Coupla White Rhones

I quite irresponsibly skipped out on posting for the recent WBW white Rhône event, so here are the notes I meant to post way back when. Each are around $14 and are good values.

Philippe Faury St. Joseph Blanc 2004
Philippe Faury makes a clean and lovely Côte-Rotie, and that's an apt description for this 60% Marsanne, 40% Roussanne St-Jo blanc. That said, the wine is just short of exciting. Pear's the fruit here, and soft nutmeg and apple skin comes across as well. Medium-bodied and nicely focused on the palate, with good length, and I'd pair this with white-fleshed meats.

Auguste Clape Saint-Péray 2005
You probably know Auguste Clape as one of Cornas's leading vignerons, and I certainly have loved the very limited experiences I've had with his distinctive syrahs. Now color me impressed by this golden beauty. It's 100% marsanne and it showcases a rich nose of honeycomb, banana, baked apple, and lemon, but while full-bodied, it's elegant rather than over the top. It shows great presence at the midpalate and an acidity that purrs throughout the long finish. The soft brown spices, marked by coriander in particular, are beautiful. I'd love to see what becomes of this wine in two years.

I was hoping to report back on the Abacela's Estate Grown Viognier from 2007, launched straight outta Southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley, but the bottle I tasted may have been in shock, as it showed none of the life of the previous two vintages. Fortunately I have one more bottle left, so I give it another month or two before making a somewhat definitive statement.

An Interesting 2008 in Store for Oregon?

I'm a big fan of the National Weather Service's web site and troll it daily. It seems the NWS is predicting a cooler and drier 2008 than normal in Oregon. And excepting one brief heat spike in May, the Willamette Valley has also had a very cool spring. Rainfall has been average in most months, but in McMinville, rainfall was quite a bit lower than normal in February and May.

Provided the vines don't get too water-stressed — and yes, many good vineyards there are dry farmed — this could be an interesting vintage, particularly for those of us who prefer the cooler vintages.

A Dark Day in Illinois

Crap! I wasn't paying attention and June 1 has come and gone. That was the day that

HB 429 [took] effect. The new law [strips] Illinoisans of their right to have wine shipped to them from out of state wine merchants... "Illinoisans will lose access to tens of thousands of wines that are not made available in Illinois by its wine distributors or retailers so that the profits of a very small group of very powerful wholesalers can be protected," said Tom Wark, Executive Director of Specialty Wine Retailers Association.

So sadly true. I believe in buying locally, or at least in buying my Loire wines locally (I ain't gonna buy no Illinois wine, bub!), whenever possible. But the fact is, there are many, many wines that are simply not available to me. The wines imported by Jenny & François? Not distributed in Illinois. The wines imported by Petit Pois? Not distributed in Illinois. And so on. Sure, I am generously allowed a few cases of wine direct from American wineries, but there is more to life than American wine. And unless and until all current-release imported wines are distributed here — and I eliminate rare back vintage wine of domestic or foreign origin that's sold online, just to be generous — the Illinois wine buyer is cut off from experiencing all s/he can experience; and the money pocketed by out-of-state agents will probably not otherwise flow to in-state agents.

So won't this simply increase the likelihood that Illinois distributors will pick up such at-the-margins wine? Hardly. Distributors are consolidating, merging. That's not a healthy environment for marketplace diversity, certainly not in the short term.

Boo-hoo, right? Well, you gotta look at how this legislation was passed — and as Mr. Wark notes, "What we are seeing is political payoff to alcohol wholesalers for the more than $6.3 million they've contributed to Illinois state political campaigns since 2000." Sounds spoofulated to me.

Before I get off my soap box, I have one more thing to say. How do we know that wholesalers paid off our legislators? We know thanks to Barack Obama. His "legislation, passed in 1998, banned most gifts by lobbyists, prohibited spending campaign money for legislators’ personal use and required electronic filing of campaign disclosure reports... The disclosure requirement 'revolutionized Illinois’s system,' said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform."

Did Obama's legislation stop the payoffs? No. But it does make it easier to hold the responsible accountable; and that is why, in the AP article, names are named and amounts are listed, e.g. "One Senate sponsor of HB 429, James Clayborne, Jr., has received $85,000 from alcohol wholesaler interests since 2000, including $15,000 since the legislation was introduced."

That Obama made a choice not only to sidestep the corruption endemic to Illinois (and no, he didn't do a thing for that Rezko guy) but to help expose it tells you a lot about who he is. Even if he does prefer beer!

(PS - the odious Ken Starr represents the the Specialty Wine Retailers Association in a legal capacity. My support of the association's argument is in no way an endorsement of his own fetid puritanism of yore. What, were all the other lawyers taken or something? Sheesh.)

Pif Pif!

You do things in a certain way for long enough and the odd begins to seem normal, and vice versa. Habit and context. Ditch that SUV and eventually you'll wonder why you ever had it. Taste a fresh-picked green bean and you'll never buy canned again. Drink enough natural / "real" wine and that grocery store wine tastes downright artificial.

That said, when I tasted the 2004 Clos Roche Blanche Touraine Pif, I thought, "Dang, this sure is a strange little wine!"

Some context here. Catherine and Didier of the Loire estate Clos Roche Blanche are big stars amongst the natural winemaking set, as they not only farm organically but avoid using "organic" pesticides, rigorously pursue biodiversity in the vineyard, implement certain biodynamic practices, and avoid sulfur. All the hard work this requires means the wines should be more expensive than the mass-produced stuff, yet the wines are extremely affordable. Also, they make the wine themselves, even though they have no formal training, so they're not paying the salary of a winemaker or a consultant.

To the wine. What does this 2004 Pif taste like? Well, the first thing to know is that it's a blend of cabernet franc, the Loire's signature grape, and malbec (which is called cot in the Loire). Unlike the malbec you'll find in Argentina, the cot grown in Touraine ain't all drippy and plush, and indeed, this wine starts off on a tart note. It just needs a little air, and then it unfurls like a shoot. That's when the acidity mellows and a note of smoke from the cot emerges.

Speaking of shoots, the Pif shows broccoli, wet leaves, wet dirt, and grilled mushroom characteristics, along with high-toned cranberry and raspberry fruit. It's concentrated, with scratchy tannins, yet spry. It is, in short, a complete wine with oodles of character, and it sells for only $14.

Now for the strange thing: this didn't pair well with the dishes I tried — roasted potatoes on day one, spinach pie and lentils and rice on day two. I thought for sure the earthiness of these dishes would work well, but the wine turned into a wallflower on both occasions. So if someone has a better pairing suggestion, I'm all eyes!

Am I compaining? Hardly. Not only is the Pif a good wine, it is a real wine, and I've had nothing quite like it. It's not a fake wine posing as real. As if to illustrate the difference, I was sipping the Pif tonight when a new McDonald's commercial came on my TV, advertising chicken for breakfast with the tag line of something like, "Isn't it great to be counterculture?" You betcha! Go tell it on the mountain, daddy-o!

The Classics

Via Big Red Diary, I see that the Financial Times has a special section on their web site called Wine Investment. Now, I ain't rich. So unless the fine folks at TIAA-CREF are investing in first growth Bordeaux on behalf of my 403(b) — and given the returns, I hope they are — the FT's mini-site is about as relevant to me as a web site on how to be an astronaut.

To me, wine is something to be experienced. As with music, the commercial aspect of wine is undeniable and not at all undesirable — artists, including winemakers, need to make a living — but it is when you experience something magical that all thoughts of commerce recede. Something else takes its place. The hoarders, the traders, they help drive up the price of certain wines and deny the rest of us the experience.

In this thoughtful and engaging new book Reflections of a Wine Merchant, Neal Rosenthal laments that the wine business has become "geared to extracting the most money in the most rapid fashion possible," arguing convincingly that this dynamic also enables the spoofulator, who cold soaks and reverse-osmosifies and oak-toastifies his wines to death in order to bring dark-colored, fruit-forward wines early to market.

And yet, Rosenthal implies that he doesn't merely oppose terroir-obliterating modern practices but also laments, or seems to lament, the passing of the old aristocratic order. The wine trade was once "a gentleman's business," and while these gentlemen (not ladies, of course) didn't turn wine like a trick, they (often) already had plenty of money and could afford "to respect the slow pace and leisurely rhythm of bringing wine to market." Moreover, Rosenthal writes, wine "started to move from its isolated position as one of the indicia of the good life, restricted to the well-heeled, the well-educated, and the older generations, to an expanded group of buyers who were perhaps less aware, and less respectful, of the traditions and rituals surrounding wine."

I know who the good guys are in that last sentence, and the sentiment makes me uncomfortable.

I don't mean to make too much of this. Rosenthal's written a fine book that conveys the richness of tradition, inveighs against false and falsified wine, and argues compellingly that each of us should allow wine the time to become what it should be. But while he invokes his early financial struggles as a retailer and importer, he doesn't really acknowledge how lucky he was to be able to drink all "the classics" as his way of educating himself. I consider myself lucky to be solidly middle class in income, to be able to afford a range of wines and occasionally splurge on them (no car = less carbon + more wine, a winning equation if there ever was one), but there's no way I can afford to drink top Bordeaux, or grand cru Burgundy, or most Hermitage.

Fortunately, the democratization of wine has paralleled the democratization of information and the rise of natural winemaking. We are, thanks to Rosenberg among many others, better positioned to discover the wines of the Jura, Saumur, and Gigondas and to understand why certain winemakers make certain decisions — to be more aware, more respectful. To place the proper intangible value on natural wine and then give it time, just as Rosenthal wants us to. And we don't even have to be rich to accomplish this. If it's sad that grand cru Burgundy is out of my reach, I am free to hear other voices, voices not heard by the wine investors. I am not beholden to the classics.

Grilled Lamb, Aged Chinon, and Sancerre Rose

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Last night I had a few friends over for grilled meats, wine, and conversation. Before the sun went down and the conversation turned (even more) bawdy, I popped open the 2006 Pascal et Nicolas Reverdy Terre de Maimbray Sancerre, which is a rosé made solely from pinot noir. Last summer this was terrifically tart and even showed sharp, flinty grapefruit a la sauvignon blanc; it was obvious it needed time. Now, it's showing very well. The acidity is still prominent but it's not nearly so aggressive as it was last year, as it's been stitched into the beautiful strawberry nose and palate. It's clean but it has suggestions of complexity, thanks to the minerally finish that dances on the tongue. Nice to see how some rosés not named Heredia can really gain from some time, and it went really well with the earthy wontons (chives, eggplant, porcini) I fried up as an appetizer.

Thanks to the Storyteller Wine Co. I was able to snag a few bottles of the 1996 Jean-Maurice Raffault Chinon Clos d’Isoré, which comes from vines that are over 70 years old. Twelve years from harvest, this is irrepressibly fresh and impeccably balanced, and it was just so good with the grilled Provencal lamb and roasted peppers. It strikes high but savory notes on the nose, particularly cherry, salt, pepper, and a hint of meat. Spicy yet subtle tobacco flavors join the above, and the acidity here is incredibly refreshing. It's not one of your lighter Chinons, and the substantial and well-integrated tannins make their presence known on the midpalate, but what really makes the whole package work is the long minerality — something for which the Clos d'Isoré is known, or so we are told. Given this wine's structure and verve, I would expect it to further deepen with another five years or more.