Browse Month

August 2009

Foxy

Allemand 2005 Cornas Reynard (Rhône) – The brooding, dark heart of Cornas, with 50% less apocalypse. Very nearly perfect in form, and thus set up for long aging. Right now, there’s a lot of (ripe) tannin and smoke, but I expect rather a lot to emerge in the years decades to come. (7/09)

On a Calera day

[vineyard]Calera 2006 Pinot Noir (Central Coast) – Friendly berry salad, in a nice mix of ripenesses and aromatics, with an enveloping sphere of darker berries and leafy hints of soil. But this is about primary fruit, for sure, and there’s not a flaw to be found. (7/09)

Catch hheck

Dönnhoff 2001 Norheimer Kirschheck Riesling Spätlese 006 02 (Nahe) – Fairly creamy (already, which is pretty common for Dönnhoff), ranging from slightly underripe stone fruit to a salt-sugar mix that slightly muddles the structure, though I can’t say that the wine really suffers much as a result. Not an intellectual wine, but not really an emotional one either; mostly, it’s about overt and superior pleasantness. (7/09)

Mime rocks

Drouhin 2006 Meursault-Pierrières “1er Cru” (Burgundy) – Ah, chardonnay. How I haven’t missed you. But then again, this is white Burgundy, and there’s plenty to like here…spicy minerality, soft wood, good balance…if one is inclined in chardonnesque directions. Which, for better or worse, I’m increasingly not. (7/09)

Thunderball

Jadot 2002 Savigny-lès-Beaune La Dominode (Burgundy) – Pointed, razor-leafed raspberry and a fair bit of tannin. A sharply-formed wine, perhaps a little brittle at the moment, but with lovely fruit within. Promising. And also, a question: what’s with the “è”? (7/09)

Azayer

Denis 1989 Touraine-Azay-le-Rideau Vignes de la Gaillarderie Sec (Loire) – Dirty – in a good way – and fairly high in acid. Unmistakably maturing chenin, yet the minerality is as much aluminum and tin as chalk. Another slight shift is from honeysuckle to pollen-dusted stone fruit skin. So how, exactly, is it “unmistakably chenin?” I’m not sure, but there’s just something about the weight, palate impression, and generally Touraine-evocative aromatics that announce “chenin” with clarity and decision. It’s never wise to suggest that a Loire chenin’s nearing the end of it’s life, and yet I don’t know that this has all that much more development left in it. (Emphasis, in that last sentence, is on the “I don’t know” more than the rest.) (7/09)

Rip Van

[vineyard]Terlan 2004 Sauvignon Blanc Winkl (Alto Adige) – What one wants from these Alto Adige wines, especially the site-designated ones, is minerality coequal or superior to varietal character. That said, some varieties just can’t be conquered, and sauvignon blanc is one. Still, I’d call this a success, with quartz and icy steel backing up a shattered-glass impression of chilly greenish-white fruit. A little white pepper’s there, too, on a finish that doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the wine. (7/09)

Osterizer

Selbach-Oster 2007 Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett 027 08 (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer) – From 375 ml, and a gift from a friend who thought I’d either gotten it wrong or had an off bottle in a previous note. At first, there’s an almost milky aroma and texture to the wine, as if cidered steel had been squeezed from a Teutonic cow. Then there’s warming, which brings out both intensity and a surprisingly bit of cream for such a primary wine (guess that cow hasn’t left the vineyard). There’s just a bit of plastic to the finish, and it definitely detracts, but otherwise this is powerful, intense, and balanced…albeit miles from anything that would have been thought of as a kabinett in years gone by. (7/09)

Treeus

[banner logo]Bea 2004 “Arboreus” (Umbria) – A tarnished brass sculpture of an orange/apple still life. A ringing broadsword slash of mineral-enhanced tannin. A pale orange sweep of a distant lighthouse, shrouded in mysterious fogs. A biting acid-wash swirled with naturally-derived organic dyes, still aromatic and of variable textures. In other words, this is my fourth or fifth taste of this wine, and I’m no closer to pinning it down than I was before. Endlessly fascinating, it is. (7/09)

Are you Cerdon?

Renardat-Fache Bugey Cerdon (Ain) – Purple nurple in liquid form. Craves salty pork, craves crisp vegetables, craves a humid afternoon, craves a parched desert, desires everything, desires nothing at all. The caveat? It’s getting expensive; the fun was less burdened at $15 or less than it is, now, but pushing into the mid-twenties it’s not entirely untrammeled. (7/09)

Renardat-Fache Bugey Cerdon (Ain) – See the previous note, but with more strawberry dust and Pink Lady apple skin. (7/09)