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Help!
I am being force-fed Raclette in a mountain retreat somewhere outside Grenoble!
The only thing to drink is a Mondeuse infused with the 71B yeast!
Jean-Paul Brun is Coming over for Dinner!
I'm having an all Côte dinner. Côte de Betes for vegetables and Côte de Boeuf for the main course. Delicious Charollais beef!
We've been running around France and currently have 14 people in my house. They are members of my Beautiful Family. In France, you call your in-laws the Beautiful Family.
I'll try to write more about what's going on in viticultural France, but I doubt I will have time.
All my best to my readers out there, particularly all the Jewish wine lovers in Ohio!
Some prominent members of Ohio's Jewish Community.
And we're off....
I know readers are dying to know the details of my personal life since we arrived in Poil Rouge.
- We arrived last Tuesday in the rain and had nothing to eat at home.
- We ate Pizza at La Dolce Vita in Mâcon. We ordered a carafe of delicious plain Beaujolais from Marcel Lapierre. It had no color, no intensity and was lovely. This may be the only pizzeria in the world which carries Poulsard from Pierre Overnoy, Fleurie from Yvon Metra, Dard & Ribo and Henri Roch in Vosne-Romanée. Mâcon rocks!
- The weather has been unbearably hot since Wednesday
- I mowed the lawn
- Denyse took care of our bushes, flowers, trees and plants
- Buster ate lots of grass
- We are at one with nature
- Jean-Paul Brun is releasing his Beaujolais as Table Wine
- We ate a lot of saucisson
- We drank a 1992 Clos Vougeot from Amiot-Servelle with no color, no intensity and which was just lovely
- We drank a 1999 Côte du Py from Louis-Claude Desvignes which was way too young
- We drank a 1996 Mas des Chimères which was dark, intense and just lovely
- We drank a 2000 L'Ebrescades from Marcel Richaud which needed time to open and should have been decanted but bordered on the profound
- We bought a flamethrower to destroy weeds in our courtyard, allowing us to avoid using Round-up. I'm looking for a homeopathic treatment so I can declare our courtyard in biodynamie
- Windows Vista sucks and keeps crashing
- I finished Neal Rosenthal's book
- Received a phone call from Interpol about possible criminal activities in Poil Rouge
The summer coincided with our arrival.
I have to pack and leave or we will be late seeing Pierre and Monique Luneau. It is a long drive to the Muscadet from Poil Rouge, nearly seven hours. I've primed the GPS and filled the tank and am looking forward to fighting sleep as I drive toward Nantes.
See you soon.
Return to Poil Rouge!
Denyse and I are off today to beautiful Poil Rouge. Poil Rouge is a hamlet in charming St-Gengoux-de-Scissé, strategically located in the Northern Mâconnais.
The locals describe the Poil Rougien life style as being exquis!
The Famous Louis/Dressner Compound in Poil Rouge Sud
It always takes us a while to get set-up. There are cobwebs (in French, they call this toiles d'araignée, mouse nests (in French, they call this un nid de souris, dust (in French, they call this poussiére), house repairs (bricolage) and lots of mosquitoes (moustiques) to keep us busy during the first few days.
We have to set up home and then go to the Loire Valley and rub shoulders with all the famous vignerons in the Loire making high acid wines when there isn't global warming.
It is kind of like leading a double life. The French countryside remains largely IPHONE free and there is a whole other culture there. Believe it or not, I'm the only person in Poil Rouge with a Blog!
Big Louis/Dressner National Wine Tasting on Tuesday, October 21st!
Please note, several readers have complained about our having the tasting on Wednesday, October 21st. So, we have changed the date to Tuesday, October 21st.
We've changed the date and changed the venue!
It is going to be bigger and better than ever before.
Enthusiastic Taster from Lillie's ’s Liquor Barn of Englewood, New Jersey at Last Year's Tasting
Lot's of enthusiastic people will be coming.
You won't want to miss this exciting event.
I have an RSS Feed!
In an effort to keep up with modern technology, I now have an RSS Feed!
http://www.datamantic.com/joedressner/xml/
Thank you very much for pressuring me for this important update.
We Had a Great Trade Tasting on Wednesday!
We have a lot of new wines in town and decided to invite our best local customers to a deluxe tasting at an obscure location.
It was a very young crown and I was more than double the age of 73% of the participants.
We actively discouraged attendance and expelled three people who were not invited. There was an enthusiastic response from the people attending and it was interesting to note the demographics:
26% from below Houston Street
46% from Brooklyn
2% from 24th Street and Tenth Avenue
15% from between Houston and 14th Street
5% from Harlem
2% from Hudson, New York
2% were members of my immediate family who are implacably hostile to Canadians.
2% from the Commonwealth of Virginia
What does it all mean?
The Incredible Pennsylvania Wine Market!
We no longer sell wine in Pennsylvania but used to sell there years ago.
The state is run by a State Monopoly and there are no private wine shops. Restaurants have to pick up their wines at state liquor stores, just like everyone else.
There is really no one to taste with and no one to sell to if you're selling anything out of the mainstream. The state personnel who decide what to buy are strictly limited in what they can taste, how often, and what they can recommend. It is a civil service run wild.
Today, we received a billback from the state for a bottle of Domaine Arnaud Machard de Gramont Chorey-Les-Beaune 1990. That's right 1990. We haven't worked with that estate since the 1993 vintage!
Arnaud Machard de Gramont of Nuits-St-Georges, Some 17 years after he Bottled the Returned Bottle
The way it works, is that if a consumer decides they don't like a wine, they can bring it back to the state and get a refund at the full purchase price of the wine. We sold this wine to the State of Pennsylvania sometime in 1993.
Fifteen years later someone doesn't like the wine, brings it back, gets a refund, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board sends us a billback for $12.71 for the bottle of wine.
The bill sent us doesn't tell us why it was returned. It doesn't really matter to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania because it is not their money. If we don't pay, they will sue us!
My God, Burgundy used to be cheaper in those days.!
Instructions for Tomorrow's Trade Tasting
We received a lot of calls today and we're all booked-up.
It doesn't make a difference if Eddie Wrinkerman is a personal friend. There's simply no room.
For those of you who have already been admitted....please bring one photo id.
The VIP tasting is from 12:10 to 12:30. Everyone else can come in at 12:45 (we need fifteen minutes to clean the platters of food we are putting out for the VIPs).
Bring paper and pencils to write notes. We have no time to print out proper tasting notes, but will give you price sheets.
We're short on glasses. You might want to bring one.
It would also be convenient if your brought a bag of ice cubes to help keep the wines at a cool temperature.
Wines are always very hot at these sort of tastings and our office air conditioner is not very powerful.
The building's bathrooms are not working. Please don't expect to use them.
We're looking forward to seeing you and can't wait for tomorrow!
Denyse Louis Gets Even Worse Spam Than I Do!
Denyse Louis, my business partner and life coach, received a spam from someone named Isabelle Scrugs today. The subject line was Best and the short text was:
your life is crap
That was it....your life is crap
That's some serious spam!
Who is Isabelle Scrugs?
What's in it for Isabelle Scrugs?
What's the point?
Why?
Denyse left work early today, visibly shaken.
Spam
Who comes up with all these wonderful names who send me spam.
Just today, I have received spam e-mails from:
- Aubrey Carlton
- Viola Watson
- Jolene Jarvis
- Consuelo K. Vargas
- Lana Serrano
- Brad Kane
- Ofelia McConnell
- Adolfo Underwood
- Jeffrey Petit
- Luciano Chang
- Elma Bender
- Arturo Fellinger
- Herbie Diggory
- Jarred Blankenship
- Tania Fritz
- Milda Vonner
- Beverly Buck
- Bernard Faustino
This is just a small sampling and doesn't include the obviously pornographic.
Someone with an active imagination is at work!
Que Choisir Article on Jean-Paul Brun's Beaujolais
Que Choisir, the French equivalent of Consumers Report, has a good article on the INAO's scandalouis treatment of Jean-Paul Brun. It is in French, so please brush-up on that language before clicking below:
Que Choisir on Jean-Paul Brun
Although I am too busy a guy to translate the article, which would also constitute copyright infrinigement, I have sent the site through Babelfish, a site which does 100% accurate translations. So readers who only understand English can check the article below:
Flawless English Translation of Que Choisir on Jean-Paul Brun
In other late breaking news, it appears that American consumers will be able to buy this wine in the coming weeks. Currently, we only have stock of the first batch of Beaujolais which was approved. But in a few weeks we will have a Vin de Table called L'Ancien de Jean-Paul Brun, which will be the banned Beaujolais.
This Blog Mentioned in Wall Street Journal and to be Featured by Tom Wark!
I just learned that famous blogger Tom Wark is doing a feature about me and my blog on Fermentations, his excellent blog.
Howard Goldberg of The New York Times
I'm really excited about this.
He's already done everyone I know and I was hoping he would also feature me.
My blog was just mentioned in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. I learned this by stealing my neighbor's copy of that newspaper.
Lyle Fass and VLM are having a blogging feud. Don't miss all the excitement on their blogs.
The Grocery Guy cut himself the other day while making pasta.
Brad Kane has launched a new blog about his wine world.
Friends of the Brooklyn Guy took a vacation on Long Island and guest-blogged about their trip.
Alice Feiring has lots of book promotional events listed on her blog.
James Laube's blog notes that the people of Napa Valley mourn the passing of Robert Mondavi.
Wine therapy has an excellent discussion on coffee.
The eRobertParker board has no controversial topics because they've eliminated all the troublemakers.
Does anyone know what Pierre Rovani now does for a living?
New York Times reporter Howard Goldberg wrote on Eric Asimov's blog: As usual, the feisty, forward-looking Joe Dressner is right.
The Wine Mule has a provocative article entitled A Reappraisal of Chilean and Argentine Wines, written after the Wine Mule did a tasting with " the irrepressible I.V. Kimberly, a regional manager for Billington Imports"
Julio Iglesias likes Romanée Conti!
Although, he usually opens a good Pauillac or Pomerol when he's just having a casual conversation.
I learned this today reading The Wine Spectator's web site.
He has only one magnum left of 1985 Romanée-Conti and will open it if the Réal Madrid team wins the soccer championship.
Taste the Banned Beaujolais of Jean-Paul Brun on June 7th at Chambers Street Wines!
For those of you who have read Eric Asimov's report on the banning of Jean-Paul Brun, please note that you can taste these banned wines for free on June 7th at Chambers Street Wines.
You can also buy these wines, which were released and imported before the ban, and hold on to them as they gain enormous value on the resale market. I have heard rumors that the 2007 Brun Beaujolais has already quadrupled in value, only six weeks after it was released! These wines are certain to be collector items.
Denyse Louis of Louis/Dressner, the banned Jean-Paul Brun and myself tasting during the 2003 harvest
At Chambers Street, we are also going to be showing our favorite Beaujolais from some of our fellow importers. We'll have our wines from Alain Coudert, Michel Tete, Louis-Claude Desvignes, Jean-Paul Brun and Georges Descombes. From our colleagues, we will have Marcel Lapierre, Pierre-Marie Chermette and Jean Foillard.
Chambers Street Wines is located somewhere in downtown Manhattan and the event will begin at 4 pm sharp.
For more information on Jean-Paul Brun, you will have to scroll down this blog. It isn't that far. Have some patience. You'll get there.
There is a lot of great wine being made in the Beaujolais and we hope to see you at the tasting. Although I expect to be under stress and fatigued and might be impolite.
Book Review: Alice Feiring's The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization
I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time now and I was both delighted and greatly surprised.
As much as I enjoyed the book, I had been totally mislead about the narrative line of Ms. Feiring's excellent manifesto and personal memoir. My understanding was that the book was about Ms. Feiring's long experience as a wine merchant.
I had heard that Ms. Feiring believes that wine should be first understood as an expression of soil through fermented grape juice and would begin her memoir of a tradesperson's life with a short manifesto on that expressive quality called terroir. Then, Feiring would takes us on an autobiography of her life as a wine merchant, starting with the opening of her Manhattan shop in 1978, from early misadventures and small-scale successes to the ferreting of significant discoveries far off the paths habitually beaten through France and Italy in particular.
Alice and her lover, Owl-Head, had a knack for finding the hitherto unknown, and she would narrate these discoveries with physical and social details that bring moments to vivid, sensory life. The period she chronicles was one of enormous developments in wine, from California through globalization, and she would write intelligently of the problems that came with progress. Yet neither the trade nor this title is romantic: Feiring would make clear in this book the hard, often unpleasant work of winemaking and its trade and the setbacks that are part of the process.
Turns out, I got it all wrong! The book I thought she was writing was actually written by importer Neal Rosenthal and is now available from Amazon. That book has a much different title and is called Reflections of a Wine Merchant. I ordered that book today from Amazon and am greatly looking forward to reading Mr. Rosenthal's book.
Alice Feiring's book, on the other hand, recounts her personal voyage through the wine world in the search for natural wines. This voyage often involves Owl-Head and other wacky characters. I found it a page-turner and compelling read and perhaps the most compelling work of literature since I read the Brothers Karamazov. You know, if Alice Feiring didn't exist, humanity would have invented her!
Unfortunately, I turn out to be a major character in this book and I feel a bit uncomfortable talking about the book and giving it the rave recommendations it so richly deserves. I can only hope that I am also featured in Neal Rosenthal's book -- wouldn't that be something?
The Best Steak in New York Can be Found in Brooklyn!
Its just a few blocks down from Peter Luger.
You have to reserve in advance but Diner Restaurant, in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, is serving the tastiest Porterhouse steak I have ever eaten. There are cuts I love in France that you can't get in America, but this Porterhouse is the next best thing. Why waste your time at that horrible steak house down the block when you can get the real thing here!
From what I understand, they are sourcing cows and doing their own butchering and aging. This is taking natural food to the source!
Tom Mylan, their talented butcher, is running an amazing and delicious operation. You get grass-fed and pastured beef that is in-house butchered rather than quartered and packaged elsewhere. Plus it is more than an idea or an ideological statement -- the steak was great!
You can call Diner at (718) 486-3077. I think you have to be a group of several people to get the meal, but give them a call and make the arrangments on your own.
Tell them I sent you and you get a complimentary glass of Caymus Reserve, depending on availability.
Secret Louis/Dressner New York Trade Mini-Tasting on Wednesday, June 4th
Only 37 people will be admitted during the course of the tasting on Wednesday, June 4th, which will be held at an unnamed location.
Last October's National Louis/Dressner Tasting
We will have lots of new wines, the 2006 Philippe Pacalet Burgundies, amazing Italian wines, and new vintages of old wacky favorites.
The tasting will be held in a small room in midtown but you have to call our office and tell us why you should be invited. We don't have much room and we want people to taste in relaxed circumstances. Ventilation will be tip-top as will the stemware.
There will be 67 wines, two of which are rosé.
See you then!