PORT PORT PORT. Friday January 27, 2012 is International Port Day. Have a bottle somewhere in the cellar? Always wanted to try port? Here’s your big opportunity. Sip and tweet #PortDay
And yes, you CAN have it with chocolate.

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Stay Away: that was the first message I got from Chateau La Nerthe in the Southern Rhone area of France — in Chateauneuf du Pape, to be precise. On a wine trip there some years ago, it was clearly painful for them to have a few journalists admitted to this prestige domaine.

We were supposed to look around quietly, listen to a few words about the ancient vineyards we had traveled through, have a couple quick tastes and leave quickly and unobtrusively. Which we did. And I never thought much about the wines since that uncomfortable time. Or if I did, I mentally shrugged, remembering the wines as “not for the likes of us peons.”

So I was pretty surprised when I was recently invited to a luncheon in Boston featuring Chateau la Nerthe. I happened to be free, so I went over. And wow! The climate had really changed. New management? New attitude? Or was it that I was in the company of more salespeople today?

But as soon as I tasted the red wines, I didn’t care. Rich, luscious, balanced, powerful but at the same time elegantly crafted. The wines are blends of the traditional grapes of the area — grenache, syrah, mourvedre and cinsault – and they’ve been organic since 1998.

I looked up the pricing just now, and the average price for a bottle has been in the $40s for the past year or so, and I say: well worth it! On balance, drink vintages that are 3-8 years old to find them at their peak.

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On a cold winter night in New England, we warmed up at the historic home of Argentine natives Vera and Carlos, with Carlos’ empanadas accompanied by Malbec Rosés. Carlos made low fat empanadas, which some people (son Marcel) quibbled with – though the rest of us were pleased, given the amount of holiday cookies we’d already started consuming.
There were three roses, all different, and we were equally divided on our favorites. With the beef empanadas, I liked the simple 2011 Michel Torino, young and even a bit spicy in flavor. The 2010 Gauchezco was more layered, with citrus and minerality, and was an overall favorite of about a third of us.
Then came the 2010 Crios, with a thicker mouthfeel and raspberry notes. Once we saw the name of the legendary Susana Balbo, we knew we were in for a treat. But the most interesting element came during the dessert course: peel a tangerine, and its scent on your skin enhances each sip of her rosé.

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For some time, whenever anyone asks me for a really good Merlot recommendation, I’ve been saying “Bordeaux.” Too often, US Merlot wines are lacking…well… almost everything except fruitiness. I want a Merlot that tastes like well-made wine. That IS a well-made wine. And you have to go way up in price if you want to get that in the US. This week I opened a few different Merlots, and I started with the two lower-priced wines: both nicely crafted and both, surprisingly, $20 or under.
The first two were Bordeaux Supérieur wines. 2009 Chateau Timberlay: buttery, cheery, bright fruit aroma, with lightish tannins. Medium-light body up front but a more solid finish. The flavors deepened with food; great with a plain hamburger.
The 2009 Chateau de Bel “La Capitaine” was finely restrained in both its aroma and flavors. Mild dark cherry, cassis and some leather, backed by very nice tannins. Hamburger or steak would be great here.
Twomey’s 2007 Napa Valley Merlot is a prime example of a US Merlot I would recommend. Across between red and black fruits, nicely integrated tannins. Moderate finish with a hint of cinnamon in its wood notes. Needs to accompany a little more complicated dish than plain meat; a beef stew flavored with onions, carrots and wine does the job nicely. Price? You have to go up; this one averages about $45.
Moving on to a less common American wine, I found a lot more fruit. I had pulled out a 2004 Dr. Konstantin Frank Merlot from the Finger Lakes, and found it bursting with fruit, pleasant and easy-drinking; quite a nice accomplishment in a Merlot from this area. And when I just looked up the price, it seems to go for only around $16 — fun if you can find it.

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I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before that this was lacking.
Well, problem solved: the new Guide to the Wines of France is out in English. It’s by top wine critics Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve, who have both been prominent in their field for several decades. They have published this volume in French for many years; finally, we get to read it in English.

When I first started going to France a lot (about 10 years ago) I would run into Michel Bettane everywhere. In Alsace, in Bordeaux, in Champagne… He was always there at the winery, had just left, or was about to arrive. Luckily for me. I knew if he was around, this was a winery worth covering. And later, when I got up the nerve to talk with him, he actually answered my questions.

When you start reading Bettane and Dessauve’s new guide to French wines, you realize this isn’t about whether or not French people would favor their own wines over other countries’. It’s about men who have grown up in France, know the history of the wine regions, and can provide context for each winemaker as well as current evaluations of the wines.

One of the best parts of this book is also the worst part. It’s the front section of the book, where the authors talk clearly about wine in general and French wine in particular. This includes everything from wine labels and grapes to “How to Use this Guide.” Unfortunately, these pages were given to a designer who slapped these fascinating paragraphs into large, unreadable blocks of text: they look good on the page, but are impenetrable to a reader.

Design in the rest of the book is much more user-friendly. Divided into wine regions, each page contains short, pithy paragraphs about each winery’s history and how it fits into the region. These descriptions are followed by brief wine tasting notes, along with guidelines on when to drink both current and recent vintages.

This is a great book to pick up, after you’ve introduction to wine. Assuming the design flaws are corrected in future editions, I would recommend the Guide to the Wines of France as a great source for anyone who wants to delve a bit deeper into one country’s wine.

Bettane & Dessauve’s Guide to the Wines of France. By Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2011. $35.
F

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For me, it’s fascinating to see a wineglass, a decanter, a wine bottle that sat on a dining table hundreds of years ago. It might be plain and thick and unevenly shaped. It might be thin and delicate and rimmed with gold. At the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, I was fascinated by their elaborate collection of glassware, ranging from ancient through medieval to modern times.

Whether you like to think of yourself as a former king or a former peasant, you’ll be enthralled with this collection. All the more so, because it’s glass, and there are so few glass items in the world that have lasted this long.

Bonus: take a workshop and create your own glass piece. This photo is the interior of the pulled-glass flower I made one afternoon — with plenty of encouragement from a patient teacher at the museum.

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Climate project and wine guru Pancho Campo suggested this week that we might want to go back to the olden days of wine commerce. In order to avoid the tremendous amount of emissions caused by transporting crates of heavy wine bottles, we might want to return to the time when wine was shipped in bulk from the producer, and bottled in the city where it would be sold. Of course Campo didn’t put it exactly like this when speaking at Vinoble, the biennial sweet wine fair in Jerez, Spain; he simply put out a general call to rethink the wine industry’s carbon footprint.
Remember that only a few decades ago wine was still being shipped from France and Portugal to England, where it was bottled by local merchants like Harveys in Bristol (Sherry) and Berry Bros & Rudd in London (Bordeaux, etc.) before being sold their customers. Shipping was handled this way for hundreds of years. So now, do we really need to ship bottles that can weigh up to two pounds each? Except for Champagnes and sparkling wines which are finished in the bottle, maybe not.
For centuries, wine merchants — such as Berry Brothers and Harveys — were the guarantors of authenticity for the wines they sold. The custom of estate bottling wines which gathered steam during the 20th century is supposed to be a guarantee of authenticity. It also became a mark of prestige when in the 1920s Baron Philippe de Rothschild first used it to set his Bordeaux wines apart from the rest – and soon everyone followed his lead.
With the current technology for temperature-controlled, non-reactive shipping containers, would we now be better off bottling our wines at least in the country they are shipped to, if not in each individual city? Lighter bottles, screwcaps, tetrapaks and bulk wine in restaurants: all these methods of conveying wines to consumer can now be put in play. It’s started already. Champagne producers are cutting their bottle weights by 7% this year. In the UK, Berry Bros & Rudd is (again) supplying their labeled “Own Selection Wines” while in the US a few restaurants on the east and west coasts are reported to have wine on tap. Now, it’s up to the rest of us to decide how to save the planet – while sipping the wines of our choice, of course.

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I wonder if this is true elsewhere? Apparently, recession mentality bottomed out for NYC fine dining customers in the 4th quarter of 2009. Now diners are not afraid to show off anymore, if they have money.

Last week, Wine + Spirits’ Joshua Greene moderated a panel with top NYC restaurant sommeliers Levi Dalton of Alto, Beverage Director Juliette Pope of Gramercy Tavern and Head Sommelier Rajeev Vaidya of Restaurant Daniel.

High-end sommeliers are busy rearranging their winelists and letting some of the less expensive wines fall off. That’s not to say everything is sky-high: summer is coming, and typically people want lighter wines which are often less expensive. Vaidya will be looking toward Chablis, Riesling and other German whites, Italian whites and Rhone reds and whites. Dalton and Pope are expressing seasonality in their wine lists with moderately priced wines, too.

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Let’s see how the mini-barrel holds up over the next 39 days…

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Before you freak, let me just tell you my theory: you can’t be a great biodynamic wine maker unless you are a great winemaker.

If you’re a great wine maker, going biodynamic* can add a whole other dimension to your wines.  More aromatics, more flavor components, subtle structural and finishing elements.

I saw this again at yesterday’s “Return To Terroir” tasting, an annual event I attend sporadically.  There were great wines and not-so-great.  But this year, everyone seemed to feel biodynamic isn’t a gimmick any more. It’s a growing system for people who are passionate about their grapes, their vineyards and their wines – in a certain way.

Winemaker/farmer Mike Benziger calls biodynamic a natural “energy management system.”  Basically, I think he is successful by paying very close attention to his vineyards and treating them like an integral part of Mother Earth instead of like grape-growing machines.  Modestly, he claims that in starting to farm biodynamically, “the biggest change is in the farmer!”

*Want to know more about what biodynamics is – and isn’t? Jim Fullmer was at this tasting, too, bringing biodynamic bread, cheese, yogurt, etc.  He’s the exec director of the US branch of the biodynamic certifying organization Demeter http://www.demeter-usa.org/

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