Browse Month

March 2007

TN: Just a Sipp

[vineyard]Sipp Mack 2000 Riesling Rosacker (Alsace) – Classic Rosacker, showing inexorable sea salt-infused liquid steel, and a striking, tongue-dampening density. It’s a little thicker than usual due to the vintage, perhaps, and there’s a mildly softening sweetness, but there’s no lack of acidity or balance. I’d say it’s fully mature, though in no danger of falling apart anytime soon; it should have a nice long plateau. Impressive. (3/07)

TN: All Fontsainte day

[vineyard]Laboucarié “Domaine de Fontsainte” 2004 Corbières (Languedoc) – Good spicy-earthy red fruit, somewhat soda-like, with that flaky, sun-peeled paint texture that the better wines from this appellation often seem to show. Nicely balanced. A warm, satisfying wine. (3/07)

TN: COS by show

COS 2004 Cerasuolo di Vittoria (Sicily) – Warm, enveloping old spice-cabinet aromas, old cedar, sun-dried red cherry and strawberry. There’s fine acidity (especially for a Sicilian wine), an inviting Old World balance, and surprising persistence despite a fairly light approach (“light” is contextual). Beautiful stuff. (3/07)

TN: Gravello road

[bottle]Librandi 1999 Val di Neto “Gravello” (Calabria) – Gaglioppo and cabernet sauvignon. The only sign that this isn’t all cabernet is the juicy, tongue-poking acidity. It’s tightly screwed and a little squinched, and deserves a good decant, but for a fierce, sun-baked southern wine it shows more authenticity than artifice. The cabernet somewhat counter-intuitively runs towards the herb/pepper spectrum, but behind that is a sharp, black cherry and raspberry acidic throb. I’m prepared to be suspicious, but end up liking it a good deal. It still needs plenty of time, however, as the tannin and tightness are still somewhat dominant. (3/07)

TN: Saumur love

[bottle]Filliatreau 2005 Saumur (Loire) – Grassy earth, thyme and dusty dark berries. It gives the impression that it’s going to be green and somewhat acrid, but in fact the texture is beautifully particulate, and there’s a surprising smoothness. This tastes completely “natural,” for those to whom that term means something, and it dances delightfully with a pretty wide variety of foods. Delicious. And ageable? Perhaps, for a while. (3/07)

TN: Drawing a Blanck

[label]Blanck 2002 Gewurztraminer Altenbourg (Alsace) – Completely closed, to the point where it almost seems corked. At least an hour of air (decanting a gewurztraminer!) is necessary to bring it out, but it still doesn’t show the full spectrum of goodness that it carried in its youth. There’s a dry minerality underneath a juicy, pineapple and peach juice…thick but not sticky, despite a very mild amount of sweetness…and this minerality, along with almost surprising acidity, really comes to the fore on the finish. It’s a very good wine in resentful stasis, and needs some time to re-emerge. Five years, at least. (3/07)

TN: Tone Madeloc

Gaillard/Baills “Domaine Madeloc” 2004 Banyuls “Cirera” (Roussillon) – Unsurprisingly, this is a fairly fruit-forward Banyuls. It shares a generally absent nose with a lot of its counterparts, but makes up for it with a rich, sticky-sweet cherry and milk chocolate palate. The cocoa turns darker on the finish, along with some espresso bean, and things stick around for a while (emphasis on “stick”). It’s a good enough wine, a pretty fair bargain, and much better than so many of the over-oxidized versions cranked out by the area’s cooperatives and touristy cellars, but other producers (Parcé, Rectorie) prove that more complexity is achievable. (3/07)

TN: XXX

Thiriez “XXtra” Farmhouse Ale (Flanders) – Quite hoppy, with wheat and corn and a good deal of backpalate bitterness. Malty and herbal. Not very interesting, despite all this. (3/07)

TN: Schaefer of paper

Willi Schaefer 2004 Riesling 01 05 (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer) – Silty and lightly sweet, with a prickly light-bodied aspect and a mild finish. Light purity. (3/07)

TN: It’s not crap

[label]Otter Creek “Otter Kilter” Scottish-style Wee Heavy Ale (Vermont) – Rich, heavy, a bit hot, but with a beautifully creamy, mineral-influenced thickness. Otter Creek succeeds most of the time, but they always do best with more naturally sweet-seeming brews. And: nice pun. (3/07)