Articles

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...

9/13/2008 -

8/19/2008 - Champagne Tarlant has a long history as a grower-producer - for 12 generations the Tarlant family has been cultivating wine grapes, and making Champagne for 5 of those starting in 1911. Their 13 hectares are concentrated around Oeuilly and Boursault and Celles le Conde, and are cultivated according to organic methods, with the purpose of sustaining the health and biodiversity and of...

8/16/2008 - (Chateau de Coulaine, rebuilt in the 15th century) During our recent trip to the Loire Valley we were fortunate to taste with Pascale and Etienne de Bonaventure of Chateau Coulaine. Situated in Veron, terroir praised by Rabelais, the estate has been producing wine since 1300. Etienne and Pascale took over the wine-making in 1988, enlarged the property, converted it to organic viticulture,...

7/28/2008 - (Bockenau - where Tim Frohlich lives and makes wine) Lots of exciting stuff in German land. I am leaving for Germany on Sunday to visit a number of estates in the Mosel and Nahe including Haag, Donnhoff, Schaefer, Knebel and Prum and to say the least I am very excited. When I get back those lovely Rudi Wiest imported German wines will...

7/25/2008 - (Robinot at La Dive Bouteille 2008 in Deauville) Jean-Pierre Robinot was a wine writer (Le Rouge et le Blanc) and wine-bar owner in Paris before returning to his native village, near Tours, where he acquired a dozen hectares in Jasnières and Coteaux du Loir. His passion is natural wine-making - he farms organically and vinifies with minimal sulphur and his yields are limited...