Articles

1/14/15- Good news seems to be in short supply these days, but the arrival of great new wines from Domaine de la Pépière is certainly something to celebrate. Our friend Marc Ollivier has given us many beautiful wines over the last twenty-five years and he has added two more brilliant Muscadets that belong in your cellar. 2012 was an outstanding but very low-yielding vintage...

1/12/15 - "2012, A beautiful vintage, very fine" says Sylvie Esmonin. "In 2012 we had a tiny harvest. We had a rigorous winter with 15 days below freezing, a variable Spring with a bit of frost, a cool period during the flowering, then coulure and millerandange (poor and irregular fruit set), a bit of hail on June 30th and a summer with a strong...

12/16/14 - The Calvados made by Camut is the Cadillac of Calvados. This might sound like a gimmick or hyperbole, but this 7th generation estate brought Calvados from the bars of Normandy to the most swank, white tablecloth restaurants in Paris. Like good wine, good Calvados starts on the farm and only great quality apples will make remarkable spirits. The orchards at Camut are...

12/08/14 - Armagnac: fiery, outdated hooch from the days of old or under-the-radar value for lovers of rich, terroir-focused spirits? The answer is probably a bit of both. Like the grower Champagne revolution currently taking place on the other side of France, the best Armagnacs come from small farmer/producers or micro-négociants with longstanding contracts with producers who are often too small in scale for...

12/5/14 - Swabia – the southwest corner of Germany – is the birthplace of Schiller and Hegel as well as inventors and industrialists like Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch. There is an old phrase that reflects the somewhat grim natural conditions there: ‘Viel Steine gibts und wenig Brot’ (We have many stones and little bread). The struggle to overcome the region’s historically scarce resources...

12/02/14 - Over the years we’ve approached each of Frank’s new vintages with excitement, suspense and perhaps a grain of trepidation. We first tasted the wines about eight years ago – they were vinous rollercoasters with thrilling loops and dives, but sometimes a bit turbid and showing some volatility. Frank always does things his own way: organic viticulture, native fermentation, no oak influence, and...

11/12/14 - Bourbon, Bourbon, Bourbon. As we enter prime whiskey season, everyone focuses on America’s most famous of spirits, but maybe we should consider other types of whiskey. Heaven Hill’s master distiller Craig Beam is the hero of our story (against expectations, he does not work for the distillery that shares his last name). There are only two recipes for bourbon at Heaven Hill,...

11/11/14 - There is a renaissance in American cider, with new growers and producers working hard to bring it back to its former glory, producers who are going the extra mile to make ciders that speak not only of the variety of apple (there are more than 14,000 varieties in the U.S. alone), but of true terroir. We are proud to feature a pair...

11/6/14 - (Jean-Charles Maire) We were lucky enough to meet and taste with Jean-Charles Maire at Domaine du Pont de Breux in the Spring of 2013 and finally his brilliant wines have arrived at Chambers Street! In his own words "The domaine was created in 1992, situated in the communes of Marnoz and Salins-les Bains. It consists of 4 hectares of vines and 16...

11/02/14 - (Happy vines at Domaine Roland Pignard, Morgon) Weather conditions in French vineyards during the 2012 growing season were far from easy, with cool, wet conditions from mid-Spring to late summer bringing mildew and oidium, not to mention hail in many areas, lowering yields by 50% or more. Better weather in late August and September, however, permitted the harvest of clean, mature fruit...

10/29/14 - The more we explore southern Italy and its historic regions, the more we find to be excited about. This week’s obsession: Cirò! This is Calabria’s crown jewel of wine production and perhaps the only wine from Calabria found easily in the United States; we just had a customer stop by to source a bottle from the Melissa zone in Calabria; we had...

10/28/14 - (Tasting with Lino Maga. Barbacarlo ages very well.) It seems that there’s been a of renewal of the wines of the Alto Piemonte, the wine district near Milano that includes Gattinara and Ghemme, and the even smaller Boca, Bramaterra, Fara, and Lessona. In New York we’ve had the fine wines from Vallana, of course, and Le Piane, and Conti, but the region...

10/22/14 - I am French, I taste for a living, and I recently rediscovered wine. After years learning about wine and tasting bucket loads of the stuff - from the cheap and cheerful to bottles worth a building in some parts of the world - I seem to have come full circle. All I want is real, delicious, natural wine. -Isabelle Legeron MW MW...

10/20/14  (Julien Guillot, Winemaker and Musician?) We've just received a small additional shipment of the 2012 vintage from the dynamic Julien Guillot, as well as his beautful sparkling wines and a small allocation of the wonderful 2013 Cuvée 910! The vineyards of the Clos des Vignes du Maynes belonged to the Abbey of Cluny and date back to at least 900 AD and it...

10/17/14 -  (Ricardo and Maria Bianco in their vines, May 2014.) Moscato has become a top-selling wine in the US, threatening to overtake the mighty Chardonnay and the even mightier Pinot Grigio; we had a look at the website of a big store upstate, and they offer 136 different bottlings of Moscato! The wine – fizzy and sweet – is credited with helping to...