This is Not a Top Ten List

This is not a top ten list.  This is a list of ten wines, selected with great difficulty and largely at random, that inspired me in 2010.  This was meant to be a New Year's Eve post... but I opted to unplug.  This is to say, drink wine... and don't forget to enjoy it.  This is to say, have a Happy New Year, dammit! 

Barbera d'Alba, Giuseppe Rinaldi 2008
Absolutely delicious, in an all one could possibly ask for from Barbera kind of way.  I have an ongoing love/hate relationship with Barbera but this was all love.  If only it were available in the US.... (My original write-up.)

Paso Robles Estate Rosé, L'Aventure 2009
One of the most memorable wines from my March trip to Paso Robles, CA, consumed during one of the most memorable events of the trip—dinner high up the Templeton Gap at the home of L'Aventure owner Stephane Asseo.  A dead ringer for the best side of Coteaux d'Aix rosé, with a dash more body courtesy of Cali-ripeness.

Barolo, Bartolo Mascarello 2005
Of the scores of Baroli from the 2005 vintage I've had the chance to taste this year, both at home and while in Piemonte in May for Nebbiolo Prima, Maria-Teresa Mascarello's stands out as the most graceful.

This is not a walrus.

Saar Ayler Kupp Riesling "Unterstenbersch" Faß 12, Weingut Peter Lauer 2008
The most inspiring Riesling I drank in 2010.  The combination of reserved character and intense depth in Florian Lauer's "Unterstenbersch" reminded me that I need to make it a serious mission to drink even more Riesling and to explore the M-S-R more thoroughly in 2011.  (My original write-up.)

Ribeira Sacra Summum, Guímaro (Pedro M. Rodríguez Pérez) 2008
The '08 Ribeira Sacra tinto from Pedro Rodriguez at Guimaro already received a nod in my 2010 in review post a few days back but what can I say....  It was one of the finest $15ish reds I drank all year and a bell-clear harbinger that, just as with Riesling (above), I'm in need of deeper exploration when it comes to the wines of Northern Spain.  (Original write-up.)

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie "Vieilles Vignes," Château les Fromenteaux (Famille Luneau) 2005
I opened this just a couple of weeks ago, after the remnants of a bottle of Meursault proved inadequate for the evening meal.  The Meursault had improved over the course of five days but the Muscadet (which is farmed, vinified and bottled by Pierre Luneau-Papin, btw) still blew it right out of the water. Wonderful aromatics, brilliant minerality, fine balance, aging gracefully... it was one of those wines that made me pause and utter a little "Oh, shit!" under my breath after every few sips.  $12.50 seriously well spent—and proof that there is cellar-worthy wine out there in the sub-$15 price range.

Els Jelipins 2005
What was I just saying about Northern Spain...?  My friend Joe Manekin, whose own Top Ten of 2010 post was at least partially responsible for inspiring this one, included Els Jelipins on his list.  Here it is again.  Sometimes besotted minds think alike.  It's not often that I encounter a bottle that retails for $80 and feel compelled to run right out to buy some.  Heck, it's not often that I buy $80 bottles of wine, period.  It's even rarer that I call a wine "sexy," especially without my tongue firmly planted in cheek.  But that's exactly what I did, on both counts.  Not having been to Penedès, I can't really comment on the wine's terroir expression.  It would be equally feeble to declare it a great expression of Sumoll.  It's simply a great wine.  (Original write-up.)



This is crossing over....

Champagne Brut Blanc de Noirs "Inflorescence," Cédric Bouchard (2006)
In a year in which I had the opportunity to drink many excellent Champagnes, this was a tough choice.  But from its incredible up-front fruit richness and textural density, to its closing minerality and long, long finish, Cédric Bouchard's "Inflorescence" left a definite and lasting impression.

Sierra Foothills White Wine, La Clarine Farm 2009
Two American wines in my not-a-top-ten list?  I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me but here it is....  It boils down to this: if more American wines tasted as good to me as does this Rhône-inspired white from Hank Beckmeyer's La Clarine Farm, as in "friggin' delicious" (cribbed straight from my raw tasting notes), I'd drink more American wine.  (Original write-up.)

Fleurie "Clos de la Roilette," Coudert Père et Fils 2009
As with the Champagne above, in a year in which I drank many excellent wines from the Beaujolais, this was a touch choice.  But not quite so tough.... Why?  Because the '09 Fleurie from Coudert is simply spot-on.  Whether to drink now or later, it's delicious wine—balanced, bright, expressive and incredibly enjoyable.  I'd be hard pressed to think of a wine I'd rather have a big stack of, sitting right next to me at all times, than this.  What better way to round out my "list"?  (Original write-up.)

Intro only...

More Deliciousness from Florian and Peter Lauer

Here's a not-so-little something I've been wanting to try ever since first drinking its "junior" brother last winter.

Just as the lead-in sentence above is a riff on the opening line of last year's post on Weingut Peter Lauer's Riesling "Senior" Fass 6, I could almost get away with copying and pasting in the note from 6 for its big brother, Florian and Peter Lauer's Riesling "Unterstenbersch" Fass 12. The two wines share more in common than they do in the way of difference.  That's not to say there aren't differences, though, significant ones at that.  Besides, you knew I wouldn't take such an easy way out, no?

Saar Ayler Kupp Riesling "Unterstenbersch" Faß 12, Weingut Peter Lauer 2008
$36. 11.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Mosel Wine Merchant, via USA Wine Imports, New York, NY.
Florian Lauer's '08 "Unterstenbersch" brims with pungent aromas of slate and apricot kernel, backed up by accents of white asparagus and yellow apple skins.  The overall aromatic sense of the wine suggests richness and at least a little residual sugar, both of which are confirmed as the wine makes its first impressions on the front palate. From there on, though, the wine's fairly muscular acidity and minerality drive that almost opulent opening on through an unctuous center before ending with a quite dry-seeming finish.  To put it into quantifiable qualitatswein terms, it feels to me like a Spätlese feinherb up front, closer to a Spätlese trocken on the finish.

If he could, that's exactly how I think Florian would choose to label his Unterstenbersch bottling; he categorizes it on the winery's website as "trocken bis feinherb" (dry to medium-dry, roughly translated).  However, the German wine authorities tend to frown on such things, so the Lauers omit any dryness designation from their label and simply let the wine speak for itself.

There's a pungency to the wine, as mentioned earlier, that to me is classic to the best wines from the Saar, a saturated mineral character, redolent of the slate from which it stems, with a subtly sour twinge. Drinking the wine makes me want to work a harvest in Kupp, just so I can taste the fruit of the vines in situ and get an even truer sense of the wine's place.

Discipline alone allowed me to save a couple of glasses for a second day, when the wine took on a more relaxed stance, its round, creamy core coming more to the fore.  What it may have lost slightly in nerve , it more than made up for in the aroma department.  Buttercups, golden raisins, golden pear, golden apples... it seems the color choice for the Fass 12 label is quite apropos — even if it is meant to signify "Unterstenbersch" as one of the Lauers' alte reben (old vine), top cru bottlings, rather than to symbolize its flavor palette.

Buried beneath all that mineral depth and fruit intensity was a subtle yet telltale whiff of sponti character, the aromatic signature that confirms that Florian ferments his wines on their native yeasts.  It's very inconspicuous, though, noticeable, if at all, only as an added nuance, not as a primary signature.  And lying on top if it all, equally quiet in demeanor, was just the slightest whiff of sulfur.  Far from enough to be off-putting, I expect it should pass even further from notice with more time in the bottle.

As long as I'm dabbling in technical info here, it bears pointing out that Florian has a relatively light hand with sulfur, especially when compared to more typical levels used for off-dry wines in Germany.  Dan Melia, the US-based half of the Mosel Wine Merchant team, tells me that Lauer sulfurs only once, a few weeks prior to bottling, adding about 45 ppm of SO2, in the case of Unterstenbersch, to help ensure stability on the bottling line and through the rigors of shipping and storage.

And as long as I'm dabbling in over-the-top tasting notes, I'll add that as the wine opened even further, as that last glass took on air, I picked up a delicate spiciness together with a marmalade-like flavor that made me wonder if there might not have been a small percentage of botrytis influenced fruit in the vats.

Lest you think all this detail somehow sucked the joy out of the experience of drinking the wine, let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.  The wine showed all of these things to me, compelled me to sniff, taste and feel them.  As murky or convoluted as my notes may seem, the wine itself was sheer transparency, totally clear in its expression.

Where it differs from "Senior" most is in the scope of that expression.  Where "Senior" was forward, Unterstenbersch was more reserved.  Where the former was more immediately generous, the latter proved just as rewarding and will likely pay greater dividends further down the road.  I'm sure that the 60 year-old vines in the Unterstenbersch parcel play a role in the wine's stature, but then "Senior" includes fruit from even older vines.  Perhaps the aging regime for Unterstenbersch — 100% in old oak fuder as opposed to the mixture of oak and tank employed for Senior — lends it some of its greater impenetrability and inner density.  Most importantly, though, the wine reflects its site.  Unterstenbersch, as Lars Carlberg tells us on the Mosel Wine Merchant blog, is local dialect for unter dem Berg (“at the foot of the hill”), and an old, unofficial name for the plot at the base of the Ayler Kupp from which this wine is produced.  The Lauers consider it a grand cru site and, to me at least, that stature of character speaks through their wine.

Intro only...

Peter Lauer's Riesling "Senior" Fass 6

Here's a little something I've been wanting to try ever since first reading about it at the Mosel Wine Merchant blog. MWM principal Lars Carlberg's writeup goes well beyond describing the wine in question; it also details the history of the pertinent vineyard, maps out its various parcels and even gets into the etymology of the names given to each part of the site. If this is salesmanship, it's salesmanship at its best, and a textbook example of what — along with the regularly featured, stunning photography by Lars' friend, Tobias Hannemann — makes the MWM blog one of my required reads. It's the kind of post that really gets my mouth watering.

I had only to wait for the wine to enter the US market, then for a bottle to make its way into my shopping cart and, from there, eventually to find its way onto my own table....


Saar Ayler Kupp Riesling "Senior" Faß 6, Weingut Peter Lauer 2008
$26. 11.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Mosel Wine Merchant, via USA Wine Imports, New York, NY.
Showing gorgeous clarity in the glass, "Senior" delivers a deeply penetrating nose of minerals, green aples and gooseberry. Those aromas actually set up much steelier expectations relative to what first meets the palate, as there's some serious richness to the wine's mouthfeel. Behind that weight, though, is a blade of acidity that drives waves of lemon-lime fruit across the tongue, leading to a long, sweet-and-sour lemon drop finish.

As Lars mentioned in his post, "Senior" is "dry-tasting" for a wine that, with 13 grams of residual sugar, is technically halbtrocken. Yet to my palate, it's not quite "trocken-tasting," either. Though Florian Lauer designates the wine as trocken (I wonder if it's labeled that way on the German market), here in the US there is no dryness designation at all, save what can be guessed at via the wine's stated alcohol level. In the end, classic Saar delicacy and acid/sweetness balance wins out, but there's no mistaking the fact that Lauer's old vines (80-90 years) have delivered intense physiological extract.

A day later, the wine's aromas had shifted more into the dark end of the slate and mineral spectrum, also moving away from citrus and toward pit fruit scents of canned peach and fresh apricot. Showing less zingy, more muscular acidity, the wine was indeed more clearly dry tasting, day one's confectioner's dusting having disappeared/integrated into the wine's core.

I'd love to drink this with pan-seared scallops in a beurre blanc sauce. Or perhaps pair it, as I did with the similarly balanced bottle of Emrich-Schönleber's "Lenz" that I wrote up not long ago, with a simple dinner of pork chops and baked potatoes. On this occasion, I enjoyed it with two entirely different dishes: cheese and onion pierogies with peas and sautéed onions on day one, and green chile and cheese tamales on day two. Just for fun, anyone care to guess which pairing worked better... and hazard an explanation as to why?

Intro only...