Posts belonging to Category Carlton



Is It Spring Yet?

Izit Spring Yet? tBoW Finds a Secret Wine Shop with a Delicioso Red Burg!

What a long and wintry Spring it has been. Long. And Winterrrryyyyy. Normally tBoW would hunker down in his wine cellar with a screwpull and a couple of goblets. Or even better invite over some pals [ed. The Large? Mr Story? Dotoré? the Glass Jar??] and pull corks together.

secret spot in Truckee

But not this Winter/Spring. Everyone is rained out or washed away or buried under an avalanche. Dark times? Perhaps. Can this be remedied? Certainly. tBoW is already planning his sunny wine tasting [ed. aka The Tasting Story or a Storied Tasting] for some time in April or May; soon as the temp tops 80⁰ during sunlight and stays above 70⁰ after the sun goes down while the jazz is still playing.

Mrs. tBoW will make appetizers. Veggies will get grilled. And at some point fish and meat will hit the refurbished BBQ.

BUTTTTT…What will be on the tasting list? This is where the balance must be delicately struck.

Mr. Story is a wine tasting novice. He certainly is fond of THE grape and THE cheese. He welcomes a gentle hand to guide him in the ways of value. Mr. Story loves value as do all tBoW tasters. He shuns costly items in general. His nose is already developed for sniffing out the hyped-up cybersecurity patch. Now he must learn the ways of detecting hyped-up wines. tBoW tries to make that decision tree very simple. NO WINES OVER $20! [ed. Note the Large came up with the U20 and the U10 designation – wines under $20 and $10. Such is value!]

Of course, this rally cry must be adjusted for inflation. And the exceptional find. [ed> please continue]

secret wine shop on 111

The mission was to golf three times in three days. And play some poker at the local Native Peoples casinos. In between those activities we had hours to fill so we went to the Desert Wine Shop in Palm Desert on Highway 111 (can be a fun ride from downtown Palm Springs thru an endless rush of towns east all the way to La Quinta).

Desert Wine is exactly the kind of wine shop we love. Hole-in-the-wall stacked with cases that allow just enough room to walk and p-e-r-u-s-e. And bingo. We had a strike like a native rainbow down the Truckee River on the road to Reno!

2016 Domaine Gachot Monot Cotes De Nuits Village $35. Yes. It is a VALUE Burgundy. Imported by Kermit Lynch. Always consider the importer when gauging the pedigree. Kermit is always at or near the top of importers worth recalling. How good was this wine? Good enough I had to keep it away from host IGTY. Lush but not full. Swoozy but not zaftig. Balanced like Cardi B on a unicycle. Cherry side of flavors. Perfect weight. Tannins? Guess I missed that call. Just about perfect. So delicious tBoW could not recall his last red Burgundy this good [ed. tBoW has given up on white Burgs LINK]. How could I pay $35 for wine if it out of bounds on the price/value ratio? I called the shop Friday so I could grab what was left in the store – one bottle – on the way out of town. Find it and buy a case. Split it with me. Now I have to check in Kermit’s newsletter to see if he ever listed this luscious drink.

Willamette Valley VIneyards Pinot Noir Whole Cluster $20 (good as a U20). You will never read about hints in tBoW. As refreshing as liquid fruit salad in a glass, this wine is ruby in color and opens with lively aromas of ripe cherry, blackberry and cocoa with a hint of earthiness. IGTY served this as his GO-TO pinot. Actually quite delicious! And at this price point a real steal; three vineyards covering ~1500 acres; been going since 1970s. Read about them here.

Back to the desert…..Ring-a-ding-ding!!

The Unburgs – Enjoy Great Wine For Less

HOW TO ENJOY BURGUNDY FOR HALF THE PRICE

Every wine snob has had this moment: discovering wines from Burgundy; finding out premium wines are not necessarily heavy cabs from Napa with the large corpulent fruit, prices and ratings. Wines that are made from Pinot Noir, a grape that is not friendly to Napa. F-R-E-N-C-H wines with complicated labels one can hardly tell what is in the bottle. Hold on. One CANNOT tell what is in the bottle.

Dotore and tBoW were initiated together, bitten by a Burg-hound werewolf [there wolf!] while groveling at a holiday tasting party with dozens of long forgotten wines filling every inch of a 12 by 5 table in a basement/cellar beneath a food market. The market is gone. The big cabs are gone, we wish Parker’s ratings were gone. 100 point scores made no sense if labels could not be easily understood.

One cannot put a score on a Burg. You might as well try and saddle up a butterfly. Hold starlight in your hand. Have a lunch date with Sasquatch. Our wine lives immediately changed. Forever.

That was then. Today the cognoscenti know that Burgundy is elusive especially when trying to pair quality with value [ed. readers may harrumph here]. One way to beat the hustle is to buy the importer . . . maybe. Burgs are expensive and $30 and $40 bargains are . . elusive.

What to do? Drink wines that have not been tainted by 100 point scoring fools. Drink wines that are not from Burgundy – UnBurgs! [ed. readers may stand up and shout here!] The UnBurgs include Schiava, Alto Piemonte, Sicily, the Canary Islands. Corsica. And that other island off the Italian coast. These are wines from a PLACE; not one lone grape. Blended wines. Local, ancient. Light weight, lower alcohol, balanced (much of the time), distinctive.

The UnBurgs. Here are three wines that share similar qualities as the best value Burgs. And are fairly priced.

2014 Patrick Javellier Savigny les Beaunes Premier Cru blahblahblah. $40 at Total Yawn (aka Total Wine – $35 in Chicago today). It is just as likely to find that the decent bottle of wine found online at Total Wine is no longer sold [ed. Beronia 2009]. However, IGTY found it, bought this Javellier Savigny and brought it to the dinner party. Excellent flavors. Tasted like Burg. Would not mistake for Rioja or Oregon Pinot. Sucked it down.

2010 Ayres Ribbon Ridge Pinot Noir $20 at “winery in 2012” [$25 for 2015/16 in USA]: This held up really well. Won’t mistake this for Burgundy. But I will have another glass please. More full, more earthy. The old forest floor – pprrraaaaappp! tBoW went on a four or five year Oregon Pinot jag which was followed by a Mendocino Pinot jag. Searching for New World Burgundy? Fuggadaboudid. Does not exist.

One cannot find New World Burgundy because the grapes would have to come from Canada to come close to the Beaune fruit profile (forget the Nuits). And then the Canadian soil would not be right. Weather is getting very similar now. Nuff said there.

2008 San Francesco Antoniolo Gattinara $40 for the 2008 in Illinois, or $30 for the 2012 in New York/Joizy: You know you are getting close to Burgundy wine when the label becomes more obtuse and practically indecipherable. If the wine is white then it is likely German. But this is Burg-like from AltoPiemonte which is where tBoWfinally found Burgundy with the proper value/quality ratio. Like memorable Burgs the wine can take a bissel age. Balanced like Olga Korbut on the balance beam. Richness like KrisB in the market. Brimming with charm like IGTY himself.

If you must search for decent Burgundy wine [ed. we always will] then stay around Beaune and south. Look for wines imported by Rosenthal, Louis/Dressner, Kermit Lynch and Charles Neal. Should you feel you must spend more than $60 then look for wines imported by Becky Wasserman. Or consult your local REAL wine shop.

Halloween warm up from a true cohort of wine conno-sewers…

 

Most Wine is Bad. It’s True.

New World rack of bottles

New World rack of bottles in your nearest supermarket

The simplest truths are often the most obvious. At a recent tasting one of the Young ‘Uns asked how can she identify the best wine at Trader Joes. Young Un tasters such as PT8Y live on a budget and prefer to limit wine purchases to $10. Boom! The obvious truth was revealed. Buying decent wine at TJs requires knowledge that draws on several data sets. The easiest answer, it turned out, was – when in TJs – look for a Spanish or Italian label in the target price range. Avoid popular domestic labels. “You mean like Cupcake” she replied proving she already was onto the obvious truth. (more…)

The Wonder of Willamette Pinot Noir

Big Table Farm impressed

Big Table Farm impressed

We got our mission. Find the “Pinot in the City” event and taste the best of wines there. It was better than Disneyland. And when we were done, like Capt Willard grabbing Corporal Lance on his way out of the Montegnard stronghold, through the dazed tribesmen and ex-soldiers, Dotoré led tBoW away from the madness into a new hell. The afternoon was approaching 100 degrees; cooler than inside the grand ballrooms where the tasting had wound down.

We had driven far. Faced down native hordes. Exercised tradecraft. Fulfilled our mission. We were good soldiers. We fared better than Col Kurtz and the unfortunate water buffalo at the end of the great film. Auteurs may discuss how CGI will never capture the authentic horror of a live slaughter from multiple angles. Our attention was on the emblematic tasting we had just survived. (more…)

The Praedominium of Wine: a Passover Tale

Seige of Jerusalem

Seige of Jerusalem

The history of Jerusalem is beyond EPIC. No filmmaker has or will ever capture the full impact [ed. Kingdom of Heaven is decent]. Only a great modern biographer such as Simon Sebag Montefiore can do the story justice; pick up Jerusalem: The Biography.

Jerusalem is not the most ancient city nor is it necessarily the most historic although there would certainly be arguments on that point. It is without doubt the most holy city if for no other reason than three major inter-related religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – claim Jerusalem as their own but have been forced to share it for millenia. Neither Buddhism nor Hinduism have a Jones for Jerusalem. Think of Buddhism as the Riesling of important religions: alluring with its particular salvational purpose [ed. would you align Hindi with Chianti?]. Which brings me to wine worship. (more…)