Wine Bazar

I can remember a time when the word “Alsace” only brought to mind dim memories of my 5th grade class discussion on some valley that people were fighting about in one of those big wars. In those days I definitely couldn’t spell Gewurztraminer, and I had only tried one or two of them.

Perhaps you’d call me a late bloomer when it came to Alsatian wine, but bloom I eventually did, and now I’m a quiet, but fierce devotee of what I believe to be some of the most individualistic wines on the planet. Alsace has always been an odd duck of a winegrowing region. It is the only region in France that not only allows, but mandates that the name of the grape variety appear on the label (though there are exceptions). It happens to grow grapes more associated with Germany and Northern Italy than with the rest of France (Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Pinot Gris), and perhaps by virtue of its occasionally Germanic past, produces more beer than any other winegrowing region in the country.

Characterized by steep hillside vineyards whose sun exposure, coupled with the region’s cooler climate make for long slow grape maturation, Alsace has been worked by small village winemakers for centuries (major regional wars notwithstanding). There are thousands of producers in the region, though according to the Oxford Companion to Wine, about 175 of those producers make up nearly 80 percent of the regions production. Many of those 175 are still relatively small by French standards, but some, due to their tenure as well as success have grown to be significant producers that make enough wine for export all over the globe.

Trimbach (or more properly, Maison Trimbach) is perhaps one of the best known of these larger producers, and for good reason. The Trimbach family has been making wine under their name since progenitor Jean Trimbach founded the house label in 1636. Twelve generations later, the estate is still run by the family, and is synonymous with the region, producing what some consider to be the finest wines around.

For the first two hundred or so years, Trimbach wines were made, like many in the region, in relative obscurity. Produced and consumed all within a 25 mile radius, the wines were part of the fabric of village life. Around the turn of the 20th Century, however, the then proprietor Frederic Emile Trimbach submitted the family’s wines to be shown at the 1897 Brussels Exposition, where they were apparently greeted with significant acclaim.

Now, nearly 120 years after that initial success, Trimbach is known for producing two of the region’s finest wines — both Rieslings. One is bottled under the name Clos St. Hune, and comes from the Grand Cru Rosacker vineyard, and is widely regarded as the region’s best Riesling. The other is this wine, named after the enterprising Frederic Emile, whose marketing skills launched more than a century of prominence for his family winery. In addition to these top wines, Trimbach makes 13 other wines, in quantities ranging from a couple thousand cases to the tens of thousands.

Cuvee Frederic Emile is made mostly from grapes grown on a south-southeast facing hillside vineyard named Osterberg above the winery. The limestone rich soil of this Grand Cru vineyard drains quickly and deep, and the grapevines are, on average, 30 years old. The grapes are picked with painstaking deliberation into small shoulder baskets over a series of days, with the goal of selecting only fully ripe clusters of grapes. These clusters are destemmed and assiduously sorted, again to ensure only the choicest grapes are crushed and fermented, ever so slowly, with native yeasts.

I’m not sure about the total production of this wine. The Clos St. Hune is less than 600 cases, but I suspect Cuvee Frederic Emile is made in slightly larger quantities. Were it more plentiful, however, it might be more common to find beautiful aged bottles like this one that some good friends shared with me last month. Trimbach’s wines, especially their top cuvees, seem to age forever, and as they do, their personalities begin to truly shine.

Every time I enjoy Rieslings from the Old World like this one, I realize that I don’t drink enough Riesling. Every time I enjoy such a beautiful Alsatian wine, I am reminded that I definitely don’t drink enough of Alsace.

Tasting Notes:
Pale gold in the glass, this wine has a shockingly bright nose of quince and honey that begs to be inhaled slowly, as if that were physically possible. On the tongue it is halogen bright, with gorgeous acidity that brings to life a swath of flavors ranging from fresh lemon juice and honey to paraffin and nut skin. The wine lasts forever in the mouth, lingering through its drawn out finish on vapors of pomelo and orange zest. A fantastic, distinctive wine.

Food Pairing:
Whatever you eat with this wine, make sure it’s damn good. I drank this on my birthday last month and enjoyed it with many things, but especially with a light cooked shellfish salad of crab, squid, octopus, and clams in an “ocean vinaigrette” with seasoned sesame.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10

How Much?: roughly $110 - $190 these days. Current releases (2003) go for $35.

This vintage of the wine can occasionally be found on the internet. Current releases can be purchased here.

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Mario OReilly)

Do you want to know a little secret? I’m probably going to catch hell for telling you, especially from my friend Jack who served this wine to me, and who let me in on the secret in the first place. But he should know better than to tell a blogger anything.

So here goes: Pre-1980 California Cabernets are some of the best buys in the wine world right now. Sure, some of them, especially pristine bottlings of single vineyard Beringer or BV wines are going for hundreds of dollars per bottle, but with a little effort you can find bottles like this one, sometimes for under $30.

And some of these wines are simply tremendous.

The Charles Krug Winery, established in 1861 was one of the very first wineries to be established in the Napa Valley. Its founder, an enterprising young man of German-American heritage, came to San Francisco in the mid 1850’s to work as a journalist. Perhaps disillusioned with the newspaper business, which even back then was undergoing consolidation, he decided to try his hand at growing grapes as a means of supporting himself. He didn’t have much luck growing them (in the hills above what is now San Mateo) until he hooked up with an equally unsuccessful grape grower by the name of Augustin Haraszthy who convinced Krug that they should look elsewhere. This would prove fateful advice for them both, as Haraszthy would become known as the founder of the California wine industry, and Krug, one of its first success stories.

After the pair found their way to the Sonoma Valley, they secured work in a vineyard site that would later become Buena Vista winery, and began teaching themselves how to make wine. Krug was a quick study, and his talents were noticed by a number of people, but perhaps most importantly by a wealthy landowner named Louis Bruck who lured him to the Napa Valley. A few years later, after a short career as what wine historian John Olney suggests might be the first consulting winemaker in the history of California wine, Krug married Bruck’s sister-in-law, whose hand in marriage also came with the added bonus of 500 acres just north of the tiny hamlet known as St. Helena.

In short order Krug built his own winery (and then rebuilt it, and then built another as the first one burned down) and set about making some of Napa’s first commercial wines with the help of another young man of German descent named Jacob Beringer. Yes, that Beringer.

In 1875 at the height of his success Charles Krug founded the St. Helena Viticultural Society. That success proved short-lived, however, as winery after winery succumbed to the infestation of Phylloxera that was at the same time ravaging the vineyards of Europe. Krug, who once bankrolled many other winemakers, went bankrupt in 1891 and died about a year later.

After changing hands a couple more times through prohibition, the estate was purchased by an Italian immigrant named Cesare Mondavi, and became the birthplace and the battleground of America’s most famous and fractured wine dynasty.

In 1974 the Charles Krug winery was producing more than one million cases of wine per year, and was one of the most commercially successful wineries in the history of Napa Valley. It was also known the site of one of the most bitter family sagas that the California wine industry has known, the rift between brothers Peter and Robert Mondavi.

1974 was by all accounts one of the best vintages in California history. I’m not sure who was making the wine at this point at Charles Krug, as production had gotten big enough that Peter Mondavi wasn’t doing it all himself. In any case, the harvest was nearly perfect, and the wines were celebrated highly at the time.

Now, of course, this wine is old. So old, that most wine modern wine lovers would never imagine what a treasure lies inside. This bottle is a special selection from the winery “Lot ʽ″ which as far as I can ascertain represents the winery’s top vineyard blocks and barrels in a given vintage. While this particular bottling commands more money at auction, if its quality is any indication, the regular bottlings have got to be worth the $25 I have seen them selling for as many people liquidate older wine collections in which they have been sitting for years.

The older Cabernets of Napa, like this wine, are marked by an elegance and a lightness that Napa will probably never again achieve (if only because global warming makes it impossible). Just 12% alcohol and very light bodied, this wine speaks the secrets of an earlier era in Napa winemaking that are beautiful and alluring.

Every time I have a wine like this, I tell myself I ought to spend more of my money hunting down treasures like this rather than buying current releases. My only problem is that I don’t have time to watch the auctions at WineBid. So for now, I simply enjoy the generosity of friends, and the magic of grapes that were picked in the year of my birth.

Tasting Notes:
Medium brick-red in color with blood red, powdery sediment, this wine smells of stewed prunes, raisins, and caramel. In the mouth it is gorgeously smooth, and not juicy exactly, but…lively on the palate — swirling with flavors of roasted meats, cedar smoke, figs, and a light funkiness of sweat. The finish, one of my favorite parts of older wines, doesn’t disappoint — soaring away in notes of caramel and root beer. Not the most amazing old California Cabernet I have had, but certainly an excellent example of the form. Tasting wines like this makes me feel extremely lucky. Lucky to be alive, and lucky to love wine.

Food Pairing:
This is one of those wines that, while enjoyable with lots of different foods, tends to make me want to push my plate away and simply sit with my eyes closed, and my mouth full of wine, slowly letting it drizzle down my throat. Sometimes wines are best savored on their own.

Overall Score: 9

How Much?: $88 currently at retail, though can be had at auction for less.

This wine is available for purchase on the internet.

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Levi Reiss)

The generosity and collegiality of wine lovers remains one of the tiny miracles of wine for me. I’m constantly impressed by the willingness to share their treasures that bonds so many lovers of wine together. Some people get a particular joy from providing others the opportunity to try wines that they would not normally be able to enjoy.

In my experience, one should always have a policy of providing friends with the chance to share their best bottles with someone who appreciates them. It’s an important service, and one that I’m proud to perform.

I happen to be lucky enough that my pursuit of such opportunities doesn’t require any sucking up or bootlicking. I have a couple of friends who all too readily manufacture events whose theme is a loosely veiled version of “let’s get together and drink some of my good shit.”

The last such gathering my friends Jack and Joanne held was an excuse to drink a bunch of wines that were waaaay off the beaten track.

A couple of weeks ago, Jack pulled a few more bottles out of the cellar, and with the help of a few of us, who brought a bottle or two of our own, we put together an eclectic tasting of old wines that was a lot of fun.

It would take me a long while to get around to writing reviews of each of these wines individually, as much as they might all deserve it, so I’m going to pull a rare one here on Vinography and just post a bunch of tasting notes.

I hope you enjoy them even a fraction as much as I did the wines that inspired them. This was a fun tasting.

1966 Moët et Chandon Cuvée Dom Perignon, Champagne
A pure amber color in the glass, so pretty I wish I had taken a photo, this wine smelled of marzipan and brown sugar. As it was poured, it clearly still had some fizz, but by the time it hit my tongue they were just a faint trace of effervescence — like the prickles of goose bumps. On the palate, the wine was smooth and regal, with flavors of brown sugar, lemon, and a bit of nut skin on the finish that rolled long down the throat. This was a Dame Judy Dench of wines, remarkable in its poise, and while past its prime, clearly still vibrant and individualistic. Perhaps not as spectacular as I would have liked, but fascinating nonetheless. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

1961 Remoissenet Père et Fils “Tête de Cuvée″ Charmes-Chambertin, Burgundy
Light blood-red in the glass, this wine had a nose of roasted figs, raisins, and marinated olives. In the mouth it offered flavors of raisins, figs, dried currants, and tart cherries, gathered carefully in a fine silk scarf of texture. I expected this wine to be more complete and resonant than it was, and I suspect that this may have been an underperforming bottle. Score: around 9.

1966 Pierre Bouree Fils Charmes-Chambertin, Burgundy
Medium blood-red in color, this wine has a phenomenal nose of exotic vanilla beans, red miso paste, and wood smoke that I could have inhaled all evening. In the mouth it was simply gorgeous. Supple, smooth, sexy with flavors of caramel, redcurrant, flowers, and then a light pine-herbal note on the finish that rippled and grew into a solid meatiness of satisfaction. I actually wrote pork belly as a descriptor for this wine, so sumptuous and savory was the long aftertaste. Score: around 9.5.

1969 Felix Clerget “Les Rugiens Tête de Cuvée” Premier Cru Pommard, Burgundy
This wine was light ruby in color and sang to me from four feet away. There are some wines that make life hard, because after you have them, you don′t want to put anything else in your mouth for a while. This wine, with its nose of tart plum, redcurrant, and pine forest certainly did its best to convince me to sell all the wine I own and only buy properly aged Burgundy. And then when I put it in my mouth, it made me want to sell my car and my stereo and only buy properly aged Burgundy. Ethereal yet precise, the meaty, plummy flavors of this wine were skeined with a fine latticework of mint and chocolate crystalline flavor that didn′t really ever finish nuzzling my neck and whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Sigh. Score: between 9.5 and 10.

1976 Pierre Gelin “Les Hervelets” Pemier Cru, Fixin (Cote d′Or), Burgundy
Medium ruby in the glass with very little sign of fading at the rim from age, this wine has a funky nose of old socks and prunes. In the mouth it belies the funk on the nose a bit, but doesn’t manage to shake a sense of mustiness (though it was not corked) mixed with leather, raspberry, and tart redcurrant. Very interesting, if not unusual in quality, but not in a way that elevated it beyond queer. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

1976 Caymus Pinot Noir, Napa Valley
Light ruby-red in the glass (looking surprisingly youthful) this wine has a nose of leather and tart woodiness mixed with what can only be described as a mustard scent. In the mouth it was remarkably…..good! Raspberry, leather, and redcurrant flavors were beautifully integrated and delicate. They base jumped off the palate into a long free-fall of a finish that left me wondering what kind of Pinot Noir Napa could grow if it were only 10 degrees cooler. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

1976 Paul Jaboulet Aîné ‘La Chapelle’ Hermitage, Rhone Valley
Medium ruby in color, this wine has a pleasant nose of plum, cassis, and <unreadable>. It sits on the tongue with a soft weightiness, like a cat sleeping on your lap. Its primary flavors are of cherry, leather, cassis, and a low rumbling earthiness that we might call a purr, just to extend the metaphor into the finish. Score: around 9.

1983 Henri Gouges “Clos des Porrets-St.-Georges″ Premier Cru, Nuits-St.-Georges, Burgundy
Medium blood-red in the glass, this wine smells of roasted figs, dates, and fresh earth crumbled in a triumphant fist of flavors — light herbs, cherries, and chocolate assail the tongue, like an army of negligeed concubines pursuing a drunken, laughing monarch through the halls of a marble palace. It ain’t so sophisticated but hot damn, can I have some of that? Score: between 9 and 9.5.

1979 David Bruce Petite Sirah, San Louis Obispo County
A slightly muddy, dark garnet color in the glass, this wine smells of fine coffee grounds in the bottom of a recently emptied cup and a bit of eucalyptus. On the palate it is a stewed prune and roasted fig soup that fascinates in with its dark caramelized quality, but doesn′t end up truly satisfying, despite a long, resonant finish. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

1979 Sebastiani Petite Sirah, Sonoma County
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of figs and fresh prunes. In the mouth it fades quickly after hitting the palate, but not before offering some flavors of cherry compote and hints of black licorice. Academically interesting for its age, but not something I wanted to drink a whole lot of. Score: around 8.5.

1966 Schloss Rheinhartschausen “Erbacher Brühl” Riesling Spatlese, Rheingau, Germany
Pure, shining, yellow, yellow, yellow gold in the glass, this wine was an enigma of tropical flavors that shifted across a whole spectrum as it gobbled up air for two hours. I finally settled on it smelling like the flavors of jackfruit (rather than the smell, of course), but then I was left to try and peg what it actually tasted like, apart from crystalline, ringing, sunlight. Beautiful acids proved the wine could last another twenty years, and supported more tropical flavors of mango, jackfruit, and papaya, with just the tiniest hint of citrus zest dusted over the top. Lovely finish. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

Thanks Jack!!

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Levi Reiss)