A New Year, A Full Moon and Movia "Lunar"

There's much in common between the symbolism of the full moon and the New Year. Both have been known to inspire wild and unpredictable behavior. Both drive transformation. And both are turning points. On the philosophical and spiritual levels, the New Year marks the end and spurs remembrance of one year while at the same time signifying the beginnings of and inspiring hopes for the next. On a more scientific level, the full moon marks the apex between the waxing and waning paths of the lunar cycle.

CURRENT MOON

about the moon

The full moon holds special significance on the Biodynamic calendar, as it does to those who farm and make wine with a belief that the soil is the meeting place between the earth and the cosmos, that that same soil is a living, breathing entity. According to the principles of biodynamic agriculture, the full moon marks a major turning point in the lunar influence on farming practices and plant growth. As the moon waxes, the gravitational pull of the moon increases and the flow of energy moves upwards, from the soil toward the sky, from the roots toward the leaves. As the moon wanes its gravitational influence lessens, the soil focuses its forces inwards and plant energies move down toward their roots.

Biodynamic winemaking principles, too, look at the influence of moon and star cycles to guide the timing of certain activities in the vineyard and in the cellar. Movia winemaker Aleš Kristančič, for one, considers the full moon to be the ideal time to bottle his aptly named Ribolla Gialla, "Lunar." It's the time during the synodic month when the wine's mineral content and energy — what Aleš calls "floating islands" as you'll see/hear in the video below — are active and upwardly mobile while the lees and grape solids in the same wine are moving downward toward a restful state.

Given that the full moon occurred on New Year's Eve just past, I couldn't imagine a more appropriate wine to enjoy with our last meal of one year and our first taste of the next.

Goriška Brda Ribolla Gialla "Lunar," Movia (Aleš Kristančič) 2005
$45. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Domaine Select, New York, NY.

As Aleš recommends, I decanted "Lunar" in order to leave behind most of the considerable sediment that makes its way into the bottle. A cloudy, coppery orange, it's a near match for the hue of peach nectar, just not quite so rich and dense to the eye. Likewise, the wine is loaded with peach and apple skin aromas and cidery nuances, which lead to a long, mineral stained finish. With air, more tertiary aromas of sandalwood, saffron and floral tea emerge, along with an intense leesiness that reminds me of the sweetness of fresh-baked whole wheat bread. Though not as tannic as some other extended skin contact wines, Paolo Bea's "Rusticum" for instance, the wine still has a definite textural component that gently grips and undulates across the palate.

Said my wife, "Why is it orange? And cloudy? I think there might be something wrong with it... it tastes kind of oxidized." For a moment, her words had me contemplating whether she might be a more honest taster than I. Certainly, "Lunar" and other "orange" or extended skin contact white wines like it are more than tough to understand without some context. And certainly, I did carry some context and correlated expectations to the table.

Why is the wine orange? Well, as Eric Asimov described it a couple of years back, "Movia’s 2005 Lunar is an experimental ribolla gialla wine, in which Ales Kristancic, an owner and the winemaker, tried to produce a wine basically without the touch of humans except at harvest. He put the grapes in specially designed barrels and then allowed them to ferment and age on their own for seven months, without pressing the grapes or adding any chemicals." Seven months of skin contact give ample time for the wine to absorb all of the pigmentation from the Ribolla Gialla skins — a distinct orange, even though "gialla" means "yellow."

Why is it cloudy? After those seven months on the skins and another extended period on the lees in small casks of Slavonian oak, "Lunar" is bottled without any fining or filtration. Only the energy of the full moon, in Aleš' view, keeps it from being even cloudier... that and perhaps more careful decanting than I exercised.


In the video above, Aleš explains his thoughts behind producing and bottling "Lunar" according to the cycles of the moon.
Why is it oxidized? Well, actually it's not, though it does have a definite oxidative character. You'll want to see Jeremy Parzen's excellent post about "Lunar" for a full explanation of the wine's production methods. In short, "Lunar" is whole-cluster fermented in special casks designed by Kristančič to mimic the shape of a grape, complete with a valve modeled after the stem of the grape that is meant to allow the carbon dioxide created during fermentation out of the cask without letting oxygen enter. After all that time on the skins plus added time on the lees, the oxygen native to the juice itself along with the oxygen that slowly permeates the casks, has an inescapable influence on the wine. But that influence is not detrimental or a flaw. Rather, you can taste how oxygen has sculpted the wine without blurring its edges or eroding its freshness.

Perhaps it's not surprising in that context that "Lunar" reminded me a bit of some of the Arbois whites from Puffeney and Overnoy/Houillon in the way it balanced oxidative character with brilliant, buoyant freshness.

"Lunar" is not inexpensive but, at half the price of similar wines from the likes of Radikon and Gravner, it constitutes a good value and makes for a quite accessible introduction to this genre of Slovenian/Friulano winemaking.

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The Blogging Year In Review: A Look Back at 2009 on MFWT

Yes, it's the ubiquitous year-end "best of" list. I started and stopped with this post several times over the last few days, thinking it perhaps too self-indulgent. But finally I've decided to forge ahead. For what is blogging, at root, if not an act of self-indulgence? When I write here, even though I hope that others will find some enjoyment or benefit from it, I do so first and foremost for myself. So, without much further ado, here are a few self-selected highlights from the past year at MFWT. Just a couple per month, I promise. Hopefully you too will enjoy the look back.

• January 2009 saw the launch of my B-Sides report. What I'd planned as a regular installment turned out to be a one-time deal. I still like the idea, and have a pile of empty bottles and tasting notes to prove it, so who knows what 2010 will bring.
  
  
• In February, I hosted Wine Blogging Wednesday for the first time with A Passion for Piedmont as my topic of choice. My own contribution was an overview of a February 2006 visit with Giovanni Pasquero-Elia at his eponymous Neive-based estate, Paitin di Pasquro Elia. Even though it's been nearly four years since that trip, there are still a wealth of notes and photos on my desktop from other winery visits that will hopefully make it to blogland in the new year.
  
  Inside the rotofermenter at Paitin.
  
  
• One of my favorite fellow bloggers, Jeremy Parzen of Do Bianchi, missed participating in February's WBW but more than made up for it in March, writing about one of his favorite Piemontese wineries as the first ever guest blogger here at MFWT.
  
  
• The stronger my emotional and physiological responses to tasting a wine, whether positive or negative, the more inclined I am to wax poetic (or at least on and on) about it. Two of the most inspiring wines I drank all year passed my way in April: Anselme Selosse's Substance and one of the many great red Burgundies from Jacky Truchot.
  
  
• My May adventures in ramp foraging were not only fun and eventually tasty but also received attention from outside the usual wine-centered corners of the blogosphere. And in stark contrast to my usually verbosity, I had a little fun with wordplay in the form of minimalistic tasting notes.
  
  
• Sometimes I can't help but wonder if what makes sense to me makes sense to anyone else, my June post on Laurent Tribut and Pablo Picasso being a case in point. On a more obvious note, were this a post about my top-ten wines of the year there'd be another Champagne on the list, the 1996 "Fleur de Passion" from Diebolt-Vallois.
  
  Mike Dashe, pictured here with his wife and partner in wine Anne, makes the list not once but twice.
  
  
• One of the neatest phenomena to occur last year in the usual wine corners of the blogosphere was July's 31 Days of Natural Wine, realized and hosted by Cory Cartwright at Saignée, my contribution being an interview with California Zinfandel specialist and L'Enfant Terrible, Michael Dashe. That same month, I looked back not one but twenty-five years, revisiting and republishing a 1985 interview I did with the seminal San Pedro punk band, Minutemen, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their benchmark album, Double Nickels on the Dime.
  
  
• I've never been much for New Year's resolutions but if I get around to making some for 2010, one will certainly be to make it to New York on a more regular basis. I made it up far too infrequently in 2009, but one August day trip definitely makes my highlight reel, as it was my first time participating in a Wine & Spirits Magazine tasting panel and prompted my first visit to The Ten Bells.
  
  
• Next, it was off to California to visit friends in Monterey and San Francisco, a trip that fueled posts for the next couple of months. In September, it was visits to the food and wine grails of Berkeley as well as a somewhat atypical celebration of the Jewish High Holidays.
  
  
• In October, a write-up of a boisterous and thoroughly enjoyable afternoon spent at that San Franciso bastion of natural wine, Terroir.
  
  
  One of my favorite photos of the year, snapped at the bar at Terroir.
  
  
• And in November, I finally rounded things up with a report on my trip to Dashe Cellars in Oakland and a recounting of the ultimate San Fran burger and beer experience. Managed to squeeze in another fun-filled trip to New York, too.
  
  
• The year finished out in quieter fashion, allowing me to spend some quality time with, among other things, a few wines I'd become acquainted with during the last couple of New York trips. I'll look forward to further exploration of the Arbois wines of Philippe Bornard and Noëlla Morantin's evolving work in the Cher Valley in the year ahead.

That's it for now. Thanks as always for reading, commenting and following along with my travels on the Trail. Here's wishing a happy and healthy New Year to all!

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Diebolt-Vallois Rosé

It's been the better part of two decades now since the Champagnes of Diebolt-Vallois initially grabbed my attention, and they've not let go since. They were the first wines to really open my eyes to the possibilities of great Champagne from small growers, the first to turn my head away from the usual grand marque suspects. There was a time when a bottle (or a magnum) of Jacques Diebolt's non-vintage Blanc de Blancs graced my table for just about any special occasion, whether a major holiday or Tuesday night sushi takeout. Nearly six years ago now, I had the opportunity to visit the Diebolt family in situ at their estate in Cramant, on an afternoon that remains etched in my mind as one of the most memorable of many, many winery visits.

Yet in all those years, at home and even at the winery, I'd never tasted a rosé Champagne from Diebolt-Vallois. When I learned just a few months back that a small shipment of Diebolt rosé was scheduled for arrival in the States, I wondered how and why I'd never crossed paths with it before. The answer, as it turns out, is quite simple. Jacques Diebolt last made a rosé in 1985. If any of it found its way to the US market, it came and went before my Diebolt awakening. And in the unlikely event that there was any of that 1985 rosé remaining at the winery during our 2004 visit, it wasn't something Jacques chose to include in our tasting lineup. So yes, in spite of consuming far more than my share of Diebolt's wines over the years, never had a drop of his rosé crossed my lips... until now.


Champagne Brut Rosé, Diebolt-Vallois NV
$55. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
As a result of my self-imposed ban on the primary blogging activities of writing and photography over the holiday weekend, you'll have to use your imagination to picture the lovely hue that once filled Diebolt's clear glass bottle. Thinking back to the heart of summer might help. Take a generous slice of drippingly juicy, ripe watermelon, then eat about half-way down toward the rind and you've got it. Like its color, the wine is beckoning and forward, brimming with clear, light raspberry and strawberry fruit. The yeast influence is present but delicate, somewhere near the fresh white bread end of the autolytic spectrum. Finely balanced, gracious and delicately dosed, at least to my palate, the wine may not be the most complex of rosés but it's a real pleasure to drink.

Produced entirely from fruit grown in 2006 though labeled sans année, the wine is a blend of 63% Pinot Noir, 27% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Meunier grown primarily in Jacques Diebolt's holdings in "Les Toulettes" in Epernay; the Chardonnay comes from Cuis. It is a rosé d'assemblage, made pink by the addition of Bouzy Rouge (still, red Pinot Noir) that Diebolt purchased from Bernard Tornay, and is finished with a modest seven grams/liter dosage.

As you'll see in the picture at right, Diebolt has recently begun to include lot numbers on most of his bottlings. When I first glanced at the number stamped into this bottle's label, my aging eyes saw "06," which I took to be a reference to the fact that the wine was made entirely from 2006 fruit. At second glance, though, and with the help of digital magnification, it's clearly "08," which I in turn assume to be a reference to the Champagne's disgorgement date. If that's indeed the case, it's definitely a piece of information I'm happy to see shared; down the road, I'd love to see Jacques add the month as well.

Though I referred to Diebolt as a grower-producer in the opening of this post, the pictures above will reveal to the hawk-eyed among you that Diebolt is in fact a Négociant-Manipulant producer. Jacques first made the switch from RM to NM status in 2004, at least partially in response to the dangerously meager yields of the hot, dry 2003 growing season. Hardly making him a coopted member of the evil corporate empire, Diebolt's négoce license has simply allowed him to purhase fruit from other growers, something he's done primarily with his own father-in-law, Guy Vallois. And something he's done, for the first time in over twenty years and with a little help from Bouzy's Monsieur Tornay in this case, to again make Diebolt-Vallois rosé a possibility.

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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?

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Joyeux Noëlla

I owe a big belated thank you to Joe D. for the gracious invitation to attend the annual Louis/Dressner grand trade tasting in NYC back in October. I'd hoped to go up to the city for both days and to linger after, making a long weekend of it, but that just wasn't to be. I did make it up as it turned out (albeit too late to attend either day of the big event), had a great time, and was even able to console myself by attending the much smaller Dressner junket of producers from the Loir et Cher that was held in the the mid-afternoon at The Ten Bells. You'll find a succinct writeup of the event, as well as some of the other craziness of the day, courtesy of Joe M. at Old World Old School.

Noëlla Morantin was all smiles as she poured her Touraine Gamay for one of my fellow tasters. She and the other producers at The Ten Bells event were clearly enjoying their time in New York and the opportunity to pour in a much more relaxed setting relative to the usual chaos of big trade tastings.

Of all the producers in attendance, it was Noëlla Morantin whose wines both really captured my attention and were relatively new to me. Though Ms. Morantin has been making wine for several years now, she's recently taken the leap from making wine for others to doing so for herself. In the fall of 2008, she began leasing vineyards from the Clos Roche Blanche, whose proprietors, Catherine Roussel and Didier Barrouillet, had been looking to downsize. 2009 was therefore her first harvest and will be the first vintage of wine produced completely from her own labors. For the full details and, as always, some great photographs, check out Bert Celce's profile of Noëlla's work at Wine Terroirs.

The wines from the 2008 vintage she was pouring on this day were made from fruit she purchased from other vine growers who farm organically; as always for Noëlla, they were produced using no additives or commercial yeasts. I enjoyed her efforts across the board, from quaffable, refreshing examples of Touraine Sauvignon and Gamay, to the more layered Gamay "Mon Cher" (on which there's a nice write-up at Cherries & Clay). The wine that made it home with me, though, and that is the answer to Saturday's edition of Name That Wine, was her Touraine Côt.



Touraine Côt "Côt à Côt," Noëlla Morantin 2008
$19. 12% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Louis/Dressner, New York, NY.
Radiant, translucent violet in the glass, with a nose to match — full of blueberry, blackberry and grapey fruit and accented by high-notes of vanilla and dill. The characteristic peppercorn-crusted beefiness of Loire Côt was present, but took a back seat to fresh, crunchy fruitiness. There's a long, loping quality to the wine's tannic structure that, along with lively acidity, makes it eminently food friendly, while its low alcohol and fresh-fruited drive make it just as quaffable as Noëlla's simpler entries.

"Côt à Côt" sidled effortlessly into its second day, those tannins loosening their knots and bringing the wine's fruitiness even more to the fore, with big time flavors of blueberry pie filling now joined by juicy, sweet black cherries. It may lack the animal intensity and cellaring potential of some other Touraine Côts such as that from Clos Roche Blanche or "Le Vilain P'tit Rouge" from Vincent Ricard, but that's no worry. This wine seems built more for everyday enjoyment, and I'd be quite happy to partake of it regularly in just that way.

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Name That Wine

It's snowing.
I'm hibernating.
Anyone care to guess what wine's on deck for tonight?

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Bornard, Reynard and Discipline

When last I was in the borough of Manhattan, after ramen, after doughnuts, after wines from the Cher, after meeting Kermit, finally there was time to get down to more serious business (aka, more wine and food) at The Ten Bells.

Over the course of the night, there was much talk of the Arbois wines of Annie and Philippe Bornard. I'd first tried one of the Bornards' wines in the same spot, not more than a few months earlier, and I enjoyed it, very much as a part of the moment rather than via any kind of deep, analytical dissection (though that wine seems to perform relatively well in a more clinical scenario, too). In any case, the two guys in the photo at top-right were up in arms as to the relative merits of the Bornard wines. Hell, it was all I could do to tear them apart. Seriously though, after only a couple of encounters, I'm hardly set yet to pronounce upon Bornard — not that I'm taken to that kind of thing in the first place. But so far, so good. The wines may not have the elegance of Puffeney's or the profundity of those from Houillon/Overnoy, but those I've tried thus far are at least savory and enjoyable.

Arbois Pupillin Trousseau "Le Ginglet," Annie et Philippe Bornard 2006
$27. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Savio Soares Selections, Manhasset, New York.

If my linguistics research is correct, "le ginglet" is the nominative singular form of an archaic French word, "ginglar," used to describe a wine that's at least a little sour. It's an apt if somewhat overstated term in this case, as the wine does offer up a core of tart cherry fruit. It pours the pale color of dried rose petals in the glass, a tone echoed by the tea-like feel of the wine on the palate — very light yet firmly tannic, even slightly astringent. On the nose, wild cherries again dominate, backed up by the scent of persimmons and a sense of twigginess. Even though there's not much here in the way of screaming fruit, the wine has a freshness and appeal that balances its slight austerity. In spite of its initially firm spine, this is really defined primarily by its delicacy. It's more serious-seeming than the Ploussard "Point Barre" I drank during my last bout at The Ten Bells, yet it's still well suited to casual enjoyment.

With time in the glass, out came more aromas and nuance: sweet earth, orange oil, even a light dusting of bitter cocoa powder. "Le Ginglet" even held up quite well into its third day, softening up yet simultaneously taking on a darker, spicier and warmer feel, the aromas of orange oil becoming even more apparent than on D1.

* * *

So, on top of all that night's Bornard wine diatribe and duologue (which even trickled over into a very much less animated brunch session at Blaue Gans the following day), there's the question of the Bornards' label design. At first glance or two, I didn't like it; the simple, naive design made me think of a youngster's first awkward attempts at graphic design.

The fact that the fox on the label is almost certainly meant to be Reynard, the omnipresent trickster figure, managed to escape me until much later. Excusable, you say? Not so much in my mind, especially given the amount of time I spent in Chaucer seminars through my undergrad and grad school years. I expect that Philippe Bornard (or perhaps it was Annie?) selected that design with an eye to satire, a constant in the tales in which Reynard the Fox figures as an anthropomorphic player. Wisdom, resourcefulness and playfulness all probably figure in to the design decision, too. Given that Reynard's satiric edge was almost always pointed at the aristocracy and/or the clergy, the foxy critter has even been considered by some interpreters to be a hero of the working class. A final gesture to the winegrowers' intention that their produce be enjoyed by all rather than worshiped by the few, perhaps. And, of course, it can't hurt that Reynard rhymes with Bornard....

Whatever the case, my take on the label has now changed. The more I look at it, the more I like it — both for all that literary innuendo and for its almost garish simplicity.

* * *

As Reynard snuck up on me, so the following song crept into the back of my mind as I wrote the words above. Warning: if you're not a fan of over-the-top drum solos, you may want to fast-forward to about the 3:20 point.


On the other hand, if that was only enough to whet your whistle, check out the following clip from the classic but far too short-lived sketch comedy/variety show, Fridays. The show may have been meant to compete with Saturday Night Live but was really most memorable for the quality of its musical acts. I still remember seeing this when it originally aired in December 1981. Definite shock and awe.

(As always, subscribers may need to click through to the blog in order to view the video clips.)

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Tissot's Crémant du Jura "Indigène"

Following on the heels of yesterday's vin de soif, today's post is about a wine served as a proper aperitif at a recent food, wine and relaxation oriented get together. It proved a very fine accompaniment to a quite tasty if rather peculiar cheese, flavored by smoked chestnuts walnuts, that my friends had brought back from a recent trip to Sonoma; let's just say the cheese was very, well, chestnutty walnutty. I can't seem to recall or find the name and/or provenance of said cheese so, if anyone out there knows it, please do hit the comments with any pertinent info.


Crémant du jura Brut "Indigène," André et Mireille Tissot (Stéphane Tissot) NV
$22. 12.5% alcohol. Cork. Importer: A Thomas Calder Selection, Potomac Selections, Landover, MD.
Stéphane Tissot produces two different Crémants du Jura: one made in the conventional méthode traditionelle and a second cuvée called "Indigène." The truly bloggerly approach to this tasting would have been to pour the two cuvées side-by-side in order to compare and contrast the differences. That will have to wait for another day, I suppose, for funds not being limitless on the shopping excursion during which I procured this bottle — not that funds are ever anywhere close to unlimited! — I headed straight for the more geeked-out "Indigène."

What's the difference? As with most sparkling wines made in the Champagne method, Tissot's regular Brut cuvée achieves its effervescence through the addition of measured quantities of selected yeast and sugar to an already finished still wine. Seal the bottle and nature takes its course, sparking a second fermentation. With "Indigène," Tissot utilizes yeast that has been cultivated from the leftovers from the production of his own vin de paille (or "straw wine," made from grapes dried on straw mats). Given that the vin de paille is fermented, like all of Tissot's wines (other than round two for the normal Brut), on its native yeasts, "Indigène" is wholly fermented on yeasts that are indigenous both to Tissot's vines and to his own production methods. Very self-sufficient, no?

The end results yield a very pretty wine, one that could easily slip into the ringer position in a blind Champagne tasting. Leading off with a forward, pillowy nose of pastry, whipped cream and lavender, the wine reveals a very sweet-fruited profile on the palate, full of baked apple and peach skin nuance, fresh hazelnuts and brioche. The wine's richness made me wonder about dosage levels. A little research, however, revealed that the wine is in fact produced with zero dosage (and zero added sulfur dioxide) but is finished with a small amount of unresolved residual sugar. So we're simply talking about good, ripe raw materials.

Cautionary word of mouth suggests that the regular cuvée is not quite so compelling but, as suggested above, we'll have to wait for another occasion to put that theory/opinion to the test.

PS: For readers in the greater Los Angeles area, Lou Amdur was pouring "Indigène" at his eponymous wine bar and restaurant, Lou on Vine, last week. You might want to give Lou a shout before hightailing it over there, just to make sure there's some left.

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An End of Model Year Special

Touraine Pineau d'Aunis Rosé, Clos Roche Blanche 2008
$15. 12% alcohol. Nomacorc. Importer: Louis/Dressner, New York, NY.
Popped and poured as something to whet the whistles while friends and I cooked on a recent Friday night, this was actually the first chance I'd had to drink any of CRB's '08 rosé. It's a little late in the season, I know, but I'm all for drinking the pink stuff throughout the year, not just in the sultry months. It's not as if I stop eating vegetables and fish, cooking with fresh herbs or simply wanting to taste something bright and invigorating just because the mercury starts its ineluctable dive toward the freezing mark.


I did somehow manage to forget to snap a picture, though, so I've recycled my own photo of the '07 version, taken in the warmer months of last year. The pic would be even more useful had I a shot of the more recent vintage with which to compare it, as the 2008 is far lighter in color than the '07, its painfully pale pink core going to green and silver highlights nearer the edges of the glass. Correspondingly, this is also far less fruity than last year's model; rather, it's much more about texture than forward fruit, marked by the characteristic rasp on the tongue of Pineau d'Aunis, backed up by whispered suggestions of lime zest, rosemary and haricots vert. It may be tougher to enjoy with casual aplomb, but it's hardly without its usual interest and merit.

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An Eye for the Holidays

With the onset of December came an idea that I'd get back to writing more regularly here, as I've been kind of missing the satisfaction of posting every day or two rather than just a couple of times a week. I don't know what I was thinking.... The first week of the month went pretty well but it's been all downhill from there.

December is just crazy, by far the busiest month of the year when it comes to the retail wine business. Thanksgiving may by the largest of the one-day holidays when it comes to wine sales and consumption but it's really just a warm up to the Christmas season. Take big meals on both Xmas Eve and Xmas Day and add in personal and corporate gift giving (not to mention self gifting).... It makes for long days with no time to stop and little energy left for writing at either end of the day. So, I'll take quick inspiration as it comes.

When a local Doc who stopped into the shop the other day mentioned that, "The Residents will come by to pick up these boxes," I couldn't help but conjure images of men in white suits with top hats perched atop their large eyeball masks, or perhaps something like you'll see in the following video. Not quite what he intended, I expect, but the associative leap brought a smile to my face.


(Subscribers may have to click through to the blog to view.)

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