Articles

5/31/11 - We are very happy to have received our first shipment of wines from the talented and energetic Julien Guillot at the Domaine des Vignes du Maynes. The vineyards of this superb estate belonged to the Abbey of Cluny and date back to at least 900 AD. The top cuvèes, including the Macon-Cruzille "Aragonite," Bourgogne Rouge "Cuvèe Auguste" and Macon-Cruzille "Manganite" are certainly among...

5/30/11 -  (Jacques Beaufort) Chambers Street is proud to offer the unique Champagnes of A & J Beaufort, made with organically-grown grapes from grand cru vineyards in Ambonnay, and other parcels in Polissy, in the Aube. These are complex, full-bodied wines, fermented with wild yeasts and bottled after very long sur-lie aging. "We keep our wines sur-lie as long as possible before release, so...

5/17/11 - (Vineyards in Rioja Alavesa) Rioja came to town last week. There is a lot to talk about in the region right now, as well as a lot to be really excited about. At times it has seemed easy to write off Spain’s most important wine region as stale, entrenched, and drowning in vanilla big business antics, not to mention poor viticulture and...

5/7/11 - (Photo: Michel Digoia in a room full of Chambolle) My visit to Michel Digioia was, along with my visit to Cecile Tremblay, one of my favorites of this last trip. At the domaine, we first passed through a very small courtyard with enough room to park a couple of cars and maybe a step van, then ducked down beneath the limestone lintel...

5/05/11 - (Another kind of Pet-Nat) There are nights, and many a warm sunlit afternoon, when uncomplicated effervescence is called for.  That is when a salivating petillant naturel hits the spot. The making of Pet-Nat has multiplied among some of our favorite vignerons over the last few years. The process (sometimes referred to as methode ancestrale) foregoes the introduction of cultured yeast and sugar...

4/16/11 - (Cecile in her vines) One of the highlights of my recent trip to Burgundy was a visit to a relatively new producer, the upcoming and soon to be famous Cecile Tremblay. She is very bright, energetic, athletic, and the first member of her family to become a vigneronne. Cecile’s great-grandfather, Edouard Jayer, was a cooper in Nuits-Saint-Georges and uncle of the renowned Henri Jayer....

4/13/11 - (Photo: La Clarine Farm Goats) When you get your first taste of an honestly made wine of Californian provenance, you might scratch your head and wonder, “New World? No. Old World? No. Hmmm.” Repeat and answer the question enough times and, like us, you’ll be driven to explore what is real and un-manipulated from the north to south coast. On that quest...

4/9/11 - Bergrettung! An impossible to pronounce term? A ludicrously overplayed piece by Mozart? A clumsy oaf? No, it’s none of those things! It’s actually the kind of project we love here at Chambers Street Wines, a small group of growers (eleven to be precise) that have banded together to preserve steep hillside vineyards in one of Germany’s most historic districts, the Mosel.  The...

4/7/11 - This Saturday, April 9th, Ryan Looper of T. Edward Wines will be joining me to pour selections from our trip to the region of Jerez. The wines of Jerez de la Frontera, San Lucar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa Maria are, and always will be, amongst the greatest wines in the world, wines that seem to defy trends in taste, wines...

4/06/11 - (Photo: Marie-Noel Ledru with her cat) What does it mean to go beyond grower Champagne, to cultivate a more “natural” Champagne section, without being dogmatic or sacrificing the playful charm that makes Champagne such a compelling beverage? This is a region associated with large scale production “houses,” negociants, wealth, opulence, method over terroir, etc... How do we find farmers in Champagne who...

3/30/11 - (Benito Santos' Limestone Pagos de Bemil Vineyard) A stone’s throw from the Atlantic grow the vines of Rias Baixas, a noble terruno* where the green grape Albarino flourishes on granite, sand, and limestone soils.  Over recent years, big money interests from all over Spain, with trained enologists in tow, have flocked to Rias Baixas to chase either the next one-hit-wonder Albarino, or...

3/23/11 - (Healthy vines in Chablis) Thomas Pico of Domaine Patte Loup (The Wolf’s Paw in French) is the next name for Chablis buffs to note. He inherited 2.4 hectares of high elevation Chablis vines in 2005, and promptly decided to rebel against his family’s tradition of high yields and machine harvesting. He now tends the vines and makes the wines in a manner...

3/21/11 - (Grumello. This image doesn't really show how steep this vineyard is.) The Valtellina is a spectacularly beautiful mountain valley in the foothills of the Alps – just south of the Italian/Swiss border. It’s a traditional place for Nebbiolo grapes; the local wines aren’t generally as structured and powerful as Barolo or Barbaresco, but the few best examples can offer fabulous drinking; old,...

3/14/11 - Our esteemed colleague John Beaver Truax has been in Burgundy for the last two weeks – working hard, I assure you. With perfect timing he has just sent the following report of his visit to Fourrier, dated Friday, March 11th: “I have had the great opportunity taste in Burgundy again and I have been tasting the 2009 vintage, some 2010's and revisiting...

3/09/11 - As exciting as it is to introduce our customers to fantastic and perhaps under the radar Jura growers such as Jean-Francois Ganevat, it is equally rewarding to remind our readers of a paradigm grower, Jacques Puffeney, whose wines have created a high standard for the region of Arbois and have been gracing our shelves for years. Puffeney’s wines inspire adoration that begins...