The Feiring Line

Giving thanks for Abe Schoener

Tonight I dragged myself out of a sick bed, dived into the Arctic temperature, heading to a  loft on Essex street to listen to lecture #1 of the Metaphysical Lecture Series, given by ex-philosophy -prof-turned-winemaker, Abe Schoener. 

There was a packed room, many of them collect his eccentric and wide ranging wines. Others pour them.  Others presumably attended because their interest was piqued. But what struck me is that no one in the room, all 40 of them,  were the kind of folk who cringe about the intellecutualizion of wine. They embrace it.

 I am weary  of the market-driven, rampant need to simplify wine, to make it accessible (drink it. Isn't that easy enough?). Why must it be reduced it to the LCD?  Like the rest of the world which pushes the extremes, the image of wine is either super pretentious or day time TV. Few venture onto the other ground, to view and imbibe it as the magical substance it is; a vehicle of pleasure and thought.

Wine is a complex and wiry metaphor.  Abe is one of the few, fresh minds who explore it from a different dimension. In fact, at times I think he might not actually be human, or at least a visitor from another time wrinkle. Some of my best friends might fall in to that category.

Think of it.  A room full of those not afraid of him or of thought. Abe is determined to find like-minded folk as he  takes this show on the road.

Praised be Aristotle.        

I'm home. I'm feverish. I'm headed to France in hours so I don't have the time to go over the lecture and give this the thought and review it warrants and deserves, and anyway, my nose is stuffed and I have a fever. Too much information. Yes, I know.

 So, quickly; the structure was a lecture in five parts, entitled Wine and Loss. Why is wine by nature tragic, Abe asks. Why do we take wine so seriously, and then he goes on to do just that. There was nothing sentimental about this, of course, he is based in unsentimental philosophy. One of the best lines was, "Aristotle was like the Eisenhower of these (Plato..etc) philosophers."  

 Abe served wines throughout, making us swallow every last drop, the bastard, to illustrate headers like heartbreak.

I knew the second wine served had to be an Abe wine, it was imprinted with his initials. But which one and how? Its taste was very cinsault-like, it seemed true but it seemed to have his thought imprinted on it, which is great, because Abe is part of his terroir, wherever his terroir is. Turns out it was the 2009 Rhododactylos, old cinsault vine from Lodi.  Track down a bottle, you won't be disappointed, unless you are. But that bring me to an unphilsopophical thought.

As he talked about the heartbreak of wine, which like the heartbreak of love--is because it is over at some point. Whether wrenching in life or wrenching in death. And wine too, at some point dies. He brought up the tragic loss of Soldera's vintages  --the acclaimed and unquestionably profound wines of  Montalcino. In December, a disgruntled employee snuck into the winer on a sunday night and opened the valves on six vintages, what would have been 84,000 bottles of sleeping wine, including the infant, 2012. 

Why, Abe asks, wasn't there a lock on those casks. It is simple, no? Yes. Simple. 

He came back to this tragedy twice in his lecture, and closed with it--before we concluded with the Coulon champagne, "Because if he had, he would have made a very different wine.'

If only for that thought, it was worth the journey. To lock up a wine, to lock up its preciousness, would have prevented Gianfranco's wines from greatness. The wines strike this magical balance of greatness and sidestepping bravado. For all of their expense, they have always been, at least the times I've been lucky enough to sip, almost humbling. And for that we need another Abe lecture to take it to the next level.

Abe has more lectures coming up across the country. Go. Sit next to your fellow drinker who loves to think about wine and how it connects to life, love and loss. 

 

Julien Sunier & Jean Louis Dutraive

Back in October I debuted my first newsletter. The next one will be shipped tomorrow or Thursday. Every month I angst, is it going to be good enough? I have no way to tell. But for those of you who are curious what kinds of material I plunk in, or even what it looks like, here's a piece included in that debut issue,  about two folk in the Beaujo who's stars are currently rising. Julien Sunier and Jean-Louis Dutraive. 

 

 

Henri Jayer Echézeaux

"Which one?" the gentleman asked me.

"Jayer," I said. Quite frankly I didn't even note the producer or the year on the Meursault alternative. There was no choice. 

No matter what you think of my life, this curtain or the box scenario doesn't happen that often. Becky and Russell spoil me and I've drunk beautifully there, enriched and educated. But at this dinner, with a gentleman I barely knew though like immensely, I was embarrased at my reaction.

I acted like a country girl who saw Paris for the first time, or the first time a knew someone I was taken with was also taken with me. Or the nights that I wished dawn would never come. It's inexplicable and giddy and all the while trying not to be gauche and to act as, well, I drink Jayer all the time.

I don't.

I have scavenged Jayers after La Paulées, draining what I could from the clunky dregs at the bottom of the bottle from table #1. I've wondered if they were fakes and wondered why I wasn't moved. But the opportunity to sit with a bottle from the legendary producer at dinner and contemplate it and perhaps understand.

I wasn't taking notes so I can't tell you a think about the way it smelled or tasted. Does it make a difference? I could write something like this note, but I found nothing like this gentleman's perceptions in the wine, nor would it make me want to drink it. It is in a wine like this that an experience makes a difference, a tasting note doesnt. 

Some was poured. I couldn't wait to put my nose in it. "So much for a lousy year," I exclaimed. 

In 1994 I was back in New York City. I had been seeing RB for just over a year and that fall was a huge torential mess, not just in Burgundy at harvest but in my life. Torment. Drama. I weighed 92 pounds and terribly confused, just making my way into the world of wine in a more serious way. I had yet to make my first visit to Burgundy. I wouldn't reach those limestoned hilled until 2001. But over there, in Burgundy it was a vintage that Michael Broadbent said he didn't know what to make of.

Their summer was going splendidly, a warm year and a healthy crop, until the pre-harvest rains started. And started. And rained. By harvest it had dried out, but the damage was done. And Henri, went to work in his part of the Grand Cru Echézeaux vineyard in the southern end, in the climat of Les Cruots ou Vignes Blanches. 

The press was unfavorable. Back in those days before I spent time with winemakers and walking the vines, I believed what I read. A bad vintage meant avoid. Now, I know better. Things can go wrong but all a bad vintage means is yields and how much work it was to get a beauty into the bottle.

When I chose my bottle, I was prepared for curiosity, not to fall in love. I was prepared for a flirt. Not to fall into the glass and be deboned. Because, I love stems in wine and Jayer used them not. I'm suspicious of 100% new oak and cold soaks. But the rest? Good viticulture, low sulfur natural fermentations. 

It goes back to the importance of no dogma. The wine maker chooses their way of interpreting nature and in that bottle I was moved. It was bricking for sure, it was time to drink, for sure, but it did not disappear, it continued to deepen, take on weight, express. The genies came out of the bottle. The smell was deep and profound. The edges and tannins and been rounded and smoothed but the texture and tannin and structure was there in its brickishness. The aftertaste drove through the stoplight and all of the sudden there was an MG racing along side.

In the miracle of nature, it was perfect with Floyd Cardoz's celery root and cauliflower, sweetening the winter salad. But who needed food. 

With great gratitude, thank you. 

Michel Bettane and the scourge of natural wine

What happens when you, like Parker, base your life's work on one kind of wine, ignoring a whole subculture that has found a huge audience? What you do, especially if you're incapable of saying something like, "I didn't know that," you go on attack, because you perceive danger. 

Vini naturali.

 

While racism cannot be likened to the treatment of natural wine by its critics, the thought that keeps on coming to mind. 

If you can't get hold of the Gambero Rosso where Michel Bettane goes on a rant about the horrors of natural wines (mothers! hide your daughters!)  follow this link to intravino. This is the speech Bettane gave warning that the danger of natural wine is nipping at the Italian toes. (Where has he been? It's been going on for a decade.) 

Pauvre Michel Bettane. His very core beliefs  are so shaken that he needs to witness against those terrible people who dare to make wine without or with little sulfur. A few years back at VinExpo I attended a tasting of his best wines. Nothing there was drinkable to me. I too was scratching my head about those wines. Really? Chateau Pavie? Really? That overipe crap? I don't get it. Those wines are as undrinkable to me as those with 'natural wine stink' are to him. I understand if he wants to rant about how bad they are but to witness about the dangers seems a little excessive.

I do wish though, being a man of the press, being a journalist and a public figure he could be a little more responsible.  He could try to undestand. He could meet the people who work in that way. Talk to the men and women who work in a natural way, find out why they do what they do. Watch the way the wines evolve and understand them. They talk a new language. He might not get fluent in the language and he might never like them, but at least he will understand and reject them out of knowledge. 

Don't worry, M. Bettane. There will be plenty of Ornellaia and the rest  for you, undrinkable to me, but vive la différence: n'est ce pas? 

Sentencing in Part 61 for R. Alcala

I felt compelled to attend Rodney Alcala's sentencing today. I got on my bike and rode down to 100 Center Street. I had been so surprised that he plead guilty to the two murders. Everyone was.

 I parked my bike on a fence right near by some of the TV vans. And in front of me on the security line the camera men filed in. Men with equiptment were lined up outside of the courtroom as well. I went in. The room was almost packed, but I found a seat, on the aisle. Many of New York's finest were there, many badges as well as mourners wearing little stickie buttons of Alcala's 1971 victim, Cornelia Criley.

Crilley, a  23 year old flight attendant was murdered just two years after I had my encounter with him on St. Marks Place.

I tucked my helmet under the bench in front of me. The air was heavy. It's not every day New York sentences a serial killer. I overheard the Asst. DA Spiro say to a family member, "As he's already confessed to the murders, there won't be any shenanigans." Alcala has been known to do such things. But we know he's eager to get back to California where he has a computer and library priveliges, so he can work on his case to reverse his position on death row. I'm still trying to understand how a murder can plead guilty just so he can go back to his more cushy jail in St. Quentin. I'm not sure I can manage that rationalization. If they would have given him those rights on the east coast, then he would have defended himself? This does seem to be a circus of injustice. 

The public defender, with her steel wool gray hair and handsome face, straight off of a Roman coin was a wee thing who was much taller and formidable in her three inch heels. She walked towards the holding room, each step taken as if she were stamping out a fire. She was called in. She emerged. The judge looked very solemn. Rodney Alcala, his long grey hair, flowing in freshly washed waves, his feet unfettered, unlike the last time I saw him in court. His hands secured behind him, walked lightly into the room not making eye contact. 

Speeches: They started, Alcala had his back to them all, of course. And so they spoke to the judge and to the DOC on his orange jumpsuit. Crilley's sister spoke, a simple woman. There was no anger just despair. Trying in a an almost innocent way to make Alcala, a man with an inability for empathy (as we know it) to understand that he just didn't destroy a life, but he broke a family and many lives. Then the assistant DA read the words of Ellen Hover's sister. Ellen was murdered in 1977. The letter was articulate, historical, and made the case for broken lives as well as well for  maximum sentence for a man already on death row. No family member showed up the reason given was that they didn't want to bring more attention to Alcala, who does seem to like his share. 

Spiro was up next to present the summation he didn't get to. I had this feeling that people needed to have their say, which they were cheated out of when Alcala plead guitly. There was an element of primitivism about it. Spiro gave an overview of Alcala's intense killing history and the brutality of his crimes from presumably his first in 1968 until he was incarcerated in 1977. There was another woman, besides me, who got away. But the other young woman, a fifteen year old, was not as lucky. He brutalized her and raped her before somehow she convinced him not to kill her. When I think how I escaped his apartment, yes, I got lucky. 

 Justice Bonnie Wittner addressed the now fragile 69 year old. She said she had never had a case such as this in her 30 years on the bench and she hoped she never would again. She choked down tears, failed and tried to gain composure. She sentenced him to the maximum of 25-years per victim. Then it was all over. 

Riding home was a shaky affair.

Bordeaux in Town & Country

I'm fresh from a tasting where I was taken to task about this piece. It was by someone I've known professionally for a long time. He told me what I wrote was not true. After all, he never sees the problem the Bordelais have. Did he think I was making this stuff up? Then after he criticized my point of view, I asked him if he read to the story to its end. He said no. 

Then it came out: he didn't even read the piece. 

He also said that as I write about natural wine, I had no business writing about Bordeaux. To which I said, "Listen to what you said. What a sad observation."

I did my research, and I did my interviews in France as well as well as from the sommelier's here and some pundits, from James Molesworth to Eric Asimov.

My story is on how Bordeaux has lost 2-3 generations of sommeliers. 

In the next Feiring Line (out end of January) I'll be publishing some of the results of the tasting which I had for the piece of Bordeaux recommendations, wines that I feel have authenticity and soul.   I'll also be printing some of the back story and other bits that fell on the cutting floor.

 

 

 

Imbibe Mag's wine person of the year? Me.

I hope you don't mind this sharing. But I was really stunned and honored when Imbibe magazine chose me as their wine person of the year. And so a little love doesn't come by that often, I had to post. There's more on their FB page and website, but this is a profile, I'll definitely cherish. Thanks, Imbibe. I think you're pretty terrific too!