Monthly Archives: January 2012

A little while back I wrote a post about a delightful tasting of small-batch wines organized by In Fine Spirits. Events like this can be amazingly helpful; tasting numerous wines in rapid succession can really clarify what it is you like in a wine. Then the next time you go into a wine shop, you can more clearly explain what you’re looking for (assuming you used the spit bucket occasionally, so that you actually remember what you like).

The other major benefit of wine tastings is meeting really fun, interesting people. At the In Fine Spirits tasting, I quite enjoyed the wines Ian of Vinejoy presented, we had a great chat, and he put me on his dinner party list. His wine company hosts periodic pot luck dinners in various atmospheric locations, gathering together wine geeks, chefs, friends and various other assorted folk.

A few weeks later, crock pot in hand, I descended into the old basement of Gentile’s Wine Shop on Taylor Street, where a bricked-up tunnel hinted at the space’s bootlegging past. Platters of delicious-looking food covered multiple tables, illuminated by the glow of Christmas lights hanging from the pipes and ducts.

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Riesling remains relatively unpopular in this country, and I must admit even I can sometimes be peremptorily dismissive of a glass of this variety myself. A lot of us associate the grape with cheap, sweet, insipid wines like Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch, and so when we drink a Riesling, even a very good one, it can be easy to just quaff it without paying attention.

It took me a while to learn this lesson: Pay Attention. There is a reason The Oxford Companion to Wine calls Riesling “arguably the world’s most undervalued…grape.”

Riesling is almost synonymous with German wine, but these days Austria produces some delightful expressions of this variety. In fact, Austrian wine has some of the strictest controls and regulations anywhere in the world, ensuring that when you get a Qualitätswein, Kabinett, Spätlese or Auslese, you are getting exactly the ripeness you expect and nothing less. (Listed in ascending order, these categories indicate the level of ripeness of the grapes at the time they are harvested.)

Just to keep things interesting, the Wachau Valley, Austria’s most famous wine region — and one of its very smallest, with only 3% of the country’s vineyards — eschews this system in favor of homegrown categories based on a wine’s alcohol content. The World Atlas of Wine explains this rather quirky (but thankfully simple) system:

Steinfelder is a light wine up to 11% alcohol for easy drinking. Federspiel is made from slightly riper grapes, 11.5-12.5% (stronger than it used to be), good in its first five years. Wines labelled Smaragd (after a local green lizard), can be seriously full-bodied, with alcohol levels above — often far above — 12.5%; they repay six or more years’ ageing.

We recently partook of the little green lizard, a 2007 Johann Donabaum Offenberg Riesling Smaragd. Johann Donabaum calls Offenberg its “most extreme [vineyard] location,” and goes on to explain how wines from this site, set a bit inland from the Danube, have a strong sense of terroir, particularly because of the soil’s slate content.

We opened the Riesling with a meal of cassoulet, a wonderful French stew of white beans and meat topped with a crunchy crust of butter-infused breadcrumbs. I love cassoulet with lardon, garlic sausage, rabbit and duck confit, but I made a simpler version substituting bacon, kielbasa, ground pork and braised chicken thighs. Still delicious, and ever so much easier. I hoped the Riesling could stand up to this rather robust stew.

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In a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to Congac, France, to participate in this year’s International Cognac Summit, hosted by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC). Each summit has a theme, and this year the focus is Women and Cognac.

One of the objectives of the summit, I’m told, is to “gather cocktails that appeal to women, identify key ingredients and possibly develop new cocktails geared towards the female audience.”

Certain cocktails, such as Cosmopolitans and chocolate martinis, would seem to have a stereotypically female following, and I suppose certain drinks tend to appeal to men (like Cognac, apparently). But why? Are our palates so different? Do delicate lady tongues really prefer sweet, frilly drinks? I don’t buy it.

But as a man, I don’t presume to know what women really truly want in their cocktails. So ladies, I’m asking: What do you want? When you’re presented with a cocktail menu, what makes you say, “Yes! That is the drink for me.” If you have a husband or boyfriend, do you think  your palate is different from his in any way?

It’s all too easy to let a special bottle languish in the wine rack, collecting dust for years, waiting for just the right special moment. And as that special bottle grows older, so too grows the amount of specialness a moment requires to justify opening it. It’s a specialness feedback loop which frequently ends in the slow, quiet death of the wine.

This loop can be all the more deadly when you lack a reliably cool cellar, as I do, and your wine suffers significant temperature fluctuations. One of my personal New Year’s resolutions, therefore, is to work my way through a substantial number of my “too special to open” wines.

I opened my first special bottle on New Year’s Eve, a good time to start work on my recommended resolution of drinking more sparkling wine. A golden-labeled bottle of non-vintage (NV) Michel Turgy Réserve-Sélection Blanc-de-Blanc Brut Champagne had provided a frisson of grandeur to my wine rack for years, but the “Sam’s Wines” sticker on the back indicated it had been too many (Sam’s Wines was unfortunately bought out by Binny’s in 2009). I hoped it wasn’t already too late.

In a moment of rather extravagant optimism, I purchased this wine for about $50, wanting a memorable bubbly on hand in case I had something really fantastic to celebrate. Though people make delicious sparkling wine all over the world, I must admit Champagne still has the edge in my book. What attracted me most to this particular bottle was the the little “RM” in front of the serial number on the bottom of the label. These initials stand for récoltant-manipulant, meaning this Champagne was produced by the grower of the grapes (you can read my post about grower Champagnes here).

At the time, I didn’t even realize that this grower, Michel Turgy, has vineyards in one of the most desirable areas of the Champagne region, around the grand cru village of Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger in the Côte de Blancs, just south of Epernay. The Côte de Blancs achieved grand cru status relatively recently in 1985, but the wines produced from its grapes “have become the most sought-after wines in the whole of Champagne,” according to The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia. It goes on to note that Côte de Blancs wines “contribute finesse and delicacy yet they mature to an unequaled intensity of flavor.”

Sensible Michel Turgy indicates the village of le Mesnil-sur-Oger as well as its grand cru status on the label, but it’s rare to see the words “Grand Cru” or “Premier Cru” (the next-higest designation) on a bottle of Champagne. The World Atlas of Wine declares, with slight inaccuracy, that “it is never mentioned on the labels.” Why would the French want to make it easy for us? If you seek a grower Champagne from a grand or premier cru vineyard, your best bet is to look for the name of a notable town. Cramant and Avize are the two other Côte de Blancs villages to watch out for.

I poured the Champagne into my friends’ glasses with some trepidation, hoping my apartment’s lack of central air conditioning hadn’t given the wine a case of heat stroke. Its bright straw-yellow color lifted my spirits, and when I lifted the glass to my nose, I smelled the sweet smell of relief in the form of apples and little white flowers. The elegantly tiny bubbles felt delicate on the tongue, and the lively acids hinted at by the nose balanced the rich flavors of caramel corn and a bit of toast. The finish lasted almost until midnight.

What a joy to drink such a splendid wine. As charming as special wines like this look on the rack, they taste even better, and are best when shared with a few good friends.

Cheers to the beginning of the New Year, cheers to the ending of my “too special to drink” collection, and cheers to those wonderful moments of extravagant optimism.

SUMMARY

NV Michel Turgy Réserve-Sélection Blanc-de-Blanc Brut Champagne: This 100% Chardonnay sparkler featured beautiful bubbles and rich flavors balanced by lively acids. Not inexpensive, but a very good value nevertheless.

Grade: A

Find It: MacArthur Beverages in Washington D.C. currently has this Champagne on sale for $35 plus shipping.