OK, the names seem to be getting even longer.  Sorry.

But do try this 90% Carmenere / 10% Cabernet, the debut vintage of the line, which I tasted with the winemaker in 2009 shortly after its release.  Even then it was already drinkable, and it’s only gotten better: a deep purple, rich, blackberry and plum treat, well balanced, with ripe, chewy tannin and a wonderful finish.

You can find this wine at about $18-21.  It’s a little above the range of wines I typically recommend, but worthy every penny. And the 2008 and 2009 are also outstanding if you can’t lay your hands on an ’07.

Champagne House Roederer Embraces Biodynamics

Natural Wines – Worth a Taste?

Consumers Fight for their Rights (Wine Rights)

Wine at…Starbucks?

Burgundy’s Magic Spell

In this wine, Italy does meet France. Argiano is an Italian winemaker with 120 acres of vines in Montalcino, Tuscany, and also produces a Bordeaux-style wine entirely from French grapes, in addition to three 100% Sangiovese wines.

This is a full-bodied, very satisfying wine that a bunch of work colleagues and I enjoyed the other night at Eno Terra in Princeton.  Forty percent Cab, and twenty percent each Sangiovese, Merlot and Syrah, this is one of the most interesting blends I’ve ever tasted.  Nice blackfruit, a touch of spice, noticeable but not overwhelming tannin and a really nice, long finish, this is a great wine with food or just by itself on a cold, winter night.  Like we’re having here in…New Jersey.

You can find this wine at about $16-19.

I know, I know, the wine name is absurdly long.  But trust me, it’s great wine.

Valpolicella is the region where the wine is made in northeastern Italy called the Veneto.  The grapes are three – possibly three you’ve never heard of: Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara.

Sometimes called a “baby Amarone,” the secret to this wine is the Ripasso method—a technique that passes the juice over the skins and seeds from an Amarone fermentation. This sets off another fermentation, taking the cherry fruit flavors of Valpolicella and creating a much richer, spicier wine with more tannin, and a bit more alcohol. You get lots of blackfruit, coffee, figs, and raisins, and much of the intensity and pleasure of Amarones at perhaps a quarter to a third of their cost.

You can find this wine at about $13-16 in most good wine shops.

California Sparkling Wine Suggestions

Charles Krug: The First Mondavi Winery

Real Men Drink Port

A French Wine Region Changes its Name

Europe’s Wine Regions Oppose EU Expansion

Celebrates its 236th birthday today, November 10, 2011

“That two Battalions of Marines be raised consisting of
one Colonel, 2 Lt. Colonels, 2 Majors, and Officers
as usual in other regiments, that they consist of an equal number
of privates with other Battalions, that particular care be taken
that no person be appointed to Officer or enlisted in said Battalions,
but such as are good seamen, or so aquainted with maritime
affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea.”

New Zealand Targets the U.S. Market

Wine Selection: Clos du Bois Marlstone 2006 (Bordeaux Blend)

Wine Category: Cabernet Franc from Long Island

The Varietal Character of Red Wines

Wine Shopping: What’s in a Label?

Step up to Sangiovese (Chianti)

Good Chard under ten bucks is almost unheard of.  This is one of them.  And it’s a pretty good wine to serve before, if not with, the Thanksgiving meal.

Now if you’re a real fan of big, sweet, caramel-y, high alcohol Chardonnays you probably won’t be impressed.  Because this is a crisp, virtually unoaked, almost Chablis-like wine, with citrus and pineapple aromas and flavors of lemon and a hint of vanilla.

This is not from Burgundy, of course; it’s from the Languedoc-Roussillon in the very southeast, bordering on the Mediterranean, and the wine is classified “Pays d’Oc”.  That means, mainly, it’s good table wine from a fairly large region.

And it also is an amazingly good, remarkably inexpensive wine that tastes like it cost about two and a half times what you can buy it for.  I just bought a case.

For thirteen bucks, you really can’t do much better.

That’s my opinion, and it’s also the opinion of a bunch of wine Judges at the Ultimate Wine Challenge in NY City this past May. Normally I don’t put too much stock in wine contests, but this one I liked, especially as the tastings were blind and the top scorers were were then tasted by a whole different group of judges. And they put a lot of emphasis on affordable and value wines.  This is certainly one of them.

Anyway, what a great food wine: medium bodied, with flavors of black and bing cherries, a hint of leather, nice acidity, and enough tannin to chew on but not overwhelm you. Most of this is Sangiovese, one of my favorite grapes, with a few percent of the other traditional Chianti grapes, too.

Right now, amazingly, it’s snowing outside in October, and this is a nice “comfort” wine at a great price.

Understanding American Viticulture Areas (AVAs)

A Primer on Wines from South Africa

Good Boxed Wines

Wine Pick: Toad Hollow Unoaked Chardonnay

The Chefs, who took home the James Beard Award for Best Chefs of the Northeast last year, were in town to introduce New York’s food writers to the book and more importantly, to the food, which we tasted while looking out over the skyline with great views of the south tip of Manhattan, Hoboken, and Jersey City, with Lady Liberty and Staten Island off in the distance. I believe we were, in fact, looking out over the Hudson at the spot where “Sully” Sullenberger brought US Airways flight 1549 to a stop, saving his own and 154 other lives.

Anyway, it was a perfect evening. Paired in my case with Four Vines Naked Chardonnay (unoaked), guests enjoyed more than a dozen treats from the cookbook including lobster mac n’ cheese, grilled flank steak with mom’s sauce, poached oysters with creme and chervil, spicy lamb sausage, lobster salad with miner’s lettuce and chive mayonnaise, crab chowder with corn and celery, yukon gold potato and wild mushroom gratin, all finished off with apple-rhubarb crisp, whoopie pies, and honey-thyme and real mint (and I mean real) chocolate chip ice creams.

You can buy the book at Amazon and a whole lotta other places. Better yet, just hop in your car to Ogunquit, Maine and visit Arrows or their other signature restaurant, MC Perkins Cove, and taste some of the treats for yourself.

Christian Moueix

On April 25 I was privileged to enjoy an evening with Christian Moueix (“Moo-ecks”) of Petrus and Dominus fame, as a guest of Sherry-Lehman CEO Chris Adams.  Monsieur Moueix hosted a tasting of his Dominus and Napanook wines, with paired cuisine from Manhattan’s Hotel Plaza Athenee. 

I’ve been drinking his wines all my adult life and so I felt like I’d known Christian ever since I’d read Napa: The Story of an American Eden. In that book, one of my five favorite wine books, we hear about how Christian, who’d studied winemaking and viticulture at UC Davis, was first approached by Robert Mondavi who was in Bordeaux for the 1981 harvest, and had met with Christian and suggested that he consider expanding the Moueix family horizons beyond France. Those horizons alone were considerable; at they time they included the famed Chateau Petrus, and Chateaux La Grave, Magdelaine and Tratanoy.

Eventually, the ever-persuasive Mondavi got Christian to fly to California, where he literally set him up with two sisters of California wine royalty, Robin Daniel Lail and Marcia “Marky” Daniel Smith, the daughters of Napa pioneer John Daniel, the former owner of Napa’s Inglenook winery, the closest thing Napa’s ever had to a French chateau. John Daniel and his sister had become the sole owners of the winery in 1937 and is responsible for many then-unheard-of innovations such as vintage dating and labeling the bottles Napa Valley. Some very unhappy personal circumstances had forced John to sell Inglenook in 1964, but the historic Yountville vineyard Napanook wasn’t part of the deal, and most of it eventually passed on to Robin and Marky.  Together they went into business with Christian to produce the luxury Dominus wines (first vintage 1983) from that vineyard, which they then jointly owned until 1995, when Christian became the sole owner. The Napanook wines are the second wines produced from the vineyard and began production in 1996.

At about 6 foot 3, Christian often towers above everyone else at a tasting, and he reeks of elegance and erudition. But aside from his thick accent he’s about as down to earth as they come, and our dinner was punctuated with laughter as he popped up only briefly from his table to introduce each wine, often with a self-deprecating line or joke.

A true gentleman farmer and a distinguished winemaker, it was a thrill to spend an evening with Christian and his lovely wife Cerise.  Many thanks to Chris Adams and the fine folks at Sherry Lehman.

Now for the wines:

Certan de May 2008: Soft and reserved, with very little tannin. Average $85 retail.

Magdelaine 2008: A big, bold wine, dense in color, with big and chewy but not off-putting tannins. Wonderful. Average $75 retail.

Dominus 1996: A lovely perfumed wine but getting a little thin. Average $110 retail.

Dominus 2001: A perfectly balanced, wonderful food wine. In fact a nearly perfect wine. Average $105 retail.

Dominus 2006: Promising but still young and a little rough around the edges. Average $90 retail. 

Dominus 2008: Lush and delicious, remarkably drinkable right now and sure to get better all the time.  Average $155 retail.

Napanook 2008:  Very earthy and lacks a bit in the mid-palate. Average $50 retail.