Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

First the Good News: Why do I always give Bordeaux another chance, although so many of my favorite wines have gone so far up the price scale that they’re no longer even visible? Is it that the first red wine that lit my fire was 1981 Château Cheval Blanc from St.-Émilion? Or is it the memory of so many wonderful bottles over the years, that is until people started treating red Bordeaux as something to be traded like any other commodity, then it descended even further with commodity traders inflating price bubbles to gain even more outrageous profits than the producers of the high-end Grand Cru Classé and comparable wines. Those profit margins put these wines in the same league as designer hand bags (which typically sell for 1,000% – 1,250% of the production costs), and mean that these “wine products” have almost nothing whatsoever to with the wines that people buy to drink any more. I have a serious problem with that situation.

It was therefore something of a revelation to bump into the wines of Saint Glinglin, a joint venture between New York based sommelier Richard Betts and the Bordeaux négociant Francois Thienpont, today at the’Bordeaux under One Roof’ tasting on the 54th floor of 4 World Trade Center. That’s where I took the picture of Midtown Manhattan above. Only minutes later I was looking at the Saint Glinglin labels which depict flying pigs (see below), and tasting red Bordeauxs of a kind I’s never encountered before. For that reason I’m christening them Anti-Bordeaux.

I found the 2010 ‘Carte Vert’ a Francs Côte de Bordeaux the more astonishing of the two, because what do I expect from a 100% Merlot from Bordeaux that retails for $20 – $23? The answer is really not much, or maybe even nothing. However, this wine (available from Crush in Manhattan and Zachy’s in Scarsdale) which was only aged in cement tanks ad an incredibly lively black berry nose, tasted juicy rather than jammy with a crisp aftertaste that just delightful. It was like being struck by lightning! Why? Because the wine made zero attempt to impress, much less did it try to pander to the critics, somms and other supposed wine VIPs. 0% oak works for me! What about you?

Now the Bad News: This morning the publisher of ‘BWWOE – The Riesling Book’ effectively imposed a 10 day sentence in solitary confinement in Writer’s Prison upon me in order to get the first round of corrections on the manuscript through by December 1st. I probably won’t be able to post the next story here until then. My apologies in advance!

The picture shows Randall Grahm, the guiding spirit of Bonny Doon Vineyard of Santa Cruz, CA, USA, Earth at lunch today in The Breslin on West 29th Street, Manhattan, NY, USA, Earth. However, what it actually records is a moment of serendipity and revelation for me. It was near the end of the tasting of the latest hits from Bonny Doon and he announced to the table that he wouldn’t be retiring until he dies. That seems to make eminent sense to me, but landed with thermonuclear force on the table, perhaps because the other people there all have jobs with salaries (something I haven’t had since September 1981, I think). I immediately sensed that something important was going to happen, as if I’d caught sight of the shadow of someone about to enter the room.

As much as for anything else we had gathered to taste Randall’s his newest creation, the 2012 “A Proper Claret” pictured above. At first glance this seems like Randall contradicting himself, because as he himself said, “officially I hate Cabernet”, and Cabernet is the basis of any proper Claret in the very English sense of that term. As the wine was poured Randall explained how he’d discovered a weird Cabernet vineyard that was box-pruned (imagine the foliage of each vine in the row having a box-like shape, so that the row looks like one long green box). The tiny clusters with tiny berries instantly fascinated him and there was only one way to find out if this might be the key to making a red wine with lowish alcoholic content, but lacking the green aromas (technical term: pyrazines) that afflict most low alcohol Cabs. That was to test his hunch by trying it out. The result is a great success, even if the blend of 62% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Petit Verdot, 8% Tannat, 7% Syrah and 1% Petit Sirah hardly resembles the recipe of any actual Claret from Bordeaux. However, it taste convincingly Claret-like with red berry aromas, a nice freshness and gentle tannins that scream drink me! “Blending is the only thing I can do,” Grahm explained, “I’m not a technically good winemaker.” For more info see:

www.aproperclaret.com

Then came the last wine, a tank sample of 2013 white wine which  we suddenly realized he expected us to guess. First, there was a moment of silence and brain-wracking

“Moscato?” someone threw in and Randall just shook his head.

“Spätlese?” I suggested on the basis of the peach aroma, the low alcohol and juicy interplay of fruit and acidity.

“Kabinett,” he replied, which confirmed that it was indeed a California Riesling. “We’ll be bottling it in three or four weeks.”

“Back to your roots!” someone else at the table commented, referring to the ‘Pacific Rim’ Riesling brand Randall launched with the 1991 vintage, which is when I first met him, roughly twenty years ago. I still have my notes from that day and the sample labels he gave me! (Pacific Rim subsequently turned into a self-contained winery, now owned by Banfi of New York, that today makes some of America’s best Rieslings).

“I’m just trying to make some dough!” Randall threw back, which also landed on the table with thermonuclear force. A winemaker admitting that he wants to make money; sacre bleu! You won’t hear anyone from Brugundy (just to take one example of a pricey and holy wine) say that, because it could undermine all the breathtaking Terroir Talk and maybe even raise the delicate question of how many hundred percent profit margin there is on some of those Grand Crus. I could sense that special moment was approaching fast.

People then drifted off to their next appointments and I decided to scrub mine (sorry Gigondas, that I didn’t your tasting today at Rouge Tomate!) In a rather confused way I blathered to Randall some of the ideas for a new book (not BWWOE – The Riesling Book due out in May/June 2014) and something seemed to click for him. Then he poured out all the stuff that follows and it clicked with me big time.

“Nobody’s written about the sea change in the wine industry. 20 years ago it was much more idealistic. People in the wine industry wanted meaning and now they want money. OK, I’m interested in both. Now there’s a cynicism and self-consciousness, and a sense of randomness…The weird thing is 20 years ago your job as a winemaker was to a really great wine. If you did, then you sold it. Now you don’t know if you can sell it! Then you’ve got all the new shock labels. Is that how you sell wine now?” Finally, he rather sheepishly acknowledged that, of course, he was responsible for some of the first eccentric wine labels. Some of them were sitting on the table in front of us. That only made what he said all the more fascinating.

PS I’m sorry that this story is already so long that I’m not going to be able to comment in detail on all the wines we tasted. Suffice to say that these were the best wines I ever tasted from Randall and I advise you all to catch up on what he’s been doing lately by picking up a bottle or six at the first opportunity. They’re all strikingly original California wines. I mean, when did I ever write about a California rosé that if I’d tasted it blind I would have placed it in Southern France and that it had a mineraly finish? The answer is, of course, is that I never wrote anything like that before. I feel sure that these are going to be game changing wines for California and will inspire many young and young at heart winemakers there and beyond. Randall certainly inspired me too!

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, sometimes I tell the stories as soon as they’ve happened and sometimes I need to chew things over for several days before I’m halfway sure what I really think. The other day at Alesio Restaurant in Brooklyn (pictured is chef Albano Ballerini of The Classon) I attended a really fascinating blind tasting of white and red wines from the state of New Jersey. It’s a little-known fact that New Jersey, as well as having a lot of industry and plenty of fruit-growing, has the seventh largest wine industry in the Union and over a thousand acres of (widely scattered) vineyards. There are all manner of reasons – also old-fashioned prejudice – why this is ill-appreciated even in New York Wine City (NYWC), but here I just want to tell you about how the juice from the wrong side of the wine tracks tasted.

We started with the whites and they confounded my expectations to such a degree that I really didn’t know what to write about them until today. You see, I was expecting the world of the 2012 Pheasant Hill Vineyard Chardonnay from Unionville Vineyards, because the 2010 of that wine had been sensationally elegant. It was the best new Chardonnay I’d tasted in many years! There’s nothing wrong with the 2012, in fact the wine is beautifully made, but the tropical fruit character and rather soft acidity resulting from a certain over-ripeness of the grapes (in spite of only 13.4% alcohol) robbed the wine of the delicacy and freshness which made the 2010 (with just 13.1% alcohol) so special. My gut tells me that the NJ climate results in the grapes of some varieties going from ripe to over-ripe almost overnight given warm fall weather. I liked both the quite crisp pear-flavored 2012 ‘Estate Reserve’ Chardonnay from Heritage Vineyards and the rich, creamy 2010 ‘sur Lie’ Chardonnay from Amalthea Cellars. However, in both these cases the wines were still too fresh (technical term: reduction). When will they open up? The other white that grabbed me was the sleek, elegant and slightly spicy 2012 ‘Signature Series’ Albarino from Hawk Haven Vineyard with salty-mineral aftertaste.

The reds also confused me, for they were way more heterogenous than I’d expected, most importantly in the stylistic sense. However, there were also several wines that had turned  too far in the vinegar direction (technical term: volatile acidity) to get my vote, however good some other aspects of them tasted. Some wines had clearly also been worked too hard during fermentation (technical term: over-extracted), perhaps in a vain attempt to compensate for deficiencies in the fruit or through an excess of winemaker ambition. I really liked the complex black fruit and pepper aromas of the 2010 ‘Leitner’ – a blend of a trio of Austrian red grapes Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt and St. Laurent – from Mount Salem Vineyards, but even in that case a little bit less tannin would have made the balance so much more appealing. However, the wine did prove the considerable potential these varieties have in New Jersey.

Tomato is an aroma in red wines which some people don’t like, but if there’s enough ripe fruit character too I don’t mind it. That’s why the 2010 Cabernet Franc was controversial and one of my favorite wines. I liked the balance of ripe black fruit flavors with a hint of the vegetal stuff and warm, moderately dry tannins. The 2010 ‘Europa VII’ from Amalthea Cellars – a blend of Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon self-consciously modeled on Chateau Figeac in St.-Emilion/Bordeaux – also had a hint of something vegetal. Each time I tasted this wine I found it more appealing, since the vegetal tough lifted the quite full and dry tannic body. This is clearly a wine that’s not yet at its peak.

At the other end of the stylistic scale was the bold, ripe and powerful 2010 ‘The Big O’ from Unionville Vineyards – a blend of both Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc with Merlot and Petit Verdot – that tasted a bit massive and chewy a year ago, but now has a wonderful balance in spite of the serious tannins at the finish; another wine with great aging potential. The 2010 Cabernet Franc from Working Dog Winery (labelled as Silver Decoy, a name the winery has had to abandon for legal reasons) was almost as powerful and a shade more elegant. As well as having a ripe blackcurrant note there were also has hints of smoke, balsamic vinegar and mint in its bouquet, which means some real complexity. It was quite a big mouthful with plenty of moderately dry tannins and a discrete acidic freshness. This was not only my favorite red on the day, but also the favorite of Aldo Sohm, the somm from Le Bernardin in New York. His judgement of the entire tasting summed up my own feelings, “NJ is a really crazy world of wine!”

It clearly demands closer attention and on December 4th I will be heading out to try and get to make more sense of it. Many thanks to Marcarthur Baralla of Defendshee Productions for organizing the tasting and helping me get this far. Watch this Space for the report of my road trip December 5th/6th!

This is Terroir Murray Hill in the throbbing heart of New York Wine City (NYWC), where on Monday afternoon (sorry for the terrible delay due to urgent and well paid work!) Rienne Martinez of Terroir Murray Hill and I staged a historic blind tasting that pitted mature dry Riesling against mature white burgundy (i.e. Chardonnay) and Chenin Blanc from the Loire. The idea was to do what regular wine drinkers do when they compare a couple of very different wines that just happen to be sitting next to one another on their dining table in a more systematic and thorough manner.

For this reason we invited along about a dozen important figures in NYWC, concentrating on people younger than myself in order to try and catch the now mood of the scene on this subject. It was great to have somms like Rosemary Gray of Flatiron Wines, Pascaline Lepeltier of Restaurant Rouge Tomate, Jarred Roth of Gotham Bar & Grill, and Arnaud Tronche of the still to open Racines New York with us alongside more experienced tasters like Lisa Granik MW, Paul Grieco and David Rosengarten. And Levi Dalton is unique until cloning technology advances to the Nexus 6 generation.

The core of the tasting was 15 bottles of dry Riesling – 6 German, 5 Austrian, 2 Alsatian plus one each from the US and Australia –  ranging in age from the 2002 Gaisberg from Hirsch in Kamptal/Austria to the 1994 Schütt ‘Smaragd’ from Emmerich Knoll in Wachau/Austria. From this one corky wine was subtracted and 5 Chenin Blancs from the Loire (2000 – 1971 vintages), 4 white Burgundies (2002 – 1995) and one California Chardonnay (1993 from Kalin Cellars) were added. The wines were then served blind in flights of three, also blind for Rienne and I.

Looking back I think right from the beginning we collectively shifted into what I call Hyper-Critical Syndrome (HCS), which results from not wanting to seem to favor any wine and leads to every wine being obsessively picked apart in the search for the slightest weaknesses, just as the NSA seems to go after every crumb of information no matter how small. I actually think this hit the Chardonnays hardest, because they were clearly the weakest group of wines on the table. None of them generated any excitement although highly-reagrded producers such as Ampeau and Leroy were included. Had we drunk these wines, rather than HCS tasted them, then I think we’d have enjoyed them all (except the 1996 Meursault Perrieres from Pierre Morey, which was dead in the water) more.

That the Chenins did rather better had something to do with the fact that with one exception they were all at least demi sec (i.e. medium-dry). No wonder the 2000 Clos du Bourg Vouvray from Huet did so well against the properly dry 2001 Klaus ‘Samaragd’ from Prager in the Wachau/Austria and the 2001 Berg Schlossberg from Georg Breuer in the Rheingau/Germany. It had about 1% / 10 grams per liter more residual sweetness than they did! That’s very significant when you’re in HCS mode.

But what about the Rieslings? Well, there were a number of wines which created a buzz at the table, most notably the 2001 Kastanienbusch ‘Grosses Gewächs’ from Rebholz in the Pfalz/Germany. It’s freshness, intense ripe fruit, great balance and very distinctive character – “melon”, “peppermint” – won everyone over.  The 1999 Auslese trocken from J.B. Becker of  the Rheingau/Germany will be remembered, not only because it was it concentrated and elegant with a style entirely its own – “celery”, “very lively for 14% alcohol” – but because almost nobody at the table had heard of the producer. The 1996 Dry Riesling from Smith Madrone in Napa valley/California was at once mellow and racy with a delicate toasty bouquet charmed everyone, then stunned everyone when they found out what it was.

The flight of three Rieslings at the end which weren’t quite legally dry (although clearly drier than the demi sec Vouvrays) all impressed to some degree, but opinions differed as to whether the lighter style of the 2001 ‘Felsterrasse’ from Clemens Busch in the Mosel/Germany – “mango”, “pretty” – the more creamy balance of the 2001 Uhlen ‘Rotlay’ from Heymann-Löwenstein also from the Mosel – “curry leaf”, “supple” or the opulence of the 2001 Grand Cru Schlossberg ‘Cuvée Set. Catherine’ from Weinbach in Alsace/France – “salty”, “nervous, tense” – was the more impressive of the trio.

However, in many ways it was what didn’t impress that was more significant. Of the Wachau wines the 1999 Kellerberg ‘Samargd’ from F.X. Pichler came closest to being warmly received, but even here there was some criticism – “quite austere finish” – and the 2002 Gaisberg from Hirsch ended up with the most praise of the Austrian wines. The 2001 ‘Cuvée Frédéric Emile’ from Trimbach in Alsace/France also got a mixed reception, the austerity here appealing to some, but others were radical in their rejection – “a joyless Australian wine”.

Personally I loved the 2001 Berg Schlossberg from Georg Breuer, although other bottles of this wine have shown better. Like many Rieslings in the tasting it took some time to open up in the glass, and of course we were all running on NYWC schedules tighter than latex corsets. But that is, of course, the nature of this game, and for the wines it was also the way the cosmic cookie crumbled. No doubt this exercise will be repeated, for it was much less weird comparing these very diverse wines in mature form than we expected.

Caitlin Harrison worked the 2013 crush at Weingut Eva Vollmer in Mainz-Ebersheim/Rheinhessen. This is her second and final report:

Upon a full two week’s reflection since I saw you last, and after many carefully thought out explanations of your production to those interested in my time spent with you, I ask you, middle of each row, a simple question:

Why? Why did you give us such an opportunity to be disappointed with you? You just love to hold on to all of that moisture, convert it into Pilze, botrytis, rot, WHATEVER, and not fully explore your potential in this singular function of harvest. You just wanted to be difficult, and you succeeded. You dusty mistress of destruction. You mocked hand lesen, and I kind of hate you for it.

You heard all of us hand pickers marvel at the precious fruits residing at the beginning and end of every steeply terraced slope, but you obviously felt we didn’t deserve happiness. You liked the murmuring of slight disbelief as we assessed your fruit. You enjoyed watching us find only little beauty and health within your clusters and dust out the carefully crafted, impolite rot. You might have even laughed at our befuddled expressions. It wasn’t cool, mid-row.

Eva and Robert choose to let you live a natural life (organic viticulture!) They don’t manipulate you and your health, they instead provide you every opportunity to live. They love watching everything from the satiated worms work through your soil, to a good old fashioned bud break and further, a normal maturity. You gave that to them. Then you succumbed to the rain. Weak.

And don’t get me wrong, as with misbehaving children, not ALL of you are responsible for this upset, but the ones who are KNOW who they are. And while you gave us some grief, not all was lost. Great wine will be made of what we worked so diligently to find in you. But your efforts put a damper on an already damp harvest.

So my words of advice for the future are this: next time if you are considering showing up in the fall in the same fashion, just, don’t.

Or, do, and we will make the best of you. Either way…

Fondly,
Caitlin “Uffmudler” Harrison

(Uffmudler is local dialect in Mainz that means someone that stirs something very thoroughly, or a mixer. I translate it to mover and shaker, and I think it sounds amazing.)

Caitlin Harrison
Student of Riesling. And German. And German Riesling.

PS We’ll hear moor from Caitlin after her return to Lenox/MA!

PPS If you have something important to say and wish to become a guest author on this blog please get in touch with me!

Red Bordeaux isn’t a wine that often lights my fire, and since the prices for the famous names went AWOL I stopped buying in protest. The last red Bordeaux I bought more than a single bottle of was the 2000 Terte Roteboeuf from Francois Mitjavile in St-Émilion, so when I got an invitation to a tasting of red Bordeaux at distributor T. Edwards in Studio 206 of 66 West Broadway which included the Mitjavile wines there was no discussion as to whether I would go. What I found there was so much more than what I’d expected and so very different from what I’d expected that it pushed other planned stories aside. The photos give you an idea of the unusual ambience.

This is a company that has gone to a lot of trouble to hunt down independent winemakers in Bordeaux who are doing what we expect of independent winemakers: making wines with character with prices that bear some relationship to production costs, rather than being figures pulled out of the according to the principle, “how much can we get away with today?” For example, the 2010 Château le Coteau from Margaux costs a tiny fraction (something like a twentieth!) of what the Premier Grand Cru Classé Château Margaux costs, but is a fragrant and elegant Margaux with quite serious dry tannins and a lovely freshness at the finish for this vintage. In a way I was even more impressed by the 2009 Château Lestage Darquier, because it cost just half the price of the le Coteau. This wine reminds me of the first red Bordeauxs I taste (from the vintages of the ’70s), but without the touch of green which Cru Bourgeois wines nearly always had back then. There are even some subtle herbal and mineral notes at the finish of this elegant wine, which spends a year in barrel of which about a quarter are new; quite enough oak for this style. Congratulation T. Edward Wines, you just proved to me that Bordeaux still lives!

The wines from Francois Mitjavile were as impressive as I was hoping. The Mijavile style is rich and highly extracted, and for this reason, and because Parker gave them some high scores, they’ve been praised and reviled as “Parker Wines”. However, they never have a hint of anything jammy, nor are they ever over-extracted and inky, much less are they over-oaked vanilla bombs. In fact, they stand out because of their beautiful balance, and for me they embody Francois’s description of the winemaker as, “a civilized peasant, because he must adapt his cultivation methods to fit the location and the weather.” It was the first time I’d tasted the L’Aurage from the Côtes de Castillon, which is the newest addition to the Mitjavile family of wines. The 2009 is the boldest of these wines and there is a bit of smoky oak in there, but also dense black fruit aromas and a menthol note. For the taste the price is OK, even if it’s off the charts for this appellation.

Oh yeah, there were also some bikes in the tasting room, one of those table football games and I don’t know what else! Don’t worry citizens of Planet Riesling I haven’t abandoned you or our favorite grape. I just wanted to tell you this rather cool story, which makes an important point about the complex symbiosis of wine character (yes, terroir) and money. Too little money and terroir isn’t going to consistently make it’s way into the glass; too much money and terroir might (I’m skeptical about its compatibility with big bucks) still make into somebody’s glass, but it certainly won’t be my glass!