell in love with my wife there and had two children there. All done in an ancient farmhouse facing vineyards which have been there for time immemorial, even if they have now been mechanized, pulverized, chemicalized and denaturified to produce something unattractive to drink. It will be wonderful to go home again, a home I never would have guessed existed some 23 years ago when I started this adventure.
Writing from a technically verified Boeing 747-400 somewhere over the Atlantic.....
Joe Dressner
PS: They just made an announcement that France lost in what must have been an exciting match. Oh well.
Allez les Bleues!
I'm off to France tonight!
First stop is Sunday's gala reception and World Cup Final viewing at the newly-opened Musée du Quai Branly. The French government has invited all recipients of the Order du Merite Agricole, to this exclusive gathing to root, root, root for the home team. Strangely, I did win this award several years ago for my service to French viticulture, even though I'm totally indifferent to soccer. But I'm not one to turn down an important honor like this!
On Monday, I'm off to Vertus, to meet, taste and rehash the exciting Sunday night soccer game with Sophie and Pierre Larmandier. I'm hoping to taste a vertical of non-dosage Champagnes, since I always have to hear how dosage helps Champagnes age. I don't believe it and would like to taste some older bottlings
On Tuesday, I'm off to glamorous Poil Rouge, smack dab in the center of St-Gengoux-de-Scissé, where I will reunite with my wife, three children and dog. Maybe I'll rest some, maybe we'll go see growers in Burgundy and Beaujolais. We will grill some good steak from the Charollais and eat some declicious goat cheese from Marc Groseiller. There are many pleasures to being in the Mâconnais and I intend to enjoy my stay, regardless of the outcome of the World Cup final.
I'll be back in New York in mid-August. Have a great summer, drink lots of White Poulsard, and buy lots of 2005 Bordeaux Futures!
Shamelessly Quoting the Wine Advocate!
I'm exhausted. I've spent the past five days cleaning up my apartment in preparation for major renovations. My wife, daughter and dog are in France. My son is in Italy. My parents are home and are ill.
I'm depressed and despondant.
The latest issue of Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate just arrived at our office. I"ve dropped everything and ordered tens of thousands of dollars in Bordeaux futures. From what I've read, this could be almost as big as 1982! I missed out on buying a coop apartment in Manhattan when the market was low and I missed out on the 1982s. I'm not going to be caught flat-footed yet again.
There are also lots of reviews of Zinfandels, wines from Oregon, Best Value wines, New York State wines and White Burgundies. Of all those wines, the only ones I drink are White Burgundies, but it turned out that the coverage from Pierre-Antoine Rovani was only about the Mâconnais and Chablis.
As a homeowner in the Mâconnais, I'm glad to see the region get such extensive coverage, even if it is three pages less than what New York State gets. Hopefully, this will help raise the property value of my home in Poil Rouge and compensate for my sluggard home ownership status in Manhattan.
Even one of our estates is reviewed, the Domaine de Roally which is now owned by the Thevenet family of Clessé. Yes, it is a review of the 2003 Mâcon-Montbellet, a wine which is very hard to sell because every wiseacre in the wine industry knows that you should avoid any 2003 white like the plague. Mr. Rovani writes:
The rich intense 2003 Mâcon-Montbellet explodes from the glass with sumptuous aromas of pears, apples, almonds and minerals. This outstanding effort is broad, suave, medium-bodied, silky-textured, and jam-packed with salty, honeyed minerals. Drink this highly expressive wine over the next three years.
The wine also garners a lot of points for a Mâcon. As high as any other Mâcon and at half the price of the similarly pointed wines. You'll have to look up the point total in the Wine Advocate, because even though I'm shamelessly quoting their review here, I still have too much self-respect to mention point totals. Bear in mind, this is no Cult Cab or Australian Shiraz and there is a mathematical ceiling for the category to assure Marquis Phillips fans that this wine is not competitive with one of the Marquis' efforts.
Like Mr. Rovani, I love this wine and find it atypical for a 2003. That is, there is none of the excess of the vintage, the low acidity and flabbiness that you find with so many Chardonnay's. There is also none of that high acidity produced by reacidification.
I remember getting a call from Jean Manciat, a vigneron in Charnay, after the harvest, who had seen the Thevenet vineyards during the harvest. Manciat was astounded that there was a normal size harvest, as opposed to the reduced size around the Mâconnais, and by the health and vigor of the vine. Unlike everywhere else, these were not stressed vines.
For Manciat, it was the most convincing argument he had ever seen for plowing and working the land and for only using natural products. Thevenet and Henri Goyard before him, have been working like this for decades, not simply for the past few years because it has become fashionable to work organically or biodynamically. These vineyards are historic treasures which are living organisms. The proof is in the bottle, year after year.
We received a lovely note from Gauthier Thevenet after the harvest, explaining how things had worked out:
The exceptional weather conditions and extreme drought of summer 2003 forced us into a very unusual harvest.
We started our harvest at the end of August (late September is the usual time) by picking the grapes hanging on the southern side of the rows. These are the least protected from the sun and were at risk of drying out.
Then, since rain was predicted by weather forecasts, we decided to take a break. Rain at the end of the growing season usually helps the grapes to reach optimum ripeness, and we still had to pick the bunches growing in the shade of their leaves.
After the rain, we went back to harvesting by the middle of September. As we had done in August, we only picked in the morning to avoid the excessive heat of the day.
We noticed that the regular plowing done for years prevented the vines from suffering from the lack of water through the season.
As for the wines, they have kept their natural balance and we did not reacidify them. They look like wines with finesse and a good potential for long aging.
All too often, when we speak about natural and real wines, we sound like dogmatists or purists. The 2003 Mâcon-Montbellet is vivid proof of why this style of work in the vineyards and the cellar makes all the difference in the world.
I have to go back to cleaning my apartment.
The Next Big Thing?
Everyone in the wine world is always recreating themselves. This is particularly true on the cutting edge where every form of extreme viticulture or winemaking becomes stale when a new generation goes one step further. Louis/Dressner used to be cutting edge, years ago, but now we're as old hat as barrel-aged Chardonnay.
I've heard rumors about the latest new thing and I'm hesitant to get involved. Apparently, there are winemakers playing around with using organic material and compost from dead human beings to enrich and develop their terroir.
Will this be the next big thing?
Sounds sort of creepy, but stranger things have worked. But I'm remaining cautious until I do a definitive tasting of wines raised in dead human matter. I hear some of our younger competitors are already jumping on the bandwagon.
Dinner with Friends
I'm all alone in New York and have to go eat with some wine geeks at a BYOB restaurant.
Here's what I'm bringing:
Bleu Marine Savignin 2004 from Jean-Marc Brignot
Les Mouches ont Pied from Jean-Marc Brignot (New York's current leading cult wine)
La Pangée from Domaine le Briseau
Philippe Pacalet Gevrey-Chambertin 2004
Philippe Pacalet Pommard 2004
I'm kind of nervous about the selection. The people I'm dining with are either big fans of Joseph Drouhin or Turley Zinfandels. I've been tormented all day about what to bring.
What would you do?
Don Francisco's Brilliant Chilean Wines!
I was pleased to attend a private tasting earlier this week of Chilean wines from Don Francisco, the famed television entertainer best known for his brilliant work on Sábado Gigante.
Some quick impressions:
Don Francisco 2004 Cabernet -- Deep ruby colour, with purplish rim, intense dark frut. Nose of mulberries, eláter and cinnamon. Palate is firm and full bodied, with oak in the background.
Don Francisco 2004 Merlot -- Deep ruby colour. Up front red-fruit nose, with herb and mint backdrop. Palate is round and warming with cherry and raspberry tones.
Don Francisco 2004 Sauvignon Blanc -- Clean, fresh nose with citrus and floral aromas. Palate is crisp but with appealing weight in the mouth. Bone dry with green apple and pear flavours, good length and lengthy finish.
Don Francisco 2004 Chardonnay -- Pale yellow straw colour. clean nose, aromas of peach and lime. Palate is dry and mid weight, with a hint of smoky oak, and fresh apple fruit.
Don Francisco 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Private Collection -- This cabernet sauvignon has a nose of ripe cassis with hints of tobacco and sandalwood. A palate oozing with blackcurrant and dark chocolate.
Don Francisco 2004 Chardonnay Private Collection -- This cardonnay is packed with creamy pinapple and vanilla laid on top of a lovely mineral acid backbone.
Some additional information about the man behind the wine:
Dom Francisco has always dreamt about owning a winery and finally his dreams have come true.
Don Francisco (Born on December 28, 1940 in Talca, Chile) is the artistic name of Mario Kreutzberger, a Chilean television host. He was born into a German Jewish family; his parents had fled to Chile escaping from CENSORED persecution.
As a youth, he traveled to New York to study to be a tailor, but he spent most of the time watching TV. Back in Chile, where TV was just beginning, Don Francisco started a TV show in 1962, and he named it Sábados Gigantes. In it, he adapted many of the formulas he had seen in American TV to the Chilean public. The show became an instant hit that has lasted 40 years as the #1 viewed show in Chile. In 1985, the show began to be produced in Miami, Florida, with the same formula used in Chile, with the slightly different name of Sábado Gigante.
Don Francisco immediately became a household name among Latino families across the United States, and in the following five years, television networks from all over Latin America started buying the show. Spain also became a show customer during that period, and with that, 99 percent of Spanish language speaking people knew who Don Francisco was. For a few years, he continued flying weekly to Chile to tape the Chilean Sábados Gigantes, and back to Miami to do the international show.
He has a three hour long variety show, including contests, comedy, interviews and a traveling camera section. The traveling camera section, or Cámara Viajera (originally La Película Extranjera, The Foreign Film), has taken Don Francisco to over 185 countries world-wide, many of them more than once.
He not only imported from American TV some of the ideas for his show, but also the idea of doing a Telethon, similar to the one Jerry Lewis has done for years in the USA. Don Francisco has done many telethons to raise money for disaster relief and to help disabled children.
Don Francisco in his show has interviewed many celebrities, including Roberto Duran, CENSORED CENSORED, Cristina Saralegui, CENSORED, Charytin and many others. In addition, his show has launched the careers of many famous entertainers, such as Sissi, Iverson and many others.
In 1992, Don Francisco was accused by Kay Bixler, one of his models, of sexual harassment, but the charges were dismissed.
Nowadays, he has stopped flying back and forth between Miami and Chile each week to tape both the Chilean show and the international show, and his daughter Viviana is becoming quite famous as the host of the Chilean show. Apparently, having to travel so much between Miami and his home country each week, plus having to travel to worldwide locations to tape La Cámara Viajera, was becoming too strenuous for him.
Also, he hosted a season of the Chilean version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Deal or No Deal.
In 2002, Don Francisco's show completed 40 years, and its host said he has no plans to retire until the day he dies.
On April Fool's Day, 2003, a rumor that Don Francisco had died surfaced around the New York and New Jersey area. The rumor proved false.
Details Coming Together for October 24th or Maybe October 25th Louis/Dressner Tasting
We are already planning for our gala late fall tasting on October 24th or maybe October 25th.
Make sure to circle your calendar for both these dates and continue to look here for a more precise announcement.
Monique and Pierre Luneau will be attending this year, the first time they have travelled from the Muscadet to Noho. We will be showing a broad range of wines from them that are not available, but which will give everyone an idea of how great Muscadet can age and develop. These wines will include:
Le L d' Or from 1982, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005
Terroir Schistes Semper Excelsior Les Noelles from 2001, 2002 and 2003
Terroir Schistes Semper Excelsior Le Poyet from 2002
We'll also have snacks and stemware.
Philippe Pacalet Burgundies
I recently had to drink a couple of Joseph Drouhin Burgundies and they made me think how happy I am that we are importing Philippe Pacalet Burgundies.
Drouhin is a reputable and admirable firm and many geeks I know seem to love their wines. Drouhin makes sound and often excellent wines and in all fairness I was not drinking wines from great vintages. They were solid and without excess, but they did not have the finesse and beauty that everyone associates with Pinot Noir. Or at least, that they used to associate with Pinot Noir. There was something dried and clunky which took away from the wine and finally which dominated what I was drinking.
Pacalet's 2004s recall another flavor and sensory profile. The wines almost suffer from aromatic intensity and subtlety -- something complex is going on in the glass, something that transcends technique. Perhaps there is even some terroir.
Philippe buys grapes only from pinot fin plantings, that is from the old massale of Pinot Noir, and vinified gently without sulfur. A small amount of sulfur is added at bottling for stability, but the wines keeps its purity and attraction.
People write about Pinot Noir with religious fervor but I rarely find drinking Burgundies a religious experience. Pacalet has restored my faith.
By the way, I took a look at Drouhin's web site and they are comitted to using séléction masale plantings in the Côte d'Or and are propogating these plantings at their own nursery. This seems admirable and no doubt adds somethings to their bottlings. They also have large holdings in Chablis. They mention on their site how they hand harvest in Côte d'Or but are silent about how whether or not they machine harvest in Chablis. I hope this doesn't mean they machine harvest in Chablis' great vineyards, but....
Strange Wines!
Sometimes I'm surprised by the crazy wines we import.
Les Mouches ont Pied just arrived. This is a Poulsard vinified as a white wine by Jean-Marc Brignot in the Arbois, a young vigneron who is a protégé of Pierre Overnoy. What a crazy bottle of wine!
The name of the wine means Flies Have Feet, which means that the Flies don't sink because they have feet that keep them on top of the water. Or something like that. I think it is an in-joke, a pun, but none of the French people at Louis/Dressner have any idea what it could mean. We've spent hours doing French Google searches and still can't figure out what it means.
The wine is sensational. Some of the crazy cherryish flavors of Poulsard but bright and brash, with acidity, length and conviction. There are even tannins! This is the ultimate totally truly blind tasting wine, which will confound, confuse and delight wine geeks all over America.
Vast quantities of this wine came into our warehouse but it is already sold out.
Upon further thought, it appears that the nature of the pun is that the glass is empty and needs a refill because the flies are walking around the bottom of the glass and are no longer submerged. Frankly, this sounds disgusting to me, but don't hold it against the wine. Great stuff!
Montreal!
Today is the first school day in 17 years that I don't have to wake-up a child and rush them off to school.
My daughter graduated the fabulous New York Rudolf Steiner School yesterday in a beautiful ceremony highlighted by the playing of Brahms' Sonata for Violin and Piano in G, the singing of the spiritual Soon Ah Will Be Done where the largely Upper East Side student body beautifully appealed to "meet my Jesus," and an elegant commencement speech by an old-time Steiner supporter who has sent five children to New York's Steiner School .
There are many great teachers at this school and my daughter loved her two years there, following her 11-year-stint at New York's Lycée Français. Next year, she's off to Montréal to study fine art and to join her brother who is studing English Literature. Montréal is the site of a burgeoning Franco/New Yorker scene and I'm delighted to have both my kids attending school there.
It only seemed fitting to celebrate my daughter's graduation at ICI restaurant in Brooklyn, which along with 360 is one of her two favorite restaurants in New York. We ordered a range of wines with sentimental importance to my daughter, perhaps the most important being the FRV100 from Jean-Paul Brun. While my daughter never sang spiritual songs with Jean-Paul Brun, she did learn the all-purpose word putain from him when she was nine-years-old. We also drank wines from Christian Chaussard, Catherine Roussel, Didier Barouillet and from several other growers I can't remember. In the grand French tradition, we arrived around 5 pm and left the table at about midnight.
Despite the day beginning at the Steiner Graduation Ceremony, none of the wines were from practioners of biodynamie. But, they were all organic and delicious.
It's an imperfect world. As they sang at yesterday graduation ceremony:
Soon Ah will be done-a with the troubles of the world
The troubles of the world
The troubles of the world
Soon Ah will be done-a with the troubles of the world
Goin' home to live with God
I want to meet my Jesus (I want to meet Him)
I want to meet my Jesus (meet my Jesus)
I want to meet my Jesus (I want to meet Him)
I'm goin' to live with God
I'm off today for Montréal where my daughter and I will be looking for an apartment, eating out, touring, arguing and having a good time.
See you all soon!