The Feiring Line

The Gonon and St. Jo Issue: Part One

Pity St. Joseph--- the underdog of the Northern Rhone.

Last June I heard so many sob stories from producers about how hard it was to get any attention. Of course I was very sympathetic but also surprised because out of the five red wine appellations in the north, St. Joseph is one of my favorites especially from the hearts, hands and hectares of Dard et Ribo, Gonon, Chave, Herv Souhaut and Bernard Faurie.

So how did its syrah get a bad rep? How is it that Cote-Rotie and Hermitage get all the glory? (With honorable mention given to Cornas and the Most Improved to Crozes-Hermitage?)

The main reason is that St. Jo is a big boy of an appellation. In 1956 there were six communes all around the town of Mauves but by the Summer of Woodstock twenty-five villages were allowed and not all of them had the gorgeous crushed granite that makes Northern Rhone syrah the real shit. The other reasons have to do with misconceptions; it seems as if Parker just doesn't ever reward the wines with high points and that's what his readers look for. St. Jo does not have snob appeal.

Last June I visited Jean Gonon of Domaine Gonon in Mauves. His wines were exciting and so it was lovely to discover he too was a sweetheart. He works without chemicals. He has a natural approach in the cellar and despises new wood, and except when he gives in to a replacement there is no new oak used here (and some barrels are as old as 40 years of age.) He works steep granitic soils. He's a brave man who lives openly n the fiercely heterosexual Northern Rhone. So, what's not to like?

Jean Gonon last June in his cellar.

I babbled on happily about him, trying to entice an importer friend, Mike, here in NYC, to pick him up for distribution.

Mike said to me, "I already have a St. Jo."

Would he have said he already had a Cote Rotie or an Hermitage --St. Jo's snootier neighbors? I should have told him he had one St. Jo, but it wasn't a very inspired one. Because to my palate, it's the truth.

When Chambers Street Wines snared Gonon for their shop I burst into applause. Oh joy, oh joy two of my top St. Joe's are in the New York City at Chambers Street Wines the Gonon and Dard et Ribo. To bad at $25-$32 they are in the price range of 'special treat.'

Last night I drank the 2004 Gonon with a friend I will call The Owl Man. The wine needs time. It is certainly a wee too young. Mr. Owl Man took a whiff, initially smiled, inhaled the aromas of smoky bacon and took a drink. He frowned and said “ I can’t stand new oak.”

“Quiet, Alice," I said to myself. " You must not punish people for confused palates.”

The Gonon and St. Jo Issue: Part One

Pity St. Joseph--- the underdog of the Northern Rhone.

Last June I heard so many sob stories from producers about how hard it was to get any attention. Of course I was very sympathetic but also surprised because out of the five red wine appellations in the north, St. Joseph is one of my favorites especially from the hearts, hands and hectares of Dard et Ribo, Gonon, Chave, Herv Souhaut and Bernard Faurie.

So how did its syrah get a bad rep? How is it that Cote-Rotie and Hermitage get all the glory? (With honorable mention given to Cornas and the Most Improved to Crozes-Hermitage?)

The main reason is that St. Jo is a big boy of an appellation. In 1956 there were six communes all around the town of Mauves but by the Summer of Woodstock twenty-five villages were allowed and not all of them had the gorgeous crushed granite that makes Northern Rhone syrah the real shit. The other reasons have to do with misconceptions; it seems as if Parker just doesn't ever reward the wines with high points and that's what his readers look for. St. Jo does not have snob appeal.

Last June I visited Jean Gonon of Domaine Gonon in Mauves. His wines were exciting and so it was lovely to discover he too was a sweetheart. He works without chemicals. He has a natural approach in the cellar and despises new wood, and except when he gives in to a replacement there is no new oak used here (and some barrels are as old as 40 years of age.) He works steep granitic soils. He's a brave man who lives openly n the fiercely heterosexual Northern Rhone. So, what's not to like?

Jean Gonon last June in his cellar.

I babbled on happily about him, trying to entice an importer friend, Mike, here in NYC, to pick him up for distribution.

Mike said to me, "I already have a St. Jo."

Would he have said he already had a Cote Rotie or an Hermitage --St. Jo's snootier neighbors? I should have told him he had one St. Jo, but it wasn't a very inspired one. Because to my palate, it's the truth.

When Chambers Street Wines snared Gonon for their shop I burst into applause. Oh joy, oh joy two of my top St. Joe's are in the New York City at Chambers Street Wines the Gonon and Dard et Ribo. To bad at $25-$32 they are in the price range of 'special treat.'

Last night I drank the 2004 Gonon with a friend I will call The Owl Man. The wine needs time. It is certainly a wee too young. Mr. Owl Man took a whiff, initially smiled, inhaled the aromas of smoky bacon and took a drink. He frowned and said “ I can’t stand new oak.”

“Quiet, Alice," I said to myself. " You must not punish people for confused palates.”

Why I Blog

A whole week has passed and I've stayed mute. I wanted to write. But I felt I had nothing to say. Sometimes it happens.

But, the explanations? I was still reverberating from finishing the book and trying to figure out what life looks like after finishing such an encompassing project. I have to make a living. Yet, I find myself more resistant than ever to pitching stories that sell like; what wines to pour on Valentines Day or what to drink with your cat. Then when an editor at New York Mag asked me (regarding a story I wrote on Prague), "Who is Smetana!" (Oh, God. What's next? Who is Dylan? Who's Monteverdi? Who is Phil Ochs? , I thought I was truly in an alternative universe. Smetna is not the world's most famous composer but come on, he's a big deal.

Back to my career: While it's flattering to receive an invite from a start up magazine from Down Under to be their wine columnist, I wonder why people think I should do this for free? Today in a world where editors don’t know who Smetna is, are words so cheap?

Which brings me to blogging.

I give it away for free here. But here I can be loose with my sentence fragments, not worry about whether the subject of my story is pretty enough and have no pressure from an advertising department to censor my content. (Though, I would love to have an editor. Every writer needs a good editor. That's another relationship going the way of Smetna.)

Over the past week, I spent some time contemplating whether or not to join in the burble of comments on the thread of The New York Times' Eric Asimov's fine blog on why bloggers blog, which came about because Tom Wark of the Fermentation.com site/blog was sponsoring The America Wine Blog Awards. I dithered on whether I should post my answer there or here? And does anyone actually care why I started this site?

For those who care, here it is. I make my living at this writing thing. I don't have the luxury of a regular paycheck, a trust fund or someone to support me. I don't have a regular outlet for thoughts, feelings, comments, observations, ideas and words. An actor has to act. A musician has to play. A writer has to write. Simple. Though I'm not an exhibitionist, I need an audience. While I also need to get paid, I need to write---the way I need to drink, the way I need to breathe, the way I need good tomatoes---the way I need....well, you know.

When I idealistically wrote my first novel as an all too-shy eight-year-old (all seven pages of it, I wrote because I felt I had to express myself or my skin would burst through my freckles. Several decades later it's no different, except my freckles seem to have disappeared.

I'm fortunate to have a few editors who seem to adore me, yet sometimes my ideas are not exactly the most editorially popular (read: bad for advertising, too esoteric, quirky or far, far from the mainstream). Many sharp wine stories passed by, merely whispered to friends or got scratched in my diary. Rather than being silenced, I decided to be proactive and jumped into the blogosphere with Appellation Feiring, AliceFeiring.com or whatever people call this site.

Readers showed up. That was the shocking thing. Up to 8,000 readers a day visit here. An essential difference between posting and writing on assignment is that whether I have energy or a brilliant idea, if I’ve a contract I must produce. If I have a week of questioning my existence and purpose as I did last week, this site remains stagnant. Because really, you don't want to read filler about the existential dilemma, do you? Or my love life? Do you? I'll save that for my fiction, not my blog.

But thank you for reading, and sorry for the blank space.

Why I Blog

A whole week has passed and I've stayed mute. I wanted to write. But I felt I had nothing to say. Sometimes it happens.

But, the explanations? I was still reverberating from finishing the book and trying to figure out what life looks like after finishing such an encompassing project. I have to make a living. Yet, I find myself more resistant than ever to pitching stories that sell like; what wines to pour on Valentines Day or what to drink with your cat. Then when an editor at New York Mag asked me (regarding a story I wrote on Prague), "Who is Smetana!" (Oh, God. What's next? Who is Dylan? Who's Monteverdi? Who is Phil Ochs? , I thought I was truly in an alternative universe. Smetna is not the world's most famous composer but come on, he's a big deal.

Back to my career: While it's flattering to receive an invite from a start up magazine from Down Under to be their wine columnist, I wonder why people think I should do this for free? Today in a world where editors don’t know who Smetna is, are words so cheap?

Which brings me to blogging.

I give it away for free here. But here I can be loose with my sentence fragments, not worry about whether the subject of my story is pretty enough and have no pressure from an advertising department to censor my content. (Though, I would love to have an editor. Every writer needs a good editor. That's another relationship going the way of Smetna.)

Over the past week, I spent some time contemplating whether or not to join in the burble of comments on the thread of The New York Times' Eric Asimov's fine blog on why bloggers blog, which came about because Tom Wark of the Fermentation.com site/blog was sponsoring The America Wine Blog Awards. I dithered on whether I should post my answer there or here? And does anyone actually care why I started this site?

For those who care, here it is. I make my living at this writing thing. I don't have the luxury of a regular paycheck, a trust fund or someone to support me. I don't have a regular outlet for thoughts, feelings, comments, observations, ideas and words. An actor has to act. A musician has to play. A writer has to write. Simple. Though I'm not an exhibitionist, I need an audience. While I also need to get paid, I need to write---the way I need to drink, the way I need to breathe, the way I need good tomatoes---the way I need....well, you know.

When I idealistically wrote my first novel as an all too-shy eight-year-old (all seven pages of it, I wrote because I felt I had to express myself or my skin would burst through my freckles. Several decades later it's no different, except my freckles seem to have disappeared.

I'm fortunate to have a few editors who seem to adore me, yet sometimes my ideas are not exactly the most editorially popular (read: bad for advertising, too esoteric, quirky or far, far from the mainstream). Many sharp wine stories passed by, merely whispered to friends or got scratched in my diary. Rather than being silenced, I decided to be proactive and jumped into the blogosphere with Appellation Feiring, AliceFeiring.com or whatever people call this site.

Readers showed up. That was the shocking thing. Up to 8,000 readers a day visit here. An essential difference between posting and writing on assignment is that whether I have energy or a brilliant idea, if I’ve a contract I must produce. If I have a week of questioning my existence and purpose as I did last week, this site remains stagnant. Because really, you don't want to read filler about the existential dilemma, do you? Or my love life? Do you? I'll save that for my fiction, not my blog.

But thank you for reading, and sorry for the blank space.

Brave Winery and Love Rant: Part Two

I liked their Group Chief Winemaker but that didn’t stop me from realizing that the acidulation on the Steingarten Riesling was unfortunate (the wine hurt).

I was intrigued by a few things he told me. One was that they started irrigating the riesling vines three years ago.The other that those supposed old, bush vines one sees, are for tourists or special projects. (I haven't been to Australia but I doubt this veracity. Most probably some are for romance but I have faith some old vines are actually in production.) Another? The riesling has a 20-year guarantee on it. I found guarantee an odd word to use in conjunction with the word wine.

I kept on thinking about something I wrote in my book proposal about wines like these: “It’s like Hershey’s posing as an artisanal producer.”

Well, wouldn’t you know, last week several bars of “Cacoa Reserve” by Hershey’s appeared in my mailbox.

Nothing is safe.

Marketing has always been important. Spin has always been important, and I myself have been guilty of spinning--mostly by hyping queries trying to get an editor's attention. But, are ethics totally out of fashion? Am I just a vintage kind of girl in all ways? Or, do people just believe sincerely in their own insincerity?

Take love; love is an arena where people can believe firmly in their own insincerity, consciously or not. In the course of this life of mine, a few men passionately told me that they loved me. Some truly did (and do) and others wholeheartedly felt it for that whole minute or a day.

After some emotional bruising, I've learned the difference between artisinal emotion and the commercial type. If a fashion operation like H&M believes in its style but doesn’t believe it’s couture, wouldn't it be nice if the likes of Jacob’s Creek and Hershey’s followed suit?

Back to the subject at hand: the Hershey's chocolate report is that I prefer the Reserves to Hershey’s Special Dark. I could actually use the stuff for chips in the ice cream. I might even make brownies out of it. I might even take a nibble if desperate. I don't know if I'd use the Jacob's Creek for cooking. I certainly wouldn't use it for vinegar and I'm not sure under what conditions I would sip and swallow.

When Mr. Bow Tie and I left the tasting, he said to me, “You didn’t like anything?”

"No."

”Not even the zinfandel?”

I said to him, “There were no zinfandels. It was a shiraz and a cabernet.”

"Well, the last one," he said.

“That was a shiraz," I answered.

“Oh, I liked it. Are you sure it wasn’t a zinfandel?”

Very sure.

Brave Winery: Part One

One quick trip to this website has all the information a winery needs to know about whether I would like their wines or not. I'm pretty transparent. When the 4th largest producer in Australia offered to meet with me (not to lynch me but to taste their wines), I was surprised and grateful. Obviously it’s been a long, long time since I’ve willingly sipped their offerings. Yet it is very important to keep up with wines on the front line of commercial palates and this well known winery was showcasing their ‘ultra-premium collection.' I really wanted to know what they were up to.

It helped to have my editor friend, Mr. along for the ride, he was the perfect foil. Mr. Bowtie is very forgiving about wine, and while he can identify AF approved wine, and finally prefers them, he can also drink just about anything, even Yellow Tail.

I asked for a spittoon, he was happy to swallow and be my beard.

TBC......

Brave Winery and Love Rant: Part Two

I liked their Group Chief Winemaker but that didn’t stop me from realizing that the acidulation on the Steingarten Riesling was unfortunate (the wine hurt).

I was intrigued by a few things he told me. One was that they started irrigating the riesling vines three years ago.The other that those supposed old, bush vines one sees, are for tourists or special projects. (I haven't been to Australia but I doubt this veracity. Most probably some are for romance but I have faith some old vines are actually in production.) Another? The riesling has a 20-year guarantee on it. I found guarantee an odd word to use in conjunction with the word wine.

I kept on thinking about something I wrote in my book proposal about wines like these: “It’s like Hershey’s posing as an artisanal producer.”

Well, wouldn’t you know, last week several bars of “Cacoa Reserve” by Hershey’s appeared in my mailbox.

Nothing is safe.

Marketing has always been important. Spin has always been important, and I myself have been guilty of spinning--mostly by hyping queries trying to get an editor's attention. But, are ethics totally out of fashion? Am I just a vintage kind of girl in all ways? Or, do people just believe sincerely in their own insincerity?

Take love; love is an arena where people can believe firmly in their own insincerity, consciously or not. In the course of this life of mine, a few men passionately told me that they loved me. Some truly did (and do) and others wholeheartedly felt it for that whole minute or a day.

After some emotional bruising, I've learned the difference between artisinal emotion and the commercial type. If a fashion operation like H&M believes in its style but doesn’t believe it’s couture, wouldn't it be nice if the likes of Jacob’s Creek and Hershey’s followed suit?

Back to the subject at hand: the Hershey's chocolate report is that I prefer the Reserves to Hershey’s Special Dark. I could actually use the stuff for chips in the ice cream. I might even make brownies out of it. I might even take a nibble if desperate. I don't know if I'd use the Jacob's Creek for cooking. I certainly wouldn't use it for vinegar and I'm not sure under what conditions I would sip and swallow.

When Mr. Bow Tie and I left the tasting, he said to me, “You didn’t like anything?”

"No."

”Not even the zinfandel?”

I said to him, “There were no zinfandels. It was a shiraz and a cabernet.”

"Well, the last one," he said.

“That was a shiraz," I answered.

“Oh, I liked it. Are you sure it wasn’t a zinfandel?”

Very sure.

Brave Winery: Part One

One quick trip to this website has all the information a winery needs to know about whether I would like their wines or not. I'm pretty transparent. When the 4th largest producer in Australia offered to meet with me (not to lynch me but to taste their wines), I was surprised and grateful. Obviously it’s been a long, long time since I’ve willingly sipped their offerings. Yet it is very important to keep up with wines on the front line of commercial palates and this well known winery was showcasing their ‘ultra-premium collection.' I really wanted to know what they were up to.

It helped to have my editor friend, Mr. along for the ride, he was the perfect foil. Mr. Bowtie is very forgiving about wine, and while he can identify AF approved wine, and finally prefers them, he can also drink just about anything, even Yellow Tail.

I asked for a spittoon, he was happy to swallow and be my beard.

TBC......

Vin de Paille Before Breakfast

(The following is the unedited essay I wrote that appears in The Oldways Table (Essays & Recipes From the Culinary Think Tank)

After a stellar tasting in their deep stone cellar, Jean Louis Chave, the younger generation of the most revered domaine in Hermitage, Domaine Chave, handed me a bottle of Vin de Paille. This is a sweet wine made from grapes raisined on straw mats—hence the “paille,” It was a 1996 and the first vintage his father and mentor, Gerard, allowed him to vinify. He explained the wine took five whole years to stop fermenting. Modern wine producers would never have the patience for such a lazy wine. They would have fed the wine yeast and presto--the wine would have finished fermenting in a matter of a few days, not years. But this is not the way winemaking happens with the Chave’s. If the wine goes slow, then it goes slow.

Well, Jean Louis asked me to share that bottle with “George the Greek” an infamous character in Tain Hermitage. George’s store changes into an impromptu wine bar on sultry summer nights. And that night, with winemakers swapping many bottles with each other (and me) the Paille was overlooked. At three in the morning, I called it a night. George insisted on making me breakfast in the morning.

I was still bleary when I stumbled into George’s store, now transformed into a caf. There were fresh picked apricots, yogurt, pain seigle, espresso and…a chilled 1996 Chave Vin de Paille. He insisted I taste it…before coffee. “Just think of it as your morning juice,” he said. The wine was a brilliant and nervous wine, an exotic nectar of apricots and peaches in one sip, gooseberries and pineapples and perhaps a bit salty. This was one of the freshest of the genre of ‘raisined grape’ wines I’ve ever tasted. Even though I was about to get on the road again, I had to have a wee bit more.

Sweet wine is best when it is made the way the Chave’s do it, in a completely naturally manner. During fermentation the yeast eats up all of the sugars in the wine it can stomach. If the yeast is vigorous it wants to digest it all until the wine is left dry. However, if there is still sugar left, the wine stays sweet. You can stop the fermentation by adding neutral spirit—as with Port or the category of wines called 'Vin Doux Naturel (such as the French Maury or Beaume de Venise). However, if the grapes are super-concentrated and super-sweet to start with, fermentation will “stick” at some point.

The world’s most famous sweet wines concentrate their sweetness with “the noble rot.” Botrytis is the a rot that sweetens the inside grape. This is the way with the golden Sauternes from Bordeaux, Monbazillac from the Dordogne, Azsu from Hungary, Beerenausles’s of Germany and in some years some gorgeous Loire whites made from Chenin Blanc.

Freezing is an option. This technique can makes the most romantic of all sweet wines. While many ‘modern’ winemakers very unromantically shove their ripe grapes into a freezer, there are still brave winemakers who gear up, steal out in the middle of the night of the first deep freeze, and pick frozen grapes off of the vine. They press those extremely concentrated fruit into precious and extremely expensive nectar—‘Ice Wine.'

And then there is the raisin technique, probably the most ancient of all. Some say it debuted in Crete when winemakers twisted stems of the grape bunch to cut off its nutrition. The grapes shriveled on the vine. This method is used in many areas of the world, most notably in France and in Italy. Some famed examples of these are Italy’s “Passitos” (love the dark cinnamon-ish Sagrantino di Montefalco from Umbria) and the seductive Amarones from the Veneto.

And then there’s that honeyed Vin De Paille. The trick to making any top-notch sweet wine is to maintain the balance between the wine’s lemony acidity and its sweetness. And this wine had it. In the end, it was a great match with the exquisite sun-blushed apricots. Sure sweet wine is a perfect way to end dinner, but before breakfast it really isn’t so bad. –Alice Feiring

The Oldways Book

I just got my copy of

The Oldways Table, Essays & Recipe from the Culinary Think Tank (Ten Speed Press).

The book was long in the making. In fact, it was so long I forgot Sara (Baer-Sinnott) and Dun (K. Dun Gifford) the founders of Oldways (the think tank that put a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil on every table in America) had asked me for an essay on sweet wines.

I popped open the book, and there with colleagues such as Melissa Clark. sommelier Cat Silirie, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Lou DiPalo--there it was.

I've posted the unedited essay under my article section.