Browse Tag

sparkling

Seville sparkler

Barboursville Brut (Virginia) – White grapefruit and green watermelon rind, bouncing between sweet and dry. Pretty decent, though it gets a little plasticky near the end. (7/12)

Almondo Wilder

Almondo 2008 “Fosso della Rosa” (Piedmont) – 5% alcohol. A sweet, sparkling wine made from brachetto, but unlike the (enjoyably) sweet familial cousins named brachetto d’Acqui and so forth, this has an exciting bitterness to it, almost as if it’s being groomed to be a chinato. It’s positively electric with food, great without, and I very much adore it. (7/12)

Formula Foreau 9

Foreau “Cuvée 2004-2005” Vouvray Brut (Loire) – Light, chalky, tentative, and lingering. Delicate yet not as weak as it seems. I quite enjoy this, though I’d be interested to see where it goes with more age. (7/12)

Traminer girls

Steininger 2008 Traminer Sekt (Kamptal) – The heady aromatics of traminer, frothy and slightly sticky, given lift and then weighted down a bit by their more fantastical whims. It’s a very fun wine. (6/12)

Paula Cole

Chaussard “Nana, Vins et Cie” “You Are So Bubbly” (Loire) – The 2008 bottling, I think, but I don’t know for sure. Frothy and thick, a very particulate wine with a fair number of stylistic familial relationships with both the orange and the natural, yet with a quirky and variably appealing individuality of its own. Cooked strawberries, albino plums, earth, perhaps even a little fruit soda. Challenging, and not everyone will like it. But I do. (6/12)

Mr. Latte

Feuillatte Champagne Brut “Réserve Particulière” (Champagne) – Broad and uninteresting, its cute little apple and ripe lemon decorations ultimately adorning nothing of actual substance. (11/11)

Delamotte-picquet

Delamotte 1999 Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs (Champagne) – My long-standing preference for noir-based Champagne has taken a fairly major hit over the last few years from a passel of grower-producers doing unquestionably brilliant work, but this reminds me why I once held the preference in the first place. Grapey, lemony, gauze-wrapped apple, filtered and only lightly yeasty…I’m sure there’s more to come later in its life, but this is a sip-while-conversing Champagne that doesn’t hit any of my sweet spots. (11/11)

BB bite

Barmès Buecher 2007 Crémant d’Alsace (Alsace) – Clean. Papered-over lemon and apple skin. Not really much more than that; an unusually simple performance for this wine, which is never overly complex but usually shows more than this. Blame barometric pressure or something. (10/11)

Having more fun

Calek 2010 Ardèche “Blonde” (Rhône) – Incandescent-lit sepia photographs, the buzz and rattle of an old electric space heater, a dusty shaft of sunlight from an ill-fitting doorframe, and just a hint of a mysteriously organic aroma emanating from somewhere just offstage. (10/11)