Augieland

Top 10 wines i was lucky enough to drink 05

·         34 DRC romaine conti
·         76 penfold’s grange hermitage
·         78 groffier bonnes mares
·         95 guigal cote rotie la landonne
·         82 cheval blanc
·         45 mouton Rothschild in jeroboam
·         88 Bartolo Mascarello in magnum
·         64 Dom perignon oenotheque
·         85 Niellon Batard Montrachet
·         86 chateau d'yquem

Big bottles

People seem to be fascinated by wine bottle sizes. Besides having wonderfully mythical names and looking very impressive at service, there is a method (if not logic) to the system, and there are reasons to own bottles of every size.

The entire system is based on the bottle. A bottle is three-quarters of a liter, 75cl. This rather awkward size is the result of the average bottle size at the time of industrial standardization. In the late 18/early 1900’s, as bottle production moved from artisanal to industrial, the size of the bottle was standardized to the average at the time. 750ml was the average because bottles were made with one breath of a glass blower, so apparently the average volume of air in a turn of the century glass blower’s lungs was about a bottle of wine’s worth.

The various volumes of the bigger bottles are all multiples of the 750ml size and break down as follows:

equivalent -  Bordeaux - Burgundy/Champagne

Bottle (.750L)       Bottle                  Bottle   
Two (1.5L)           Magnum               Magnum   
Three (2.25L)       Marie-Jeanne            -   
Four (3.0L)           Double Magnum   Jéroboam   
Six (4.5L)             Jéroboam            Rehoboam   
Eight (6.0L)          Impériale            Methuselah   
Twelve (9.0L)           -                     Salmanazar   
Sixteen (12.0L)         -                     Balthazar   
Twenty (15.0L)         -           Nebuchadnezzar 

As far as bottle shape has been explained to me, and I see no reason to dig deeper, the two shapes evolved as a response to sediment. The grapes of Bordeaux throw sediment, so the broad-shouldered bottle was shaped to create a wall to catch it against while decanting. The burgundy shape has a much gentler grade because the sediment of pinot noir is finer and catches over the long slope as the end is poured gently.

Before you go getting all angry that the French can’t agree among themselves on what the name of a size is, remember that, at the time these things were being developed, the Bordelaise were actually British and that communication was nowhere near efficient. So probably at some point one wine guy went from one area to the other, saw a big bottle and said “oh we call that a Jeroboam” not realizing that the bottle was actually a little bigger, or smaller, than the one back home.

The primary enemy to maturing wine is air. There is air in wine bottles between the juice and the cork. As the amount of wine in a bottle grows the amount of air in the neck grows in a far smaller proportion, so the wine in an Impériale is exposed to far less air than the wine in a bottle. The result is a much slower maturation process. Therefore the arc of evolution of wine in a bigger bottle is much longer and gradual than that of a smaller one.  The six liters of wine in a properly stored Impériale should last many generations. So, really, there is no reason, other than marketing, to produce still wine in a bottle larger then six liters.

For Champagne, however, there is the factor of the saturation of C02 in the juice; over time it will dissipate. As the wine matures and harmonizes, the gas is diminishing. The more liquid in the bottle, the more CO2 in the solution and the longer it will take to dissolve. This, plus how cool it looks on the head table at a wedding, is why champers is available in the larger bottles.

So, here is what we know about bottles. In smaller ones, the wine will mature faster. You want to drink that Borolo in seven years as opposed to fifteen? Buy it in a half-bottle. You want to share the treasure of the ‘96 vintage with your grandkids? Buy a double-magnum. With their grandkids? Buy a Jéroboam. The Bordeaux shape is made to catch sediment so the wine inside is probably made from thicker-skinned grapes. And best of all, the Champenoise for some reason think of pre-Christian Middle Eastern Kings when they look at large format bottles.

I'm just gloating

I am too hung-over to do much more then gloat today, last night I drank:
02 delille harrison hill, WA
00 bruno giacosa barbaresco santo stefano
94 drouhin musigny
87 aldo conterno barolo bussia
71 giuseppe mascarello barolo 'pugnane'
97 clerico barolo 'per cristina'
67 lafon meursault charmes
71 giacomo conterno monfortino
90 guigal cote rotie la landonne
99 bonneau chateauneuf du pape 'celestins'
85 lopez de heredia rioja gran reserva 'vina tondonia'
97 yquem

Yes, it was awesome.

Have your-self a drink with a pundit

                                                                                                                     No matter what your opinion of Robert Parker, the truth is that for all his short-comings he has done an exceptional job of referencing the wines he prefers and his tasting notes and vintage profiles can be truly helpful when deciding whether or not to part with the cash some of today's fine wine costs. The fact is, Parker has a language and, if you learn it, his publication and website can be a constant and accessible reference. So, whenever the occasion arises to taste with Bob, as it does every now and then, I try to attend.

Sitting in a room, sniffing the wine Bob is sniffing and tasting the wine he is tasting, while working through your thoughts and hearing his, allows you to figure out what jibes in your mind with his language and what doesn't. Armed with this experience, the Advocate becomes quite a useful tool and you can delve past the ambiguous numbers that follow every wine's name.

So last night, Trombone, Bubby, Bear, Fittsdoola, and I went to a Left Bank Bordeaux vintage match-up at EWS hosted by special guest Robert Parker. The vintages were '95 and 96, and the wines were served as twins (two chateaux's wines from the two vintages served blind, side by side, in groups of four.) The chateaux represented were as follows. The first notes are mine; the second are Bob's verbal notes, followed by his published scores. The wines are listed in the order we tasted them.

• 95 Lafite: Black fruit jam, raspberries, spun sugar, and licorice with a boozy greenness on the palate, my favorite of this group of four
  • Beautiful balance, spice, cedar, earth, sweet cherry, black fruit, 95 points

• 96 Lafite: Black fruit jam, blueberry, detritus, soy, awesome tannin and currants on the palate
  • Beautiful balance, spice, cedar, earth, sweet cherry, black fruit 100 points

• 95 Leoville Las Cases: Black fruit jam, earth, camphor, clay, cumin, cinnamon, aggressive tannins and great focus on the palate
  • Hard tannin not open for business 95 points

• 96 Leoville Las Cases: Black fruit jam, cinnamon, spices, tart flat and tannic on the palate
  • Hard tannin not open for business 98+ points

• 95 Haut Brion: Black fruit jam, very round nose with miso notes, balanced body supple tannin on palate
  • Supple, pure, rich 96 points

• 96 Cos d'Estournel: real funky, cheese, skunk, wood, some green notes, with stones and blueberries on the palate, my favorite of the flight
  • Dirty ashtray and barnyard 93+ points

• 95 Cos d'Estournal: flowers booze and clay on the nose with a round jammy hot palette
  • Tight 95 points

• 96 Haut Brion: Black fruit jam, pronounced mineral, with great integration on the nose, a subtle attack with crazy minerals and great structure on the palate
  • Brilliant sweet cassis 95 points

• 95 Latour: Black fruit jam, black currant, spices, cinnamon, tight on the palate with currants and earthy notes; well integrated tannin
  • Big, woody, tannic 96+ points

• 95 Mouton: Black fruit jam, with a saccharine sweetness on the nose, very dry minerals on the palate
  • Big, woody, tannic 95+ points

• 96 Latour: Black fruit jam, mushrooms and camphor with a nice round balanced palate and sea-glass on the palate
  • Bob gave no notes during tasting but at the end, before labels were revealed, said it was the only 100 point of the tasting 99 points

• 96 Mouton: great big fruit, wood barnyard and grilled sardines on the nose, a lush balanced well-integrated palate, my favorite of the flight; I said that if I were a holder of this wine I would drink about 65% of my holdings over the next three years with some steaks
  • Sexy 94+ points

• 96 Margaux: Black fruit jam, capsicum, dog, cassis, earth and truffle, with a big and lush palate.
  • Earthy, well integrated

• 95 Margaux: tightest wine of the night, smelled like the inside of a glass sprinkled with black pepper, big on the palate with a sharp lasered focus
  • Bob declared he was pretty sure the last two were Haut Brion 95 points

• 96 Pichon Lalande, Black fruit jam, kirsch well integrated and short on the palate
  • No notes 96 points

• 95 Pichon Lalande, Cassis and blackberries with great tanic structure a fun drink, my favorite of the flight
  • No notes 95 points

My top three wines of the tasting, in order, were the '96 Mouton, followed by the '96 Latour and the '95 Lafite. Popular opinion put the '96 Mouton first, with the '96 Haut second and the '95 Lalande third.

EWS tastings always skew toward the third group tasted. The progression usually goes as follows: everyone is quiet through the first flight, people start talking during the second, the favorite wine is always found in the third, and the fourth is mostly surrounded with idle chat. I am not sure why this is, but I bet you can guess. I can tell you, I seldom see anyone using the spit bucket.

Two of the sixteen bottles I tasted were corked, one subtly and one so offensively I couldn't get my nose near it. I am suspicious how the boys running the tasting did not notice this and remedy it while they were decanting at 3pm that afternoon. I see this as unforgivable. With tickets costing $595 per seat, had I not noticed and declared the wine corked immediately, and insisted on tastes from a new bottle in each case, we would have simply missed that 12.5% of the tasting, most likely without a refund of that cost on our tickets. Although it is true that sometimes wines are just corked, the reality is that there was plenty of time to tell in advance, and these wines are completely accessible enough in the NY market to remedy the situation well before any of the paying customers showed up, as real professionals would have.

As for tasting with Parker, it is great. He is a machine and no one is better at articulating the traits of his kind of wines then he is. However, people, for the large part, show up to these things for one of two reasons. The first wants to see him sniff a wine and accurately declare its producer, vintage, and level of barrel toast, the other wants to see him fail at this same task. As a result, at this point in his career he has gotten good at fading declarations, and hedging his bets with statements like "if it is this, it could be this, but the fun of wine is it is always changing.” You hear him say things like, “Mouton is the first growth most irresponsible about crop reduction, and this definitely shows in the quality of the juice. Mostly the label art and the Baroness’ skill at marketing keep their prices up,” then, later, declare that the Mouton ’96 is drinking far better then the other 15 wines. But how could it be any different? People want Bob to know it all because he has spent 25+ years shamelessly self-promoting that fact that he knows it all. The reality, though, is that he is just a guy who really does love wine, especially these wines, and it is a pleasure to hear him talk about them.

As for the wines, all these makers should be ashamed of themselves. Eight chateaux and two vintages were represented, yet no one wine stuck its head out as truly unique. I really had to dig to find anything past the simple, abusive black fruit jam. There was not a lot of distinction. All these wines tasted way too similar, and this is according to both the world's foremost authority on these wines and little old me. Of course he phrases it more like, "I am surprised by how similar these vintages are drinking, considering the disparity in vintage conditions.”

If you are in the market for top end, monster fruit bombs, these are definitely some of the best. If you want to drink them now, buy the '95 Pichon or the '96 Mouton. If you want a wine with a promising future, buy the '96 Latour (though I suspect you will do better with a well spent Benjamin in Washington State or Montefalco).

I don't see any of these wines as special enough to part with the cash they demand. But then the sad irony is that, if I could afford it, I probably would, because now I have tasted them and I would love to see where they go. That's the charm of the myth of the first growths and super seconds. Even though I know better, I go against my judgment, because they are supposed to, maybe, be great.

The Parker Palate and the Roland Recipe

The Parker/Roland dilemma is one of my favorite things about wine. The argument goes that these two are making the whole wine world move in a boring direction. I think this is absolutely true, but I think it is our fault, not theirs. We are the consumers. We drive the market. And we are the fools encouraging their two philosophies to destroy nuance and poetry in the wine world.

Robert Parker was raised on Coca-Cola and sees wine as a beverage rather than a component of a meal. I love when people discuss his exceptional palate. In my view, and I may be wrong, an exceptional palate would be one very skilled at seeking out variety and subtlety in myriad things. Parker doesn't do this. Parker has never pretended to do this. Parker simply declares, "this is the kind of thing I like," and "I like it a little," "I like it a little more," or "I like it a lot." Long gone are the days when Bob didn't like a wine.

Parker likes the wines a kid raised on Coca-cola would love. There is no subtlety in a Parker wine. His wines are in your face, they are huge, they are fruit bombs, with alcohol and lazy tannins filling your mouth. They vary very little. In Bob's world, the difference between a Cabernet Sauvignon from France and one from California should not be much more than the difference between a Pepsi and a Coke (definitely a little different and one definitely goes better with pizza, while the other pairs better with cheeseburgers, but both are constant and dependable). That's all. That is definitely a type of wine, it's the one Parker likes, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Michael Roland has figured out how to make all wines taste pleasing to Parker. Roland knows that if you let the fruit ripen longer, the tannins will soften and the sugar will concentrate, and if you expose the resulting juice to an enormous amount of oxygen, very quickly, and then slam it into new oak, any edges will be rounded, hastening the results that used to require patience, and foresight, and perfect weather. In Michael Roland's world there are no bad vintages and there is no need to wait. Pull the pop tab on your wine and drink up, there will be more exactly like it next year.

Consequently, when someone hires Michael to consult on his or her wine and make it a huge powerhouse of boozy extraction, Robert Parker loves it and gives it a very high rating. This makes total sense to me. The problems occur following this process. Once Parker rates it, the price runs up because people demand wines of his considered caliber.

At this point, there are a lot of people in the world who were raised on Coca-Cola. Add to this that learning wine is a slow, life-long process that many people find threatening and awkward, that the biggest conspicuous consumers in our culture are too young to have had the experience necessary to develop a personal view of wine perfection, and that Parker's system of elementary grading is user-friendly and easy to follow, and it's no wonder his influence is so great. Also remember, sometimes Coke just tastes good. As a matter of fact, when drinking wine as a cocktail, which many consumers do, these wines are very good at standing alone. The result is that people the world over now lean on Parker to pick their wines for them.

The problem is the market, and that we seem to expect a wine Parker has given a great score to cost a ridiculous amount of money. Why? When Parker started, there were only a handful of wines pleasing to the Parker Palate, and they were some of the most expensive wines in the world.  Somehow, as wines without the pedigree and proven tradition of these higher-caliber wines started tasting somewhat like them we started paying up for them, without realizing that they needn't cost as much. More wines of a type equals more supply, more supply should mean lower prices.

There is now a larger supply of wines in the world that follow Parker's preferences. Granted, winemakers play down this fact by labeling the same wine as different, but we as wine lovers should be savvy enough to see through this. Accepting that all Parker-style wines are similar to one another, just buy the cheapest 96 pointer every time if that's what you want and don't pay up, then all the other 96s will have to come into a sensible line.

Winemakers are doing exactly what they should do; the disenfranchised wine lovers aren't. Winemakers are simply charging as much as the market will afford for their product. It is simple supply and demand, and it makes perfect sense. People in business should be doing all they can to make money. However, the market can resist the Parker Effect by simply not letting makers skew their prices just because he has given their wine a good rating. Make them first prove over hundreds of years that this style of wine has longevity and will appreciate in both value and profile. We can also push the market away from Parker's influence by seeking out a variety of wines and rewarding uniqueness.

In my lifetime, I have been lucky enough to try some of the great Bordeaux. I can actually tell you that, having tasted the '45 Mouton out of both jeroboam and magnum this year, the jeroboam is fantastic and drinking perfectly and that the magnum, although interesting, has lost some of its depth and is primarily showing a very interesting note of spearmint. As a result, I suspect the bottles have started their decline and that if you own some you should drink them now (if you do, and want company, shoot me an email.)  I have also tasted about 20 vintages of Latour this year and I can definitely tell you that the ones made from the early 90's on taste like a genius representation of generic, big, hedonistic wine and not distinctly like Latour anymore.

My fear is that, by forcing oxygen exposure in order to make wines drink better in the short run, their death will be hastened and the arc of their prime will be curtailed. Is Michael Roland being shortsighted in his recommendations, as I suspect?  Only time will tell. If so, the '00 Moutons will have been a huge waste of money in the $500 dollar range, as soon as 2015. People being born now will be paying ridiculous prices for the more traditional wines being produced today by people more concerned with actual terroir representation then  pleasing the Pepsi Generation, and everyone will have rushed through this generation of wine realizing that, without significant acid and tannin structure to balance the extracted fruit and alcohol, all these wines do over time is flatten.

Lets face it: Bob and Michael have nothing to lose. They both turn 60 in '07 so why would they want wine to only hit its perfect stride in sixty years? They very much benefit from winemakers ignoring tradition and forcing wines to cut their noses off to spite their faces, playing up immediacy at the cost of promise.

The reality is wine is a market, and only people paying for authenticity will stem this tide. So, if you hate they way things are going, stop bemoaning the lemming-like tendencies of Parker-ites and go seek out real wine and buy it. Stop bitching about Bob and Mike -- in this shortsighted, immediate gratification world only a very few people would turn their backs on an opportunity to make the whole world taste like they think it should. Be honest, would you be one of them?

Drink your-self some cider

Bridge brought over two hard ciders Monday night, both by West County Cider. I don't know a lot about cider, so I started looking around on the web. Turns out cider is a pretty artisanal product and I love artisanal products.

To start, you pound the hell out of some apples. This is called scratting and the resulting product is called pommace. The pommace is formed into cakes, which are called cheese. The cheese is stacked on slatted racks with cloth on them and pressure is applied to the stacks to squeeze the juice. The juice is then strained and the cheese discarded.

The process of fermentation is the same as for wine: yeasts, either natural or added, consume the sugar and turn it into alcohol. To add the sparkle to cider, near the end of fermentation the juice is racked off the dead yeast cells while some sugar and yeast still remain, and is put in an airtight vessel. The carbon dioxide that results from the remaining fermentation is trapped in the solution, creating the effervescence.

Here are some cider facts:

• Cider can be bottled right after fermentation or aged in casks.

• Various apples are often blended for different characteristics.

• Apples that taste good to eat are often poor for cider because you need more tannin and acid in the fruit to translate to the beverage.

• Oxidization is a big concern while extracting juice from the cheese; exposure to air taints the product.

• Fermenting at colder temperature preserves subtlety in the resulting juice.

• European apples tend to be more tannic.

• If you put cider in an open bucket and leave it out on a cold night you can make Applejack by skimming the frozen water out and leaving a more concentrated alcohol.

The first Cider we drank was Heritage Apple. It is made from Baldwin, Roxburry Russet (which was America's first-named apple variety), and European apples. It was crisp and light with very nice acid; the predominant scent on the nose was that of a carton of white button mushrooms and reminiscent of the forest floor. A very interesting drink

The second was Baldwin, which I assume contains all Baldwin apples. It is slightly sweeter and more straightforward apple on the nose and palette. I imagine it would go very well with roast pork at a Christmas dinner, but that may just be the season taking hold.

Cider seems pretty cool to me.

'00 Portteus Zin

Thursday night I played “go ahead grab any bottle you like,” with Bubby. He pulled a 2000 Portteus Zinfandel that Wife and I bought on a trip through the Yakima valley in 2002. (Stay here, and go here). I think we bought it at around $26 and it was amazing. A big, heady red with great integration of black pepper and black fruit, Bubby, Wife, Cop and I all agreed: If you have any drink it, it is drinking perfectly right now. If you know how to get some more, please tell me.

The good news is that, thanks to repeals or changes or redistricting or whatever it took, wineries may now ship directly to consumers in New York. I know not every state has ended its Mafia-like rules regarding liquor distribution, but mine has, so I found Portteus on-line and ordered a mixed case of current vintage wines. Alas, Pataki and the boys got around to changing the rules too late for me to lay in a deep row of ’00 Zin, but at least I can try the new stuff and boy do I intend to.

There are awesome little guys making wine out there, wines where the guys making the decisions are the guys that live on the farm, not some beer company in Australia. You can now support them by buying direct. Try it, your business may give some little guy the ability to resist a buyout offer he otherwise couldn’t and then we will all be a little better off.

Drink your-self a vertical

There are not many luxury items that people share as freely as fine wine. When a guy pulls up to a bar in a brand new Lotus and you say, "Wow what a car, I've always wondered what it's like to drive one of those," never does he throw you the keys and say, "go ahead, try it."  However, when you say to a wine drinker, "Is that a Jeroboam of '45 Mouton? How wonderful must that be?"  most true lovers of wine will ask the bartender for an additional glass, pour you a small taste, and send it over. Loving wine inspires a certain benevolence because the enjoyment of fine wine is simply enhanced by sharing it with people who appreciate it.

Pichon and Helmet are wine lovers/collectors. Pichon has a deep collection he has put together over some time that he has rounded out by cherry-picking his father's cellar, which is set up in much the same way. It is great and shows that methodical collecting over time leaves you with some delights as time passes. Helmet is a young, big-game hunter. He has tasted a lot of wine and has great exposure to some of the most respected wines in the world. He has a concept of value for those bottles considered to be great and it is fun to watch him stalking all over the web, sighting up wines in his range, and taking them down.

One night, while out with these two, they mentioned what a great idea it would be to put together an assortment of the different vintage Latours they each have and do a vertical tasting. When they said that it would be fun if I joined guess what I said?

The beauty of a vertical tasting, of any wine, is that you can get an appreciation for how vintage affects the final product.  Ideally, each house is using the same fruit from the same place and making wine with the same ideals in mind, so the variations from year to year will be the result of weather. If you want to take your connoisseurship to the level where you discuss good vintage vs. bad, a vertical is the best way to examine these differences.

So we all met at Pichon's house. Pichon was providing an '86, '90, and '93. Helmet brought a '64 and a '98. Pichon Sr. decided to join and brought a magnum of '89. We tasted, standing around the kitchen counter, and kept the food we intended to eat after tasting out of the way.  We tasted the Latours in the order they are listed below.

1998 had a deep garnet color and bruléed sugar, raspberries, lilac, white pebbles, blueberries, chocolate and anise on the nose. It had great focus with very up-front tannins; very juicy.

1993 was garnet with a brackish hue around the rim. The nose was green bell peppers, red fruit, minerals and cinnamon. The palate was green and very thin in the middle.

1989 (out of magnum) the color was a mature garnet. There was decomposing meat and red fruit on the nose and the palate was flattish and hollow in the middle. (Read on for notes on the evolution of this wine).

1990 was a light garnet color with cinnamon, leather, dry-aged beef, and macerated fruit on the nose. The palate was very well structured with a solid backbone. It was quite complex and was consistent from attack to finish.

1986 God, we did not want this wine to be corked. We smelled around it and claimed spice, dry herbs and wood. We called it funky and let it sit, hoping it would blow off but, alas, this wine was corked, just slightly, enough to let you know that it probably could have been a great wine if the Bordelaise would accept responsibility for quality control and test their corks for TCA.

1964 The conditions of this wine's storage were suspicious from the get go. The ullage was high shoulder and the label was very discolored, so we were not surprised that it was shot. It was totally maderized and smelled of blood, iron, sourdough and Port.

I think the '90 was the big winner. The fascinating thing about a vertical tasting is that we never would have thought to call the '89's mid-palate hollow until we tasted it in a flight of it's siblings.

Then the real hedonism got underway. With the tasting officially finished, we left the remains of the bottles to give them a chance to open up and went to the dining room table with our tasting glasses to sit, and drink, and eat.

Because tasting never really gets going until after a little wine has been consumed, I had brought and an '01 Marcassin Three Sisters to be used as a warm-up. Helen Turley may make America's best white wines, so I figured it would be a fair starter for such an amazing line-up. The wine had started all lemon, toast and minerals with amazing focus. Coming back to the half glass I saved a few hours later, it had become hazelnuts. It was so rich and great and it served again to refresh for what was coming next.

For the second round, we added a '70 Cos d'Estournel and an '82 Pichon Lalande, figuring that the Latours wanted some time to evolve. They were fantastic. The Pichon was blueberries and leather, with a huge attack that tapered away through the mid-palette and finished forever.  The Cos was detritus and blackberries, not as huge as the other wines of the night but solid and good.

We also added a plate of sliced prosciutto, three dried sausages, and four cheeses. The first of the cheeses was an Affidélice, a pungent cows milk cheese that has had its rind washed with Chablis. It was very stinky and the runny paste was amazing. It was everyone's favorite. Tete de Moine from Switzerland, an intense, semi-hard cows milk cheese, was second.  Third was Fourme d'Ambert, a semi-soft blue that is great in taste without getting overly blue-y on the wines. Fourth, in the starring role, was a real Camembert. God, there is nothing like Camembert and Bordeaux. The most ridiculous thing in the world is that that cheese is illegal in this country.

With some time for them to open up and some food to put with them, we went back to the Latours and the biggest notable change was that the '89 it had found it's balance and was all kirsch liqueur goodness. The '86 was still corked, the '93 was still really just flat, the '98 had not changed much, and the '90 was still the most noteworthy sample.

That the '98 didn't really go anywhere is an interesting conundrum because that is the exact opposite of how Bordeaux should act. After 3 hours in an open glass, wine (Bordeaux especially) should either evolve or decompose, it should not still taste like it did when opened. I am suspicious that there has been some manipulation by the winemakers here to give it a certain flavor to appeal to a certain palate, forgoing the fundamentals of the French ideal of terroir. Only time and verticals will tell.

Accept your-self a challange

Cru is the perfect place for a cork dork to be lazy. Firstly, even the most proud connoisseur can push aside the 35,000-label list just because he or she is not up to it. Secondly, Robert Bohr and his staff are fantastic at selecting great wine from the cellar. I almost always use Cru as an excuse to learn something new. I will say things as steeped in lethargy as, "I would like a $100 red and a lesson." Without fail, they step up and find me something that is both unique and fun to drink, as well as details down to the name and age of the dog that accompanied the vintner on his walks through the vineyard.

Well, last night it all came to a head. I had been drinking in the proximity of a guy I had met once or twice and realized to be a regular. At some point I saw him poring over the list and I asked, "you looking for a bottle?" He responded in the affirmative and I offered to split it with him, up to $50.00 (it was only Tuesday after all).  We both pretty much decided that we didn't really care white or red or part of the world, and that we were happy to serve the ball up to the staff.

Then Alex showed up and smacked the ball right back at our lazy asses. He put down an unmarked carafe of dark red juice and said, "tell me what it is." I guess some days even the workhorses of New York wine get a little fed-up with carrying you on their backs. 

This has happened to me before in other places, but it was the first time for Regular. It is very daunting facing down the fact that no matter how genuine your love of wine, and how thorough your study, a couple facts will always remain: there is too much wine at Cru (not to mention on Earth) for any one person to fully wrap there cognitive abilities around, and taste is the most subjective thing in the world. Can you trust yours? Basically, it's the question we used to love to ask when experimenting in school: is the color red the same to me as it is to you?

Alex had offered us a very good BS test for all the wine talking and drinking we had each done in our separate pasts.

So we put our noses in the glass. It was Syrah and, I thought, Old World. I can't even tell you why I thought that, except that it smelled like Syrah, chocolate, cassis, and black fruits. Done. That easy. Until the doubts set in. The first one crept in when I detected the slightest bit of green and worried it could be a Cabernet Franc-heavy blend from somewhere hot like eastern Washington State.

Then I tasted it. Definitely Syrah. Definitely Old World. Except then I detected some blueberries in my mouth which, although sometimes I taste them in Syrah, made me suspect the presence of Grenache. Keep in mind all this pressure was self-generated. All Alex said was, "you tell me about it." He was giving me the right to declare it fruity or tannic, big or light and instead I beat myself up trying not to get it wrong.

When Alex returned, Regular was outside smoking a cigarette, so he asked and I answered: Syrah from the Rhone, that I suspected it was southern and that it may have been blended with some Grenache. Alex explained it was 100% Syrah, from the southern Rhone. Typically, southern Rhones are Grenache-dominated. So I had come up with the grape and the terroir.  I would say if it were graded I probably got in the low eighties, a number that makes me proud. Maybe next time I won't rethink so much and I'll remember that games are for fun. Then again, maybe next time I'll be ballsy enough to guess a vintage.

It was an '01 Chateau de Fonsalette, labeled Cotes du Rhone and produced by Chateau Rayas, which is in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  Chateauneuf-du-Pape is a region in southern Rhone and it allows up to thirteen grapes, three of which are white. Beaucastel is the only house that uses all of them, but it is pretty safe to say that there are always at least three in the blend, Grenache dominating Syrah and Mouvedre. So this is a unique wine, all Syrah from C-d-P.  Very hedonistic. When people talk about a Parker wine this is what I imagine.

So my years of drinking wine, seeking out wine geeks, and talking about it incessantly have gotten me to a point where I am pretty sure what Syrah from France tastes like. Four years ago I never would have believed that was possible. The best part, though, is having an awesome place to go and find guys that truly enjoy wine, just because it is Tuesday and you feel like a glass.

Make your-self some cellar tags

Inevitably, the night before Thanksgiving is a time for Bestman and I to get together, way over imbibe, and catch up on all the things going on in our lives. This ritual is born from the years when we were at college and various other places, in reality we grew up around the corner from each other and he currently resides on the upper west so, except for those years, it has been a while since so much time passed that an entire dedicated evening of drinking was merited. This year, however there is a lot going on and it seemed right to meet at the traditional watering hole, and get started on way overdoing it.

When we were finally kicked out of the bar at two am in the greatest of New Jersey traditions, we made our way back to the homes of our parents (still right around the corner) and still having more to argue, Bestman suggested we head over to his folk’s place and raid a bottle from his dad’s cellar.

Bestman’s dad Up has been collecting wine for quite a while and has an awesome collection that involves many pitfalls for a very drunk cork-dork headed in with the direction to pick the best wine in there. There was no way I would have picked the best bottle. First, it would not be fair to drink it without its proper owner. Second, the collection is almost entirely Bordeaux and Bordeaux blends and there was no way we were going to pay proper attention to decanting and glasses standing in the 55˚ cellar till all hours of the morning. Third, and probably most significant, Up has amassed quite a collection of very good wines from the 2nd and 3rd vineyards in less good vintages that never really cost more than roughly $35 at the time of release, so it is hard to know without a quick reference of vintage by area if you are grabbing a good bottle or maybe a treasure he plucked before the pundits figured it to actually be good, thereby presenting a more significant value then expected.

Here is where a genius steps in and, to be honest, a lesson is to be learned by all of us aspiring to wine education. CP, Bestman’s oldest brother, lives very far away and gets out for visits about once a year. He loves wine like you and me and had found himself frustrated by the fact that, when he would visit and go into the cellar, he would often find wines on the decline of their optimum drinking period slope. So on his last visit he spent about six hours with the guides and marked up the cellar with drinking notes. Some simply citing the best years to drink the wines. Some with photocopied notes from Parker. Some as simple as “this is special.”

When yours truly stormed through the cellar doors I was faced with some very helpful scrawling. I found about four bottles with notes that said “drink by ’04” and from them found the one with multiples in it and then just leaped.  We went with an ’88 Rausan-Ségla. I would love to tell you it truly got all the appreciation it deserved. I will say that it was very well balanced with great notes of kirsch. To the vodka-soaked palate I was putting it up against it tasted like it was bordering on over-the-top extraction without real acid or tannin to balance, but the whole time my real thoughts were, “I’m pretty sure I would like to taste this again with a clearer head.” Thanks to CP’s notes we will be able to.

There is nothing better than drinking good wine with great friends and family, whether it is at dinner, in a formal tasting, or after way too much. Lets face it, if you keep wine around the house and get a couple of drinks in you; it is likely someone will be grabbing bottles out of the cellar. Hell, you may even be silly enough to say to your cohorts “go ahead, grab whatever you feel like.” Spending a little time on labeling may save them some embarrassment and you the bottle you assumed they would know you didn’t mean.

If you are sober and pulling a good one, the notes will make for interesting contemplation while you drink. The labeling process may also make you aware of some wines you forgot were in there that may be in their prime. If it is late on a bender and you and your more hedonistic friends are scavenging for “the right bottle to cap such a great evening,” it will either save your most cherished bottles or at least make everyone aware they are taking down the great one. Seems like time well spent in the process of learning wine.