16
Mar
2011
0

A great read: Natalie MacLean, ‘Red, White and Drunk All Over’

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Sometimes you can tell a book by its cover, or at least its title. Case in point: Natalie MacLean’s “Red, White and Drunk All Over,” which is as charming and disarming as one would expect from a book thusly named.

Deftly juggling interviews with winemakers, merchants and writers with sensuous sojourns to Burgundy, MacLean makes her wine journey personal but not overly about herself. The result is a work with broad appeal, as she neither writes down to novices nor up to experts, thanks to a sparkling wit and “don’t-take-this-too-seriously” approach.

“I’d love to say that I was born with an uncanny palate, but I was just born thirsty,” she writes, later noting, “Much as I’m drawn to its nuances, I wouldn’t be writing about wine if it weren’t for the buzz. I love the way a glass of wine makes me feel — invigorated and animated, released from my natural shyness.”

Here’s what I wrote in the Star Tribune upon the book’s release:

“There’s a good bit of fodder for oenophiles — green harvesting, terroir talk, decanting dos and don’ts — but MacLean nimbly places those passages into a broader tableau. She is inexorably drawn to people who prefer to view wine as a pleasure rather than something to be deconstructed to death, who understand that “˜how a wine tastes is different every time you try it,’ depending on the mood, the food, the company and the evolution of the juice.

“With an uncommon dollop of common sense, she writes about how stocking a wine cellar is different from other collecting pursuits because it “˜is as much about letting go as it is about gathering in.’ And why a special wine with a great bouquet is an utterly unforgettable experience (“˜smells are routed directly to the areas of the brain responsible for emotions and memories’). And why tart wines are the most versatile at the dinner table (“˜acidity is the salt of wine; it brings forward the flavor of both the wine and food’). 

In short, she’s an engaging and entertaining tour guide on this wine journey that has grabbed a-hold of so many of us.

16
Mar
2011
0

A great read: Rick Kushman, ‘A Moveable Thirst’

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Rick Kushman was one of the nation’s best TV critics before turning his attention to wine. The skills needed for writing about both topics jump off every page of “A Moveable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in Wine Country.”

Displaying a sense of humor worthy of a “Simpsons” writer and the stamina of someone who has made it through a dozen bad miniseries, Kushman chronicles a year of visiting each and every tasting room in the Napa Valley.

The travelogue that unfolds over the book’s first half features a jeroboam-load of interesting characters and experiences, as Kushman and Sacramento wine buyer Hank Beal blanket America’s most renowned wine region.

The book’s second half includes seriously detailed capsules on 141 wineries, down to such all-important details as the availability of spit buckets, plus the kind of back stories that wine enthusiasts relish.

While some tasting rooms have opened and others have closed (RIP, Chateau Potelle) since the book’s publication, it’s still a timely, lively volume, easily the best Napa travel guide I’ve come across. (Full disclosure: Since the book’s publication, Kushman and I have become friends and occasional quaffing mates.)

In serving as “the enthusiastic idiot” to Beal’s serious expert, Kushman not only makes readers want to go to Napa but provides immeasurable help for those who decide to do so.

5
Mar
2011
0

On the newsstands/Interwebs now (March 2011)

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This is a great time to be not only drinking but reading about hearty red wines from California.

It was a delight to see a young winemaker on the cover of the latest Wine Spectator, especially since it is Saxum’s Justin Smith (left), whose lusty, ultra-expressive wines I adore. Several articles cover California’s success with Rhone varietals (never mind all those wineries that have stopped making syrah because no one would purchase buy it; as Homer Simpson would say, “stupid buying public!”).

The March 31 issue also includes nice pieces on beer-food pairing and great values in Chile.

Oh, and one gigantic snafu: James Laube’s front-of-the-book column “Knights’ Day is Coming,” a paean to the Knights Valley region, landed three pages after a two-page ad for Beringer’s Knights Valley cab, with most of the type devoted to that AVA. Laube also praised the wine in his column (and not without reason; it is consistently a great value).

Now I’m not claiming that anything untoward went down here. But given past assertions that the glossy wine mags provide favorable coverage for major advertisers, and given that appearance is almost everything, I am saying this:

If I were editor or publisher of this magazine, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed the ad and column to be in such close proximity, and I almost certainly would have asked Mr. Laube to sit on his Knights Valley piece and file another column.

Back to syrah, briefly: The latest issue of Wine & Spirits includes a fabulous story on some more of my favorite winemakers who are fashioning fascinating cool-weather renditions of the varietal. The wines crafted by Pax Mahle (Wind Gap), Wells Guthrie (Copain) and Duncan Arnot Meyers and Nathan Lee Roberts (Arnot-Roberts) are well worth seeking out.

Those guys are sourcing a lot of their grapes in the humongo Sonoma Coast region, the focus of two pieces in the always-excellent Sommelier Journal, which is offering a free look at that issue.

It’s hard to believe while reading Randy Caparoso’s expansive look at Sonoma Coast’s many micro-regions that this is but the first of a two-part series. Terrific reading, and elsewhere in this issue editor David Vogels deftly encapsulates the wonders and frustration of this way-too-big AVA. Plus we get the ever-readable Jamie Goode on malolactic fermentation and up-close-and-semi-personal looks at the resurgent Soave region and Chile’s independent vintners.

There actually isn’t much about California in the March edition of the Wine Enthusiast, aside from some tasting notes and the inclusion of the Sierra Foothills in an article about “10 great undiscovered wine regions” (make mine Umbria!). This issue’s highlight is a dandy Cheat Sheet, on brands (wine and spirits) that consistently offer good value. Oddly enough, the only quibbles I have are with the selections from California (Fetzer? Kendall-Jackson? Really?).

2
Mar
2011
0

The word(s) on Burg

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Some of my favorite quotes on my favorite wine region:

Harry Waugh (left), when asked if he’d ever confused Bordeaux for Burgundy:”Not since lunch.”

Isak Dinesen: “There are many ways to the recognition of truth, and Burgundy is one of them.”

Jean-Robert Pitte, in “Bordeaux/Burgundy: A Vintage Rivalry”: “Bordeaux makes you piss. Burgundy makes you fuck.”

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: “Burgundy makes you think of silly things, Bordeaux makes you talk of them and Champagne makes you do them.”

2
Mar
2011
0

Local linkin’

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One of the best wines I tasted last year came from Lebanon — and it was not Chateau Musar, which is the only Lebanese winery most oenophiles know. In my little black book, Chateau Belle Vue’s “Le Chateau” red blend got an uncommon and unusual tasting note: “Now THIS is wine.”

I wrote about the winery in January, along with another Lebanese outfit with Minnesota connections. According to Naji Boutros, in a quote that I couldn’t fit into that column, Charteau Musar poohbah Serge Hosar said that “Le Chateau” was the only Lebanese wine that he (Hosar) felt could hold its own with his estimable red.

And now some folks from across the pond have descended on Belle Vue and discovered not only its great juice but its wonderful back story, if this blog post is any indication.

A long way from the Middle East, but with an even stronger Minnesota connection, this post provides an interesting take on whether the terroir in Tundraland can ever produce truly noteworthy wines. The short answer is that the human factor will be crucial.

It’s hard to ponder during this absurd, will-it-ever-end? winter that this could ever be great wine country. But that post’s author, U of M enologist Katie Cook, is among many very smart people trying to make this happen, so I’ll join her in being a cockeyed optimist on the topic.

Wouldn’t hurt, though, if our climate started to even remotely resemble Lebanon’s.

23
Feb
2011
0

Note-worthy (or not)

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I’m at the Wine Writers’ Symposium in Napa, where a couple of years ago, Eric Asimov held a session called “The Tyranny of the Tasting Note.” Asimov revisitied that topic in his New York Times column today.

Asimov is decidedly not a fan of the lengthy tasting note with five aromas and umpteen flavor components. “Experience will give you a general idea, but fixating on exactitude is a fool’s errand,” he writes. “Two bottles of the same wine can taste different depending on when, where and with whom you open them.

“Besides, the aromas and flavors of good wines can evolve over the course of 20 minutes in a glass. Perhaps they can be captured momentarily like fireflies in a child’s hands, yet reach for them again a minute later and “” whiff! “” they’re somewhere else.”

I’m with him all the way there, although he loses me a bit when he delves off into what I call Thomas Friedman Land, trying to explain something complex by claiming that “it’s either this or this.”

While mentioning Asimov’s column, symposium keynote speaker Gerald Asher noted that “then [Asimov] goes on to divide wine into sweet and savory and digs himself into a really deep hole.”

Still, Asher is on board with the gist of the piece. “My fingers curl when I read tasting notes. Boring stuff,” Asher said. Earlier, he had made the distinction between the objective aspects of tasting (acidity, tannins, etc.) and subjective notes such as “peaches with truffles in the background. There’s no way I can reconstruct that [other person’s] experience.”

And when a reader encounters such notes and goes to try the wine, “that person is going to stick his nose in that glass and say, where are the truffles I was promised?”

Another symposium speaker, blogger Alder Yarrow, takes issue with Asimov’s dichotomy in a post this morning. He adds some excellent points, but the gist of his piece is that he is much more inclined to be forgiving of the flowery-descriptor approach:

“Yes, I’ve never smelled what crushed seashells smell like, but you know, I could imagine what that might smell like, and so if Robert Parker or someone else wants to use it as a descriptor, I’m fine with it, in the same way that I’m fine with an outlandish metaphor in a poem. The fact that it’s beyond my experience doesn’t matter all that much as long as I can understand it.”

I guess I’m not much of a poet, because I side with Eric’s basic premise. In a column a few years ago about this phenomenon, I cited something importer Kermit Lynch told me a few years back, which makes the most sense to me:

“I might smell violets on a wine out of the barrel, but by the time it’s bottled, there are no violets there,” he said. “And a year later, it will have none of the same aromas as before. Or you can get an aroma at one temperature, but you heat [the wine] up five degrees and that aroma’s gone.”

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