Browse Month

September 2007

Rough diamond

Rosemount 2005 Shiraz (South Eastern Australia) – This is the Diamond Label bottling. Bitter and somewhat rancid fruit in a synthetic key. Ugly. (8/07)

Star trek

[bottle]Voyager Estate 2003 Shiraz (Margaret River) – Flavorful, full-bodied and balanced, with affable dark berry and leather characters structured by soft tannin and a light winemaking hand. A solid performer, though there’s no complexity (at least not yet). (7/07)

TJ hooker

TJ Wines “Jonesy Old Tawny Port” (Australia) – Tastes like balsamic shiraz, minus the boisterous fruit; it’s heavy, it’s dark, it tastes of molasses and prune, and it demonstrates by counterpoint that, despite the brickbats, there’s some redeeming structure in pedro ximénez after all. (8/07)

Walla welcome

[vineyard]

Let’s start off gently, shall we? I’ll leave the harsh criticism for another day. Though I assure you: it will come.

I had a meeting the other day — brief, over water and coffee rather than wine — with two representatives from the Washington Wine Commission. Boston and environs are one of their target markets for expansion, and they wanted to do a little information exchange…get their message to me, and let me give them some local knowledge of the market and a few of the key players within it.

Personally, even though I have fairly strong Europhilic tendencies when it comes to wine, I welcome the effort. Other than the mass-market stuff brought in by Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia Crest and the like, we don’t see much Washington wine here. Oregon does better, with a fair sampling of the lowbrow and the more interesting stuff on the shelves (or allocated in the back room), and of course through sheer size and inertia California does the best, but for whatever reason, we don’t see much (in fact, very close to any) of the higher-quality, artisanal stuff. That’s a shame.

On the other hand, I wish them luck, because it’s going to be a tough sell. Which, it’s worth noting, I told them as clearly as possible. Boston is, itself, a very Europe-facing wine market, both figuratively and literally. We welcome some measure of European obscurity — this is, at least the last I’ve heard, still the number one domestic market for Alsace, we’ve long had a very solid Portuguese underground, and there’s not quite so much focus on Tuscany on Italian shelves as there is pretty much everywhere else — but domestics are a tougher sell.

It’s not just Europhilia, though. Our asinine anti-shipping laws, bought and paid for by the greedy wholesalers (oh, now just watch the invitations to their tastings roll in), keep a lot of the cultier, mailing-list-only wines completely out of the market…at least for those unable or unwilling to use one of the usual but time-consuming work-arounds. So if the wines aren’t on the shelves and aren’t in the private cellars of wine geeks, it’s hard to build up much of a market interest in them. And with the rapid contraction of distributors in this market, there are fewer potential buyers than ever; the small, focused distributors tend to have almost exclusively European portfolios.

Washington will have to be careful, too. The big, ripe, woody reds that so impress certain critics will not be a showstopping success here (not that they need to be; they sell very well without our help). Leaner, more…well, let’s be honest: more “Old World” wines will do better. And perhaps the best option of all is to push non-chardonnay whites. Riesling, in the form of “Eroica,” has done well (though note that it has done so primarily through its German connection; there’s that Europhilia again), and other rieslings could be successful. Sémillon is a difficult grape, but there’s potential for success there as well. Among the reds, it seems to me that syrah (which is better known for a general aversity to oak, a fact I’d hope Washington state winemakers embrace) would do better than cabs and merlots, but I’m not an expert in such things. I was given a cabernet franc to taste (haven’t yet), so maybe there’s potential there. And, of course, there’s always interest in an expansion of the varietal palette past the handful of big-name grapes…grapes that far too many places produce already. Washington may indeed have something unique to say with, for example, a cab/merlot blend, but there’ll be an extra burden of convincing to sell it in this market.

Overall, and as always, the wines will succeed or fail on their merits and their pricing. But the key will be to get them in front of consumers in the first place. Alsace succeeds because certain key figures visit to push their wines, year after year. I’d expect to see Washington put on a lower-end push at next year’s Boston Wine Expo, and then bring the better stuff to a dinner at the Boston Wine Festival. Perhaps Nantucket. I’d expect to see them in the market, collectively or individually, showing the wines to trade and press at other times of the year (the frenzy around the previous two events, when everyone is in the market and wants the same fifty tasters’ attention, is hard to cut through).

As for that cabernet franc, I’ll report back as soon as possible, over on oenoLog.

Blanck slate

[label]Blanck 2002 Gewurztraminer Altenbourg (Alsace) – Beautiful peach, pear, cashew and light lychee with a strong, crystallized mineral core and fine balance. I’ve always thought this was ageable, and now that the first throes of youth have passed, I’m even more sure. But it’s in a really good place right now, as well. (7/07)

See Hugel

[label]Hugel 2004 Gewurztraminer (Alsace) – Done up in the classic Hugel style: dry (to the palate; there may be some analyzable residual sugar) with plenty of acidity and a restrained, elegant character. This restraint doesn’t always serve Hugel well in these days of critic-pleasing excess, and then some years Hugel gets it profoundly wrong, producing something wan rather than elegant. But when it all works (as it does here), it’s a firm commitment to tradition over modishness. There’s still plenty of tradition to be found in Alsace, but not much of it is exported in these quantities. Grab it before it disappears forever. (8/07)

JP II

JP&JF Becker 2001 Riesling Kronenbourg (Alsace) – A composite note. The first bottle is advanced, with creamier and more oxidative notes in concert with a quartzy mineral spice and flashing whiteness, while the second bottle is much more along expected lines, with firm malic acidity and a fresh, glacial wash over white rocks. Well-stored and with cork intact, this has years yet to go. (7/07)

JP I

JP&F Becker 2005 Riesling (Alsace) – All the riesling notes are here, but they’re vague and tentative, and there’s neither intensity nor elegance, polish nor verve. Becker’s quite capable of interesting, terroir-revelatory rieslings, but at the lower end things are weaker than they should be. This is insubstantial and diffuse, and I doubt it’s going to improve either. (7/07)

Mambourg number five

[label]Sparr 2002 Gewurztraminer Mambourg “Grand Cru” (Alsace) – Intense but not overdriven, with a burnt-mineral foundation layered with firm crystallized peach, lychee and almond and a supportive acid backbone, which completely dominates the very mild residual sweetness. Balanced, long and showing its terroir; what more could one want from a gewürztraminer? (8/07)

Sparrs and stripes

[label]Sparr 2001 Riesling Schoenenbourg “Grand Cru” (Alsace) – A softening sweetness can’t detract from the pure terroir on display here: crushed white flowers, a little chalk, a rounded and polished core that tails off a bit on the finish. Classic and ageworthy, though there’s definitely that sugar to contend with. (9/07)