Virgil’s Blog

My two cents about bordeaux:

Tue, 25 May 2010 17:13:46 -0500

In a recent column, Eric Asimov, the NYT’s wine critic, said that Bordeaux is losing its appeal among domestic wine buyers. (here’s the link: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/theres-more-to-the-world-of-fine-wine-than-bordeaux/) He claims that Bordeaux (BDX) is becoming “irrelevant” in the USA because of astronomical pricing (true), a stuffy corporate image (also true), the “natural” movement in wine making (whatever that means), and the fact that most Americans don’t like Cabernet based wines (?).
Here’s my take:
First—Yes, great BDX is expensive, with prices far exceeding what the average wine buyer will pay; there are, however, some reasonably priced BDXs that are good values, especially from the right bank of the Gironde. These are generally Merlot based wines that don’t need substantial time in the cellar or extensive decanting. These wines are fruit forward with soft tannins and provide a perfect compliment to most red meat dishes. Ok—that’s my retailer spill. My real thoughts are that this is bulk juice from second tier chateaux blended to make a less expensive wine that can be peddled to American and British customers who want to cache of drinking high dollar booze. Or, they can be marketed as best buys that tickle the fancy of the local neighborhood wine expert. James Suckling can rhapsodize all he wants on the virtues of Cotes du Blaye or a hill of mud in Entre Deux Mers, but he still gives the 100 point scores and glowing reviews to the left bank communes, St. Emilion, and Pommerol. “Value” BDX sells magazines.
Second—No BDX doesn’t have an image problem, because it is the epitome of big business wine. Asimov misses the larger role of BDX in the business of wine. No other wine region—excepting perhaps Napa Valley—has this level of corporate boosterism. When was the last time you saw a Burgundy (DRC excluded) in Wine Spectator’s top 10 wines of the year? BDX is first and foremost a business that everyone buys into. From the winemaker to the critics to the importers to the distributors to the retailers to the consumers, everyone has a stake in this game. Just see Steve Spurrier’s latest comment on the 2009 vintage on the link above and you’ll see my point. He must create demand for this vintage, because without demand, everything falls apart. Think about it for a moment: the euro is trading at a record low due in large measure to the Greece bailout, wine warehouses are full of juice from past vintages that is so-so quality and will probably be made into generic Chateau this or Chateau that, American markets are still unstable, and no one has any idea about the Far East markets, so Voila… 2009 is the best vintage of my lifetime. (I find it amusing that most critics thought the 2009 vintage was good but not great before the Greece bailout. ) Now to be fair, wine critics need to create demand with sensational hype or we wouldn’t buy the glossy magazines. Consumers either buy the 100 point Lafite at $5,000 a bottle to show off as a trophy or they want the “best buys” that fill the magazines. Either way, the critics are driving the business. So…
Third—I have always thought the “natural” movement is wine-making is a gimmick, peddled to American consumers who want to feel good about themselves and the illusion that they are “doing their part.” (I’ve found that these same people often support governmental policies and politicians who drag their feet on serious environmental issues.)  
Fourth—Americans don’t like Cabernet-based wines? What? Are you kidding me? I probably sell more Cabernet than any other grape. But this isn’t New York City, home of sommeliers looking for that “new” hip wine, so I will give Asimov a pass on this one.  
So, is BDX becoming irrelevant? Nope. Business as usual.
V.  
(What I’m drinking: 2006 Francois Bertheau Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Amoureuses
What I’m eating: Duck
What I’m reading: the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, Heidegger: The Basic Writings, Michael J. Sandel: Justice: “What’s the Right Thing to do,” P.G. Wodehouse: Reckless Jill, and Thomas Baker, The History of the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
What I’m listening to: Bernstein Symphony no. 2 and Goreki Symphony no. 3. )

An apologia for burgundy

Tue, 11 May 2010 11:39:28 -0500

Hi All:  
      So, I know I left you on the edge of your chairs last week in anticipation of my trenchant analysis of wine consumption patterns in the Far East (a tired geographical descriptor—sorry). Well, I will have to disappoint you.
       This week, I want to talk about Burgundy. And no, I don’t mean the gallon jugs of Taylor and Carlo Rossi (people still buy that stuff?) that line the back of most wine stores. I mean the region. The best wines in the world come from vineyards south and west of Dijon in France. Although production is limited and bottle prices may equal the cost of a used car ($2,995 for a bottle of 05 La Tache) fine Burgundian wines exude a je ne sais quoi that makes wine lovers weak in the knees.
      Since I have started selling wine in middle Tennessee, I’ve heard multiple people say that Nashville is not a Burgundy town. Their argument is that Burgundies are priced too high and few understand enough French to read, much less understand, the labels. Besides, they say, good Burgundy is expensive, and the entry-level offerings from the large negociants don’t deliver good value. Further, Middle Tennessee is dominated by a steak house culture. People want grand cru Bordeaux, Napa Cabs, and super Tuscan blends to accompany their meat and potatoes, or lamb, or veal or most any other meal they’re having. If given the choice between a grand cru Bordeaux and a grand cru Vosne-Romanee, most would choose Bordeaux. Or so I’ve heard.
      I’m skeptical. At Vinea, we sell quite a bit of white Burgundy; from Macon, to Chablis, to Cotes de Beaune, our customers like chardonnay from France. The reds, however, are a different story. Generally when people ask for pinot noir, I lead them to the domestic pinot noir rack. I do this because most of these selections are priced from $9.99 to $30, and deliver the typical—if simple--black cherry and spice flavors that characterize the varietal. We have Burgundies priced at $20—and I believe those from Vincent Durieul offer fine value—but his Passetoutgrain (Pinot with a touch of Gamay added) and his excellent Rully are mixed in with the French wines, so they don’t get the exposure that they might get in the domestic rack. This is my fault, I know. But, to the critics point about pricing and quality, I would state flatly that Burgundian wines are first and foremost food wines i.e., low alcohol, varietally correct, and well balanced. All wine should aspire to be ‘food wine.’ Sadly quite a bit of domestic—and increasingly European wine—are not ‘food wines;’ they are huge, massively extracted, wines designed to garner points from critics rather than compliment, say, salmon or mushroom chicken. I’ve found that most domestic pinot falls into this category. Red Burgundy is different. Many villages require years of cellaring to show their best. Unfortunately, an increasing number of French winemakers, seeing the potential for quick dollars, are crafting wines designed to compliment the need for instant gratification. The scandal with Gallo’s Red Bycellette (sic) label goes far to prove this point.
      So, to sum up: Yes, wines from Burgundy can be expensive. Yes, some less expensive versions tend toward under ripe fruit. Yes many can be tannic and closed in their youth. And yes, the labels and villages may be difficult to understand. All this is, to some extent, true, but these are not necessarily bad things At the very least Burgundian wines—by and large--are honest expressions of the land and climatic conditions. They are wines from farmers and represent the culmination of centuries of savior-faire. So given the choice of wine for dinner, I’ll reach for a good bottle of Burgundy every time.
      (here is a burgundy cheat sheet.)
          Ok. The first thing to know about Burgundy is that there are two principal grape varieties, pinot noir and chardonnay. Bourgogne rouge is made from pinot noir, and Bourgogne Blanc is made from chardonnay. It’s that simple. Beaujolais, which is made from Gamay, may technically be classified as Burgundy, but I, and I think most others, consider it a separate category. (Chablis is a topic all to itself.)
      Burgundian wine labels laid out fairly simply. The village or vineyard will be mentioned on the label but not, generally speaking the grape, variety. This may seem confusing for Americans, but this practice goes back before the era when grape varieties were well known. People requested wine from a particular town or vineyard. For example, Thomas Jefferson didn’t buy chardonnay; he requested his merchant (Parent in Burgundy) purchase Meursault because he liked wines coming from the vineyards around this village. These vineyards are rated by the French government according to the quality—or supposed quality—of their vineyard sites (this practice goes back to the prices merchants were buying for wines in the mid-19th century). Grand Cru is the highest designation followed by Premier Cru (often expressed as 1er cru), followed by village wines, and then followed by the generic bourgogne blanc and rouge.
      The geography of Burgundy is important for finding affordable options. Moving south from Dijon, there are three groups of hills (cotes), the Cotes de Nuits, the Cotes de Beaune, and the Cotes Chalonnaise. The Cotes de Nuits are the most famous (and expensive). Here you’ll find the great vineyards of Musigny, Bonne Mares, Chambertin, Romanee-Conti, Tache, Richebourg, Unless you have a wealthy uncle, however, or hit the lottery, or rob a bank, wines from these vineyards will be out of your (and mine and just about everyone else’s) price range. These are the fabled grand cru vineyards of Burgundy.
      Around the town of Beaune you find the smallish villages of Pommard, Volnay, and Meursault. Vineyards in the Cote de Beaune can be good value, especially the 1er cru vineyards of Beaune for reds and Chassagne Montrachet for whites. Moving further south is the Cote Chalonnaise. The wines of Mercurey and Rully are great values for both red and white wines. Further south is the great white wine region around the town of Macon. Pouilly-Fuisse may be the two most famous towns in the region, but great wines and fabulous values can be found from vineyards around St. Veran and Clesse.
      Hope this helps:
      V.
      (what I’m eating: short ribs
      what I’m drinking: Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfindel
      what I’m listening to: Elgar’s 1st symphony, LPO, Daniel Barenboim conducting)

Reading....

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:19:41 -0500

I have just finished reading Neal Rosenthal’s memoir, Reflections of a Wine Merchant: On a lifetime in the vineyards and cellars of France and Italy, and it is one of the most informative—if sometimes self indulgent--books on wine I’ve read in long while. To be honest, I don’t read many books on wine, because, apart from a few notable exceptions, there simply aren’t many worth my time. Most of these are travel show propaganda or generic wine overviews or worse. Consider these titles on Italian wine that I pulled up in a recent library search: Italian Wine for Dummies (this whole “For Dummies” line I find baffling—this must be an Americanism that takes pride in self-deprecation), The Italian Wine Guide: Where to go, and what to see, drink, and eat, and, of course, my favorite, Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy. Now, not to seem elitist, but I’m not interested in other people’s love lives or the wines that sparked them (though see my blog from last week.) That’s why Rosenthal’s memoir comes as a welcome relief. Rosenthal is an insider, a merchant. He is one (along with Kermit Lynch, Becky Wasserman, Robert Kacher, Terry Thiese, and a few others) one of the premier wine importers, and he writes with candor and frankness on his experiences. There is none of the overt sentimentality of the travelogues, nor is there any of the showiness (meaning the ridiculous descriptions of wines) of books by sommeliers or wine critics. Throughout, he recounts the various personalities he has encountered in his travels as a wine buyer. Sometimes his stories become tedious and plodding, but Rosenthal is unapologetic about his preferences.
His opening sentence reads as a declaration, a casting down of the gauntlet. “I admit to a firmly held prejudice,” Rosenthal writes, “I have a distinct preference for the traditional wines of western Europe and a matching skepticism about most of the wines produced in the New World as well as for those wines made in the Old World that seek to imitate the characteristics of the New World brethren.” From there, Rosenthal descends into the ways and means of the wholesale side of the wine world. There are some fascinating stories packed into this book. In a chapter titled, “The Test,” Rosenthal writes about the Burgundian way of selling wine. “Business in Burgundy does not always come down to the simple proposition that you can purchase what you are willing to pay for. Burgundians apply a certain value to their wines that is not defined simply n monetary terms.” In order secure contracts with growers throughout the region, Rosenthal must prove, by tasting blind, that he can differentiate between village level and 1er cru wines.
While these stories are fascinating, it seems that Rosenthal’s larger purpose for writing this “memoir” is to bemoan the state of the wine industry today. In his final two chapters, Rosenthal attacks the current state of the wine industry with vigor. He notes the shift from traditionally made wines to huge multi-national corporate brands. In particular, he takes aim at wine writers who write reviews “cluttered with adjectives culled from a limited vocabulary” and concluding with a point score. This, according to Rosenthal has created a marketplace where the consumer dictates taste to the retailer and thus to the grower. Rosenthal attributes this shift to wine moving from the hands of the “well-heeled, …well educated, and the older generations” to “an expanded group of buyers who were perhaps less aware, and less respectful, of the traditions and rituals surrounding wine.’ I might add (and Rosenthal is silent on this point) that this shift is also a product of an increased distribution of wealth and sense of global awareness emerging after World War Two, of which he is a part. So…the issue, as I see it, is not whether wine writers or uninformed, ignorant consumers are driving the wine business; rather, it is a question of wealth and its distribution. Consider, for example, the rise of the fine wine industry in Asia, Asia is one of the leading markets for grand cru Bordeaux and Burgundy in the world. This was not the case 30 years ago; so why has Asia developed a “taste” for Bordeaux and Burgundy? Why have they eclipsed in many cases the European market in expensive wines? Why do they allegedly sweeten Mouton-Rothschild with Coca-Cola? (This is one of my favorite rumors, because it has strong elements of Orientalism, Western Imperialism, and downright racism cascading through it) Well, gentle reader, to be continued…    
V.    
(Oh, this week I’m drinking Notro Sangiovese/Bonarda blend from Argentina—this is my go-to pasta wine. Medium bodied, fruity, with restrained tannins. Simple but packed with flavor, and…the price is right—$9.99. And with this wine (and a great pasta dish…try Prokofiev’s symphony no. 1 in D (the classical)

The Literary Turn—Wine and Memory:

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:39:58 -0500

Hi all:  
I’m a voracious reader. Perhaps my favorite living author is Ian McEwan, who wrote among other novels Atonement, Amsterdam, and On Chesil Beach. McEwan’s latter work typically revolves around one event that profoundly changes the lives of the protagonists. In Black Dogs, for example, it was an encounter with the eponymous dogs in rural France that altered one family for generations. In Atonement, a young girl misunderstood (or did she?) an event causing irrevocable harm to those around her. This week in anticipation of reading Ian McEwan’s newest work, Solar, I began reading one of his earlier works, Enduring Love. As with most of McEwan’s work, this one begins with an event—the death of John Logan. McEwan places the death of John Logan and the resulting narrative back to one event and to one wine:
“The beginning is simple to mark. We were in sunlight under a turkey oak, partly protected from a strong, gusty wine. I was kneeling on the grass with a corkscrew in my hand, and Clarissa was passing me a bottle—a 1987 Daumas Gassac, That was the moment, this was the pinprick on the time map: I was stretching out my hand, and as the cool neck and the black foil touched my palm, we heard a man’s shout.”
From here, McEwan begins his tale. I find it interesting that wine is so strongly associated with memory here. Having sold wine for a few years, I’ve noticed that all too often many customers simply cannot remember the wines they’ve consumed. Their memory fades. At Vinea, we even have a computer system that will tell you what you’ve purchased. But in McEwan’s novel, wine is associated with a moment of significance. And thus the wine becomes significant to that memory. Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes the wine is so memorable, the event or place or people become memorable. In a letter to a friend (June 18-25-1930), Samuel Beckett commented, “Harry Sinclair turned in the other morning. He was very hospitable & stood me dinner twice at the Hotel Bristol, where I tasted the best wine—Chablis Moutonne 1926—that I have ever tasted, and alas also suffered the 5 acts of Louise at the Opera Comique.”
Like Beckett, I have memories of dull events made bearable with great wine. One wedding in particular stands out as a rather dull event—no names forthcoming—but someone turned up with a bottle of 1982 Haut Brion and, needless to say, it is part of my memory. Conversely, I can remember one night where great conversation and beautiful music made a 2005 Treana Blanc (certainly not a bad wine) seem like Hermitage Blanc. I suppose that is the magic of wine and what sets it apart from beer and, to a lesser extant, spirits. It can create memories and trigger them. It seems that novelists, playwrights, and poets understand this all too well. So… to pose a question:
What are a few of your memories where wine figures prominently?
Thanks,
V.
(PS—this week I’m drinking 2005 Yves Cuilleron St. Joseph Les Serines, Had it with lamb at the Yellow Porch. Good with the lamb sans the horrible chimichurri sauce. Musically, this wine reminds me of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola—try the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields version with Alan Loveday on violin. Classic and refined, yet tuneful with many flavors—it needs time or food.)

They call me virgil....

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 13:27:26 -0500

Hi All

Call me Virgil. (I know, I know, a little pretentious to begin a blog this way, but…) This is the beginning of my food and wine blog at Vinea. I have two goals for this blog: First, to set down my thoughts on food and wine as clearly and honestly as possible. And second, as a good history student (and possibly as an offering to Clio for my transgressions to her) to provide a little historical context to things I’m eating and drinking. That said, I hope to accomplish something more than simply putting down what I’m eating, drinking, or thinking about today; I want to explore why I’m eating and drinking these things, who made them, why did they make them, and what value does society place on them. In a recent column, Eric Asimov, the wine writer for the New York Times, exudes “Great wines pack history into a glass. Mostly, it’s a natural tale — of calamitous weather or blue skies and sunshine. But the human element pours forth, too — weddings, births and deaths, war, prosperity and depression. “ I will try to write about this human element to the best of my ability, because it seems so much more interesting than the wines themselves.

V.

(PS—Yesterday I was drinking the ’07 Durieul-Janathal Bourgone Passetoutgrain. It is a solidly made Passetoutgrain (pinot noir and gamay blend—a story for another blog), full of ripe cherry flavors with an oaky, slighty tannic finish. A little simple. Good choice for Beef Burgandy. Couldn’t help myself. Sorry)