What am I looking for in wine?

I’m looking for the Leon Trotskys, the Philip Roths, the Chaucers and the Edith Whartons of the wine world. I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue. With this messiah thing going on, I’m trying to swell the ranks of those who love the differences in each vintage, who abhor homogenization, who want wines that make them smile, think, laugh,and feel sexy. For better or worse, it seems as if I am a wine cop traversing the earth, writing and speaking my mind, drinking and recommending wines that are honest.

Please check in frequently for news of my latest travels, travel, wine tips and rants.

Q: In your opinion do most Californian wines stink?
A:Yes.

Q:Why is that?
A: So many reasons. But generally, the grapes are grown to a point of ripeness that too often obliterates a sense of place. Then, those grapes can't produce structured wines and so the structure often has to be imposed, much like the bones on a girdle, but in this case through chemistry and process. The point of view seems wrong to me as most California and New World wines are made for the market -- the most obvious taste--than the product of a carefully matched grapevine to land and climate and a passionate winemaker who is part artist/philosopher and part scientist. I find the mindset is man over nature. There's a little spoiled child saying, I want to plant pinot; so what if it is the wrong place and climate! Thanks to technology that winemaker can indeed plant pinot but the result and what they have to do to the poor wine, is not something I want to drink.

Seems totally ass backwards to me and often tastes that way. If California continues on the path that Matthew Debord so clearly outlined, as a place that doesn't believe that where a vine is grown matters. or if more people believe as Vinovation owner, Clark Smith does, that industrial yeasts are better than native then...wow, then I'll have to give up all hope. When I was a tot my mother was told not to breastfeed me by her gyn. "Are you a cow?" he asked her. Same thing with frozen food--healthier than fresh. I believe we are in the same era with wine. When I was growing up my parents thought the neighbor who went mushrooming or had a garden was nuts.

Q:Are there exceptions to the awfulness of California wine for you?
A:Of course! Right now, there are some producers in the state who believe place matters and strives to express it in a somewhat natural way. More are coming down the pike.

Q:But then?
A:Then still, I fear even then the wines will be like most of California, too overpriced. In my budget if I choose to pay over $30 a bottle, it is a bottle that will age gracefully and knock my socks off.

Q:Can you tell a well made Californian wine that is just not to your taste?
A:Yes.

Q:Are you allowed to your own taste?
A:Yes! What a question! And I hope you do too!

Q:Do you tell people who like Californian wine they have no taste?
A:Are you kidding? I also, and this will shock you, I don’t take it personally what other people drink.

Q:Would they be your best friends?
A:Probably not. On the other hand, one of my best friends voted for Bush. But we like the same wines.

Q:Could you fall in love with a big Cali Cab or Pinot Guy?
A:Probably not.

Q:Is that snobby?
A:Probably not.

Q:Than what is it?
A:I think the closest people to me have shared aesthetics. Wine is one of them. We don't agree on everything but that is as it should be.

Q:Are most of your wines unrecognizable names that cost under $25 a bottle?
A:Yes.

Q:Are most of them French?
A:Yes.

Q:Why?
A:The give the most expression for the money, and they get me excited.

Q:Is not buying mass produced wines snobby and pretentious?
A: Buying for status symbols is pretentious, buying wines that I love that are affordable like I do? You tell me.

Q:When Alice Waters started the food revolution out of Chez Panisse, was she accused of pretension because she wanted more honesty and purer growing techniques and less process in her food?
A:No.

Q:I see. In that case, why when someone wants the same quality and approach in their wine as their food is there an outcry about heresy?
A:Excellent question.

I rest my case.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-debord12-2008may12,0,6289192.story

I wish on Mr. Matt, nothing else in his cellar but Au Bon Climat, Flora Springs, Joseph Phelps, Far Niente and Ridge. Now, what could make the fellow happier?

Commentary to follow. Feel free not to wait.

Signed...one of the terroir jihadist.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0805/gallery.biz_books.fsb/3.html

The Battle for Wine and Love
By Alice Feiring (Harcourt, $23)

Feiring fears for the existence of wine - authentic, Old World-style wine, not the overmanipulated, standardized products churned out by too many vintners trying to impress wine critic Robert Parker. This book is part polemic, part love note to the small winemakers and importers struggling to keep traditional methods alive.

More coming but here's the dance card so far. Hope you can come. --Alice

NEW YORK CITY EVENTS

Monday June 2nd

BARNES & NOBLE
7pm
97 Warren Street
212-587-5389

Tuesday June 24th

8-9:30 pm
NATIONAL ARTS CLUB
w/ Sue Shaprio Dana Jennings & Liza Monroy
15 Gramercy Park at 20th street

Thursday June 26th

6:30-8:30 pm
PANEL: SECRETS OF BOOK PUBLISHING PANEL, BRYANT PARK
w/Karen Siplin, Dana Jennings, Liza Monroy &
moderated by Susan Shapiro

Bryant Park West 42 Street (btw 5th & 6th Ave)

CALIFORNIA EVENTS

Monday, June 16, 7pm

Healdsburg, California
COPPERFIELD’S
104 Matheson Street
707-433-9270

Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 6:00 PM

BOOK PASSAGE
1 Ferry Building, #42
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 835-1020

Wednesday June 18th 5pm

TERROIR WINE BAR
1116 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 558-9946

Terroir. Who knew that word could get the room roiling. Sure there was that Harold McGee article in the New York Times last year, disparaging the concept of tasting terroir in the wine. There was the 2002 article by Karen McNeil, "Is Terroir Dead." That one highlights that the hand of man obliterates place. A better title would have been, "Are We Killing Terroir?"

The debate, the evolution and misconceptions of the word continued in the Hotel Vintage Plaza and the Portland Indie Wine fest in both seminars.

In the midst of the lively conversation, while I was still trying to pretend I was a neutral party, a winemaker from Healdsburg asked the panel to define terroir.

Clark, the only winemaker on the panel who did not own vineyards, seized on the question. He confidently announced that terroir was 'appellation.'

The woman and the audience were sophisticated. They didn't take that answer lying down. Plenty stood up.

Where was Clark going with that one? One (that would be me) might ask the same thing about his push for a natural wine certification for 'natural' --something he does not make. For a guy who introduces himself as having been booted out of M.I.T., he was far from an anarchist, concerned rather with order and rules.

After that, hell broke loose in the room. I stopped the pretense that I was neutral, and every time Clark took a swipe at me, in his good-natured way, I blocked the jab. One or two times, I took the initiative. Outrage is a wonderful motivation. This was my first panel and as Don from Domaine Selections, who graciously provided the gorgeous Jean Paul Brun vielles vignes beaujolais observed, I was not a very comfortable presenter.

(By the way, Joe Dressner reports that the 2007 VV did not achieve appellation. I presume it was too honest a wine and showed too much terroir for the AOC.)

I was mostly anxious about posing as neutral, ruling over a panel while I had strong opinions on about everything that came up.

When the appellation question came up, I relaxed.

When Clark tried to tell the audience that I was against organic farming, my brain truly sharpened up so I get set the record straight that if he remembered my opening remarks says that I take that as a starting point, a given to make great wine. And when Clark said his "roman syrah" was wild yeasted I had to point out that his tech sheet stated Pasteur Red. There were several other moments of slippery language. And then there was his wine, poetry in the bottle. But you know, mother's love their children no matter what they look like. To him, perhaps it was Robert Frost, but it certainly wasn't T.S. Eliot. His wine was bottled music, perhaps Barry Manilow but not Mozart.

But I run away with my thoughts like a Bowery Bum with an oyster.

The next day I wondered if this terroir-oriented altered reality could be a Left Coast e.g New World disconnect. My suspicion turned to firm theory by noon, after attending the Indie showcased Terroir 101: Can you Taste Place in Chocolate, Coffee and Wine?

This was the Indie write up:

Some say terroir is dead, but tell that to Aubrey Lindley, owner of Portland chocolate boutique Cacao; Mason Sager of Caffé Vita Coffee Roasting Company; Joseph Whinney of Theo Chocolate; Michael Hebberoy of ONE POT and Athena Pappas of Boedecker Cellars who’ve created thriving enterprises by paying attention to origin and place. Is terroir’s alleged death just an excuse for inferior products? The seminar is moderated by Kate Simon, senior editor of Imbibe Magazine and will include a tasting of chocolate, coffee and wine to spark the conversation. $35

The Caffé Vita coffee, by the way, was divine. Michael is the controversial figure who (with his ex-wife Naomi) started the deconstrcuted restaurant concept and ran away to Seattle, spun magnificent tales about the coffee rituals of Ethiopia. He made it seem like an opium saturated dream. He lobbied to include culture as an aspect of terroir--a cute quirk on the topic; fun to think about but ultimately doesn't stick.

Aubrey, whom I adore, (co-owner of the BEST CHOCOLATE SHOP IN THE WORLD, Cacoa. http://www.cacaodrinkchocolate.com/ you'll want to know that.), read from the back of one of the chocolates he sells that reported terroir is 10% of chocolate. That makes sense when it comes with something as highly processed as chocolate--after all--isn't the same thing with cocaine? But wine? Wine is a different genre.

We started however with wine. The panel’s winemaker poured wines from two different 'terroirs,' she buys fruit from. She emoted about the two wines as if they were beloved kittens with different markings. She believed in the magic. She presented the magic. But she presented those two vineyards without any mention of the soil. And when asked, whether volcanic or sedimentary, she couldn't tell us about the dirt or even the difference in the climates, what we knew was the name of the clone.

Alone that was shocking. but together with Clark's definition from the previous day, I began to believe what I suspected all along, that a culture exists that rejects old-style wisdom. Wine in the New World has become about grape and winemaker and the knowledge that man can override nature.

Perhaps this is the natural evolutions in a wine society where winemaker and growers are not the same person. Perhaps when the winemaker is not a vigneron, the emotional connection between land and bottle is broken.

The next day, Aubrey showed up at my Powell's reading. He confided in me, " I was waiting for someone in the audience to ask, "But isn't terroir the interaction between soil and climate? What's the matter with them?"

But you know what? Both of these seminars were terrific. People left both filled with argument and new ideas. They were as stimulating as Talmud class. Sometimes the questions are just as good as the answers.

I'm waiting for Lisa D., the mother of the festival to make these topics a full weekend event.

Next up: What happened to me at the Powells Reading or Alice Gets Scammed.

Peter Hellman wrote a wonderful (if I say so myself) review/profile in today's Sun.

You can read it

HERE.

I found my narrow seat on the plane, and I spent five hours between the knit of My Life as a Man and the pearl of gearing up for more email bombs, fallout from my Los Angeles Time editorial entitled "California wine? Down the drain."

In the warp and weft of it all, I mulled over a big, fat old conundrum about how to present the How Natural is Natural panel that kicked off the Portland Indie.

What is the best way to distill the arguments and sparring and jabs down to the essentials?

I think it all comes down to a New World disconnect around concept of terroir and a human twisting and obsessing over semantics.

But first some background.

Lisa Donoughe created the Portland Indie Festival. Now in its 4th year, this is two days of tastings from Oregon's teensiest wineries, too small to show their wines at most big venues. This year Lisa, also the genius behind LAD Communications added two terrific seminars. And I coordinated and moderated How Natural is Natural.

I gathered an interesting quartet; the perplexing Clark Smith (Vinovation & WineSmith), the animated Amy Lillard ( La Gramiere from the S. Rhone, and fellow blogger), pensive Aaron Lieberman ( Cottonwood and Owen Roe) and avuncular Oregonian, Doug Tunnel (Brick House).

Clark Smith makes wine with yeast and chips and micro oxygenation and alcohol adjustment (all technologies that he sells) lobbied for a ‘definition’ of natural wine and would like standards outlined for certification. "I thought that's what we were here for!" he argued.

This did not go over too well with the crowd, and I too let go of my sheep's clothing--the neutral moderator---I pointed out that the terms biodynamic wine and organic wine already should cover (and hopefully will) the ‘natural’ category, so why create a third category to confuse the consumer?

The first wine I needed to drink upon returning home was one of my last two bottles of the Clos Roche Blanche 2002 Cot. It stunned me. I bowed to it. It was at its perfectly floral moment.

Look For Part Two Where Terroir Shakes the Room

I'm not up at dawn dancing today with my fellow Morris dancers, but packing to head to Oregon and the Portland Indie Wine Festival.

Tomorrow, we figure out why 'natural' wine is a hot button issue and threatening the entire wine industry. But meanwhile, happy May Day.

After the Globe and Mail profile, Mr. Crosariol wrote me an email. "You must have really thick skin," he said. "You get these often?" He was referring to a piece of, well, hate email. He received a nasty one from a California 'winemaker' who disapproved of Crosariol's reportage of me.

Truth is, I don't have thick skin at all, but I better grow one quickly.

The offending 'gentleman' who wrote his mind to Crosariol, continued his bashing on the ebob board. He told his buds...

++++I actually e-mailed the author telling him he was really embarrassing himself by trying to write about wine. Designer yeast? Adding urea when yeast are tired? Filtering out moulds from wine? Micro-ox bubblers commonly used? It's apparent he really has no clue about winemaking. His article does nothing but propagate misinformation. What a fine bit of writing. Not!+++++

Note: the writer, Mike is a winemaker! (or hires one) and he doesn't know that micro oxygenation is wildly used? Superfood? Designer yeast? Or that mold is an issue? I have a feeling he is so intellectually challenged that he didn't recognize the British spelling of mould as mold.

The board didn't help set Mike's neurotic reaction to the piece right. They didn't point out his ignorance. They, instead cheered him on, trying to poke holes in the book review. One man pointed out that in regards to Lopez de Heredia (mentioned in the piece as an example of unParkerized wines) was a favorite with Mr.P*****.

It is actually Mr. Galloni who likes them and recently wrote favorable reviews.

Do they not know that P***** calls the reds feeble and as far as the whites, it is in the book--the My Date With Bob chapter where he writes "I hate those wines."

Ah, boys will be boys. I think this is why I never dated in High School.

Saving the world from Frankenwines
The Globe And Mail
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Page: L1
Section: Globe Life
Byline: Beppi Crosariol

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080423.DECANTER23/TPStory/?query=Feiring

It's a quaint myth: Wine is a product of nature, the simple spawn of fruit and airborne yeast. To drink anything more ancient or unadulterated, you'd have to dip your cup into a stream, crack a coconut or milk a cow.

That's how it has been for 9,000 years, but over the past two decades, myriad
technologies and lab tricks have turned that typical weeknight bottle into the potable equivalent of cake from a mix.

At least that's the feeling you get after reading the book The Battle for Wine and Love by New York writer Alice Feiring, out next month.

An industry answer to Fast Food Nation and Kitchen Confidential, the book paints a distressing picture of a world full of Frankenwines (my word, not Ms. Feiring's),cheap-trick sops with all the engineered flavour, artificially smooth texture and proximity to nature of a McDonald's shake.

For example, winemakers now generally kill off natural yeasts with sulphur and replace them with designer strains that can add flavours of, say, strawberry, cocoa or banana.The yeasts are often fed urea when they get tired, to keep fermentation humming at ever-higher sugar and alcohol levels, thereby creating bigger bodied wines for today's
tastes. Among other additives are enzymes that deepen colour and boost "mouth feel."

Then there's the hardware. A device commonly used over the past 10 years is the micro-oxygenation bubbler, which can soften texture by erasing naturally astringent particles known as tannins. Arguably more intrusive is something called the reverse-osmosis filter - the Cuisinart of the wine trade - which can perform a host of functions, including reducing alcohol, removing water to concentrate flavours, restarting
a stopped fermentation and filtering out mould.

Still not happy with your wine's taste? Fire-charred barrels can add notes of smoke, espresso, vanilla and butterscotch, which are catnip for catching the attention of important American wine critics. And if $1,000 a barrel is too costly, oak chips tossed into the aging vat like bouquet garni into a sauce can mimic barrel aging at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time.

Welcome to Ms. Feiring's nightmare.

"I am hoping to give the other camp a voice," Ms. Feiring, formerly the wine and travel writer for Time magazine and a regular contributor to U.S. newspapers, said in a phone interview from New York. "I want to teach people who may not know how conventional wine is made what is in the average bottle of wine."

The book is something of a Proustian journey, following the author to Europe and California, where she continues to find that the charming, hand-crafted country wines that turned her into an aficionado as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1970s are vanishing under the pressure of industrialization and global taste preferences dictated by international critics.

A more literal title for the book might have been À la recherche du vin perdu, but The Battle for Wine and Love, to be published next month, will no doubt sell most of its copies on the basis of its provocative subtitle: Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization.

Robert M. Parker Jr., as most wine aficionados know, is the world's most influential nose, a Maryland-based former government lawyer who shot to prominence in the 1980s with his newsletter The Wine Advocate, largely on the virtue of its much-copied 100-point scoring system. Mr. Parker has prompted, it is widely alleged, winemakers everywhere to torque their juice with overweening new-oak flavour and near-flammable levels of alcohol
to pander to his supposed biases.

By contrast, oak- and technology-eschewing traditionalists in regions His Bobness isn't so hot for, such as the Loire Valley and Rioja, have languished or disappeared.

Lest one suspect Ms. Feiring is writing out of jealousy (the standard charge against wine writers who dare challenge Mr. Parker's infallible scores), she comes across as wholly sincere in her passion for what she calls preindustrial wines.

"I have no desire to chip away at his power," she told me. "He's a great leader to those people. He can lead you to those wines," meaning those big, oversized, nipped and tucked California cabernets and Australian shirazes that may win beauty contests adjudicated by quick-sip critics but which she thinks have no authenticity.

Ms. Feiring dares to confront her nemesis head-on in a chapter called "My Date With Bob." It's a tense exchange, conducted over the phone, and while Ms. Feiring controls the narrative, one can't help but commend her fairness, quoting him at length. "Don't shortchange the consumer; they know when a chicken is a bad one or a good one," Mr.Parker deftly admonishes her. "There is no global palate." It's a platitude straight out of the U.S. politician's playbook; you can't argue with a free market.

If the engagingly written book sets up Mr. Parker as Goliath, Ms. Feiring in the end comes across as an endearing David, a self-described petite redhead whose roller-coaster romances lend the book a subplot as well as a metaphorical conceit. The "50-ish" author remains single at the end of the book, alas, but she will no doubt win a few male wine-geek hearts with her avowed lust for funky, old-style Riojas such as those of Lopez de Heredia and reds that smell of "puppy's breath" and "chicken soup and dill." Then there's her belief that "true wine" is about as rare and precious as true love. (Her words, not mine.)

A reader can't help but be gripped by the chapter "Desperately Seeking Scanavino," about the Italian producer of her first love, a 1968 Barolo that most connoisseurs would consider an ugly duckling. The section reads like a murder mystery, with Ms. Feiring frantically following clues to the whereabouts of the faded winemaker, whose Barolos,symbolically redolent of faded roses, have succumbed to competition from Parkerized wines.

If tales like that sound familiar, you may recall Mondovino, the 2004 Jonathan Nossiter documentary about globalization in the wine industry. It, too, featured Mr. Parker as a sort of Dr. Evil. But I think The Battle for Wine and Love is much more compelling for its rich technical detail, passionately argued thesis and entertaining storyline.

It's hard not to become curious about the wines Ms. Feiring loves, including Clos Roche Blanche from the Loire Valley.Another out of favour region she adores is Beaujolais,particularly premium bottlings named after the Beaujolais village of Morgon, such as those of Louis-Claude Desvignes.As for those dreaded Frankenwines, Ms. Feiring's strongest antipathy is aimed at California, land of the three-digit cult cabernets made by retired land developers who hire consulting winemakers following the Parker playbook. "The wealthiest people don't make the best wines," she says toward the end of the book.

But when pressed, she does note exceptions, chiefly Grgich Hills, a winery I, too, love,which has been going from strength to strength since embracing organic principles.

When asked if she may be considered a snob, she doesn't flinch. "I'm a snob when it comes to shoes, too. It's not about price, though. I work really hard to find wines that I can
afford."

© 2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Illustration:
• Illustration

Idnumber: 200804230068
Length: 1178 words
Keywords: WINE INDUSTRY; STATEMENTS; BOOKS; THE BATTLE FOR WINE AND LOVE

My voyage to see Ethel for Passover started with a sweaty taxi ride uptown to Penn Station. It was a post 80 degree-day and I was toting three kosher bottles of wine (Yarden cab blend. Not bad.). With few seconds to spare, I claimed a three-seater on the Long Beach branch of the LIRR as my own for the next 50 minutes.

In back of me, near the doors, stood a gentleman-- term loosely used. The man, who I would soon hear was 43-years -of -age, stared dreamily out the window to the Queens landscape. His phone rang. Lucky us. For the next eight minutes, in heavily accented Long Island-ese, he broadcast minute details of his last lazy hour. The car packed mostly with commuters who had otherwise spent their day at the office, had no choice but to hang on every word.

We learned that he would definitely see this girl again. She was a hot girl, yes the website lied a little. She was 40 pounds overweight, but still hot. And no, he told his friend, he did not go near her ‘box.’ He was careful to tell us all and leave almost nothing behind, no pun intended. Few details were poetic, most were prosaic.

I couldn't believe my good luck. I was never this close to this kind of monologue. The real thing. At work was an odd kind of whore/madonna mindset. He was boastful but clearly he felt virtuous. He knew he had his fun and helped her out. "Four guys, $800 a day, not bad, right?" he asked his friend.

Knowing I would use it in some piece of fiction or even an essay, I took notes. Fast. My fellow travelers were not nearly so eager to hear what keen bservation the man would next share with us, his new best friends. A woman near me barked back to him, “Hey! Hey! Can you tone it down? We don’t need to know this stuff, okay?”

After that do you really want to know about the Seder?

No. Let’s talk about this specious Natural Wine article. Afterall it reminds me in a strange way of the train incident.

Eric's comment that, “The author is a paid lobbyist for the producers of millions of hectoliters of wine from a specific region and thus by definition not objective,” might be true but the fact that Ned, the writer, seems to be a sommelier based in Tokyo, works against it. His prose flags how much of a threat wines made close nature poses to the world. I experienced quite a bit of this attitude in Champagne.

Though Ned (shockingly) tips his hat to Marcel LaPierre in a different article, he desperately wants to grind his axe against wines that shun hi-technology, additives and mostly sulphur. He seems as offended by the complexity of natural wines as I am by the Nabisco-esqueisms of conventionals. His reaction is that of cornered rat looking to bite the nearest pinkie. If he is an aspiring writer and not on the take, I’d love to see him banned from writing anything that passes as journalism. Such unsupported vitriol belongs in the domaine of the blogosphere home to both sane and insane. ( I know of what I speak—do you think I could get away with this outside of my own living room? Or yours?)

This fellow’s journalism was quite as ‘yellow,’ as much as the slime on the train's prattle was blue, especially in Ned’s sentence: “the extreme school, or ‘naturel’ producers eschewing responsible levels of sulphur dioxide.”

I would expect Ned's spin more from the Presidential campaign than from someone who passes as a ‘wine expert.’ Aren’t’ LOW or no levels of sulphur what is considered responsible? But here he is actually saying that using sulphur and ENOUGH sulphur is responsible.

People--and there are plenty--in the trade and journalism know nothing about wine and will believe his ink. That is dangerous.

Where Ned is correct is when he says in another article, “C’est bio, c’est bon.” There are plenty of substandard natural wines that wave the banner of love me I’m natural, when they are merely fuzzy, volatile experiments. But when the writer can’t even define his use of the term even with its modicum of truth it is easy to discount anything he said.

As far as the man on the train who paid his $200 for that hour, certainly getting more for his money than Spitzer did, told his friend in only slightly lower decibels, “Man, the whole car heard me, I gotta move into a different one. Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed. They heard everything.”

Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.

Borrow from Burnt Norton? Sure. Let's.

The beginning of the end is when natural wines makes its way into a trend story, no? Or am I just being hyper-emotional? Meningers Wine Business Journal, ever see it?

I was at first amused then perplexed at the article by Ned Goodwin on the Japanese craze for 'natural wines.' I cannot get the link to work, so give it a Google on your own please, the actual title is....The Japanese Embrace 'Natural' Wines.

"Wine Tokyo, the largest wine fair in the Japanese calendar, was held on 8 April, where distributors purveying extreme styles of minimally sulphured wines, under the vague and frequently misused term “BIO,” drew the most attention from punters, buyers and sommeliers alike. Is this the future of the Japanese market, or merely a passing fad?

According to Japan`s most influential wine trade journal, WANDS, sales of ‘natural’ wine have increased dramatically in the last three-years, possibly as much as 25-30%. However, due to the implicit vagaries of the term, it is difficult to come up with exact statistics. After all, is the term an abbreviation for ‘biologique,’ or organic wine? If so, as biodynamically produced wines are inherently organic, the term should encompass this sector of the market also. Moreover, the extreme school, or ‘naturel’ producers eschewing responsible levels of sulphur dioxide, usually farm organically and thus, are part of the sector grouped under the BIO banner.

In a recent article in WANDS, Kenichi Hori of the Californian Wine Institute, states that the term BIO is used as a marketing tool. Importers of the extreme school of wine claim that their products, despite obvious faults, are healthy and prevent hangovers. As a result, many producers such as Thierry Puzelat in the Loire, are encouraged to make wine with minimal or no SO2, to be labeled as ‘BIO’ for the Japanese market."

Class, look at that last graph and the last sentence. Puzelat is ENCOURAGED?

Thierry Puzelat needs no encouragement.

Thierry has been on the low sulphur track way before the Japanese 'encouraged' him and his brethren such as Olivier Lemasson of Vins Contés, Hervé Souhaut and Dard et Ribo. The reason Thierry, his brother Jean-Marie etal. became rock stars in Japan was because the country discovered their wines where delicious as well as having purity. The wines, as it turned out were unsulphured (or low sulphured.) and then their thirst began and a cult of the wine underground commenced. The writer seemed to have gotten it backwards.

But what the writer did get correct was " the term BIO is used as a marketing tool."

I have to hop on my bike, get something to drink for Passover (there are no unsulphured kosher wines by the way) clean the apartment and get out of her so long commentary is shelved for next week, but I wanted to continue the nonsequiter….

I was at a little gathering pulled togeter by Byron Bates at the Chelsea Hotel, in the room Syd killed Nancy, something BB called Fête de Puzelat. Thierry had brought along a bottle of his 1996 Buisson, which is sauvignon blanc. He said had been his first attempt at absolutely no sulphur, and made just for home use.

It was a twelve-year-old wine with absolutely no oxidation. The wine was fresh and slightly evolved with years to go before it melts. A lyrical and vibrant wine.

As the room darkened and Byron lit tea candles Thierry told the trick of making stable wine that reflects terroir without sulphur, and it is that almost old fashioned concept of élevage. Tried and true, there are no short cuts. Wine takes time. That sauvignon blanc had been in vat for almost two years before seeing a bottle. Healing from heartbreak and making great wine-- without sulfur, have something in common. They both need time. And taking time is the polar opposite of the immediacy of trend.

Like many others in New York I've been drenched in tasting season. (Today was Polaner. Best wine? That's tough, Emidio Pepe 1985? de la Tour Clos de Vougeot VV 2006? Desvignes Morgon Cote du Py? Eric Texier St. Joseph?). You want to hear what I found, yet like a woman, all I want to do is talk about Philip Roth.

With my teeth a fuzz from the two days of red wine, is it any wonder that I find myself thinking of this scene?

Letting Go, published by Random House 1962 From the section Debts and Sorrows.

"Why don't you clean my teeth? I'm asking you to clean my teeth."
"You'll sit there fidgeting. I don't do a rush job. I'm not a plumber."
"I won't fidget."

Without looking at me he walked around the chair. "I just won't work with sombody fidgeting." A hand appeared over my head and I was in the glare of the light again. He spoke from behind, like Marge. ‘I don’t know when you became so casual about your health. You used to love to have your teeth cleaned. You used to say your mouth tasted pink afterward. I still tell that to patients. I don't know where you suddenly picked up such bad habits." Behind me he was scratching together a sweet-smelling paste. "It’s funny," he went on, “How a mouth doesn’t' change, how yours is the same mouth now it was then. I can remember it, you know that? I can remember your mother’s mouth. I find that I can remember every single tooth in her head." Then his face appeared above my own. I could have reached up and pulled him down and kissed him. But would he understand that I was not prepared to surrender my life to his? He was a wholehearted man, and such people are hard to kiss half-heartedly.

+

My mouth was tasting pink when I asked the operateor for Iowa. I waited to be connected while my father's tuneless peppy little whistle came from the bedroom. Removing my tartar had restored his belief in the future.

Listen to that last line. “Removing my tartar had restored his belief in the future.”

I have recently forgotten how to write. It happens. I usually panic. And then I read Letting Go or Sabbath’s Theater and immerse myself in restoring the belief my scraping out the tartar.

Mr. Roth in his Letting Go era.

In February, on the outskirts of Barcelona, as I foraged into the Penedes and Priorat the scotch broom was fluorescent and the almond trees uncommonly early in flower and the rosé cava uncommonly drinkable. And it was a good thing too! Most of the wines, white or red in the still category were fairly undrinkable. I never thought I would say, thank God for cava because I never could tolerate them or the sulfur headaches the next days.

However.....

Agusti Torello Mata Brut Rosat from the Trepat grape. Though my notes on it were predictably poor, I was too busy drinking; I remember it as being quite dry with hints of raspberry, refreshing and great to wash away the mega Priorat wine's density. Next up for best was the Bodegas Naveran Rose Brut Cava. This was a 2004, very onion skin in color, happily austere.

I was going to go on to tell you that the best red I had, greedily guzzled after a trip to wine challenged gorgeous mountainous (if ravaged by the rich wanting to plant grapes) was a 1999 Todonia at the tapas place reliant on canned goods, Quimet Quimet, after being scammed by a taxi driver yet still made it to the place and the wine before closing time for lunch... but I was distracted by yet another event I wasn't invited to. No, it wasn't yet another barolo extravaganza but the celebration of Philip Roth at Columbia.

The New York Times had a bit of a write up end graph struck me:.

+++Between the discussions, a recording of an interview with Mr. Roth played, in which he remembered being concerned about how his parents would react to the bitter controversy that he knew was going to envelop “Portnoy’s Complaint.” “I felt I had to prepare them,” he said. So he met with them at a restaurant, where he told them that it “appears it’s going to cause a sensation,” and that they would be besieged by journalists.

Only after his mother’s death did his father reveal that after leaving the restaurant, his mother burst into tears and said, “He has delusions of grandeur.” Only after his mother’s death did his father reveal that after leaving the restaurant, his mother burst into tears and said, “He has delusions of grandeur.” +++

I realize that Mr. Roth, one of my literary Gods, the go-to writer when I need to remind myself (often) that I need to write has been sorely neglected as a topic in these pages. Not only do we now have the same publisher (because Houghton Mifflin bough Harcourt we are under the same roof, a thought which thrills me.) but our mother's seemed to have read the same Jewish Mother phrase book.

They're starting to roll in and hopefully soon we'll have a nice little dedicated space for them but as of now, book your calendar:

PORTLAND, OREGON

May 2nd
3-5

I'll be leading a seminar on How Natural is Natural for the kick-off of the Portland Indie Wine Festival. The panel will be exciting. Be prepared for fireworks and banter.

*Clark Smith (Vinovation & WH Smith)
*Doug Tunnel (Brick House)
*Aaron Lieberman (Owen Roe and his own Indie wine, Cottonwood)
*Amy Lillard (La Gramière, from the Rhone)

Price: $35

May 3rd:

Book Reading at the FABULOUS Powells
2pm
1005 W Burnside
Portland, Oregon

You might want to take a look.

Download file

A fine article, but one expects no less of Slate’s Michael Steinberger who has a blessedly trustworthy voice and palate. One question he raises in the Fine Wine Magazine (out of England) piece is whether the next wave of wine criticism will be the playground of the rich?

When he told of his mention of me in the then to-be-published piece, he offered advice. "Don't you think you might get a job in the trade and write on the side?"

I told him I'd email him back after my panic attack subsided. I paced for the next two hours.

He just wanted to protect me from what he knew to be the dilletantism of the wine world.

Back when I sneaked into the first trade tastings, did I ever even think I would be cut out of the game because I couldn't play with the doctors, lawyers and investment bankers who compete for ink--just for fun ---because I couldn’t afford to? It's fine when I'm batting up against other full time writers, that's cool, but it's the 'on the sides' that give me the palpitations.

Oh, sure, I've had my moments of glory tastings, but can I count on any verticals of Cannubi or Les Amoureuses as my God given right? It's not like I can go down to my 5,000 bottle cellar and stage one for my friends. (Damn!)

For two years I've been lucky enough to sit at Becky Wasserman's ten-year on Burgundy tasting. Shit. What an education. What history! But this year the growers revolted. No more outsides. No more Alice. Maybe I brought it on myself. Maybe I was such a pain in the ass to Clive he told Becky, no more Alice! So Alice is on the bench this year. No 1998's for me. And I am sad that I will not see that snap shot into the vintage. I can't pierce the code. I can't see how the wines were influenced by fashion and time. I will never own that piece of knowledge.

I suppose there is always getting a job at Whole Foods...but I digress.

Steinberger also brings up a very pet peeve of mine; the way editors assign wine stories to great journalists but to those who know nothing about wine. (Honestly, I could write about cardiology way more effectively). His example is the oft cited William Langewiesche Atlantic Monthly article on Robert M. P*****, Jr. and as he calls it the "rumpus over the garagistes."

And of course, I thank him for respecting my writing and opinions enough to have included me (with Tyler Coleman, Jamie Goode and Tom Wark) in the kicker.

On a brief hiatus due to computer failure but do check out ...The Wine Enabler for a less emotional, more thoughts on the issue.

Ah, copper. That old bugaboo of the biodynamic world. Take a look at the fiery comments on the previous entry and its easy to see the emotion about the bordelaise mixture --the fungicide originally created as a treatment for downy mildew – Plasmopara viticola – has been commercially produced for vineyards since 1885.

Yes. Copper is toxic. But the question is, are the amounts used in Biodynamics safe or not?

So I turned to Nicolas Joly, the famed Biodynamist and leader of the Return to Terroir group. His answer to me popped up in my in-box this morning.

Nicolas and his horse, taken at Le Coulée in the winter of '06.

Hello Alice,

About copper. it is very easy to understand. It is a metal. Its archetypal forces are Venus . Dilutions of cooper or plants which are grown by laboratories on soil saturated with cooper, is/are used as a therapy to cure problems on many people. So it is used as medicine more and more often in alternative medicine because modern farming have almost totally destroyed the capacity of food to cure people (food should be considered as medicine). So all metals have a part to play for our health.

Then comes the question of quantity. How much too much of a good thing is a problem.

We need oxygen, but too much oxygen will burn your lungs very fast. Should you for that reason forbid oxygen?

On vineyard were BD is practiced, where the soil are alive, where the living elements of the soil can help its " digestion " 3 to 5 kg of cooper per hectare is a plus. That means as bouillie bordelaise is concentrated at 2O% of cooper (8O%chalk ) you can use up to 2OKG of bouilllie per year per hectare . Which is more than enough; which all BD people find sufficien.t I use from 2kg to 6 per year. 6 for the very high mildew pressure.

Last this story on the toxicity of cooper is pushed by the chemical industry that has more and more difficulty to sell their poisons.

Last, get hold of the 2 hours broadcast of 2 weeks ago ( a DVD is available ) on Monsanto done by Arte the 5th TV channel very well-known in France and Germany. I would not think such a thing would come on TV. All the tricks, lies, threatening done by Monsanto and their government connections. Confessions also. Fabulous. It is a must !!!

See you somewhere

Nicolas
++

Of course, scientists need proof. And from what I can see no one on the BioD side is doing any tests on the veracity of low dosage safety.

The truth I am sure, like most, is somewhere in between. But my emotions side with Joly. The best BD farmers will use as little copper as possible. Clearly in the wet 2007, there were more treatments than in other years. However, I trust that the best Biodynamists still used the treatment reasonably while others were spendthrift.

I imagine its frequent use inspired the film Les Raisins de la Mort (1978, Jacques Rollin) where the culprit, with its telltale blue color, is some vine 'pesticide.'

Why they are spraying this stuff after harvest is another question but the auteur, clearly wasn't a winemaker.

Clearly not a biodynamic vineyard.

The pesticide turns the vineworkers into oozing sored zombies with leaking brains. All one has to do is either be exposed to the spray or exchange some sort of bodily fluid. The film is classic shtick, I got my copy from Amazon, but I do wonder about where the inspiration for its hysteria originated.
Fun, nevertheless.

And then there was this late breaking news: I was drinking a glass of the puppy breathed and exuberant Olivier Cousin 2004 Le Breton, eating steamed asparagus (oh god, who would have thought! for those of you wooses (sp?) I survived the match) and read a very timely piece in the New York Times about electricity and plants.

<>

Powdery mildew begone? Perhaps. But I wonder, perhaps this is what today's current ( no pun intended) biodynamists (and I'm not talking about those who wave horns above heads like flags) are trying to do in other ways of magnetism?

..why she hates the whole genre.

Now that big biz is buying up every winery in sight, I'm all for the giants reducing their hoggy carbon footprint and inch towards non-chemical growing practice. I'll also be delighted to see them reduce the weight on those ego-driven, hefty, mine is bigger than yours bottle. But I am so annoyed by this whole, "Kiss Me I'm GREEN," campaign. Of course grapes should be grown from sensible vineyards that are at least organic, but the GREEN GRAPE focus begs the question of what is in the bottle? Yeasts? Enzymes? Tannin. DeAlking? Reaciding? Ultrafiltrating and other acts flavor and taste altering machines? GREEN is a pretty color but when it comes to wine, it means nothing.

On May 5th, the First International Green Wine Competition , is to be held in California.

There are four categories for submission, concerned with the way the grapes are grown. This has caused a stir on the Decanter.com website, where several winemakers, including Doug Tunnel (who will be with me on the Portland Indie wine festival’s panel, “How Natural is Natural, May 2nd) weighed in with outrage that a GREEN wine competition had a 'transitional' category which also allows "Oregon LIVE and Certified Salmon Safe programs"--which are sustainable.

Sustainable agriculture allows chemicals.

Another protester likened the sustainable inclusion to 'being a little pregnant.’

Agreed. Agreed. Then there is the Biodynamic grape category. That one bugged me. The rules state that wines that use GMO yeast would be disqualified.

Does this mean one can enter a wine in the organic category and use GMO? (By the way, no industrial yeast is allowed in Biodynamic wine.)

But the one that really got me all riled up was:

Class 4: Natural (International Imports Only)

International wines made from grapes farmed without the use of chemicals. This category is open to International Imports ONLY. It is intended for those within the International community who has traditionally farmed without the use of chemicals, but who have not sought certification. Wineries entering Class 4 must sign an affidavit (provided with the Class 4 Entry Form) that they do indeed farm their grapes without the use of chemicals of any kind. Wineries found to misrepresent themselves under these guidelines will be disqualified.

+

Besides the fact that the Vin Naturel movement is alive and strong and bears no relation to their category, there is also the ironic language: "traditionally farmed without the use of chemicals." Where the irony? In the Old World 'traditional' farming refers to farming WITH chemicals.

In general, I don't like the idea of wine competitions. In fact, I always had trouble with competition. When I was in summer camp I boycotted Color War. But if you're going to do something like this, hell, do it right. Do it honestly. Don’t help along the usage of GREEN as a smokescreen for the wine industry. Find out what the deal is and don't hide behind ignorance, or the question might be raised, as I do here, that perhaps what is at play is ignorance that is willful.

So, Mike Dashe, known for his zinfandel (his riesling is pretty damned good) catches my expression, which I imagine was dazed and confused. He gets this older brother I'm-going- to-tease-the-shit-out-of-you smile, and says, "You must be a friend of Joe's," referring to the gentleman who sometimes posts here and elsewhere---SFJoe.

I like SFJoe immensely but we are not really friends, though there is no reason we're not, except that we just haven't had the chance. What we have is more like acquaintance, extended friendly family-esque, might be more like it. It clicked. SFJ had written a bit on a certain non-sulfured wine that Mike had up his sleeve.

"You want to taste Fat Boy?" he asks.

Oh gee, do I!

Word has it that a certain sommelier from San Francisco, a certain euro-wine-purist was behind this 'Fat Boy.' That person would be Mark Ellenbogen.

Ellenbogen, who has something of a guru air about him, has been under plenty of pressure to stop his embargo on California wines and let them through he border of the Slanted Door, the acclaimed pan-Asian resto whose list he rules. He suggested that Dashe, a nice guy who doesn't inoculate and is eagerly reducing his usage of new oak (but still picks really ripe) make an experiment.

Dashe found some great tasting, dry-farmed organic grapes that came in at a sane brix # he went to work, nervously.

He crushed, the ferment went on for three weeks, pressed off into 900 liter foudres (albeit new, he soaked them for six weeks to leach out as much 'new' as he could. It's low alcohol for a zin these days, 13.8. The color is something Mr.P***** would call feeble, but at this point, before the tricky bottling, it is a delicate ruby wine with transparency. cheerful and lively with great forest berrym herbal complexity. So far there's been little sulfur (SEE DASHE'S COMMENT BELOW) and there won't be any from this point on. Not even at bottling. Which is why it's risky. It also makes me a bit nervous because I feel the most successful sans soufre wines I've had sit for a longer time. On the other hand, Ellenbogen is going to sell the wine like hot dogs at a ball game, so the wine won't have too much time to funk out.

But right now? Fat Boy would definitely get a spanking from Mr. P***** for being one of those "French" wines out of California.

As I was leaving the extremely affable and extremely brave Dashe he said, "I have to hide this wine from the critics. Most of them would feel offended by the wine, like how could I have the audacity to make something like this, something that most of them would hate?"

Now, that was an interesting thought. I suppose if Didier at Clos Roche Blanche started to P******** his wine, I might indeed be offended, thinking him a sell out or perhaps going senile, but would it offend my ego, as fragile as it is? Hmm. Something to think about.

What is this woman doing on my blog? And where is Mr. Big?

And what a review it is. Here's the thing. When the bad reviews hit, and I am sure there will be, will I be girl enough to put them up here as well? I really don't know.

But the PW one is terrific though it does feel strange to get a stranger's take on the book and hear me compared (or at least my situation) to Carrie Bradshaw's. I mean, we have completely different senses of fashion.

But, it is exciting that this is the first review from the non-wine reading world and the first clue I have that my book works for us and the rest of the world. Have I really lucked out and made discourses on yeast and tannin sexy?

++

*** In this entertaining oenological salvo, wine blogger and journalist Feiring makes an argument for wine authenticity through adherence to old techniques. She's against what she calls “Big Wine”—viticulture as business and technology—and blames the shrinking appreciation for hand-vinified, long-aged “Old World” wines (like the Barolo that eventually led to her career) on, among other things, the UC–Davis School of Enology and Viticulture and the wine writings of critic Robert M. Parker Jr. (of the book's title). But what sets her sprightly polemic apart is that her argument is pinned to a personal narrative of wine tours through Europe and California. Rounding out the Syrah-and-the-City parallels are several female characters who receive noms de vin like “Honey-Sugar” and the air-kissing “Skinny,” and most entertainingly of all, the author's Carrie-like relationships. Parker looms like Mr. Big over all Feiring's oenological relationships; they finally have a couple of phone dates that distill the differences between them down to quantifying (Parker) versus qualifying (Feiring). The author, who already has fans through her blog and other journalism, can count on new ones with this publication. (May) ****

Still on the California mission, my next stop was the Skurnik tasting. I plucked a wineglass and took a few minutes to examine the tasting book for prospects. There was a new boy on the block, Stewart Cellars. Their copy included, "only native yeast fermentations." I circled the winery and proceeded to table 56.

The owner is from Texas. The winemaker is Paul Hobbs. I was surprised that the Russian River Pinot,'06 was drinkable ($400 a case, wholesale.) What does that mean to me? It wasn’t overtly offensive. There was no in-my-face candy or strong toast or cherry. First impression? Heat and an odd, silty gritty texture, like find ground sand.

Mr. Stewart told me with a great deal of pride how he sold off the '05 vintage and wouldn’t bottle it under his own name. "I make a Californian wine, not a French wine and the '05 vintage was French."

Upon further pressing he explained, “It was too earthy. It just wasn’t a Californian wine.”

Had he been reading Robert ******? The critic who reprimanded and punished Steve Edmunds (Edmunds St. John) for making a “French” wine?

When did fat, fruit-driven, alcoholic wines of no interest become California? Doesn't it seem as if the state might have an identity crisis? It might be the wrong analogy, and I'm sure I'll rethink it and choose a better one in a few days but for some reason I began to think of parents whose smart children dropped out of school, ran away to the Unification Church.

On to the next child--the Stewart '04 Cabernet at $520 a case. Perhaps the Californian of his dreams? No irony, just straightforward over ripe, toasted, thick-headed stuff.

But there was indeed irony in the room. Because two tables away was Cathy Corison. From what I can ascertain, Corison, who debuted in 1987 has never gone after an “American taste.” (Is this way Parker hasn’t covered the wines in ten years?).

Her ’03 Kronos, from her own vineyard, was wildly expensive but elegant, a descriptive I don’t use frivolously for California. What’s more is that her 1996 Cabernet was herbal (that’s not American, I guess, maybe that’s why I liked it) with plenty of thoughts and counter-arguments thrown out in the texture and meaty flavors and good vibrancy. The wines were about 13.6 and when I asked her how she was able to manage this remarkable feat of lowish alcohol she said, “ I don't make a Las Vegas showgirl of a wine.24 brix is plenty of ripeness.” When I asked her if in an odd year she would ever try reverse osmosis she just about went apoplectic. Perhaps she conceded, if she were to lose her wine due to some bacterial invasion, but never for flavor or alcohol profiling.

I left feeling hopeful. There were some people who still made expressive wines. Next stop was to see what Randall Grahm was up to since he jumped on the biodynamic wagon.

“Ready for some MOX-ed wines?” he asked, knowing my distaste for the process of bubbling oxygen into the wines. Two years ago I had a conversation with Jim Fulmer, head of the U.S. Demeter, the keeper of the Biodynamic trademark. I tried to persuade him to disallow the use of MOX for Biodynamic wine. As it overtly changes the wine’s chemistry it seems to be completely against the core of Biodynamic belief. But Grahm doesn't see any conflict at all. He uses it, he says, not to decrease the reduction in his reds but to increase it. Even though he says he does not use it to erase his tannins, that was part of the wine picture as well. That said, the Grahm wines are very improved and it was nice not to get aromatic yeast on his whites.

As I was walking the aisles for my next victim, or the next to victimize me, I looked up. Saw Mike Dashe and whispered to myself, " A sign from God.”

To be continued......

In the near future I'm going to be placed over the barbie coals. As my feet catch fire the gate keepers will ask, "Why do you say such nasty things about California wine," (take that, Alice Sari. And that and that!).

I need to be armed with answers that can pass as intelligent. This is why, instead of relying on seven year old notes, I'm on a mission. I am tasting wines I malign.

This past Tuesday I started with the Sherbrooke Cellars/Liz Willette tasting held at Cru.

First I fortified myself: Markus Fries 1976 Auslese Noviander Honigberg!! What a delicious spicy confection, even more delicious and important due to a touch of funk. The 1988 Spatlese Bernkasteler Schlossberg is a wee more subtle and no less delcious. And at $420 a case wholesale?

I loved the new Mikulski labels, bold, almost like Dard & Ribos and his Aligoté is extremely charming, Then there was one more star for me before I had to go and do service. Domaine Martray's Brouilly, courtesy of Becky Wasserman. The Les Feuillees (which also should hit in the $20s) is a gorgeous beaujo with just the right amount of refreshing tart to balance out the velvet raspberry. The Cuvée Corentin, is more brooding and more of a keeper.

Then I went to Purgatory.

I tasted Finnegan’s Lake. Right in the booklet, the winery's objective was clearly stated. “to source the best fruit available.”

So much for words. I tried the Cabernet. And while I applaud the price, an old fashioned $80 a case it had over-ripe, rotted flavors I couldn’t deal with.

I’m going to get to the point: I’ve never been able to see the fuss over Brewer-Clifton. Lee Campbell, one of the best sommeliers in town and certain with the most infectious, joy producing smiles, directed me to a table over yonder. “Go taste that chardonnay.”

She was talking about Brewer-Clifton, one of the Santa Rita Hills wineries supposedly cult. A cult that I never signed up for.

“Why?” I asked.
“Just go and do it!” She said, cute dominatrix that she is.

Being in an oddly passive mood, I complied. I appreciated that there were no aromatic yeasts at work. No tropical fruit! Great going! The wine was poured quite cold, there was a certain squeak to it. I looked at the label. 16% alcohol! For a Chardonnay? Why do they bother to grow the grape down there?
Why? Why? Why?

And what was the real alcohol? It was so squeaky I felt it had to have been de-alked. It might have entered the world at an even higher percentage.

I don’t understand how anyone could drink it let alone pay about $55 retail for the torture of it. That makes the Mikulski, a way more enjoyable drink with way more complexity, an extreme bargain.

On to the 3 Somms, because Lee said, “Try it. I want to see your face when you taste it.” The 3 Somms refers to 3 sommelier’s who confer on the ‘project.’ The 2005 Napa Red? More rotted fruit. I appreciate that it probably was not reverse osmosed to find the ‘sweet spot,’ but perhaps in this case, machine calibration for taste might be a good thing.

When Lee saw my facial confusion mixed with a quick spit, she burst out. “It’s good for you!” she said, laughing so hard at me tears came to her eyes.

Could you share some stories of how a friendship or a relationship broke up or never got started because the object of potential affection (or fraternization) could not understand your sense of smell or your palate and how that ultimately was the symbol of deeper issues?

Such as, could you ever get into bed with a someone who wore Opium or who put a nose in a glass, smelled a big, fat stinking oaky fruit bomb laced with espresso and said, “terrific,” knocked it back and went for more?

The scene at the latest Jenny & Francois tasting? Energized. Wines showed well and there were plenty of slurpers and spitters getting down with them. Amongst the luminaries were ...
Brooklyn Guy , Ruben Sanz Ramiro from The Monday Room (his first taste of these wines, he was particularly charmed by Domaine Rimbert from St. Chinian). Fifi (La Pere Pinard..etc.) and Jorge, of 360 fame and is now shaping the list an unlikely spot, Le Cercle Rouge (I guess I have to show up there and see what he's up to). Dress was informal but all indications point to some version of rasta casing for hair meeting the snood as a look on the rise.

Many thanks for Jenny for synching the tasting handouts with the sequence of the wines. Brilliant. All of this meant that Alice was far less confused!

If I were putting together my next wine list, these are the wines I would choose.

CHAMPERS!!
Lassaigne Brut. One of my favorites. I bowed to it and went down the line.

OUDIN CHABLIS VAUGIRAUT '04
Just adore the Vaugiraut. Yum. A mineral blast. A classic crystal and steel chard.

AUDREY & CHRISTIAN BINNER
The 04's from this Alsatian house are brilliant.
*Pinot Gris is refreshing.
*Katzenthal Riesling is got a long grip and layers of flowers and petrol.
*Gewurtztraminer: a great one for people with fear of Gewurtz. Very dry with the appeal of a gin &tonic.

PEYRA COTES D'AUVERGNES, SG ‘04
Geek alert wine: For those who are mourning the financial demise of Stephane Majeaune there are three more vintages on the way, made in the trendy, hard-core Jules Chauvet method.

Though I defy anyone to ident the grape in the bottle, it is a great drink and a text book illustration of how a vin naturel differs from the conventional, even the conventional ‘natural.” It is twiggy, earth meets currant and delivers plenty of puppy breath while still managing to intrigue.

BOBINETE SAUMUR-CHAMPIGNY '06
I admit I didn't love his first two vintages, but now all has quieted down and was much impressed. The wine is a mouthful, has a bit of barnyard brett to flesh out some ripe green/red pepper.

DOMAIN DE LA PATIENCE, ST. GUILHEM MERLOT ‘05
By the glass alert. A merlot that is woodsy with a nice dollop of tar and edge, reminds me of a great 1970's zinfandel.

ROMANEAUX-DESTEZET
Hervé Souhaut’s Souteronne is old vine Gamay. The ‘05 is edgy and lush with more syrah animal than gamay floral. The ‘06 syrah has got a nice flash of horse, chalk, dander and white pepper. Admittedly, both should be labeled-- geek alert—for for those who love Dard & Ribo? Enough said.

L'ANGLORE LES TRAVERSES '06
Another one with Chauvet style little extraction and you've got to wonder, white or rosé? But the flavor delivers with interest and elegance... hard to spot the syrah--supposedly is 60%?

CAVES ESTÉZARGUES
I love this Southern Rhone cooperative. I really do like the '06 Les Grandes Vignes cheap, typical rhone fruit, and reliable and interesting but…..the star is……..

BAG IN THE BOX!!!
3 liters are wrapped up in a plain brown wrapper. They call it From the Tank. If I had a restaurant I'd pour the crap out of this wine. It is perfect. Be a nice guy, sell it for $5 a glass and make your customers happy. (Hey, I'd serve it for parties, or keep it on hand for nightly tipples.) The finish is slightly loose, but it's got enough licorice, tar and white pepper to keep it going.

DEUX ANES:
I've writen about these wines from Corbieres often. Licorice marks all three wines. The '06 Premier Pas is easy to love. The '05 Fontanilles has a slight skunk but great texture, some sand, and acidity. L'Enclos is brooding.

JEAN LOUIS TRIBOULEY L'ALBA '03.
No, not THAT Alaba! This is from the Roussillon. A dense red wine with plenty of power and spice to have a touch of peach. Go figure.

CLOS DES CAMUZEILLES VdP

Always a fan of Laurent Tibes' wines. This is all carignan, and it's tense and animal with a touch of hay and honey.