The Feiring Line

France 2011

Don't set the dogs on me! I have been missing. In France. 

The day after that gorgeous Les Clous (see below), I took the TGV to Avignon (will I ever actually see the town instead of the train station?) In the morning, we left Amy's puppies, we went to La Remise where I wondered if I'd ever return. There was something about tasting wines pre-malo, hard and unexpressed, especially when few wanted to seriously discuss their farming, the terroir and the vintage. Party atmosphere, the ubiquitous Utah Beach oysters. I found myself depressed. 

Can I go home? Will I come back? Or was this merely jetlag. Not sure. Highlights? Natural wine from Greece! Finally. Crete and Santorini. No, I won't tell  you now. You'll have to come back. Laureano's 2011's are tasting good. Great.  And he has a new child in anfora which was damed tasty.

Andrea Calek was there with a new hair treatment, he told me he wasn't going to read my book but someone told him it was funny. He agreed. I don't know if he was laughing at me or with me, but it doesn't matter. He's a smart one, that one. I'll take with or at. It works.  

That night, I went home with Amy by way of Le Tracteur where there was yet another tasting. Find? Yes.  Jean-Sébastien Gioan's  Domaine Potron Minet from Côtes-du-Roussillon.

Frankly it was hard to get me to taste another SW wine as so many just lack freshness, but this one, especially his white which is a blend of macabeu, grenache and muscat was peach, floral and apricot fuzz. 

Once back with the puppies,

 

 I gorged myself on her husband Matt's freshly made kimchee. He's got a thing for fermented foods and I really needed a vegetable.

 Millesime Bio is that organic wine fair in Montpelier and an event I'm getting more fond of with each year.

Cheapish for the vignerons.

Great tasting conditions and some very fine wines.

Greatest hits? I fess up, ones that I know from here. I zoomed right over to taste barolo and Erbaluna (Savio Soares imports). I love those barolos. Really, and the 2006 is fragrant, sturdy, sandalwood and chalk.  I reaquainted myself with the find wines of Cascina Cornia in Tuscany. This domaine, also imported by Savio Soares, by the way, stopped using copper in the vineyards in 1996, a fact I found compelling, and so were the wines.  Gorgeous.  Long macerations here and a great box wine. Along with the new domaine of La Porta di Vetrine, remembered what sangiovese tastes like and why years ago I loved it so much. Thanks guys.  The Saladin sisters make a fabulous white wine, Per El a blend of 5 grapes all peach and rock. Le Pinte from the Jura gets better and better, Bruno Ciofi is doing great over there, so why isn't this imported into this country? Hello poulsard! And I ended happily with the burgundies of Giboulot.  Elegant, even in the vintage I might be scared of, 2009.

 Purpled teeth, I dinnered in town with Les Saladins, Amy and The Shep, a place where the Italians were retiring from their two days at La Remise, kiss kiss goodnight, knowing I would see Francesca and Alessandra at the gare in Blois.

 

TBC

Clos Roche Blanche '09 Cot and Speckled Trout

 Maybe it's this time of waiting; waiting for my editor to get back to me with his comments. Maybe it's working  on that damned navel, oh I mean, novel, a futile exercise headed for sorrow, but to tell you the truth, I have been enjoying not blogging. 

I don't mind talking to myself, but that is what blogging has become to me, talking to myself and I' not sure if it's the best use of my time. Or anyone's time.

Also, there's vanity involved. I'm not sure if I'd rather do it in public, or down Prince Street behind my wool hat and sunglasses.

True, people read me, from all over the place, and I see the click throughs, and I see the stats so I now I am not as isolated as it seems, but I must tell you, writing on this site feels like one hand clapping. A tree falling in the forest with no one around. A meal without a diner.  I'll figure it out, tomorrow I'll have a different story to tell, a different feeling, but right now? 

I've been in the ether.  I have been  standing in the river waiting to get me a speckled trout. 

Sporting my  diaper-like rubberized waders, I waited for the speckled trout to nibnle, leaf brown or  pea green, swim on.

Waiting, I saw what Beckett fabricated:  Vladimir and Estragon fishing. V&E waited with a bat to bang the beast  between its little bead eyes, to stun it and live bleed it. This is what it was all about. 

But there were no fish. False advertising.

Like a pink pelikan, I stood in the water,  a redhead with one leg up, and still, so still. It was frigid; cold. Snow and ice. In the end nothing to show for it except some shrapnel from some idiot who wanted to do that exploding fish in the water thing, what to they call it? Torpedo fishing? Dynamite fishing? There were the frozen fillets in my freezer, someone else sent to me. And I waited for guests to come. 

I eased the cork on a new vintage of an old favorite, the Clos Roche Blance Cot, vintage 2009. Favorite. What a word. That is a favorite of mine. Seems meaningless and shallow, sort of like name that tune. Favorite. Indeed. When people ask me if I have a 'favorite' color, I have to stop the pity from crossing my eyes. No, I don't have a favorite color. I don't have a 'color.'

Favorite, and i call myself a writer? Is that the best I could do? A writer that is knee deep in the Roscoe River waiting for speckled trout? No wonder I didn't catch anything if I was calling wines like Clos Roche Blanche favorites.

We get sloppy, or I at times get sloppy. Favorite is an inferior word. Who wants to hear a tune when what you really crave is music? Yet, sometimes there's no word for love but the simple love.

I love this wine, the  cot, in any vintage but I didn't know what to expect here. That, sir and madam, was a good thing.

A hint of sparkle, and as M. Chauvet said, one shouldn't be afraid of a little carbon dioxide. In this case it blew off in a few minutes.  I have never heard Didier Barrouillet admit he had a hard year. Even in 2008 he said, it was fine. No problem. Was there a problem? It is a year, and they are all different, it is Didier against the challenges and if he spends every minute in the vineyard making sure the vines usher in the best fruit possible, there are no complaints. There are no problems.

What about 2009?  It was crazy, anything but typical. Hot, cold, hot, wet and hot.  "No problem," he said. He never wants to talk vintage, and he never complained, at least to me. Except he doesn't want to work so hard, but he is a master vigneron. Sly, funny, sly, smart. He just..is.

This cot. I first met this cot in 1999. I first met the vines in 2001. They were 110 years old then and the old ladies had plenty of softball sized yellowed limestones lodged into their winter soil like rosy bones waiting for the soup. I loved them then, and I love them now. Sometimes you just fall for a vine when you least expect it.

The wine, the  '09,  is  packed with unfruited jam,  a cloudy day with the sun shining.  Sweet walnut skin, neat, tannic, 12.5% or so.

I missed the violet, I missed it so damned much. That violet sucked up through a chalk straw? It failed me. Where was that purple flower scented through that limestone straw. I needed it.  I wanted it. Gone.

I had soup. I had brussels sprout sprinkled with hot green sauce, ages old, bought in NOLA in 1996, three years before I sipped the first CRB cot.  I changed the strings on my guitar for the first time in seven years. I went back to the wine, no longer a favorite but a friend who had a new pair of shoes. A lover who had grown a beard.

The chalk straw was there. The tannins, very different, as if the wine had a new haircut, sassy, maybe a pincurl or a two.  And wouldn't you know, the wine was sprinkled with a citrusy, blood orange like freshness. Then it stared at me and laughed so hard, the bottle almost split its seams. 

It's about $21 if you can find it. 

 

++

How about that 6000 year old winery found in Armenia. I guess Genesis got it right, Noah was the first winemaker. What I would like the writer to explain, however, was his supposition that the wine was like nouveau. Thermovinified, malo-blocked wine, yeasted, confabulated plonk. I think he must have gotten that one wrong.  

 

Champagne for Bjork's New Year, 2011

The wind almost blew me off my bike, yet I arrived without incident. After locking my vehicle to the two-wheeled vehicle parking space in front of Astor Wines. I walked into the store, frozen, but came to life quickly because there is something magical about a wine store filled with people looking for help and it brings out the therapist in me. Though I was a miserable salesperson on the wholesale side, it turns out that I am brilliant on the floor where the extrovert in me sneaks out like Persephone from the other side. 

I sauntered down Astor's Champagne aisle to see what they had these days.

I had been feeling out of touch and wanted to see if what I thought was true: that one cannot get a decent bottle under $30.

True.

There is no wonder I am recommending sparklers from the Jura instead. Meanwhile, the champagne season is upon us and people will be wanting recommendations. So, while making notes what was available, I saw a slim, fashiony man in a short snorkel coat, fingering the Moet.

"Can I help you?" I asked him.

He was hesitant, and in a lovely Italian accent, tried to dismiss me. I insisted with uncharacteristic bravado, as if I was playing some grand role,  "I hope you don't mind but I really would love to help you choose a wonderful bottle and I know this area well." 

We perused the options in the under $41 category. Personally I would go for the Boulard Rosé ($39), which is wild and strawberry with a brilliant touch of volatility. Or the La Caravelle Blanc de Blancs ($36.), which I had the pleasure to have only once, last year in Louisiana, but was impressed with its clarity as well as nice squeeze of citrus. Either one, great deals. But I could see, he needed a box. There are sometimes that you need a box. 

I directed him to the Roederer Brut Premier-NV @ $41. Sold. I saved him from a fate of Moet, and all was good in the world. And while another five dollars would get him the glorious B&B of  Lassaigne, which can be found with its box, but they had none, sometimes you need a box.

Then he had a real question for me. "Do you know Bjork?"

Well, yes, not personally, but I live in the world and I often see her standing on Houston with mult-shopping bags of clothes hailing a cab.

"I'll be at her house on New Years Eve and do you have any suggestions? I was thinking of Dom Perignon."

Oh dear. First I had to steer him away from Moet, now I had to deal with the whammy of the 'DP' status. So I said, let's see if they have the 1996. That is the only vintage you should get.

They didn't.

Safe.

Then I said, you know how Hermes is really about quality but LVMH is all about image?  For all I knew, Arnault was his employer, but he understood. I followed up with , "Bjork is an organic kind of girl, if she or you ever saw the Moet vineyards, you'd swear you'd never buy another bottle."

Okay, he said. And we were off.

His budget was $200.  I thought of a magnum, but I didn't like the options at Astor. (Had we been at Chambers Street he could have purchased a magnum of the Gautherot-Vouette et Sorbée NV (2007) Blanc d'argile for $175. )

Astor still has a good champagne lineup but it has never reached the greatness when Jeff Connell, now departed for parts north, was its prince. On Thurday, @ Astor, there was one wine to go for; and it had to be Selosse.

Not Substance because the Substance can be awfully slutty, but the Initiale? Now that is cut from stone. $129. (He could have also gone for the Paillard 1996 @ $199, great vintage, lovely wine, not that I had it recently, but let's just say I wouldn't kick it out of bed.)The thought process clicked in motion. "I thought rich, exuberant, flashy, but an element of eccentricity but not over the top, I didn't want to risk it, but the wine had to have lots of  beauty and a story.

Never the less, I think the Bjork sensibility and the Selosse is a match made in heaven. 

I adore doing this kind of wine matchmaking, something like I did for the Plumber.  for one, I'm usually right. For two, I don't get blamed if the couple breaks up.

On this Christmas that fell on the day after the foggy moon, spend cleaning the bookshelves and the corners of my curly brain, I'll never know what the outspoken star thought of her bubbly, and that makes me sad. So if you happen to be at Bjork's this New Years, will you be my spy and let me know? 

 

 

The Cook, the Thief the Suckling Tapes and Me (a picaresque wandering)

Readers of this blog can rightly assume that I'm no fan of the Suckling Tapes. I've heard others pose the theory that watching the high-gloss productions have the compelling magnetism of a train wreck. Yet, I've not been able to make it through the end of any. 

In one disturbing episode he, Jay McInerny and David Sokolin tasted and scored a mashup of 1982 Bordeaux. None of these men gave context. There were no stories behind the chateau or the vintage, all they proffered were boring, (very) tasting notes and numbers.  

Directed towards Suckling's target customer? Of course.

Directed to the collector who cares soley for status and not taste? It would appear.

 God knows, there are enough of those types around, who view their 1982 Latour as their new Breitling,  or their new piece of arm-candy. Yes, good luck to him. 

While I turned the tapes off,  I found myself thinking about how years back when I sat in the Angelika watching  The Cook the Thief His Wife And Her Lover, I had to leave.

 Not during this scene, but during the end of this: 

 

 Tell me, is this the scene where Michael is being force fed pages of his books? ( or that's what I thought.  At the time, I was so troubled, I ran away from the wet sounds of Michael's strangulation,  forced to eat the words from the volumes he so loved. My fantasy may have been worse than Greenaway's reality.) But I do know, that in this scene, Helen Mirren's character said, "What good are these books? You can't eat them."

Here was disrespect for man, words and literature. Here was a scene sobereft of humanity, much in the same way  those Tapes  respected neither word nor story. Where the Greenaway film was complex and layered, the Tapes had an obscene reductionism. The number was the  parameter, not the taste. I felt I was  being smothered by points.

I have no trouble with someone marketing themselves or making money, I  do question Suckling's judgment for  using  social media. The crowd just doesn't seem to be his audience. He was slammed immediately for shamelessness, ego. He was cited for being as out of step with current wine trends and assuming a 'natural wine' was no longer for Birkenstock wearing hippies. People in 17th century France were guillotined for similar points of view. Social Media can also be brutal with its rapid lifecycle from Hero to Haman. 

While Suckling innocently sauntered into a world he didn't belong, none are immune to the lifecycle and pettiness of Blogging and Tweeting where wings of both angels and dragonflies can be ripped off from the the scapulae. Applause is as common as jeers. Sometimes the bullies swarm;  mean boys and girls drive their peers to thoughts of suicide. It's easy to see how the young and the weak, or merely the weak, can be provoked to self-destruct. I am not immune.

A good and famous friend once counseled me that I should never read what is written about me. He was right and I imagine Mr. Suckling will not read the Heimoff Blog. But what happens when the hate gets posted on Twitter or even in your mail box? 

Over the past few days I have had pieces of hate arrive  through email, through Twitter and to my face. I did not have the option of not reading. But it sure made me think hard about human nature and how modern technology is helping to feed the baser emotions. 

How people see themselves as opposed to the reality is the stuff of both depression and therapy. I have no idea how Suckling views himself, perhaps a rock star, perhaps a wine 'expert.'  While people view me as some sort of natural wine something (fill in the blank: diva, princess, high priestess) those are media's terms for me, not mine.  

Creating a sentence and not an image or even a wine message is what gets me up in the morning.  Unfortunately, no therapist to date has been able to wean my ego away from its obsession of  syntax; not color, structure and aroma. True,  wine is the majority subject and it fascinates me and I do love writing about it as cultural, philosophical and political metaphor, and the ones that I love, sure do taste good to me. So I fold these two obsessions into this complex tango.

 I use is my tools and platforms  to support my stories and the little guy, the under dog, the person and the wines and stories that I think need to be told. Vin nature is one of them, I am not a one trick pony and my stories don't come with a number.

This weekend,  Leonard Bernstein's picture arrived in the New York Times. 

 

I tore it out and pegged it with a slender needle to my book shelves, above my computer. Lenny is speaking to me.

Look at his focus. The coaxing look in his eye, the tension across the shoulder, the grip on his baton, the curl in his pinkie; every bit of his energy is going into the orchestra to squeeze out the sound he wants. Everything. There is no room for hatred, there is no room for anything but the music, there's no room for the audience. He is there with his art and with the art. That is it. That is beauty. That is brilliance. In that moment there is no room for pettiness. There is wisdom in this image. I will try to listen.

 

 

 

 

Laura Maniec, MS Opens a Bottle

At a special little tasting/dinnerLaura skillfully opens a 1947 Liger-Belair Clos Vougeot.

 

   

La Clarine Farm '09 Syrah

Random Three Wines

I've been working through some wines from Savio Soares and wanted to let you know about three that I'm liking. 

 

From the Chignin region of Savoie, in the eastern part of France, we have a little Jacquère. At under $13 a bottle this Cellier des Cray is  a refereshing, innoocent example with a splash of CO2 and orange essence. Nothing exciting, but wet and fun. Party wine white alert. 

 

I have to say the Octavin Dorabella '08 Poulsard was delicious. Kind of the wine that you keep on coming back to you, it just kept on saying, Alice, come here. It was puls, lighthearted and ethereal but with a vein of tannin. At $30, a little steep, but the glass was empty.

Then we come to Domaine Le Picatier which was the most gamay-like pinot noir I'd ever had, which I suppose is a compliment coming from granitic soils of the  Cote Roannaise, an area that gets no respect. 

The ‘Auver-Nat-Noir’ is a VdT  Pinot Noir, aged for 11 months in barrel. And I loved it. Tremendously complex. This is reported on Richard Kelley's site as being a traditional fermentation but it seemed methode (partial carbonic) in the best sense, in the way of Puzelat, where the grape (okay, even if I did think it was gamay!) shone through. It was spicy, cinnamon, perfume by the gallons, angels and angles, with a compelling floral finish. About $23.

A New California: Arnot-Roberts

It was a cool May in Sonoma. I had just pulled a gnarly celery root from Marcy's back yard and felt quite proud of myself (it was a beast.).

 

Guests arrived. The inevitable pile up of wines collected on the marble kitchen island.  I was looking forward to some old Gaglioppo I carried north from Los Angeles. But little did I know, those were not going to be the treat of the evening.  After the beet salad came an Arnot-Roberts. I had heard the buzz. New faces about town.

“This is your wine, the  2008 Clary Ranch syrah? ” I asked Nathan Roberts as I tried to register what this new taste of old California was in my mouth. Alcohol, mint, clover, stem, spice, color and horse.

 “Pretty neat!” I said as I noted that this must have had low alcohol.

 Sure, I found it lovely, delicious but I suspected  that some readers of other blogs would run for a stick of gum.  I  thought to myself, '"If is a direction alternative for California, I'm in-- ready to write a retraction to my 2008 op-ed piece on California wines.

 Then I doubled back to the label...11.5%?  "But how?”  I asked.

The 2006 was picked on November 3rd @ 21.05 Brix and that was the ripest that wine has ever plumped out to. The 2007 never quite made it to ripeness and  the 2008 squeaked through. The 2008 wine was foot -trodden (as was the '07) and had plenty of cola, clover and spice, helped by whole cluster, natural fermentation.

To find out how, I needed to spend some time with the three Ts; thinking and talking and tasting. Last month, I olled in to their old apple processing barn in Forestville, Sonoma. It was the second day of that hot spell, the one that felled so many grapes in the Golden State.

The winery was warm, let's make that hot. We retreated to a narrow packing room with the A/C. There I was, around a barrel with fresh-faced Nathan Roberts and his equally fresh faced boy-hood bud, Duncan Meyers, friends since their Cub Scout days in Napa

 "Napa? You grew up in Napa and make wine like these?” I asked with great admiration.

They were embarrassed by the Cub Scouts but tried to explain to me they grew up around wine and their evolution was nothing unusual. "Napa? And you make low alcohol and low intervention wines? No inoculations, acid or tricks. You've got a chardonnay in there still not finished from 2009. Don’t people think you’re freaks?”

 Turns out this was a relatively new turn of vinous events for them. As Nathan said, "The narrative for me is being rewritten."

 Their first vintage was in 2002. Their real philosophical change came about in the cooler 2005. Other people in California were flipping out but they liked this lean. So they did some soul searching. The wines they admired were high acid, low jam, with some edge and always provoked a reaction. They traveled, they talked to winemakers, unlike so many other winemakers who bow at let's say Thierry Allemand's feet, they actually listened to those wines. They did not mimic, but they listened instead of drinking Allemand and making fruit  bombs.

 As Duncan said, "Our palates shifted westward towards the ocean."

 Which is how they unearthed the Clary Ranch. Writer, Jordan Makay describes that  vineyard close to Tomales Bay  beautifully in a piece for San Francisco Magazine, "Windblown, fog tormented, denuded hillsides ."

 Other wines:

2009 Arnot-Roberts Old Vine White Compagni-Portis Vineyard Sonoma Valley ($30): -Gosh, I love california field blends. This is floral, honeysuckle, lily and a bitter edge.

 

2009 Arnot-Roberts Chardonnay Green Island Vineyard Napa Valley ($30):- Lively and lemon.

2009 Arnot-Roberts Trousseau Luchsinger Vineyard Clear Lake ($30): yes, you read right. Trousseau. A gamay lilt and perfume, berry and bitter. Pretty complex cookie.

 

2007 Arnot-Roberts Cabernet Sauvignon Bugay Vineyard Sonoma County ($80): helped out by the petite verdot and cabernet franc, bell pepper varietal character but sweet fruit and  Reminds me of a cali cab with aging power, like the ones we love now from the 70's? 

 
 

 

Coturri: A Sonoma Treasure

In August, I arrived from sticky New York into hot Sonoma sun. I couldn't complain, after all it was their first two steamy days of the entire vintage. Ever wilting me,  the arid 110 degre day was far more tolerable than 90 and 100% humidity of New York City.

I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that sitting in dinner party pro,    (Marcy with the worlds best dog)
 
 
 

Marcy Mallette’s Healdsburg backyard, with a fig tree groaning with unripe fruit and  guests  sopping up the last of their Alaskan salmon BLT
 wasn’t a joy, even if everyone wore wearing flip-flops, and Kevin Hamel (my boss on the Sagrantino project and winemaker for Pellegrini) made fun of my trapped shoes. I was outted from the shtettle. That's okay.

I  reached into the pileup of wines we had assembled. "You got to taste this," I said, and  poured  around, then sat down on the stoop, near the long, al fresco dinner table.

Taking a tentative taste of Coturri’s  2005 Cabernet, Hardy Wallace said, “That sure is some Hippie juice." He was certain the wine had a significant retro taste, within spitting distance of a Haight-Ashbury head shop.

 ripped off from Hardy's facebook page. 
Wallace, you might remember, is the  young cherub who arrived to northern California from the South to live out a dream. The dream had been induced when  he won a very high profile contest to be social media guru for a Kendall Jackson winery. He knocked out the competition with his brains, chops and goofball charm. After his six months, however, he really found his dream job, with Kevin Kelley,
the winemaker whose grapes I had trod, cheated on, really, when my Sagrantino was in process. His palate, as far as I could see was more aligned with 'hippie juice,' than techno-wines. I kept on trying to look into his face to see what he really thought about the wines. I knew if I had the rosé or even the chardonnay he'd have been won over as Marcy and I had been. 

Earlier that day, when it was only ninety-three degrees or so, she and I drove to the Coturri Global Headquarters in Glen Ellen, clear on the other side of the county. We wended on the back lanes, past brush and the spindly copper barked trees. Baking in the heat, the landscape seemed friendlier to cattle ranching than grape farming, I thought. And then there were the zinfandel vines, floppy and unirrigated. 

 Tony Coturri (with brother vineyard manager Phil) had the winery bonded in 1979, aiming to make wine the way their father learned from their Tuscan grandfather. The only difference seems to be fermenting in one-ton redwood tanks instead of two-ton and more whole clusters. They had been in my consciousness since the mid-eighties. I remember back in the day seeing bottles of Coturri relegated to the 'organic' wine section, a pathetic rack of a few wines down the block at Astor Place. The bottles stood upright, in the sun, languishing and bleaching out. Not a good thing for natural wines without sulfur.Perhaps like so many, I discounted them as hippie juice, but was that a bad thing? I mean, I was a little hippie wanabee, too young at the time to be part of the movement, but yearning to grow up to be free.  

It wasn’t until Jenny Lefcourt, (a woman who could look like my dark haired sister, who started to import natural wine in 2000) took them on as her sole-American winery, did I reconsider.

 I was at a party in New York City (not that long ago) and the only wine I could drink there was the 2004 carignan. I didn’t just like the wine, I loved it, earthy, never a touch of new oak, brambly and call me impressionable, but I thought it tasted, like California, whatever that means; wild, unbridled and friendly.The talk on the street was that sometimes the wines were great and sometimes they sucked. But to some, they were cult, before there were cult CEO wines. Tony always made his wines with the credo, organic viticulture,  nothing added, nothing taken away and no sulfur, even at bottling.

This was crazy. Tony was never a hipster. I'm not sure he, even with his wooly, unkempt beard, was ever a hippie, he just cared about land and health and the environment and honesty.

Separated at birth by 6000 miles, the Coturri winery had been organic and sulfur free---that reads ‘hard core natural,’ since the beginning years. Two years before Francois Morel started his sans soufre wine bar in Paris, Tony was an American pioneer. Thirty years later he was just as hard core as Laureno Serres in Terre Alta. The only difference is that the others had a circle of friends, of like-minded people. Until Tony joined up with the Return to Terroir group, he was working in total isolation. He did not have a clan. He didn’t have any idea he wasn’t alone untl he went to Paris around 2000 and a friend told him about a wine store, he can’t remember which one, that had natural wines. He discovered Paolo Bea, sagrantino, as a matter of fact. He was still struggling but maybe he belonged to something bigger. And now he does. 

Some of my favorite wines from that tasting were: 

'09 Coturri Chardonnay: peachy and refreshing.

'08 Carignan; Yes, from the smoky year, and there it is like a lamb smoking on the spit. Sheep, lanolin and currant.

'05 Cabernet; VA alert, if you can't take it, move away, but I think this touch is lively. Old school, not too ripe, earthy with just enough lilt, and berry fresh.

'03 Cote de Cailloux; a blend of Rhone-ishisms, forest and licorice.

 

The next generation: 

 Nick Coturri, "I finally took a look at one of those enological catalogues and was pretty shocked."

(photos, from the generosity of Marcy Mallette) 

This Weekend's Wine Obsessions

$20 and.. $18 and... $27 (I think I might prefer the acidiy on the '08, but this is so pretty, chamomile, fennel, yellow flowers, and a chenin-like wet wool)