Browse Tag

france

The home of Russian currency

Coquelet 2009 Chiroubles (Beaujolais) – In a boozy, stumbling stage, tripping over its concentrated, lavishly Languedoc-like berries. Time will tell – from others’ cellars, as this is my last bottle – if it comes out the other side, but I’m not optimistic. The structure is already fraying, there’s a little bit of brett, and the alcohol does stand out. That said, with a few hours’ air, this blossoms into a slutty fruit bomb of a wine, which – while not exactly typical of anything except the vintage – would be difficult for anyone but the terminally puckered to not at least kind of enjoy. (5/12)

Hail Faller, well-met

Faller “Domaine Weinbach” 2008 Riesling (Alsace) – Striving. And, it must be acknowledged, reaching. Even at the lowest end, these are wines of ambition and force, and the vintage provides an opportunity for a bit of strut and swagger. Green apple (ripe), key lime, molten aluminum. Striking, exceedingly well-balanced, and very long. No, it’s not the most complex or mineral-driven riesling of all time, but it’s the entry-level, and under that nomenclature it succeeds. Wildly. The price? Well… (5/12)

Geordi

Lafarge 2005 Bourgogne Aligoté (Burgundy) – Perhaps a touch older than need be, though the interest grows with air and it’s possibly I’m underselling this. Old wax, slight oxidation, faded copper, somewhat acrid sweat-laced grapefruit skins. Much less tentative than it seems at first sip, it does build to something, but that something is mostly more of what it first promised, which isn’t an improvement so much as an escalation in volume. (5/12)

One hand

Clape 2002 Cornas (Rhône) – From a local store’s closeout bin, at a low-for-Cornas price. That’s still way too high for this wine, which is basically fully mature, and tastes of a good aged Côtes-du-Rhône (syrah-based, of course): sepia fruit on a warm bed of brown soil and faded herb. There’s nothing about it that speaks of Cornas, which is why even the closeout price is too high. (5/12)

The rest of the Chorey

Drouhin 2006 Chorey-les-Beaune (Burgundy) – Dusty red fruit, trembling and just clinging. Far, far more advanced than a bottle from just a few months ago. Drink up. (5/12)

Oh Tempier, oh mores!

Tempier 1998 Marc de Provence (Provence) – France is rife – one might legitimately say littered – with distillates that almost no one knows. Of all the European spirits that have been aggressively, relentlessly exported, the micro-marcs are so far down the queue that there’s little hope of ever seeing them out-of-region.

And thus, one must drink them in situ. Or at least in restaurant. I have, I admit, a bit of a fetish for asking after such spirits, but it’s all too often the case that the obvious liquids are so obvious to my interlocutor that they don’t arise in conversation. And when they do, it’s often in the negative: “oh, that’s…rough” as the declination goes. I was turned away from spirits like this very one countless times, in hotel and restaurant bars.

I don’t brag to say that I’m no ordinary drinker; I’ve learned to like the chaos of the private distillation, and I don’t discredit those who would, looking after my well-being, try to dissuade me for cogenerative reasons. But – barring the next-morning hangover from a poorly-distilled spirit – I just don’t mind the weirdness that often results. And so there’s cajoling, and sometimes a measure of begging, but eventually the spirit arises. So to speak.

At Tempier, where I acquire this particular example, the problem isn’t existence – there’s a bottle of this prominently displayed in their foyer – so much as saleability. Where’s the capsule? What’s the price? Can we sell it? Which “vintage”? And so forth. No importer’s last-second demands have caused as much frenetic trauma as my request for a bottle of this spirit, while chez Tempier.

And, so? It’s…majestic. As would, admittedly, be expected from Tempier. Gravels and sands, rocks and earthquakes, bronzed plums and ambered figs. It’s breathtakingly great. (5/12)

He said, she Cèdres

Jaboulet 1995 Châteaneuf-du-Pape “Les Cèdres” (Rhône) – As each of what was once a fair stock of Jaboulets leaves my cellar, I breathe a sigh of relief. They just aren’t my style, which is my dodgy way of saying that I simply can’t understand the praise lavished on the wines by ostensibly right-thinking people. That they’re hard and chronically abused by their structure is almost a given, but the tumescence of an Hermitage is one thing, while a similar lack of yield in a Châteauneuf-du-Pape is quite another. There are, here, liquefied black peppercorns and what might, once, have been a presence that once, long ago, glimpsed a black and white painting of a blackberry from a few blocks away. Otherwise, all is dust and solidity, now eroded and crumbling but still architecturally sound. It is not, I hasten to say, a bad wine, and there’s certainly intellectual interest. But my enjoyment has dried up only somewhat more slowly than the wines. (5/12)

Eh

Trimbach 1998 Riesling “Cuvée Frédérique Émile” (Alsace) – Not decanted. There’s some friendly disagreement about this wine; I think it’s still closed, another taster – also quite familiar with the wine – thinks it’s tiring. (It’s not, for the concerned, suffering from premature oxidation.) It’s true that it’s not showing much other than a milky mineralistic texture and a restrained yet tense structure, but the duration of its persistence without weakening is what convinces me that it’s intact and progressing properly. (5/12)