After a week tasting the great 2010 vintage Bordeaux wines en primeur, it’s no wonder I look like this!
Click here for a preview of the wines of:
Sauternes + Barsac
Graves region
St.-Emilion and Pomerol
The Medoc
Tags: 2010, 2010 vintage, Barsac, en primeur, Graves, Medoc, Pomerol, Sauternes, St.-Emilion, wine Bordeaux
Sort of a cliché, but on St. Patrick’s Day while waiting for our corned beef and cabbage dinner to finish cooking, I got out the Irish whiskey. In this case, a special bottle: Bushmills 1608, created to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the original license to distill in the Bushmills area.
It’s a smooth whiskey (due in part to the “crystal malt”) that evolves in the glass. First you notice the spicy wood and sweet caramel which continue from the nose into the flavor of the tangy whiskey. A bit of water added to the glass emphasizes the aroma’s sweetness and caramel.
Drop an ice cube in, and the drink tastes smoky.
Smoothness and wood spice dominate in the finish.
This limited edition whiskey was available in the US in 2008; now you can only get it at the distillery — yet another reason to visit Ireland.
Tags: Bushmills, Bushmills 1608, Irish, Visit Ireland, whiskey
One of my favorite things about Bertani, the Amarone producer, is that they make available their vintage Amarones from just about any year in the last half-century. Anyone can order one through the distributor, and the prices are in the $$ hundreds, not $$$ thousands – great for celebrating special occasions.
Recently, soft-spoken Bertani winemaker Cristian Ridolfi stopped in Boston for lunch, on his way back to Italy. Bertani produces a total 1.5 million bottles (125,000 cases) of about a dozen different wines all from their own vineyards. They don’t buy and they don’t sell fruit, emphasized export manager Stefano Mangiarotti, who was also at this lunch. But they could easily produce more than twice this amount of wine from their vineyards, if they weren’t so highly selective.
Bertani has not made any major changes in their winemaking since they started producing Amarone in the mid-twentieth century. Ridolfi still dries the grapes for 120 days, not just the required 90. He is convinced that this is what accounts for the longevity of the Bertani Amarone wines. Incidentally, he has also found that the anti-ageing compound resveratrol doubles in these grapes in the 120 days.
He is doing one bit of experimentation, this with the large wooden casks the Amarone matures in for six years. The winery is in trials with chestnut, acacia, and possibly more cherry wood, all sourced locally.
Ridolfi brought several Bertani wines, and several vintages of Amarone della Valpolicella DOC: 2003, 1998, 1980 and 1967. His favorite, he admitted was the 1967. Mine was the 1980. Bursting with life, this 30-year-old wine had huge fruit aromas. It actually smelled young. There was some minerality, a hint of bitterness to show that there was some structure here. The wine’s fruit flavors were well developed, continuing with prune and plum into the finish. Later, I found fresh herbs and a bit of eucalyptus coming out. Suggested retail price is $230.
The most astounding thing happened at the end of the meal. We had just finished our espressos when someone called for a toast. After raising a glass, a sip from it is required, so I did. And this wine from 1980 flashed out its flavors, firm with fruit, even after the coffee. I was impressed.
Tags: 1967, 1980, 1998, 2003, Amarone, Amarone della Valpolicella, Bertani, Cristian Ridolfi, Stefano Mangiarotti, wine
Having just returned from the annual Sicilia en primeur event, I find myself swimming in impressions about what’s happening on this island. Or is it a continent on its own? The further from the mainland you get, the more you feel you’re on a separate continent, a crosswind of cultures set out in the Mediterranean Sea, the center of the ancient world. Every province has its own character, and the wines are no exception.
The newest standout is Etna, the province around the volcano, where wineries are springing up in this unique terroir, the winemakers lured by altitude, independence and potential. With red wines, producers make a range from international to modern unoaked to ancient styles.
The white wines of Etna really stood out to me, their aromatics, crispness and minerality providing a vivid expression of the volcanic soils the grapes are grown in.
Nearby is Sicily’s only DOCG: Cerasuolo di Vittoria, the wine a blend of nero d’Avila and frappato, two indigenous red grapes. The DOCG was created in 2005, and the wines I was tasting were well thought out, and well made. Nicely balanced. This blend is traditional to this part of Ragusa, in southeastern Sicily, but now that’s been made official, it’s changing – inevitably, I suppose.
From a native wine that was on the light side, ready to drink within a year, with the “cherry” notes its name evokes, the gravitas of the DOCG label is beginning to weigh the wine down, causing producers to think and rethink, to work on making it bigger and heartier. Instead of a wine that may age, pretty soon we may find this wine requires ageing.
Is this a good idea? Not necessarily. But it might be necessary if producers want to charge more now that they have that DOCG label around the neck of the bottle.
FOR MORE, listen to me on iwineradio.com
Tags: Cerasuolo di Vittoria, DOCG, Etna, frappato, nero d'Avila, Ragusa, Sicilia en primeur, Sicily, wine
Listening to people making plans for Vinitaly – the frighteningly large, annual Italian wine fair in Verona — reminds me that I met the organizers, CEO Giovanni Mantovani and Stevie Kim in New York this winter.
Along with Cristina Mariani-May of Banfi and Marilisa Allegrini of Allegrini Wines, they co-hosted fundraising events that culminated in a donation of $40,000 to the American Cancer Society. To mark the occasion, we all got to go to NASDAQ to ring the closing bell that day. I was thrilled!
Here I am, the 4th head from the right (blonde, with purple scarf)
Tags: Allegrini wines, American Cancer Society, Banfi, Cristina Mariani-May, Marilisa Allegrini, NASDAQ, wine
What’s going on in Burgundy right now? Here’s a photo Alex Gambal sent of the first day’s work in one of his newly-acquired vineyards – in the areas of Batard-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.
He also bought a house “on the square in Santenay that will be turned into a guest and rental residence.” Hoping it’s ready next time I get to Burgundy…
Tags: Alex Gambal, Batard-Montrachet, Burgundy, Chassagne-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, Santenay, wine
I’m trying to remember the story of these little glasses. They came from the apartment of my friend’s mother. It was a pre-war co-op on Central Park West, always decorated in the earthtones she loved, mid-century modern with a 1960s artistic overlay. When the décor was new, I picture these glasses stowed in the freezer with the vodka, to be brought out when the opera singers and artists gathered there late at night, after a performance. They’d toss down shots of a clear, authentic Russian liquor, its harshness only tamed by over-chilling.
Now we have vodkas so distilled and/or flavored we mix them like chemists into dozen-ingredient cocktails. Tonight, for some reason, I brought out this glass for Absolut Wild Tea. It seemed like a sipping type of vodka, moderately flavored with oolong tea and elderflower. It has some sweetness but allegedly no sugar.
Now, if I could only figure out how to get a tiny ice cube into this glass…
Tags: 1960s, Absolut, Absolut Wild Tea, Central Park West, mid-century modern, pre-war co-op, vodka
Just caught up with Chateau Roubine’s Valerie Rousselle today at the “Provence in the City” aka Rosé wines tasting in Boston. In addition to her “new name” (as she describes her divorce) she has several new wines and a charmingly renovated, rentable house on the property, “in the midst of the vines,” she says. And there are cooking classes on Tuesdays.
Or if you only have a day in the area, feel free to bring your own picnic and spend a few hours on a self-guided tour of the vineyard, including the ancient Roman road that runs through the property.
I recall a wonderful dinner there some years ago, with guests as charming as the wine. The vineyards are sustainable, and to further cut down on the necessity for sulfites, they harvest at night, beginning at 2am in order to finish before the early fall heat of Provence takes over during the day.
Valerie is also planting more of the indigenous Tibourin grape, which is featured in her 2010 “Inspire” Cru Classé Côtes de Provence – 80% Tibourin, 10% Clairette, 10% Rolle — a touch smoky, deepening garden aromas, and plenty of body with lemony finish, a good food wine.
Tags: Chateau Roubine, Clairette, Cotes de Provence, Provence, Provence in the City, Rolle, Rose, rose wine, Tibourin, Valerie Rousselle
I like the way marketing spirits and wines is changing. Instead of summoning the press to a morning seminar or mid-afternoon comparison tasting, some companies are demonstrating the way their wines or spirits fit into our lifestyle. They’re doing this especially for younger bloggers, I think, but it works for me.
Last week I went along to a dinner at Mooo
in Boston, where the menu said we were “Guests of The Macallan Scotch.” And we were – guests.
Upon arrival, we were offered glasses containing small pours of The Macallan 17-year-old. We stood and chatted, nibbling appetizers, meeting the other guests.
After a time we sat down to dinner, and several entrée choices. We drank red or white wine with our meal, depending on our own preferences.
We ate, we conversed, we sipped our wines: it was a dinner party.
After the meal, there was another offering of several Macallan single malts — each in a different glass to avoid confusion. Along with more of the 17, a few mouthfuls each of the 12-year-old, 18-year-old, and finally the 25-year-old.
Instead of spending the evening analyzing and scribbling tasting notes, I relaxed and got to know some of the other people at the table. Then I sipped and considered the scotches.
The sum total of my notes for the evening was a short observation from early in the meal: “When I think of Scotch I think of earthtones, of mushrooms and brown things.”
My favorite? The smooth 25-year-old. I can remember that without copious jottings in a notebook.
A good lifestyle lesson, I’d say.
Tags: Boston, mooo, Scotch, single malt, The Macallan
