Articles

2/14/2009 -    It turns out that the rarest wines in the world are not the most expensive: you can find Petrus or Romanee Conti all over the place, but other wines that age fabulously, like old Chinon, or Bandol, or Gruner Veltliner are virtually impossible to find. The low release prices for these wines is the primary factor in their early consumption, as...

12/19/2008 - (Agnes Foillard at Deauville) All wine geeks and Beaujolais fans know of the Gang of Four - great Morgon producers imported by Kermit Lynch - Breton, Thevenet, Foillard and Lapierre. We at Chambers Street Wines have drunk countless bottles of these wines at differing points in their evolution and have loved them all (well, most of them, anyway…).  Last February at the...

12/2/2008 - For Thanksgiving I had an absolutely lovely bottle of the 2006 Rene Bouvier Marsannay “En Ouzeloy.” I was amazed at how fresh and delcious it was! I have had many versions of Roty’s Marsannay “En Ouzeloy” and it has always been tight, austere and in need of aging.  The Bouvier wines are completely different. Juicy and suave with lovely spice and velvety...

11/20/2008 - (Dominick, Lyle, Roman) Last February I went to Germany with David Weitzenhoffer, president and CEO of Acid Inc, a small boutique wine importing company  our goal was to come back with the best estate not available in New York. Well, we did. Through a combined effort we managed to get Van Volxem back into the New York market. Terry Thiese used to...

11/12/2008 - It’s important for us fans and fanatics to learn about how a wine is made, but walking through vineyards with a grape grower is generally much more interesting than visiting another cellar full of steel vats and barrels. In the vines most growers are very much at ease, and they love to talk about their methods, the nuances of each plot and...

11/10/2008 - (Vincent Rapet pouring Jean-Marie de Champs some delicious 1988 Corton) On my recent visit to Burgundy the highlight of the tastings was the wine of Roland Rapet. Roland Rapet is the name of the estate but Vincent is the winemaker and proprietor. The 2005's were stupendous, and in many cases his 2006's are not as showy, but they express more terroir while...

11/08/2008 - The 2005 Cuvèe Lehengoa from Domaine Etxegaraya was a thrilling wine but pundits and politicos say that this wine is even better in 2006. Well they are right. It's about time they got something write. The region this wine hails from is called Irouleguy and is one of the more important regions in Southwest France and Domaine Etxegaraya is one of the...

11/7/2008 - Pascal and Francois Cotat make some of the most legendary Sauvignon Blancs in the Loire Valley and we've received a nice sized allocation of the 2007's.  These wines are the peak of Sancerre and their famous sites Les Monts Damnes, La Grand Cote and Culs de Beaujeu performed as expected in 2007. These vineyards are on the vein of Kimmeridgian marl (as...

10/29/2008 - Last winter we accompanied the folks at Louis/Dressner Selections on a ramble through Normandy and discovered the wonderfully delicious ciders of Julien Frémont. Monsieur Frémont works on a breathtakingly beautiful farm in the Pays d’Auge, Calvados, a place where cows and apple trees have defined the landscape for more time than can be remembered. It is green, lush, softly hilly, the soil rich clay...

10/27/2008 - A listing in the new environmentally-friendly website Greenopia got us to thinking about which wines are called "organic" and what that really means. We noticed that many wine stores list a very high percentage of organic wines, but upon closer examination, most of the wines listed as organic on their websites are not. Many appear to be estates practicing "sustainable" agriculture, without...

10/25/2008 - Happily, there is no departure here with this vintage in terms of terroir expression. The attractive nose shows pillow-y aromas of bright blue-raspberry fruits, black pepper, earth, and subtle hints of orange zest and sea salt. These flavors are echoed on the light to middle weight palate with suave tannins leading into a beautiful and supple finish of focused berry fruits, granite...

10/21/2008 - Guiseppe Rinaldi & Brovia, 2004 Here you have two of the greatest names in Italian wine; both make traditional Barolo that is understated, elegant, long-lived wine, not flashy but classic expressions of exceptional vineyard sites. Both performed brilliantly in 2004. Rinaldi has a cult-like following, in part because very little wine is made, and much of that is immediately sold to local...

10/20/2008 - To borrow some commonly used rhetoric these days, the 2005 wines from Patrick Bize are game-changing wines. Burg-heads and wine geeks agree that Bize has always been the top guy in Savigny; for our palates Bize has true soul and unique character. He has some of the choicest 1er Cru's in the village including Aux Vergelesses, Les Fourneaux and Les Serpentieres. Bize...

10/10/2008 - When David Lillie and I tasted these wines at La Dive Bouteille in February 2008 we were very happy, and you’ll be even happier to see the reasonable prices of these fantastic natural wines. The Schuellers have been a force in the French natural wine movement for many years and work with bio-dynamic principles in the vineyard, but they are not certified...

9/15/2008 - We scarcely believed it either, but big, juicy cheeseburgers seemed a good enough reason to try the latest release from Michael Dashe: 2007 Zinfandel L'Enfant Terrible. First, what it is not: it is not crazy high in alcohol (13.8%), not over-extracted, not jammy, and does not taste like cough-syrup. So what is it?  It's startlingly good: something like good Zweigelt, with the...