My Approach to Wine Naming Conventions

While reading Alder Yarrow’s recent post on Croatian wines at Vinography the other day, I had a bit of an “ah-hah!” moment. It had nothing to do with the part about Croatian wine. Rather, it was in response to his (re)iteration of the standardized format he uses when writing wine names. Though his logic doesn’t match mine, his post made me realize that I’d never explained my own standardization protocol and told you why I do it the way I do.

Here’s my format:

Place of origin (including cuvée and/or vineyard name and/or grape variety, as applicable) – Estate/Producer – Vintage

It’s a style that lends itself most readily to the widespread practice in Europe of naming a wine after its place of origin. For instance, here’s an example of a wine that I wrote up recently: Vouvray “Cuvée de Silex,” Domaine des Aubisières (Bernard Fouquet) 2007.

Things can get a bit awkward when applying the same structure to wines from the New World, as a wine that many people might refer to simply as “1999 Caymus Special Selection,” for instance, would become: Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon “Special Selection,” Caymus Vineyards 1999. I admit it doesn’t roll off the tongue in quite as easy a fashion. But it works for me.

My profile picture is a shot of a vineyard called "Runcot," a subset of the the Gavarini cru in Monforte d'Alba, one of the districts where Barolo is produced. It's owned and farmed by Elio Grasso and his son, Gianluca. I've yet to write up the details of my visit there in February 2006. And their Barolo "Runcot" from '06 has yet to be released. (Photo appears courtesy of its photographer, Tino Gerbaldo, and the Elio Grasso estate.)
Wine names written in this manner, even though they may appear to include an awful lot of information, really present only three basic elements: place, person and time. This construct is meant to convey, in all cases, three points that I feel very strongly about.

1. Place of origin is – or at least should be, in my view – the single most important factor in determining the overall character of wine.
   
   
2. It’s the person or people making the wine that nurture the wine – from vineyard to cellar – and allow it to express its place of origin as they interpret it. I like to think of the winemaker as a servant to his or her vineyards, as less important than the place but more important than the vintage in determining the overall quality of any given wine.
   
   
3. Vintage is very important in the context of any single wine. All things in parts one and two being consistent, it’s the qualities of a given growing year, and the human decisions based around the vagaries of that year, that make that wine different from year to year. Vintage becomes important to understanding wine, however, only after an understanding of the wine’s place and people have already been formed.

This is obviously a big topic, one that’s open to a wide range of viewpoints. While I could go into much greater detail, I’d rather stop here, encourage questions, feedback, commentary, criticism – even outright bashing – and see where the discussion leads.

Intro only...

Sunday Housekeeping

When I traveled to Germany and France in 2004, I did so without a camera. Luckily, one of my trip mates brought his camera along and was able to capture at least a few images at many of the wineries we visited. Nearly five years on, I’ve finally gotten around to borrowing his photo album (Thanks, Eric!), scanning some of his shots and adding them to the winery profile pages here at MFWT. If you’d like to check them out, you’ll find that new photos have been added to the pages for:

• Weingut Ratzenberger (Mittelrhein)
  
• Weingut Keller (Rheinhessen)
  
• Emrich-Schönleber (Nahe)
  
• Domaine Barmès-Buecher (Alsace)
  
• Diebolt-Vallois (Champagne)
  
  Jacques Diebolt in the process of performing dégorgement à la volée with a bottle of 1953 Blanc de Blancs.
  
• Clos Baudoin/Philippe Poniatowski (Vouvray)
  
• François Chidaine (Montlouis)
  
• Domaine Ricard (Touraine)

On a more technical bent, I’ve just updated my subscription feeds in keeping with Feedburner’s recent merge with and migration to Google. If any of you following MFWT via RSS feed or email subscription encounter any interruptions or problems with service, please drop me a line or leave a comment to let me know.

Intro only...

Tria, Ars Nova and Menetou-Salon

Update: Classes at Tria are now open for registration. Check out the entire February schedule or jump directly to my courses on sparkling wine or Italy on a budget. Both classes are now sold out.

The February 2009 schedule of classes at Tria Fermentation School is due to be announced later today. I’ll do my best to update this once the roster goes live but you can also keep an eye on it yourself. I’ll be leading two seminars in February. The first will be the ubiquitous seasonal sparkling wine class, just in time for Valentine’s Day, on Friday, February 13. I’ll return in quick fashion on Wednesday, February 18, with an overview of some exciting options in everyday wines from Italy. Think $18 and under – $15 doesn’t get you quite as far in Italy as it does in France – and you’ll be on the right track.

Another promoter of great cultural events available to all of my Philly-based readers is the Ars Nova Workshop. For those not already familiar, Ars Nova's driving force Mark Christman puts on a really adventurous series of musical performances at small venues all over the city. To over simplify, the focus is on jazz but his bookings encompass an incredibly wide range of musical talent, occasionally straight ahead but more often exploring the cutting edge of improvisational and experimental music.

Last Friday’s performance, the first in a three-part series paying tribute to the great, late saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill, featured Baikida Carroll, trumpeter on Hemphill’s landmark 1972 recording, Dogon A.D., in what turned out to be a really eclectic, energized evening. Perhaps I’ll see some of you at the Thurston Moore/Mats Gustafsson performance on the 31st of this month. I trust it won’t be for the faint of heart…. Here’s a short clip, loaded on the aural assault front, of Mats and Thurston performing with Original Silence at an August 2008 performance in Oslo.



Finally, getting back to wine, I mentioned in yesterday’s post how a food pairing brought out something extra, something that wasn’t already in evidence, in an otherwise relatively unremarkable Chinon. Well, I finished off the same disc of Selles-sur-Cher last night, washed down with a couple of glasses of Jean-Max Roger’s 2005 Menetou-Salon “Cuvée Le Charnay.” The wine was showing very well on its own, having moved past the lactic tendencies it can show in youth to a more highly-charged expression of fruit, flowers and minerality. The combination, though, focused and magnified the experience of both the wine and the cheese, putting paid to the classic pairing of Loire Sauvignon with goat’s milk cheese from the same locale, adding layers and hitting new notes along the way. Good stuff all around.

Intro only...

Breakfast Wine for WBW 53

It’s been a while since I’ve jumped into the Wine Blogging Wednesday pool. But given that this month’s host, El Jefe at El Bloggo Torcido has, in his own typically twisted way, made things both fun and challenging, I figured it was high time rejoin the fray. El Jefe (or Jeff Stai, if you prefer – he’s the owner of Twisted Oak Winery in Calaveras County, California) has asked participants to write up their favorite breakfast wine. No problem, right?

When I show Moscato d’Asti at wine tastings, I often describe it as the perfect breakfast wine. It’s always good for a laugh and it’s also true. A good example of Moscato represents some of the best fruit juice you’re ever likely to drink. It’s low in alcohol and has enough residual sugar to pair with a wide variety of breakfast sweets, from pastries to pancakes to French toast.

I’d actually rather drink Champagne, but that’s harder to explain to that percentage of the population that for some reason believes there’s something wrong with having wine before 5PM. There’s nothing, though, quite like a good glass of Champers with an omelette aux fines herbes or with a simple plate of bacon and eggs for that matter.

The challenge is that El Jefe has forbidden us from drinking anything with bubbles or anything that’s at all sweet. And wine cocktails such as the ubiquitous Mimosa? Forget about it. Dry red or dry white wine is the rule of the day. So, with that in mind, I think back to my last couple of wine junkets to Europe and, in particular, to the wine villages of the middle Loire.

Chinon, Domaine des Rouet 2005
$14. 12.5% alcohol. Diam. Kysela Père et Fils, Winchester, VA.
I’m cheating a bit here, as I drank this Chinon over the course of the last two days with dinner rather than breakfast. I doubt whether the main component of those dinners – pumpkin lentil soup with sautéed mushrooms – would fit into many people’s definition of breakfast food. However, on both nights, I also enjoyed a couple of slices of crusty bread and a generous portion of Loire Valley goat cheese – Selles sur Cher, to be exact.

If you’re in a budget hotel, like the one in Montlouis where our group stayed a few years back, breakfast may be nothing more than a stale baguette, butter, jam and a cup of weak coffee. If you have an early morning appointment at a nearby winery, on the other hand, you’re much more likely to be greeted with a plate of dried sausages or cured meats, a little bread and a wedge of the local goat’s milk cheese. It’ll sate your belly and stand you in good stead for a day spent in cold cellars and – if you’re there in February as I was – frosty vineyards. If you happen to be in the town of Chinon, the cheese on your plate would probably be St. Maure de Touraine but that’s splitting hairs….

The Chinon from Domaine des Rouet is simple and unassuming. In fact it’s actually not perfectly balanced nor all that memorable. Lean and a little ungiving on its own, it does perk up in the presence of food, its slightly herbaceous and tart red fruit opening up to reveal a riper core of redcurrants when matched with the Selles sur Cher. It’s what some might call a bistro wine – straightforward and direct, with little personality of its own but quite flexible at the table. At 12.5% alcohol, it’s relatively low alcohol so not too, too strong for early going. Besides, I don’t want anything deep, dark, profound or powerful first thing in the morning. Just something to kick my taste buds and palate into gear for the rest of the day.

Intro only...

B-Sides: Some Recent Hits, Misses and Outtakes

B-Sides. Sometimes neglected, almost always overshadowed by their siblings on the up-side of the disc; sometimes plain bad, but just as often every bit as interesting, if not more so, than the tracks that get more airplay. Here at MFWT, “B-Sides” will be a new series of posts that I’ll run periodically (as long as the content moves me in any way). The B-Sides are quick notes about wines that didn’t get the full attention, by way of individual or more detailed posts, they may have deserved.

The hits – wines that made my palate stand up and take notice….


Pfalz Pinot Noir, Becker Estate (Friedrich Becker) 2006
$20. 12.5% alcohol. Screwcap. Importer: A Rudi Wiest Selection, Cellars International, San Marcos, CA.
I’ve read good things about Friedrich Becker’s Spätburgunders at both Barry’s Wine and Rockss and Fruit. So I didn’t hesitate to pick up a bottle of Becker’s Estate Pinot Noir when I found it on the shelves at, of all places, a local outlet of the PLCB. Very nice wine, with fresh acidity, minimal tannins and clear fruit expression. A classic unoaked Spätburgunder nose of black cherries, smoke, a little pepper and clove, and a twinge of green herbaceousness. Reductive when first opened – perhaps a side-effect of its screwcap closure – but that blew off quickly.

Chénas, Domaine des Pierres (Jean-François Trichard) 2007
$17. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
A solid example of fruity-style Beaujolais, showing much better than when last tasted a couple of months ago. It’s shed its earlier baby fat and is starting to lean-out and take on more herbal interest in its bright, raspberry driven flavor profile. Jean-François has taken over charge of the estate from his father Georges. They're apparently still working through their batch of old labels, so you may see this version of this wine labeled with Georges' name as well as with that of Jean-François.

Vouvray “Cuvée de Silex,” Domaine des Aubisières (Bernard Fouquet) 2007
$15. 13% alcohol. Screwcap. Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA.
I don’t have much more to say about this than last time other than that it’s showing drier than it was just three months ago. At an average retail price of $16 – and I’ve seen it lower in some spots – this is a great value in Vouvray that’s both serious and quaffable.

The misses – wines that left me wanting a little (or a lot) more….


Jasnières “Clos des Longues Vignes,” Domaine le Briseau (Nathalie & Christian Chaussard) 2004
$28. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Louis/Dressner, New York, NY.
The Chaussards’ wines continue to leave me scratching my head. This is a fully dry Jasnières that showed some Chenin typicity, with pear fruit, good acidity and aromas of flowering herbs. But it was bitter on the finish, hollow on the mid-palate and short on the end. Though fresh on day one, it darkened in color and oxidized more quickly than normal by day two. Too low-sulfur for its own good? I’m not ready to give up yet but it will take some convincing showings to change my impression of this estate’s wines.

Barbera d’Asti “Tre Vigne,” Vietti 2006
$26. 14% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Remy Cointreau USA, New York, NY.
I have a love/hate relationship with Barbera. This one fell in the grey area, with not enough depth in the fruit and textural departments to balance its tangy, borderline sour acidity. I have no problem with high acidity – it’s one of Barbera’s hallmarks – but it has to be in balance to work. Vietti is a consistently reliable producer but this vintage of “Tre Vigne” didn’t do it for me.

Marlborough Pinot Noir, Churton 2005
$10. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Allied Beverage Group, Carlstadt, NJ.
Every once in a while, I get the urge to explore a thing or two from Down Under and, for whatever reason, New Zealand Pinot Noir has recently piqued my curiosity. I had an off chance to pick this up for $10 on an importer’s close-out deal; it usually retails for $20-25. I wouldn’t buy it again even at $10. Like sweet and sour tomato paste. I forced myself to stick with it for not one but two nights – for educational purposes, mind you. I had a hard time squelching it past my tongue on both evenings.

The outtakes – wines that might have been hits if consumed at the right time or if handled with better care….


Bourgogne Aligoté, Domaine Diconne (Jean-Pierre Diconne) 2002
$13. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
As I enjoyed this wine when it was released back in 2004, I know it to have been a solid example of textbook Aligoté from a producer whose wines I generally enjoy. This one just got away from me in the cellar. Once I realized that, sometime in ’07 I believe, I decided to make an experiment of it, intentionally keeping it past its expected prime. The results of said experiment turned out as anticipated. Not entirely uninteresting but it was more volatile than anything else, smelling and tasting not unlike the vapor of Lemon Pledge.

Bekaa Valley White, Château Musar (Gaston Hochar) 2000
$30. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Broadbent Selections, San Francisco, CA.
I’ve yet to have a bottle – white or red – from Musar that justifies the reverent things I’ve heard and read about the estate. I don’t doubt that such a bottle is out there. It’s just that those with which I’ve crossed paths have all been either lackluster or abused. This one fell into the latter camp, the result of heat damage I suspect. What little fruit was left was caramelized; otherwise, this mostly just showed volatile acidity.

Saint-Véran, Domaine des Valanges (Michel Paquet) 2005
$15. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
Another grey area wine, this is still holding some drinkability but hasn’t developed enough in the way of bottle bouquet to offset its trip down the slippery slope. Paquet produces direct, early drinking Mâcon-Davayé and Saint-Véran that are pretty decent values. But this, after only two-plus years in the bottle, is fading faster than I would have expected. If you’re holding any, drink up while the drinking’s still satisfactory.

Intro only...

Turducken Considered

When the folks at CajunGrocer.com sent me a turducken a few months back, I’m sure they hoped I’d try it and write it up before the holidays. I have to imagine that 75% or so of annual turducken sales are concentrated around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Be that as it may, the right opportunity – namely, a house full of people – didn’t present itself until just after New Year’s.

Until that day, I’d been a turducken virgin. The idea of the dish – as CajunGrocer describes, “a semi-boneless turkey stuffed with a deboned chicken and deboned duck breast [with] creole pork sausage & cornbread stuffing between each bird” – had always struck me as odd. Why the heck would someone go to all that trouble and who the hell thought it up in the first place? Is it really a Louisiana specialty or just a marketing gimmick? On the rare occasion – maybe once or twice a year – that someone would walk into the wine shop and ask for a suggested pairing for the turducken they were planning to cook, it always made me kind of laugh. Silently, of course. Or maybe it was out loud…. When chortle came to shove, though, I was more than happy to give the turducken a wing.


Before and after roasting.
Given that the turducken ships frozen, the only time or labor intensive part of its preparation is thawing, which took about three days in my refrigerator. As it arrives fully prepared, cooking is as simple as preheating the oven, putting the bird(s) in a roasting pan, tenting it with foil, putting it in the oven and shutting the door. CajunGrocer’s instructions suggest about five hours cooking time. Mine took closer to six but that extra time is a typical side effect, in my experience, of the heavyweight All Clad roasting pan I use. There are actually a couple of sets of cooking directions on the CG site: one that recommends water in the roasting pan combined with occasional basting, another that goes for straight-up dry roasting. I went with the latter, preferring to keep the heat in the oven and the process as rudimentary as possible. You could, of course, get creative with basting methods or pan sauces but I wanted to keep it simple, to see how the turducken would turn out with as little doctoring as possible.

I removed the foil at around the four-hour point to allow the turkey’s skin to crisp and ran periodic temperature checks after another half-hour. When my not-so-insta-read thermometer hit160°F when inserted in the center of the roast (CG’s directions suggest 165, no doubt for litigation’s sake), I removed the turducken from the oven, tented it and allowed it to rest while cooking our side dishes. Not much to it, really.

The end result? In the simplest sense, the turducken turned out quite nicely. Its skin was perfectly golden, the meat tender, flavorful and moist.


Our turducken at two different stages of the carving process.
Slicing and dicing a little more deeply, the best came first. Carving from the neck end of the turkey we quickly hit the duck/chicken mother lode, both smaller birds delivering greater richness and depth of flavor than the white meat of the turkey alone. By the halfway point of the roast, the duck was long gone, leaving a crosshatched pattern of turkey and chicken, still moist and well flavored by the meat’s rub of creole seasonings. As the butt end of the bird approached things turned less favorable, as the chicken went the way of the duck and the stuffing took over. That stuffing, an unattractively brown mixture of cornmeal and seasoned pork, was the weakest point of the turducken, bland and dense, acting more as filler than flavor enhancer.


On the table and leftovers.... We served our turducken with cornbread, roasted yams with coriander-citrus butter and sauteed brussels sprouts with a balsamic glaze. The leftovers, at the butt-end of the roast, illustrate one of my main issues with the construction of the dish: uneven distribution of the creole stuffing.
At about $85, the average price after shipping, CajunGrocer’s turducken might seem like a rather hefty investment for what many might consider a novelty act. Take into account the amount of work – not to mention trial and error – that would go into making one from scratch though, along with the fact that it’s easily enough food to feed twenty people, and you might just consider it an investment worth risking.


Finally, yes, I do recommend wine pairings for turducken when asked. I suppose beers such as Blackened Voodoo or Abita Amber would have been more appropriate to turducken's Louisiana roots. For my own purposes, though, I opted for a couple of Loire Valley Cabernet Francs. Catherine & Pierre Breton's 2005 Bourgueil "Clos Sénéchal" stole the show. It's painfully young but still delicious, brimming with black and blue fruits and a brooding, sauvage aromatic profile. The 2003 St. Nicolas de Bourgueil "Vieilles Vignes" from Joël Taluau, which was pleasantly plump and quite tasty on release, has now shut down and gone into a completely dumb phase. We still managed to drink it... but forget about it for a while if you're holding any.

* * *
The roasting pan:

Intro only...

Exploring Long Island, Long Distance

As a lifelong resident of the Mid-Atlantic States and a frequent visitor to New York City, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve never once set foot on Long Island in Nassau or Suffolk Counties, the seats of Long Island wine country. It’s only slightly more often that I’ve taken the opportunity to investigate Long Island’s wines. I’ve been making some inroads with the latter of late, and I suppose I’ll have to make an effort to remedy the former situation before long. Here are some quick impressions of a couple of Long Island wines I’ve recently poured.

Long Island Merlot “Estate Selection,” Wölffer Estate 2004. $35. 13.3% alcohol. Cork.
Once its veil of oak lifts, Wölffer’s “Estate Selection” Merlot reveals a finely balanced core of sweet cherry fruit supported by mature, nuanced acidity and supple, delicate tannins. Its pure, red-fruited character, allied to nuances of sweet herbs, tobacco and leather, bring a young Pomerol to mind. It’s definitely more closely aligned with its neighbors across the Atlantic than with its country mates from the West Coast. Indeed, the only things standing in the way of this being a completely charming and very French-inflected wine are its oak treatment (19 months in French barriques, 50% new and 50% one year old – just a bit too much for the wine’s body and structure) and extremely gentle tannic profile. For my own tastes, I’d like to see a little less polish and more viscera. Nonetheless, this is real wine, made well. It held up admirably into its second day, showing good fruit development and a leaner, cedarier wood tone. A blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, estate bottled in Sagaponack, Long Island, New York. At $35, I can’t call it a great value but it’s a wine I’d be happy to buy, particularly if I were out to spread the word about the existence of serious wine from Long Island. I really do need to try their Cabernet Franc, a wine about which I’ve heard equally promising things.

A deposit of tartrate crystals, as seen here on the cork drawn from Wölffer's Merlot, is always a good visual indicator of a wine that hasn't been heavily manipulated.

Long Island White Table Wine, Bouké 2007. $18. 12.5% alcohol. Cork.
Bouké (yes, it’s pronounced like "bouquet") is a brand new “boutique winery” on Long Island’s North Fork. This is the first release of their white table wine, an unoaked blend of 40% Chardonnay, 32% Pinot Gris, 18% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Gewurztraminer. Between its cutesy name and colorful label (which bears a striking resemblance to Weingut Huber’s Grüner Veltliner “Hugo”), the wine conjures images of ladies who lunch, out for a poolside brunch – perhaps on the very island from which the wine originates. And the wine’s style would be perfectly suited to just such an occasion. Crisp, clean and simple, it delivers fruit in the candied apple, peach and watermelon vein, presaged by pretty aromas of rose petals and apple blossoms. Not just in its blend but also in its flavor profile, it reminds me of Caymus’ popular brand “Conundrum,” though in a drier, food-friendlier style. At its recommended $18 price point it’s also a slightly better value, though I think it would be a better performer at under $15. Would I buy it? You can probably guess the answer to that. But I wouldn’t scoff at a well-chilled glass were it handed to me poolside.

Disclosure: Both of these wines were received as winery-direct samples.

Postscript: Wölffer Estate’s owner and founder, Christian Wölffer, passed away on New Year’s Eve, the result of a boating accident while vacationing in Brazil. You’ll find a personal dedication as well as links to press coverage of Mr. Wölffer’s death at Lenn Thompson’s blog focusing on the wines of New York State, LennDevours.

Intro only...

Champagne for a Week

After dropping not one but two brief mentions of it at Do Bianchi last week, I’d more or less decided not to devote a full write up to Bereche’s Extra Brut Réserve Champagne. Besides, I know little in the way of exacting detail about the wine. But then I did something I don’t often do and that, with most wines, one can’t usually do, at least not with good results. I left the unfinished portion of the bottle – not much more than a glass – stoppered in the fridge not for one day, not for two, but for six days before getting back for a revisit.


Champagne Extra Brut Reserve, Bérèche et Fils NV.
$56. 12% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
The wine was lovely enough on day one – lithe yet muscular, aromas of toast and a hint of fino sherry, a color in the glass that could define “onion skin” and a surprisingly great match with butternut squash soup (Xmas dinner takeout from Talula’s Table). But on day six it was somehow even more beautiful. Even though a hiss escaped when I unclamped the wings of the bottle stopper, the wine had achieved total visual tranquility. Yet in spite of that loss of bubbles there was no loss of fruit. If anything, it had taken on greater clarity of fruit expression. If anyone ever doubted the descriptors “vinosity” or “red-fruited” in the context of Champagne, they need only to have tasted this to have achieved their “Ah hah!” moment. That last glass – which I shared with a buddy on New Year’s Eve – was a real pleasure to contemplate.

Here’s what I do know about the wine. It’s a red-fruit dominated blend of Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay from various Premier Cru vineyard sites spread around the hamlet of Ludes on the Montagne de Reims (see my earlier posting about the estate’s unusual packaging for more detail). Raphael Bereche farms naturally, ferments his wines on their native yeasts and ages at least some of the base wines for all of his cuvées in wood. The Extra Brut Réserve is similar in blend to the regular Brut Réserve (see my note from Xmas Eve) but it spends at least an additional year on the lees prior to disgorgement and is then bottled with no dosage, finding its balance through careful work and full ripening in the vineyard and through the transformation wrought by the oxidative aspects of that additional period of sur-lie bottle aging.

What is it, though, that enabled it not just to hold up but also to show so well after almost a full week of being open? I’m sure a good stopper didn’t hurt but on other factors I can only speculate. Of course, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the matter.

* * *
The stopper:

Intro only...

Going Through the Change, or Hitting Riesling in Its Sweet Spot

I made an unspoken – at least I think it was unspoken – resolution around this time last year to taste more Riesling in 2008, to explore wines from producers new to me. I’m not sure how good a job I did of it but, hey, slow progress is better than no progress. One thing the goal didn’t stop me from doing was continuing to explore and enjoy wines from the German producers who have been near and dear for many a year. And I happen to have alit upon a particular high point just as ‘08 was coming to its close….

Saar Wiltinger Schlangengraben Riesling Kabinett, Johann Peter Reinert 2004
$14. 8.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
I consider myself lucky when I catch Riesling in its sweet spot, as it’s going through the change – the change from its fruit-forward, frank youth to its dark, truffled, rounded maturity. When you catch a good bottle in transition, it can display the best elements of both ends of the spectrum.

I also love the Saar wines of Johann Peter Reinert. They don’t seem to get a lot of play; they’re kind of off the radar. But they’re pure and expressive, whether trocken, feinherb or fully fruchtig (the German term for delicately sweet wines), whether Spätlese, Auslese or Eiswein. It’s his Kabinett Rieslings, though, that I really dig. They’re real Kabinetts – light, graceful and crystalline – that are perfect as aperitifs and also eminently food friendly.

Reinert’s 2004 Kabinett from the Wiltinger vineyard Schlangengraben (yeah, it’s a name that inspires sophomoric jokes – it means “serpent’s den” in German) is in that ideal ‘tweener spot right now. Its color has taken on a pale yellow hue, darker than its original white light. The nose delivers an immediate wallop of petrol-rich minerality while second and third inhalations uncover rich scents of apricots and golden peaches. Eyeing the glass again, with a backdrop of light, there’s a slight appearance of effervescence. That trace of residual carbon dioxide is still apparent on the tongue, combining with the wine’s scintillating acidity to balance and, really, wipe away any impression of sweetness stemming from natural residual sugar.

And that youthful, crystalline acidity delivers the first notes on the palate – clementine, blood orange and clove. It then finishes with rounder, more mature acids that bring back the flavors of stone fruit hinted at earlier by the wine’s aromatic profile. It’s delicious stuff and, at only 8.5% alcohol, superbly drinkable. On day two it showed even better, if that’s possible. Nothing different really, just a magnification and refinement, an additional layering of all the good stuff that showed up right out of the gates. I have one bottle left and I’ll look forward to its demise in another few years. If only I’d stashed away a case….

Intro only...

Happy New Year, By Georges!

Philadelphia Restaurant Row stalwart Brasserie Perrier out. Le Bec Fin, Dubai in? What a way to say goodbye. A harbinger of the eventual demise of Chef Perrier's empire or just a sign of our economically downtrodden times?

Intro only...