The Loire Transmitted Via Baudry and Puzelat ca. 2007

After I fell in love with dry and demi-sec Vouvray some years ago, I was driven to learn more about Loire chenin, and so I crossed the river to Montlouis and went downriver to Savennières. I began reading about reading about the nearby appellations, and soon enough my palate was making loop-de-loops throughout the Loire. Hello, Bourgueil, hello, Chinon, pleased to meet you. I was initially more intellectually engaged by Loire reds than emotionally engaged, but then I found some that changed that dynamic, although doubtlessly my palate became more open to these wines simply by virtue of exposure.

The rains of 2007 in the middle Loire did not necessarily cause dilution, but acid and tannin levels are typically lower than in the more structured vintages that surround it, and people more experienced than I say that 2007 Loire reds are early drinkers compared to 04, 05, 06, 08, and (it is thought) 09. That is, while my favorite producers' wines are transparent in every vintage, the wines from 2007 will likely express the terroir and the vintage more quickly and are less apt to last. I continue to put this received wisdom to the test.

Thierry Puzelat Le Telquel (lot 2007)
It's now more common for American shoppers to see Loire reds made from grapes other than cabernet franc, and among the 500,000 cuvees that Thierry Puzelat makes, both with his brother under the Clos Tue Boeuf moniker and on his own, is this 100% gamay, a negociant bottling sourced from a variety of vineyards in the central Loire. Back in August of 2008, Mr. McDuff reported that there was "no mistaking it for anything other than Gamay" due to its pure and bright red fruit. With a further year's evolution under its skinny belt, I actually could mistake this for something other than gamay, but I would not, I think, mistake it for anything but the Loire.

Certainly with its nose of black cherry, smoke, roasted barley, black olive, and worcestershire sauce, I wouldn't peg this as Beaujolais — the olive note in particular recalls, say, Saumur, although the barley and smoke notes push this wine closer to the Clos Roche Blance 2007 Gamay. The Telquel is fairly concentrated and the texture is more rustic than refined, and driven by robust cherry-tart acidity. There's plenty of primary, non-sweet fruit on the palate — tangy plum, mostly, with a hint of olive — yet it's just starting to turn autumnal, with aspects of dried leaves and brown earth minerality.

Is this an expressive early drinker? You betcha. I suspect the acidity will seem harsh after the fruit fades but I expect this to drink very nicely over the next 6-12 months.

Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Granges 2007
Baudry's entry-level Les Granges, per the excellent profile at The Wine Doctor is "a wine produced from 6 hectares of vines planted on alluvial sand and gravel soils on the banks of the Vienne between 1985 and 1988; when the Vienne bursts its banks the vineyard can flood, and Baudry has been known to undertake pruning from a rowing-boat." Um, wow.

Les Granges is meant for early drinking — at least by Baudry standards. I'm not sure whether this sees oak or not. The Baudry web site mentions nothing about oak aging, but I've read elsewhere that it is aged in older, more neutral oak. It hardly seems to matter, as I am consistently bowled over by the purity, elegance, and transparency of M. Baudry's wines (even the 2003 Les Grézeaux was astonishingly elegant given the crushing heat of the vintage).

My rule of thumb is to wait three years before opening better Loire cabernet franc, a rule that even this meant-for-early-drinking wine validated to some degree, as it was fairly tight when first opened. But no worries: over the course of the evening it slowly revealed aromas of coffee, smoke, candied ginger (!), sweet black cherry, and especially iodine. It also became very expressive on the palate, as the flavors of cherry, graphite, and blackcurrant are nicely framed by (and integrated with) both acidity and tannins. Finally, there are fine, pure, iodine-rich minerals on the medium-long finish.

It's a mystery to me why I don't have more Baudry in my life. I think that's a mystery I should solve.

If Acid Is Your Crack

If acid is your crack, then set down that glass of Muscadet, stuff $20 in your pocket, and find the friendly local dealer who has a bottle of the 2007 Domaine Seguinot-Bordet Chablis to sell you. "Nervous" barely begins to describe it — it's more like electric. Zap!

You may want to pick up some mussels on your way home and steam them with butter, for this is a delicate wine that's easily overwhelmed by heartier fare. For example, I tossed sauteed onion and ginger into quinoa and the wine worked well with this dish, but it got lost when I paired it with roasted vegetables (potato and carrot), even though I did a simple prep of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

That surprised me a bit, as the wine has a chalky, smoky top note of caramelized lemon peel that I thought would work well with the roasted veggies. It's also creamy on the palate — the acidity isn't tart or underripe — and rich in iodine, particularly on the long and poised finish. It also has great structure. But for all its smoky exuberance, it's definitely delicate, at least at this point in its young life.

Zinfandel Counterprogramming

It's a shame that zinfandel, a grape that even when rendered well does not make my favorite wines, is subjected to so much abuse by too many California winemakers. Most of these wines strike me as way overripe and overblown, and I've tasted a few that go even beyond that, as if they were chaptalized with blackberry pancake syrup. Too few producers, such as Ridge, produce more balanced renditions.

I'm happy to say that Graziano made a balanced 2004 from the Eddie Graziano Vineyard, where the grapes are grown organically. Black pepper is far and away the dominant characteristic here, and that's because the fruit is not big and bruising and overripe. The wine does have one big flaw: per the fact sheet (PDF) it was aged in 30% new, heavily-toasted oak barrels, which gives it a sweet polish that obscures the ruddier aspects of the wine much like cellophane obscures your grandma's nice couch. (And now I want more than ever to taste the Dashe L'Enfant Terrible.) But even so, this went well with spinach lasagna and a cheddar-inflected risotto cake.

Better yet and cheaper still ($14) is the 2006 Monte Rosso Primo Rosso, also made by the "Graziano Family of Wines," which is a blend of zinfandel, nebbiolo, carignane, sangiovese, and negroamaro. Its slightly sweet tannins are balanced by slightly tart orangey acidity, while the medium-bodied mouthfeel is soft yet nicely structured. There's a nice zing of black pepper to compliment the generally red-fruited flavors (esp. currant), while a darker note of slightly bitter licorice provides a welcome complication. In other words, it's more interesting and complex than its big brother, and it worked well with enchiladas.

Reds in the Finger Lakes

I visited a friend in Ithaca recently and we hit a couple of wineries on the southeast shore of Seneca Lake before we hiked up Watkins Glen (pictured at right). Our timing was great: we were swamped by heavy showers during the wine tasting, but the skies parted before our hike, just as we'd hoped.

The Finger Lakes is of course known for its riesling, but it's tougher to ripen reds adequately in this climate, and whatever the effects global warming might have, the region is still subject to periods of bitter cold in the winter and hot, humid conditions in the summer. Nevertheless, the two wineries we hit both focus on reds.

Up first was Shalestone Vineyards, who proclaim that "red is all we do." Despite their specialty, I was distinctly underwhelmed, as their entire lineup — from the cabernets to the merlot to the pinot to the meritage — tasted exactly the same: simple yet vague, with the barrel influences overcoming whatever terroir / varietal expression there might have been. The one exception was their Synergy blend that's 50% syrah; it was so short that it tasted like nothing at all.

Our experience at Damiani Wine Cellars was considerably better. I'd tasted their 2006 Meritage previously, thanks to a generous gift from my friend, and I'd admired its balance, its Loire-like weight, its lightly spiced minerality, and the way it hadn't been knocked up by oak or overextracted. During the tasting here I walked around the winemaking facility and saw that Damiani do use new French oak, but the oak doesn't overwhelm any of the wines. I was particularly pleased with the pinot noir, as every one in the lineup, from the $8 2006 (simple yet tasty) to the $32 2007 Reserve (more substance and complexity), drank as true pinot, with the light weight and refreshing, savory/sweet cherry aromas I look for. Interestingly, Damiani claims that their vineyard includes limestone as well as slate, which likely helps matters (or does for the reds; I found their semi-dry riesling dull).

As an aside, I received a press sample of the 2007 Heron Hill Blaufrankish Reserve from the Keuka Lake area back in July. Matured for 18 months in mostly Hungarian oak (70% new) and described by the winery as "opulent" and "hedonistic," I found that it announces itself on the palate with a blast of brisk, orangey acidity, sweet-tart flavors of pomegranate and mulberry, and a hint of white pepper and minerals. These elements are integrated, yet somehow they sing the same high note; even over three nights of tasting the wine felt one-dimensional rather than complex, and its thin orange-and-mulberry acidity seems to overrule the other characteristics. This wasn't an off bottle, but it seems strange that others seem to have had a different wine than I experienced.

Anyway, the rest of my Finger Lakes trip was pretty cool. We hiked in dramatic shale gorges, waved at Carl Sagan's house from afar, and had a couple of low-stress and delicious meals at the Pourhouse in Trumansburg, where I discovered the excellent Southern Tier IPA. Cheers to Ithaca!

Green Shoots?

There's a lot of economic pain in our future but I'm hoping we've started to turn the corner for real. Industrial production is "growing seriously fast," the dollar's decline will increase prices on imported wine but help US manufacturers and the workers they employ, and several people I either know or encountered just found jobs in the last week.

To celebrate a good friend's newfound employment, we opened a bottle of Egly-Ouriet Champagne Brut "Les Vignes de Vrigny" 1er Cru, which is 100% pinot meunier from 40 year old vines — quite unusual. This is a joy to drink, a wine of real cut and verve. It's autolytic, with aromas of toasted hazelnuts and salted crackers (not the bread or brioche found in many Champagnes), but I also smell yellow flowers, chalk, and pears. It's beautiful, creamy, and long, with the racy acidity driving red fruits down the sides of the tongue with lovely cut and precision. The mousse is full, fine, and alive. This spent 40 months on the lees and was disgorged November 2008, so likely there's a lot of fruit from 2004 in here.

Going way downscale, I recently bought a terrific bottle of the 2004 Agricole Vallone Salice Salentino Vereto Riserva for just $11. Wine in Chicago seems to be more expensive than everywhere else on the planet (among other things, we have the highest sales tax in the nation), so you can probably find this for less. This medium-bodied wine shows bright cherry fruit, solid acidity, and some zingy pepper notes that showed great with pizza. The 10% of the blend that's malvasia nera is used to soften the wine; the other 90% is negroamaro. It's nice to find an affordable, everyday wine with real character and life.

Malvasia From the Piedmont

Now here's something interesting: a totally dry white malvasia produced in the Piedmont. Malvasia bianco is widely found in warmer "Mediterranean" regions — it's relatively common in southern Italy and in Portugual, for example — and it's often used to make sweeter wines, such as Madeira.

Malvasia bianco (there are red sheep in the malvasia family) is known to travel inland and north somewhat. For example, Lopez de Heredia uses a small proportion of malvasia in their white Riojas, and it's found to some small degree in central Italy. The Oxford Companion to Wine even says that "The finest dry white varietal Malvasia is made in Friuli," and it's certainly news to me that any malvasia is grown there.

Casalone claims that their Monemvasia is produced from grapes initially imported from the Greek village of Monemvasia by the Venetians in the 13th century. This sounds more like marketing than literal truth to me, but this non-DOC, non-vintage (but surely young) wine sure tastes like a malvasia grown in the sandy soils of Monferrato. For one thing, it's all peachy and aromatic like a larger-framed (if less creamy) arneis. For another thing, it has a certain subtle je ne sais musk that's totally crisp and and is clean and dry on the finish.

This works well with a variety of raw and cooked vegetables and would probably be great with prosciutto and cantaloupe.

Griffin or Jackalope?

What's the difference between a "white pinot noir" and a rosé of pinot noir? It's a difficult question to answer, given that many labeled as white have a pinkish hue and even perform like rosé, and the techniques for making such wines are manifold. And some wineries may simply want to avoid the term rosé for marketing purposes.

The amount of maceration time may be a good place to start. If the juice was macerated with the skins for a few hours, then it's probably a rosé. If the juice was separated as quickly from the skins as possible during pressing, then it's probably safe to call it a white, regardless of its final color.

Of course, I'm not a winemaker and I've surely oversimplified the matter, so anyone who wants to clarify (or complexify) matters should weigh in.

On the other hand, I am a wine drinker, and I can tell you I've never had a rosé of pinot noir that resembled the 2005 Dirler Pinot Noir Cepage Pinot Noir. I cannot find any information about how, exactly, this wine was made, but Dirler is my favorite Alsatian producer* and if they make it, I'll buy it. Still, I was taken aback by this wine's distinctiveness.

It's the color of rose petal-macerated cantaloupe drippings, quite lighter in color than most rosés, and its nose really sets it apart; it reminds me of the more delicate style of skin contact whites such as those made by Paolo Bea. I smell apple skins, dried strawberries, freshly sliced oranges, and fresh tarragon. It's beautifully complex on the palate, with an extremely subtle earthiness that haunts the red fruit, musk melon, apple, herb, and Xmas spice flavors. And if that weren't enough, the Cepage Pinot Noir has a mouthcoating viscosity that's practically weightless, and the finish is fresh, perfectly balanced, subtly mineral, and very, very long.

I wish I knew more about how this wine was made. But if more knowledge would enhance my awe, I'm more than happy to just have the awe.

* Caveat that I've really only tasted from a handful of Alsatian producers