Chidaine Montlouis sur Loire Méthode Traditionnelle Demi-Sec (Loire) – Fresh as a fermented daisy floating in a glass of tonic water. (10/11)
sparkling
Orange soda
Donati 2008 Malvasia dell’Emilia (Emilia-Romagna) – An orange wine that really is orange (most of them are in the beige/tan/brown spectrum), or perhaps we could get swanky and call it a lighter sort of burnt sienna. And: sparkling. So, the heavy tannic overlay of the orange genre is lightened not by the counterpoint of fruit, nor of acidity (a rare thing in the category in the best of cases), but by a gentle – and fading – fizz. It’s more distracting than present at the moment, and it’s not going to do anything but fade, but it’s necessary for the wine’s tenuous grip on balance, which is falling deeper into a cider-esque hole with each passing month. It’s more an intellectual pleasure than a sensory one, because it pairs some extremes of technique with a relentlessly uncompromising weirdness, but as someone who enjoys this particular thought experiment I still quite enjoy it. That said, there are many who would not allow that this is “wine” any longer, based on its taste rather than its origin, and I would have sympathy for that opinion. But wine it is, nonetheless, and if you own any, you should drink it. (10/11)
Achieving saetti
Vigneto Saetti 2010 Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce (Emilia-Romagna) – Uncompromisingly dry, bitter (in the amaro sense; I very specifically don’t mean astringent, though it’s not exactly lacking in razory tannin either), and the definitional opposite of a cocktail wine. I mean, I suppose people who like shoving razor wire into their flesh just for the lulz would like to sip this with canapés and genteel conversation, but otherwise – more than any lambrusco I’ve ever tasted – it needs food. It cannot, in my opinion, be appreciated or even enjoyed without food. And the thing to realize is that this isn’t – despite what gob-loving sybarites would insist – a criticism, it’s a characterization. This is a wine that demands a very specific kind of participation, and if you don’t agree with those terms you will have an unsatisfactory experience. So…you’re now wondering…what’s it like? Well, what did I just say? (10/11)
Roses for Jeanne, bulles for her
Bouchard 2005 Champagne La Bolorée Blanc des Blancs “Roses de Jeanne” (Champagne) – Difficult to know, difficult to like. I don’t mean that I don’t like it, at all…rather that my experience of it is more of an appreciation than something more visceral. It seems like it wants to be pretty, but there are so many rigidities and barely-hidden edges to it that it really can’t be, and instead what it ends up being is sharp to the point of aggressivity, and rather abrupt as well. There’s also a sense that it’s trying a bit too hard. If this note reads as a lot of vague characterization without anything in the way of organoleptic specificity, that’s because that’s how the wine expresses itself to me: no “fruit” as such, structure mostly just bite and snap, ultra-fine electric-shock bubbles, and quite a bit of attitude. (9/11)
Bolly good
Bollinger Champagne Brut “Special Cuvée” (Champagne) – Not sure of the “vintage” of this non-vintage, but it’s at least four, and probably more, years past release. It’s good, of course, with weighty, dark fruit and a gloomy neutron star concentration of light and darkness in tandem, but I realize as I drink it that I hardly ever drink Champagnes in this style anymore. I don’t know that my tastes have changed as much as the context in which I explore those tastes has changed; the reasons I used to like Bollinger still apply here, and yet I think I’m more interested in other directions and diversions in bubbly these days. The lusciousness that I love gets, by the last glass, a bit more tedious than I think I would have found it a decade ago, and I think it’s both the style and the short-term age that even this bottling can definitely absorb. (9/11)
Joe LaCava
German Gilabert Cava Brut Nature Rosat (Cataluña) – Trepat and garnacha. Less interesting than the white, with fruit sheets wrapped around bones. All treble, little midrange, no bass. (8/11)
Gee, a French bear
German Gilabert Cava Brut Nature Reserva (Cataluña) – Macabeo, xarel•lo, and parellada. If I say that this is the best cava I’ve ever had, that shouldn’t be over-interpreted as a superlative; while I’ve had my share of cava over the years, almost none of it has been aspirational. Nuts and flowers with an inner electricity; this is very appealing, but its duration is extremely short. I don’t mean that the finish is short, I mean that it’s so gulpable that it’s gone in mere minutes. (8/11)
Captain Krug
Krug 1989 Champagne Brut (Champagne) – My taste in Champagne has drifted away from the world on which Krug sits atop (or near) the mountain, so I’m not sure my assessment will be what it was back in the days where I would have bathed in Bollinger should the lottery have come my way. Laden with toast, brioche, yeast, and bronzer, this is a powerfully heavy Champagne. And yet the number of notes it sounds are few…fewer than I’ve become accustomed to after drinking my way through a lot of the small growers’ efforts. I like it – of course I do, it’s extremely well-made – but it is well-made, and that gilded aspiration is evident. The thing is, by complaining in this particular way I’m kind of asking Krug to not be Krug, which is ridiculous and presumptuous. I guess what I’d ultimately conclude is that I’d be more enamored of its Krugness were it a heck of a lot cheaper. That, of course, is not the case, and one pays for Krug more than one pays for a Krug, if that distinction makes sense to anyone other than me. (8/11)
You might get eaten, etc.
Gruet Brut (New Mexico) – Clean, frothy, somewhat dilute. (8/11)
Ashton
Gruber “Punkt Genau” Brut (Weinviertel) – Sparkling grüner veltliner. Not, I should note, overwhelmingly “grüvee” despite the varietal purity, but more of a clean, crisp, straightforward sparkler in the white-green herbed fruit realm. Which, I guess, is sorta grüneresque, but if you’d told me it was sylvaner, or verdicchio, or anything else that can two-step into that realm, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Impose no demands on it, and it will impose none on you. (7/11)