Sips: wines we like

I’ve been tasting a variety of excellent inexpensive whites in recent weeks and wanted to share one of my favorites. At Gabriel’s restaurant here in New York last evening, I wanted a refreshing, easy-to-drink but interesting young white over which to have a business conversation with a friend. On a hunch (and because I didn’t know the wine), I ordered a bottle of Saladini Pilastri’s 2008 Falerio “Vigna Palazzi” from Italy’s Marche region. My hunch was right. This crisp and focused wine has delicious fresh fruit and I suspected there was some chardonnay in it; in fact it’s a blend of  blend of the trebbiano, passerina and  chardonnay that combine to offer notes of pear, lemon-lime, subtle herbs and minerals with a nice little overlay of cream on the finish. It matched well with a little steak tartare and some  bruschetta. We paid $24 for it at the restaurant but I saw it listed at $8 or $9 at retail on the Web. Imported by Michelangelo Imports, New York. I’ll have some more exciting white wines in coming days.

Technorati Tags: Edward Deitch,Italy,White wines,Italian white wines,Falerio,Marche

The superb Montlouis

I had a delightful tasting and lunch in France last week with Lise and Bertrand Jousset, a young couple who have been farming about 26 acres in the Montlouis-sur-Loire appellation since 2004. Mountlouis has been overshadowed for most of its history by its larger and more famous neighbor, Vouvray, but Lise and Bertrand are among those demonstrating why tiny Montlouis is making its mark producing some of the most exciting chenin blancs in this part of the Loire Valley.

For one thing, they are farming and making their wines organically, though Lise says you will never see the word “organic” on their labels. While an increasing number of winemakers here and elsewhere use organic certification as a badge of honor and as a marketing tool, the Joussets beg to differ. “We don’t want to use ‘organic’ to sell our wines,” Lise says. “We want people to buy our wines because they like them, not because they’re organic.” She adds, “There are a lot of industrial wines that are organic. We don’t want to be mixed with these people.”

The Joussets’ wines, made from chenin blanc grapes from 40- to 130-year-old vines, speak for themselves, as I quickly found out  in the small cellar below their house, tasting five or six 2009 barrel samples from various vineyard parcels, some of them still fermenting. The fruit, though still a bit bitter in some cases, is ripe, concentrated and altogether delicious and another sign of the quality of the ’09 vintage that I found in a week of tastings in the Loire Valley.

The vineyard lies on soil with a good deal of flint, or silex as its known, which gives the wines a precise, focused quality. I liked all three wines from the 2008 vintage, the dry Premier Rendez-Vouz, with lush pear, honey and minerals, still a bit bitter at the end reflecting its youth; the Trait d’union, a semi-dry chenin with a good deal of tropical fruit and a touch of banana supported by firm acidity; and the racy, more austere and profound Singulier, made from some of the oldest vines on the property, which has a superb finish.

Chenin blanc, as I was reminded time and again in my tastings last week, not only benefits from but really requires aging to enjoy fully, and the point was emphasized when Bertrand served the 2005 vintage of Singulier at lunch in the couple’s kitchen. The food highlight was a simple soup that Lise had made with pureed carrots, potatoes and leeks and flavored with what Lise called some some “bones,” or veal scraps. The wine, with a few years of bottle age, had lost its edges and made for a sublime pairing.

The Joussets’ production has been and will remain small. They’ve been making 20,000 to 25,000 bottles a year and will go up to about 40,000 this year. But that will be it for now. As Bertrand explained, “We want to keep it a human winery. I like to work the vines myself. I don’t want to be a businessman.”

Loire Valley 2009s: an exceptional vintage

Just finished my first day of tastings here in France at the Salon des Vins de Loire in Angers, a big trade event where hundreds of Loire Valley producers are pouring their newly released or soon-to-be released wines. Headline: the 2009 vintage is excellent, with great fruit and balance in both the reds and whites. Some highlights:

Lucien Crochet’s 2009 white Sancerre reminded me why sauvignon blancs from the Loire Valley are the benchmark with which others are compared. It’s a model of elegance and balance. Sancerre’s reds are made from pinot noir, and  Crochet’s  2006 “La Croix du Roy” Pinot Noir speaks well for Sancerre’s ability, with certain producers and in certain vintages, to make distinctive pinots with both ample fruit and high acidity. It’s a style that I, for one, prefer.

From Chinon, Bernard Baudry is making some of the most delicious cabernet francs in the Loire Valley – or the world (his son Matthieu is seen holding one of them on the right). Cab franc can be dominated by the variety’s “green” notes, but in Baudry’s wines they are in the background. One focuses, instead, on the concentrated red fruit and violet notes and the minerality of the wines, which show nuanced differences depending on whether the grapes are grown in soils with gravel, clay, limestone or chalk, all of which are found in Baudry’s vineyards. Four of his   Chinons – the basic Les Granges as well as Les Grezeaux, Le Clos Guillot and La Croix Boissee – are must buys in ‘09 when they are released beginning in a few months or so.

Other highlights included a sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and rosé of pinot gris from Domaine de Reuilly in the small Reuilly appellation in the southeast Loire; several Saviennieres, both dry and sweet (the grape is chenin blanc) from Domaine des Baumard; a dry chenin blanc (Les Chanteaux) and Chinon (Les Graviere) from Couly-Dutheil; and another sauvignon blanc, the 2008 Pouilly-Fumé from Chteau de Tracy.

We’re in the Loire Valley

I arrived today in the chilly Loire Valley of France, which is still one of the more under-appreciated wine regions, and I’ll be posting from here during my week-long look at the wines of the Loire, which include such well-known appellations as Sancerre, Vouvray, Muscadet and Chinon, but also many others that deserve to be better known. The centerpiece of my visit is a three-day event here in Angers, in the central Loire, known as the Salon des Vins de Loire. It’s a giant tasting that attracts hundreds of winemakers who hope to make an impression with their latest offerings on the world’s importers, retailers, restaurants and journalists. I’m here with a small group of American wine writers invited to attend the event and sponsored by InterLoire, the region’s wine trade body. The tasting and spitting begin bright and early tomorrow.

This afternoon, we had a delightful warm-up at Domaine Richou just a few miles outside Angers. Didier Richou, seen above on the right, took us around his vineyards and poured his expressive, terroir-driven chenin blancs, both dry and sweet, as well as his red gamays and cabernet francs. I’ll have details on our tasting shortly.

A Winning California blend

I’m sipping a very nice California blend tonight that is almost Bordeaux-like in its elegance. It’s the 2007 Blues Cuvee from Longoria Wines in Santa Barbara County. And yes, the label has a very cool painting of a guitar-strumming bluesman on the label. But that’s beside the point. The wine is a winning  blend of 31 percent cabernet franc, 27 percent merlot, 24 percent syrah and 18 percent cabernet sauvignon.

Notes of dried red-berry fruit, coffee bean and herbs are supported by good tannic structure and great balancing acidity that make it a pleasure to drink even with a high 14.8 percent alcohol (other California wineries please take note).  It sells for $28 and with production at just 150 cases, you’ll want to buy it directly from the winery.  Also check out Longoria’s crisp, refreshing 2008 Albarino-Clover Creek Vineyard, a lovely California take on the Spanish-Portugese variety, at $23. (Wines received as press samples.)

Wine in a box (yes, good wine)

The innovative wine company Yellow + Blue has come out with its fourth offering, a crisp sauvignon blanc from Chile. It joins a malbec and a torrontes from Argentina and a rosé of syrah and monastrell from Spain that, together, present  a quartet  of excellent wines for everyday drinking. See my MSNBC.com column on Yellow + Blue from earlier this year.

The wines are all made from organic grapes, which is worth applauding in itself. They’ve also made me a convert to wine in a box, a concept that I found a bit difficult to swallow until now. The wines come in one-liter boxes that contain one-third more wine than a typical glass bottle. The juice is shipped to this country in containers and then packed  in the Tetra Pak boxes. The process reduces the carbon footprint of shipping wine. (The  point is that Yellow + Blue = green.) The 2009 Sauvignon Blanc from Chile’s Central Valley is fermented in stainless steel with native (naturally occurring) yeasts and shows notes of lime and orange with a bit of vanilla on the finish. It has a suggested price of $11. Once you pour yourself a glass, you’ll quickly forget that it came from a box.

Washington wines

I was impressed by a number of new releases from Seven Hills Winery in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley.  Seven Hills  grows grapes in its own vineyards and sources fruit from other growers in five Washington state appellations and, in the case of an excellent pinot gris, from a vineyard in the Umpqua  Valley in southern Oregon.

The 2008 Oregon Pinot Gris is made in a crisp, mineral-driven style (just 10 percent of it has oak contact) and is well priced at $16. Another real value is the 2008 Columbia Valley Riesling, $12, a lovely, off-dry wine with “wet pebble” aromas and pear, apricot and lime tastes. Among the reds, the 2006 Columbia Valley Tempranillo, $22, is an exciting interpretation of the Spanish variety that is gaining a foothold in Washington. It’s fruit forward with concentrated blackberry, blueberry and herb tastes. The 2006 Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon “Seven Hills Vineyard” is accessible and bright with sweet tannins and blackberry and vanilla notes. It’s $32 and drinks well now. Do I smell a steak?

2009 Thanksgiving wines

In case you hadn’t noticed, Thanksgiving wine advice is coming in fast and furiously, and I thought I’d share my own take on the subject with my annual MSNBC Thanksgiving wine column.  As

you’ll see, there are any number of ways to go. I’d also like to know what you think. Do you have a favorite red or white Thanksgiving wine? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Gewürztraminer

I started out, as I do on many evenings, by grabbing a few bottles of white that might work with our meal and shoving them into the freezer. Yes, I confess that I chill my wines quickly in the freezer when I’m in a rush. Sometimes I’ll even douse them with cold water beforehand to speed up the process. No, it’s not a terribly elegant picture – pushing aside the containers of half-eaten Hä agen-Dazs, the frozen tomatoes and leftover sausages, to make way for the wine bottles. But it does work, unless, of course, you forget to take them out. Twenty minutes or so is all it takes.

The centerpiece of tonight’s dinner was flounder fillets roasted with a simple coating of coarse Dijon mustard and a splash of white wine. The wine possibilities were a simple Vin de Pays from the south of France made from the ugni blanc and colombard grapes; an insolia from Sicily, and a gewürztraminer from France’s Alsace region. Turns out the gewürz did the trick – Hugel’s 2007 Gewürztraminer “Hugel,” a lovely $24 wine that has great balance and complexity with signature gewürz floral and herbal notes, along with pear, apricot and honey, and a good deal of spice on the finish.  This would also be a superb white for all the tastes of Thanksgiving as Gewürztraminer won’t easily be bullied by food. Imported by Frederick Wildman and Sons, New York.

Washington riesling

Riesling, as you may know, elicits all kinds of reactions, from worship to disgust and everything in between. I'd have to say that I'm firmly in the middle. Riesling comes in all manner of styles, from dry to sweet, and is made in many countries, from Germany, which produces the world's most famous rieslings, to France's Alsace, to Australia, California and Washington state.

A good example at the bargain price of $12 is Chateau Ste. Michelle's just-released 2008 Dry Riesling from Washington's Columbia Valley. I tasted this wine over several nights, and it got better over time. It shows notes of pear, pear skin, a bit of lime and orange and is nice and chewy in the mouth. Roast pork, grilled salmon, sushi and roasted turkey come to mind. In a word, versatile.

California pinot gris

 

Pinot gris, or pinot grigio as it's called in Italy, has firmly established itself as one of California's "other whites," and for me it can offer a pleasant and useful alternative to the ubiquitous chardonnay.

If you haven't tried the variety in a while, the 2008 Pinot Gris from TAZ Vineyards in Santa Barbara County is a good way to get reacquainted. Medium-bodied and focused, it has tastes of pear, pineapple, a touch of white pepper and minerals on the long finish. About $15.