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Excused from Jury Duty
After waiting around two days in a jury selection room, I was finally interviewed for a jury on Tuesday afternoon.
The case, involving a hatchet assault at a major real estate developer"s constructions site, posed numerous complex and intriguing legal questions.
I was interrogated by four batteries of attorneys to determine my fitness to sit on the jury for this case. I got carried away during the interrogation by the plumbing contractor's attorney and launched into a passioned defense of the Napoleonic Codes, pointed out the many weaknesses in the Anglo/American Juridical System. This unnerved the potential juror who was interviewed after me, who meekly suggested he might not be an objective personality.
Inexplicably, I was not picked for the jury and was dismissed for a minimum of four years.
Prominent New York/New Jersey Wholesaler's Top 100 List of Louis/Dressner Wines
We received an important note from New York's top wholesaler with a numerical rating of the top Louis/Dressner wines of the year. The scores and commentary are below:
My top eleven Louis Dressner wines for 2002 include some tasted at the LDM office as well as from the local distributor.......
#1 2000 Montlouis "Clos Habert"
#2 1989 Closel "Isa"
#3 2001 Angeli Rose
#4 1999 Texier Hermitage
#5 2001 Angeli "La Lune"
#6 2000 Montlouis "Tuffeaux"
#7 2001 Closel "Papillon"
#8 1998 Clos Rougeard "Poyeaux"
#9 2000 Peillot "Buster"
#10 2000 Thomas-Labaille
#11 2000 Pepierre "Eden"
#12 2000 Guigal Tricastin (Négoce)
Prominent Seattle Wholesaler's Top 100 List of Louis/Dressner Wines
We received an important note from Seattle's top wholesaler with a numerical rating of the top Louis/Dressner wines of the year. The scores are below:
I remember it as the top ten but...from the first sip this summer I knew my number one was:
- Marc Angelli Rose d'Anjou -- the pinnacle of vinuos pleasure
- Francois Chidaine Montlouis Clos Habert -- pure genius
- Clos Roche Blanche Gamay -- the finest expression of gamay?
- Pierre Breton Bourgueil Perrieres
- Mas de Chimeres cuvee Buster
- Puzelat Pineau d'Aunis La Tesniere
- Franck Peillot Altesse d' Montagieu
- Renardat-Fache Cerdon du Bugey
- Terre Doree Beaujolais Nouveau Vieilles Vignes
- Bois de Boursan Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee Felix
- Eric Texier St. Gervais Cadinnieres
- Quinta da Pellada Dao Tinto Roriz
- Francios Legros Nuits St. George Perrieres
- Marc Angelli La Lune
- Luneau-Papin L d'Or multi vintage binge
- Guigal Chateauneuf
- Guigal Hermitage
- Guigal Ventoux
- Guigal Napa
- Guigal Barossa
- Guigal Toro
- Guigal Walla Walla
What a Great Nation!
I'm off to 100 Centre Street today to fulfill my civic duties. Jury Duty Rocks!
So, I might not be here over the next few days. I have been feverishly preparing The Third Annual Joe Dressner's Top 100 Louis/Dressner Wines of the Year and will gladly print thoughtful contributions for the readership. I will be attending jury duty with my PocketPC and my Stowaway Keyboard and plan on finishing off this project while I wait in the jury duty waiting room. Please feel free to send me an e-mail with your selections. Thoughtful selections will be published in this space.
This morning, I reread Jefferson and de Toqueville in preparation for my jury duty. The New York Times arrived at my door and a wonderful article on the front page reminded me what a great national we American Wine Importers live in.
Congratulations to Chesa Boudin on his winning a Rhodes Scholarship. For more information:
You Don't Need A Weatherman to Know Which Way.....
Please note that free registration to The New York Times web site is required.
More News from Mark Angeli!
I posted a good portion of Mark's newsletter a few weeks ago. It turns out, our French translators had not finished their work. Below is the remainder of the article.
One side-point -- some of the discussion in the last installment from Angeli argued that Angeli already had wines that refermented. This was true about his early Bonnezeauxs, wines that are high in residual sugar. What Mark is now talking about are dry wines.
The unfiltered Les Fouchardes: the rediscovery of dry wine in the Anjou has come to a turning point. If we have begun to successfully understand the parameters at work during the growing cycle, the harvest and the aging process, when it comes the moment of bottling our wine, we hit a brick wall. A ripe Chenin grape, depending on which parcel it comes from, oscillates between 13.5 and 15 degrees of potential alcohol. Fermentation in vats proceeds rapidly due to the effect of mass but to the detriment of the power and harmony of the wine, it is a whole different story in barrels where the yeast may labor for a year before giving up, leaving 3 and 10 grams of residual sugar. “Officially”, such a wine is vulnerable to refermentation execept if one does a drastic filtering to eliminate any yeast, this also at the cost of the wine’s power and harmony. One might then think of protecting the wine with SO2, which in high doses is toxic for one’s nervous system and liver. There seems to be no way out.
For the past eleven years, I’ve been experimenting with bottling dry wines without SO2, before filtration, a few bottles of several wines, including all of the Vignes Françaises cuvées. As of today, none of them have ever refermented and the tasting verdict has never been repealed: the no SO2 bottlings are always livlier, more harmonious, more exciting and….healthier than the filtered versions of the same wine, the lees, while forming a light deposit turn out to be a much better protection against oxidation than SO2….
…on the condition that the wine is stored below 14 C. This constraint, by the way, also applies to the filtered wines, not for reasons of stabilisation, but for their optimal aging.
Aging wine without SO2 requires one to follow strict methods (racking under carbon dioxide and bottling under vacuum), constant care (topping-up every week), constraints (storing the wine in different vats and keeping the wine at the estate after bottling for an extra year to avoid any unpleasant surprises), time (putting the backlabels on by hand)…but these efforts should enable us to raise the quality of the wines (not their prices!). I hope to start by applying this (lack of) method to Les Fouchardes 2001. There will still be, however, a filtered version for those who do not have the means to store the wine at a temperature below 14 C. Depending on what people order, the production will go back and forth between one version and the other.
Abstruse paragraph for Médoc winemakers and (therefore) stock market tinkerers
My prices are based on yield/hectare, not on demand. Which doesn’t mean, however, that I raise my prices in years when yields are low. Its hard to get even a yield of 30 hl/ha of passerillage or botrytis affected Grolleau Gris which is the base of the Rosé d’Anjou, so in the case of this wine, I have raised the price. On the other hand, the Vignes Françaises and the Vieilles Vignes des Blanderies are now jauntily producing their 20 hl/ha,
so I have lowered their prices.
Prophetic paragraph
Almost every year now, most of my wines (and those of the shrewdest of my fellow winemakers) are refused the slapped-together agrément of the Institut Négativiste de l’Apathie Organoleptique at least once. It suffices to know that the three taster-authorizers are simply winemakers who base their judgements on their own personal criteria to realize that the chances of getting someone who is really qualified are about 5% and also that the final decision is made by a majority vote to have an idea of the effectiveness of this parody of justice. I left behind the days of having my fingers rapped by a ruler a long time ago, especially since I do quite a good job of whipping myself all on my own.
Would you accept to pay for this useless mascarade, especially because, in the end, you alone are the final judge? It is therefore up to me, a farmer and proud of it, to discipline myself and to not deceive you about the quality of my merchandise. While waiting for a hypothetical return to sanity or, even better yet, the abolition of the agréments to be replaced by a system that monitors yields instead, (dear to the heart of the new president of the INAO, but violently opposed notably by the Médoc winegrowers (yet again!) and the operators of their “experimental” reverse osmosis machines (160 now in use!), don’t be surprised if all of my production becomes simple Vin de Pays and thus ceases to provide such great publicity for the region (how prententious!).
Recommended winemaker: Richard Leroy in Rablay sur Layon (49): the most fundamentalist of us all
Recommended CDs: Ogeret Sings Aragon on Disques Vogue and Richard Galliano/Michel Portal : Blow up on Disques Dreyfus
Marcel Richaud 2001 Cairanne and 2000 L'Ebrescade Are Here!
Yup. They just arrived.
We have always considered Le Marcel to be one of France's great winemakers and it is an honor to be selling his wines. This year, we have a huge quantity of his 2000 L'Ebrescades, his top cuvée. This is one of the Southern Rhône's top bottlings of the vintage and you will not want to miss this wine. Even though it will cost you a fortune.
La Revue du Vin de France recently had an article about Domaine Richaud, along with tasting notes of a 10-year-vertical of L'Ebrescades. Excerpts from the article follow:
A little history
As is the case for so many of the winemakers of the region, this estate's story begins with the local wine cooperative. Marcel Richaud's father was a member up until 1974 when he went out on his own working the fifteen hectares which he owned at the time. Marcel started out working his aunt's property: fourteen hectares on which he had complete freedom to do anything he wanted. Starting with almost nothing, his first wines were sold in bulk. With his father's help, he was able to buy 18 hectares. Today, the family property has enlarged to 45 hectares spread out over several terroirs. Over time, the equipment was gradually all brought up to date. An underground cellar was built three years ago and a tasting room just opened to receive the drop-in customers who account for 60% of the estate's sales.
The terroir and the vineyards
The variety of soils, altitudes and exposures combined with the age of the vines, ripeness levels and the characteristics of the various parcels allow Richaud to make a complete line of wines. One can thus distinguish the riverbank parcels with their cooler soils, the hot and dry garrigue terroirs composed of the red clay of the plateau, those planted in terraces and on slopes, one high slope from 250 to 300 meters high, another on the Rasteau border on limestone scree on top of white and blue clay - the highest quality parcel which gives birth to L'Ebrescade.
All of this is relative for Marcel Richaud, because for him, there is no such thing as a bad terroir, only different sources from which to create his blends. The regional grape varieties include Grenache, Carignan, Syrah, Mourvèdre and a little Counoise in red grapes and in white, the traditional Roussanne, Marsanne, Clairette, Bourboulenc and Viognier. The soils are worked and the vines are all trained in traditional gobelet style except for the Syrahs which are trained on wires.
The vigor of the vines has been calmed down for ages and there is no use of fertilizers, only a little compost to balance the soil. Marcel Richaud stays tuned in to the organic agriculture movement. Having achieved a healthy balance in terms of plant growth, green harvests are now unnecessary and yields self-regulate to come out to around 35 hl/ha. Richaud favors organic treatments on the vines, using sulphur and copper only when needed.
Harvesting is done by hand, sorting is done in the vineyard, where sometimes only half grapes are picked, so that all are in perfect health. The grapes are transported in small bins for the Cairannes and in flat baskets for the L'Ebrescade cuvée and the whites. Then they are all sorted through a second time on a conveyor belt at the entrance to the cellar.
In the cellar
All the grapes are destemmed. The vats start their fermentation using natural yeasts and the temperature is regulated by a special cooling apparatus called drapeaux (stainless steel plates with channels of water running through them which are submerged into the vat in order to vary the temperature of the must during fermentation). SO2 is prohibited up until bottling in order to preserve the natural character of the fruit. The yeast and bacteria levels are continually monitored so that there are no surprises.
Vinification follows a simple principle: respect for the grapes, with no massive extraction or prolonged vatting (no longer than 12 days) with little remontage (pumping-over) and a only few délestages. The l'Ebrescade cuvée is usually pigée (punched-down), but there is no fixed rule. Marcel Richaud tunes into his wines and adapts his decisions accordingly.
The wines are run off warm into barrels where they undergo their malolactic fermentation. Only a small percentage of Richaud's barrels are new, only 30% for the l'Ebrescade. The woods are Burgundian in style, more suitable for Côtes-du-Rhône style wines than Bordeaux-style barrels. The wines, which are kept on their lees, are only racked at the time of blending and bottled without fining or filtration with only a homeopathic dose of SO2. They are then stored in an underground cellar until they are sold.
The Style of the Wines
Pleasure and sensuality: such is Marcel Richaud's motto. The love of eating and drinking is intrinsic to his wines. To this end, he relies on his raw materials. He does not steal from the Cairannes to feed the higher end wines, nor does he seek after the kind of monstrous extractions in fashion these days, which induce remarkable but undrinkable wines.
Marcel Richaud makes personalized and balanced wines. With such a variety of grapes and terroirs, sometimes there is a month's difference between the Grenache grapes' harvest and the Mourvèdres'. He knows how to keep freshness in his wines, without resorting to acidification - a little weakness common to many winemakers in such hot regions. He prefers to make wines meant to be drunk young, even if sometimes they do age very nicely.
The wonderful fruitiness of Richaud's wines is spared the harshness that sometimes comes with the addition of SO2. Each cuvée has its own distinct character, from the simple and delicious vin de pays from young vines to the two cuvées of Côtes-du-Rhône (Grenache, Syrah, and Carignan) which both beautifully express their different terroirs, to the Cairanne (Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Counoise), right up to more ambitious l'Ebrescade (equal parts of Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah) a wine with great aging potential. The Les Estrambords (selected old vines of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre and Counoise) is made in a more modern style using new wood. The white wines are fat and refreshing at the same time.
In sum, Richaud's wines are a perfect example of what well-balanced wines from this region can be.
Mini-Muscadet Cellar Sighted in New York!
Soon to be in Seattle!
Being invited to lunch at Domaine Pierre Luneau in the Muscadet is always an extravagant event. Denyse, Kevin and I spent a leisurely Sunday afternoon eating delicious food, gossiping, and drinking old vintages of their Muscadet. We only do marginal business with Monique and Pierre, concentrating more on Marc Ollivier's Domaine de la Pépières, but this marginal business is always a great pleasure to us.
As we started on our fifth or sixth or seventh vintage of Muscadet, I asked Monique if it was possible to sell us a bunch of old vintages. How it would be great to put together a 12 bottle case with six different good vintages, two bottles of each. That this would be a great way to promote Muscadet and show how great it can be when it ages. The idea being to put together a mini-cellar that would only be sold by the case for a consumer who wants an exciting experience.
Monique and Pierre thought it could be done.
The wine is now in New York and will soon be in Seattle. All the wines are from Luneau's top cuvée, the L d'Or, which is a cellar selection of his best cuvées. The vintages, two bottles each, are: 1990, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The handful of retailers who are buying these wines have been instructed not to break up the case, as all 12 wines must be sold to each consumer.
The suggested retail price is $280.00 a case, but already there are rumors of it going for $180.00 to $200.00 a case.
I don't think any of you will regret the experience of buying and drinking these superb wines.
Back from Mexico Vacation! Elated by Wine Spectator Top 100 List!
What a great time in Mexico! More reports later.
It is always difficult to switch gears from a vacation mentality to the hard realities of selling wine in today's crowded market. So here goes....
Eric Texier's Châteauneuf 2000 Rated No. 3 Châteauneuf by The Wine Spectator!
That's right. Only Guigal's 1999 Châteauneuf and La Nerthe 2000 scored higher! Congratulations are in due for all concerned.
Parenthetically, the Guigal 1999 was the No. 1 Wine of the Year, La Nerthe was No. 2, and Texier Châteauneuf was No. 66. Texier narrowly beat out Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon (which was no. 67), even though Louis Martini no longer exists.
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm Gone.
So, a happy pre- and post- Thanksgiving to everyone.
I''m in Mexico on vacation and will be back here on December 2nd.
The Marc Angeli Newsletter Arrives and is Translated
L’Année des pantoufles
(Translation: The Year of Bedroom Slippers)
Never has a vintage been so easy, from pruning the vines to the harvest. We had the impression that the weather was granting our slightest wishes. What a dream! But nevertheless, this year’s wines will not be “intrinsically better” than the wine’s of more “difficult” years like 2000, only different. Some news:
-- Honey: At last! An overabundant harvest of…30 kg due to a massive swarming. The bees have thus revealed themselves to be incapable of producing honey and offspring at the same time!
-- 100 liters of Anjou Rouge Les Gélinettes: the auction house Drouot will certainly offer to sell this first vintage on their worldwide internet auction site. I will not budge (yield).
-- The Rosé Coteau du Houet: in celebration of the permanent return to the level of quality of 1997, Nature has dictacted that the name of the parcel make an appearance on the label. Surprising for a Rosé, no?
-- Sunflower oil: the tractor didn’t use it all up and left us a little for making french fries.
-- 2001, an odd-numbered year, means that we will produce 400 liters of Bonnezeaux while waiting for the completion of the vineyard’s restructuring (planned for 2006) at which time we will once again begin producing every year, just like in the Coteaux du Layon.
- The unfiltered Les Fouchardes: the rediscovery of dry wine in the Anjou has come to a turning point. If we have begun to successfully understand the parameters at work during the growing cycle, the harvest and the aging process, when it comes the moment of bottling our wine, we hit a brick wall. A ripe Chenin grape, depending on which parcel it comes from, oscillates between 13.5 and 15 degrees of potential alcohol. Fermentation in vats proceeds rapidly due to the effect of mass but to the detriment of the power and harmony of the wine, it is a whole different story in barrels where the yeast may labor for a year before giving up, leaving 3 and 10 grams of residual sugar. “Officially”, such a wine is vulnerable to refermentation execept if one does a drastic filtering to eliminate any yeast, this also at the cost of the wine’s power and harmony. One might then think of protecting the wine with SO2, which in high doses is toxic for one’s neurons and liver. There seems to be no way out.
For the past eleven years, I’ve been experimenting with bottling dry wines without SO2, before filtration, a few bottles of several wines, including all of the Vignes Françaises cuvées. As of today, none of them have ever refermented and the tasting verdict has never been repealed: the no SO2 bottlings are always livlier, more harmonious, more exciting and….healthier than the filtered versions of the same wine, the lees, while forming a light deposit turn out to be a much better protection against oxidation than SO2.
Editor's Note: The Fouchardes would sell in America for about $40. There will no returns if there are stability problems. Let us know by e-mail if you are interested.
A special thanks to Sheila Doherty of Louis/Dressner Selections for translating the material
Le Domaine des Griottes est Arrivé!
These wines are now available at a liquor store near you.
The Layon is in a difficult pass, and many of its talented winemakers have a hard time selling their sweet wines.
Still, more newcomers are trying their luck and bringing excitement to this part of Anjou. At Domaine des Griottes, the dynamic trio of Sébastien Dervieux, Patrick and Claire Desplats appeared on the cover of L’Express’ Special Wine Issue (Sept. 2002). Not bad for winemakers who are picking their third harvest this fall of 2002!
Patrick and Claire arrived from Sologne eleven years ago on a photography assignment, and, unwilling to leave Anjou, got work in vineyards and cellars in the area. Sébastien, who is a local kid, joined the adventure, which started in earnest with the purchase of a house in St-Lambert-de-Lattay. It came with a plot of very old vines planted, with a mix of eight varietals, and an open shed for sheltering a few vats and barrels.
They looked for forgotten or forsaken plots to rent, the ones no one wanted: the “too old vines”, the Chardonnays that are not allowed in the AOC, the Gamay and Sauvignon blanc vines on schist (the best terrain for Chenin blanc), the surviving rows of Pineau d’Aunis. They had no money and no vineyard equipment, so they made a virtue out of necessity and did everything the hard, old-fashioned way, by hand and 100% organically.
All the treilissage, poles and wires, had to be redone, and they couldn’t afford it, so they decided to train all their vines in gobelet. They say: “It’s easier and more aerated”, echoing their colleague, Mark Angéli, who thinks all vines in western France should be bushes, to allow the grapes to dry off the humid oceanic winds.
We are starting with a small selection of three wines. La Poivrière (the pepper-mill) 2001 is a vin de pays made from 60 year old Pineau d’Aunis vines: with its ruby color, spicy notes of bay leaf, celery, and a lot of black pepper, this charmer needs some food to balance its exuberance.
The Rosé les Fins de Vendanges (end of harvest) 2001 is vin de table, a blend of Cabernet franc and Gamay picked in late November/early December, when the grapes were a bit dessicated and rich in sugar: it is deep orange, with a floral nose, and a sweet, round and spicy mouth.
The Anjou rouge 2000, a blend of Cabernet Franc, Gamay and Pineau d’Aunis, is super ripe, deeply colored, big and tannic; it finishes very long, sweet and fruity.
In coming vintages, we hope to add: The Milky Way (Chardonnay VDP), Homo-Erectus (Gamay VDP), Sauvignon, Anjou blanc, Anjou-Villages red and their two Côteaux-du-Layon sweet wines.
Honestly.
Yes. We Now Have Three Pineau d'Aunis from the Loire in Stock!
No doubt, this is a first in the annals of wine importing.
We now have:
(1) The Rouge Gorges 2001 Côteaux du Loir from the Domaine de la Belliviévre
(2) The Pineau d'Aunis La Tésnière from Thierry Puzelat (from the Touraine)
(3) The Domaine des Griottes Les Poivrières VDP Pineau d'Aunis 2001. This is from the Anjou, but they are not allowed to do a straight Pineau d'Aunis in the Anjou appellation
All these wines are from old vines. They are all quite different. They are all quite delicious. They are all part of our goal of saving this grape from extinction.
No importer has ever had three different Pineau d'Aunis in stock. At least, no importer who has not goin bankrupt.
Why is this Woman Beaming?
This is a multiple choice question in two parts:
A) Because she has enjoyed drinking the Domaine des Griottes Pineau d'Aunis from 50-year-old vines?
B) Because she grew up in a Christian home, attended an evangelical church all her life, and can quote Romans 8:39 and Ephesians 3:23,24 by heart?
Assuming A is correct, your follow-up questions are:
A1) Where can I purchase a bottle of this fabulous Domaine des Griottes Pineau d'Aunis from 50-year-old vines?
A2) Will I be able to walk on water after consuming a bottle of this wine?
Assuming B is the correct answer, your follow-up questions are:
B1) Is there any relationship between Romans 8:39 and Ephesians 3:23,24 and the Domaine des Griottes Pineau d'Aunis from 50-year-old vines?
B2) Why would a God-Fearing woman put her picture on the internet where anyone can manipulate her picture and use it for means other then her original intent?
Be sure to read this site tomorrow for the answer to these questions.
All Our Thanks to Everyone at Polaner Selections
We went up to Mt. Kisko this morning to have an important meeting with the people at Polaner Selections.
This company is our distributor in New York, except for wines that come from the Pineau d'Aunis grape.
I just want to thank them publicly, inasmuch as this can be considered a public place, for the fine job they are doing getting our wines out to an unsuspecting public.
Thank You Arrowine
I've had a tough week.
I've been denounced and repudiated by various journalists, professional colleagues and family members. What's particularly daunting is all of them are right! Last night, I accidently ran into my minister who suggested I attend Sunday Services elsewhere!
So, it came as a wonderful surprise this morning to receive a link in my e-mail to the current Arrowine Catalog. This store is located in Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC and they have been very strong supporters of our wines. Luckily, they have no idea what a confrontational, mean-spirited and rotten human being I am. My partner, Kevin McKenna, handles our business with them.
Arrowine's current monthly catalog features Louis/Dressner wines for Thanksgiving. Click below to go to their Adobe Acrobat file:
Nice Words About Louis/Dressner Wines
All my thanks to Doug Rosen and Vicky Reh.
We're Back!
The system was down for a day, but we're back on line. Vance, Jim and I decided it was time to update the software.
Two important postings are missing, I can't remember what they were about.
By the way, I want to apologize to anyone who has been offended by my postings on this blog. Apparently, this has happened several times. The new software has a built-in content engine that censors any offending comments I might make.
Holy Chimères!
I'm here at my office sipping on the 2000 Cuvée Buster VDP Coteaux du Salagou and the 2000 Coteaux du Languedoc.
The Buster has great Grenache intensity and aromatics, the CDL has depth and finesse.
Both efforts are just terrific.
Thanks Guilhelm.
Mexico City
Mrs. Wine Importer and I have decided to vacation in Mexico City at the end of this month.
We have not been to Mexico City since 1963 and I'm sure there have been major changes to the city.
Denyse and I visiting Mexico City in 1963
Please let me know if you have any first-rate ideas for hotels, restaurants, tourist sites, diversions, etc. In particular, I am looking for a fabulous hotel with lots of charm but which also has an exercise room. I fear that I will have to take a room in a souless modern hotel to get an exercise room. I need to exercise, given my history of heart transplants, but do not want to spend 10 days in a hotel that could be in a suburb of Detroit or St. Louis.
Be warned: all bad jokes and puns will be deleted from the comments section.
We are having a moratorium on bad jokes and puns this week on this site.