WHAT’S UP WITH FINE DINING?

Fair question from our perspective and it is that perspective that defines our position. Granted we have pulled no punches in calling out by-the-glass failures, wine list pretense and sommeliers who have more attitude than anything else. But, as much as we have great expectations about what the fine dining experience should be, we do like to eat out and enjoy an innovative menu.

We have a lot of friends in the restaurant business, so it’s not like we’re against eating out. But we do have a little bit of an edge developed over the years working as ‘second class citizens’ in an industry that treats eateries with kid gloves and creates more advantageous programs with minimal purchase requirements for them. Why should a restaurant literally pay less, sometimes substantially less per bottle, for a two case wine order than a retailer for an order 10 to 20 times that size?  There is no business logic for that, particularly when one takes into account that restaurants are one of (if not the) highest failure rate businesses in the country. Yet it has been that way since we started.

We have had plans to address this fine dining issue for some time, but more in the context of what we see happening around us. We’re talking about the disappearance of the ‘white table cloth’ venue. Yes there are still a number of them that have opened in hotbeds like San Francisco, New York and Las Vegas. But the upscale burger palace and pizza spot have been proliferating at a much faster clip than what one would consider ‘traditional’ restaurant concepts.

Yes there are still steak houses. But how many have opened recently around you? You are much more likely to see places that serve ‘gourmet burgers’ (at $20 or so) and have an extensive selection of IPA beers, with wine service that has been given little thought beyond having both colors (red and white). The point is that places like fancy burger joints, upscale pizza places and, of course, those places dedicated to permutations of the chicken wing, are essentially a step up from the fast food the ‘next generation’ grew up on.

Is this upscale dining these days? Does Michelin have a special section for ‘gastro pubs’ and ‘wine bars’? Given the rate at which these types of venues are opening these days, they surely must be popular. But what kind of experience is the diner getting for these elevated costs? By the time you have a couple of cocktails and a couple of upscale ‘angus burgers’, the costs aren’t insignificant. Is this the millennials idea of ‘living large’? Or is this what they can afford simply because true ‘fine dining’ has become prohibitively expensive?

The other day we heard an interesting term from a well known vintner who, though he put it in a nice way, suggested that they were deigning to visit retailers like us because of the ‘restaurant crisis’. Huh? There was a clear vision in this fellow’s mind of restaurants being ‘costed’ out of existence. Rents for certain places have become almost laughably steep, food costs have been erratic, and little employee amenities like extra ‘paid’ sick days and medical insurance mandated in places like San Francisco have made profitable operation quite a challenge.

As this gentlemen went on to say, “restaurants can’t make money on food any more” and are forced to rely more on “beverage” for their profits. Essentially that translates to restaurants demanding even heavier discounts and favorable pricing to improve their bottom line from suppliers. Also, he pointed out that a lot of restaurants are raising the ‘multiples’ on their wine lists, making, say a $20 wine that would have been $60 under the old system, now closer to $100. First of all, restaurant wine was expensive enough before, so making it more expensive hardly seems like a well thought out solution.

Second, you can’t bank ‘percentages’. You bank dollars. So raising prices could (and usually does) have the opposite effect by lowering sales and thereby potentially decreasing profits. With all due respect to Uber, the stricter alcohol laws have probably lowered ‘on-sale’ wine sales over the years anyway.

So what do we have to look forward to? Well one might presume those large, cozy restaurants are a thing of the past, unless they are underwritten by a hotel or some other entity for which the restaurant is a draw that pays off in other ways. Restaurants have been seemingly getting smaller by virtue of the costs of rent and labor. Usually the sizeable venues are going to be chains that can survive based on economies of scale. This of course comes with the corporate mentality that can tone down the innovation part of the dining experience.

An emerging scenario is the deliberately small, fixed menu establishment. Something on the order of 18-30 seats, which makes the staffing needs less, with a fixed menu so food costs are much more controlled. This seems to be the ‘new wave’, gives the chef great latitude in what to serve since they know exactly what they will need, and can provide an amazing experience. Of course these experiences seem to come at a considerable cost. Dinner for two, a couple bottles of wine (with those hefty markups), tax, tip, some sort of add-on percentage for staff health care or some such, and an Uber, can run well over $1000. That’s a lot of ‘wings’.  Also, they are charging for the meal up front.  So lord help you if you get the flu. Talk about the hidden costs of illness.

Where is this going? Well, certainly the restaurant landscape is going to continue to change. Restaurants (and menus) are trending smaller, and more of the middle tier of restaurants, mostly chains, is proliferating. For a lot of folks, that’s OK. There are lots of people that like to go to the same restaurant, sit in the same chair and order the same thing (we find fine wine buyers to be substantially more adventurous as a rule). And, yeah, there will b a good number of ethnic places, too. But we may be seeing the last of a certain ‘maverick’ breed that has influenced the food scene over the last few decades.

Where are the next icon eateries going to come from? Great chefs may have to start with food trucks because of the prohibitive costs of opening a brick and mortar venue. Maybe everyone will be cooking in business parks and serving via UberEats or Eat24, or in a food court of some sort. The problem we see is that the next generation of innovators, new versions of places like Spago, Valentino, Providence, French Laundry or Boulevard, will have a much lower chance to survive and become an icon. It has never been easy. But with the current rent scenarios, mandated entitlements, and, of course, a near-double minimum wage, the road is going to be much harder for aspiring chefs and their investors.

For our part, we like to eat out, though we do have a little bit of trouble with a meal costing as much as a house payment. We, like everybody else, will see what develops. The only thing for sure is that it will continue to change, and not necessarily for the better. As for the ‘restaurant crisis’, what our vintner friend was talking about is real for wineries. With an ever increasing number of premium wine labels, serious competition from imports, and what promises to be a lot fewer places dealing in those kinds of wines in general, a lot of ‘upscale wines’ will have trouble finding homes. Then what?.

SWAN PINOT: HOME RUN FOR THE ‘OLD GUARD’

JOSEPH SWAN VINEYARDS PINOT NOIR TRENTON ESTATE VINEYARD 2013

 Historically, this is one of those labels where we never really ‘got it’.  The reputation of Joseph Swan has been exalted for pretty much our entire time in the wine business.  But perhaps because history doesn’t really matter to us when it comes to purchasing, only what’s in the glass, we have not been big fans.  A lot of the wines were a bit too, um, ‘exotic’.  Maybe we had the misfortune to have them all on ‘root days’ (arguably before anyone knew what that was).  But we never understood why the ‘old timers’ spoke of the label in such glowing terms, and presumably never tasted the wines that generated such a buzz back in the day.

It is with that history, and with full knowledge of the fact that a number of people will simply tune out as we are pitching a $70 Pinot with a 91 point score, we say that the Joseph Swan Vineyards Pinot Noir Trenton Estate Vineyard 2013 is bloody amazing.   We kept tasting this and looking at each other with the expression, ‘is this really that good?’.  The answer is, “heck yeah!”  It is one of the best Pinots we have tasted from anywhere this year, and we have been tasting 2015 Burgundies among other things.

Apparently the 40th vintage of this wine, it shows deft winemaking in its unfettered purity, haunting, subtle spice and anise tones to the deep dark red and blue fruits, refined tannins and just the right touch of acidity to make the wine pop on the palate.  If you are looking for some sweet, gooey ‘jamball’, this is not that.  It is instead a very focused, refined and harmonious expression of Russian River Pinot that can play alongside anything.

It isn’t ‘big’ as that is defined these days.  But it is deep and expressive, simply a gorgeous effort that made us reconsider our position on this producer.  We must, in all fairness, give some of the credit to 2013, one of the most impressive vintages we have ever had from California.  It was also one that was particularly kind to Pinot, giving the wines an unusual depth and power while maintaining balance.

Lisa Perotti-Brown’s description, while accurate and complimentary enough, sounds a little clinical, “The 2013 Pinot Noir Trenton Estate Vineyard presents a pale to medium ruby color and tar and asphalt-led nose, opening out to a core of raspberry preserves, red currant jelly and licorice, plus a waft of underbrush. Full-bodied, rich and powerful in the mouth, it gives mouth-filling berry preserves and anise flavors with a chewy backbone and a long, fruity finish.”

The score and the rhetoric, while pretty good for her, simply doesn’t convey our level of enthusiasm.  Maybe she had it on a ‘root day’.  In any case, this is a serious, layered bottle of Pinot that deserves equally serious attention.  There are lots of other wines that would be easier sells, but this one is very special, and maybe something of a game-changer for us….$69.99

#TRENDING

At the end of our last op-ed piece, which discussed large trends in the wine business past and present, we said, “There are a couple more things we’d like to hit, like ‘sweet’ reds and kitchen sink blends in ‘cool’ packages (aka ‘Prisoner’ envy).  In many cases they are one-in-the-same.  Those are definitely trending upward much to our chagrin…”  People will say that, if such wines are popular, what’s the problem?  That’s a complicated question.

One can always make the case that any time you have something that the public is latching on to, that’s a positive.  From that perspective, it is tough to argue.  One thing that previous ‘trend’ wines like White Zinfandel, Merlot, and fizzy Portuguese pink wines in the 60s and 70s have done was create more wine drinkers.  But the backlash suffered by each and every one of these genres after they went out of vogue was rough to say the least.

One of the great quandaries for the industry over the last decade has been how to appeal to the next generation of wine drinkers, the ‘millennials’.  In thus hunt, the current trend towards reds with residual sugar and/or ‘red blends’ seems to be striking a cord with the ‘Pepsi Generation 2.0’.

The wine we would credit with starting this whole new genre of ‘sweetish reds’, made from diverse and not necessarily complimentary grapes, is “The Prisoner”.  Dave Phinney, the ‘inventor’ of this concept, candidly admitted before an interview here one day that the whole thing started as a mistake.  He had a batch of wine grapes that got a ‘stuck fermentation’.  Let us explain briefly, and not particularly technically.  As you are aware, grape juice becomes wine as the yeasts convert the sugars to alcohol (roughly in a ratio of .55 degree of alcohol for each 1 degree of sugar).  Sometimes the yeasts die before the fermentation is finished, which results in the as-yet-unfermented sugar remaining in the wine and the wine tasting sweet.

In any case, rather than try to force fermentation by introducing more aggressive yeasts, Phinney worked with blending. There are other winemaking ways to try and solve the problem, but they don’t always work. The key point is that there is noticeable sweetness in lots with that issue.  In the old days, such wines would be bottled as ‘late harvest’, telling the customer that it was ‘dessert’ style.  That made it a niche wine that people would fit into an occasional scenario but generally avoid because it was ‘sweet’.

While the discovery may have happened accidentally, the process of dealing with it was a fresh, innovative approach to the situation in creating a whole new identity.  Blend in the residual sugar lots with other wines to get it to a particularly appealing level with the perception of dryness, give it a cool name, and put an attention getting label on it.  Oh yeah, and charge a premium price.  This was genius, though not unprecedented.  Jess Jackson built an empire by making Chardonnay with a little sweetness.  The old adage people talk ‘dry’ but drink ‘sweet’ has always been true, the ‘catch’ being you simply can’t tell them it’s sweet.  But the upscale marketing was an innovative twist.

Phinney’s success in doing it with reds was a breakthrough, quality wine and the guy got paid big money for his idea. He figured out that you don’t need a lot of sweetness to fill in the cracks and round out a wine. Good for him. He used that success to ‘double down’ on the quality, locking up top vineyards sources throughout the Napa Valley to produce The Prisoner.

But his success spawned what we like to refer to as ‘Prisoner envy’.  Another winery took the leave-a-little-sugar-in-it approach to Pinot Noir and created a hugely successful brand that also sold for millions.  But the majority of the new renditions of this concept follow the basic Prisoner model of a little bit of sweetness, a ‘cool’ or irreverent label and no varietal identity.  They exist at several price levels as well so there is more market penetration and broad acceptance.  With most of these ‘copycat’ Prisoners it’s more about the label than the juice, and the fruit-sourcing for many of these bottlings has most certainly not been at the level of Phinney’s groundbreaking efforts, though many try to charge a similar price.

This has been the most significant wine trend in at least the last decade, but curiously none of the media ever mentions the residual sugar.  Do they not taste it? Some wines hide it better than others, but it is there.  It was interesting to talk to one of the winemaking principals at a well known Napa address who was also presenting his own version of this new genre.  He said that they had been measuring residual sugars in a number of wines on the market as they were trying to define their own style and found readings in some wines as high as 10%.  To give you some idea, a wine is considered ‘sweet’ if it has more than 3%!

Given the success of Prisoner, Conundrum, and the like, everyone is trying to get into the act with some sort of sweetish red of their own.  Apparently, the world is buying the stuff and, yes, ultimately it may create some new wine drinkers among that hard-to-read next generation.  The thing is that, like with white Zinfandel, Merlot, rosé, etc., the category is now expanding too fast and not everything made is as well considered (to put it politely).  Unfortunately, the wine industry will keep it up until it implodes, as they have so often with categories like those we mentioned.

So, what is our problem if it sells? Well, nothing if we were considering an option to buy stock in one of these projects (though with a definite ‘intermediate term’ frame of mind). The RSR (‘residual suger red’) from a business standpoint might make a lot of sense, particularly given the prices that some corporate entities have thrown down to buy such brands.  Sugar sells, whether the market, or the public, care to admit it.  But we definitely don’t see it as a long-term proposition.  We’ll see.

Our other objections to the wines themselves are personal.  We like wines that are definitive stylistically and have a sense of place.  To do that, you have to pay attention to both farming and winemaking.  It isn’t easy to get all of the components right but we feel the best wine expressions fall into this camp.  First off, with these multi-varietal blends, it seems wineries are ‘stepping outside the box’, but not in a good way.  There are reasons certain varietals have evolved as being able to partner with one another.  Centuries of experience and experimentation have validated certain combinations like the varietal choices in Bordeaux and the Rhone.  They have been proven to stay complimentary as a wine ages.

When you blend grape varieties that aren’t necessarily complimentary, you run the risk of some flavors overpowering and others cancelling each other out.  Sangiovese, Cabernet, and Petite Sirah with a little residual sugar and oak staves?  Why not? Everything starts to taste simply like ‘red wine’, but wrap it in a hip package and sell the sizzle and you might make it work, though that isn’t our preference.

We like when varietal characteristics show themselves and certain blends (again like Bordeaux or the Rhone) evolve in a more linear path.  That aspect is what makes wine so fascinating.  If you just put together a bunch of ‘stuff’, that’s what it will taste like.  These blends can have size, color and punch, but not necessarily the nuances and complexity that make wine unlike any other beverage.

Take an amorphous blend, tweak it with some oak chips and leave a little sugar in it, and you have a wine-like beverage that varies little from year to year.  Sounds a little like a soft drink or juice.  Plus, when you make wines this way, you have the means to constantly tinker with the blend to get a consistent profile.  But such manipulative winemaking takes away a lot of the ‘soul’ of the wine itself.  The RSRs, which have a lot of punch and roundness on entry, are often front-loaded and simple.  But they can lack finesse, sit heavy on the palate, and do not play well with anything except ribs slathered in BBQ sauce or a cowboy ribeye.

We taste a number of these through the course of what we do, and find it hard to differentiate from one jam-ball red to another, and the sweetness and/or artificial oak notes glaze over nuance and flaws alike.  Are we saying such wines are bad?  Well, not necessarily, they are just not why we drink wine.  They can be tiring to drink, matching poorly with most dishes.  As far as aging, all bets are off because the sweet veneer interferes with the layers of flavor that aging is supposed to bring out.

Curiously, we have rarely read anything in the media that calls out the overt sweetness in some of these RSRs.  In fact, a number of them get good reviews because they stand out in a crowd by virtue of their weight and overt ‘fruitiness’.  Are we the only ones that see this? Actually, we know that isn’t the case because we have had a number of candid discussions with winemakers who are trying to make their own Prisoner-esque concepts.  We think (hope?) this escalation, too, will pass.  There’s room for a few well-done examples but overkill seems to always be the end result.  Also, we are concerned that a lot of people won’t know what ‘wine’ (by our definition) is supposed to taste like, and we’ll admit our own reluctance to get behind most of them.

If this genre creates more wine drinkers, in theory that is OK.  But we have been pretty adamant about disliking the idea of wine becoming more predictable and uniform thanks to this growing manipulative bent in winemaking. ‘Mutt-blend’ RSRs are the most blatant example of this trend.  The ‘cool label’ trend that eschews information is another adjunct issue.  One guy hits a home run and everybody wants piece, at any cost.  Marketing gone wild?  Then again maybe it’s our problem and we sound like a bunch of conspiracy theorists.

 

PLOYEZ JACQUEMART-A DIFFERENT KIND OF PINK

Yeah, we are kind of weird about Champagne. We love the stuff and think it has purpose every day of the year, not just the holidays and Valentines Day. It’s great for celebrations, but also makes a fine aperitif and excellent foil for certain dishes as well. So we’re likely to spring a Champagne piece on you any time.

We were quite taken with the Ployez Jacquemart Extra Brut Rose for its sleek bead and ample, distinctive palate. We have talked about this family-run house before but this stylish pink is something new to us. This wine is only produced in years where the red grapes excel and the base cuvee here is primarily from 2013, made with first pressed Premir and Grand Cru fruit. The red juice for this primarily red cuvée sees some time in oak which gives it a bit more depth and muscle.

The toasty edge plays nicely off the surprisingly full midpalate, and the bead is fine and precise. You’d never guess from tasting it that the dosage in this bubbly is a low 3-4 grams per liter (standard bruts run 10-15 gpl, hence the ‘extra-brut‘ handle).  The lower dosage has a lot to do with the clarity of the fruit in this sparkler, but to do it this well in this style is not easy. We could say this is a food focused cuvée, but we think a lot of you will appreciate it on its own for its masculine style.

A ‘NOSTALGIC’ CABERNET DEAL

Who knew back in 1967 that we would get here?  Steve was still in high school and Chateau Ste Michelle, then called Ste. Michelle Vineyards, would start a long and impressive run as well as essentially be the genesis of the wine industry in Washington State.  We’re sure there are historians that would dispute that latter point with an example of some winery that may have preceded the folks at Ste. Michelle.  But in point of fact this is the winery that eventually got people’s (and critic’s) attention at a time when the Hugh Johnson Wine Atlas did not even have a Washington section.  The rest, as they say, is history.

We don’t necessarily go in for nostalgia plays.  Usually it is an excuse for a winery to make some special ‘commemorative’ bottling and charge a big price tag.  But this one caught our fancy because the folks at Ste. Michelle took the unusual step of ‘doing a solid’ for their customers and creating a wine at a ‘throwback’ price while adorning it with a take on their original label from back in the day.  It’s a ‘feel good’ story which, of course, is the point.  But back when they started, no one would have any way of knowing that the 2015, which is being released in their 50th year of existence (though from their 48th vintage) would happen to come in a near perfect vintage in the great Northwest (one of the warmest ever).

The winery chose Cabernet to celebrate their milestone, and sourced the grapes from Columbia Valley vineyards in eastern Washington including Cold Creek, Canoe Ridge Estate and Indian Wells.   The blend is 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot, 4% Syrah, 1% Malbec, 1% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Petit Verdot and saw fourteen months in a combination of French and American oak, 32% of which was new.  The juicy Ste. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley 50th Anniversary Commemorative Bottling 2015 shows plenty of ripe dark fruits, a touch of vanilla, surprising amplitude and polished tannins for something this age.  Think of this as a step back in time, to when you could get a pretty compelling bottle of wine for ten bucks, only it’s 2017 and you can’t get much of anything for this kind of price.

Therein lays the attraction.  Cool label, sure.  Great feeling and commemoration of a surprising history that few would have predicted back then.  But in the end, our interest in the ‘50th’ is because it’s a really good, honest bottle of Cabernet for an unbelievable price in today’s market.  Think of this as at least on par with, and arguably better than the best offerings we’ve sold from their Columbia Crest brand over the years, many of which received 90-92+ scores.

Thus far we haven’t seen any reviews on this one, but the price/quality relationship is more than enough reason to get excited about it.   As you know, we are not ones to spend a lot of effort promoting large wineries, though we are certainly not afraid of doing so when the wine merits.  It certainly does here. Kudos to Ste. Michelle for their doing something tasty at a price where everyone can celebrate a little, as well as one of the better value Cabernets around.

Massican’s ‘Real’ Italian

California’s Cal-Ital movement has been quite a mixed bag.  We get that folks like Italian wine (we do to) and ‘hands on’ vintners couldn’t wait to try and emulate those wines here in California.  After all, they reasoned, the same sun shines over Italy that does over California, right?  Yeah, but that’s about where the comparison ends.  The term ‘terroir’ describes those things that make one place different than another and, frankly, a lot of Italian varietals planted here simply don’t perform well.  For sure they don’t come out anything like the ‘original’ versions.  There have been successes, sure.  But for the most part they are curiosities rather than something that threatens to find a consistent place on people’s tables.

One of the more intriguing new players in this arena has been Massican, named for a mountain range in Campania where some mythological occurrence involving Bacchus supposedly took place.  The winery has developed quite a cult following centering on wines made with such grapes as Ribolla Gialla, Greco, Friulano, and, of course, Pinot Grigio.  No small task to do this kind of thing in California, so props for that.  The wines are unique in this landscape, which will certainly get them an audience among the geek set, and they were well crafted.  But Italian purists will make the point that you can’t take certain grapes out of their native environments where they excel and expect to achieve the same level of performance somewhere else.

While some will praise the Napa versions of these distinct Italian blends as uniquely intriguing, the counterpoint is that grapes can’t ripen the same way California that tey do in Italy.  The acidities are never quite the same, and, while the wines might be richer here, they won’t have the same ‘hum’ as Italian versions.  While we will surely find fans for the small amounts of this winery’s home grown Italian blends that we get, some among us felt for this kind of fare, there had to be better, more compelling examples actually from Italy.

While winemaker/owner Dan Petroski, who also makes Larkmead wines (certainly a completely different discipline), has definitely become what one article called “icon of hipster wine”, classicists might argue that the Cal-Italian blends don’t have quite the lift and pop of the ‘real thing’.  For whatever reason, Petrowski decided to give it a spin with Italian grapes, as in from Italy.

The result is Massican Bianco Friuli Colli Orientali Gaspare 2015. Now that’s Italian.  While the winery was named for mountains in the south, these grapes came from the white wine bastion in the northeast, Colli Orientalli.  The mix here, surprisingly, is more Chardonnay heavy than the California examples (40% in the Gaspare as opposed to 9% in the Annia Napa white), but different environments might well dictate different blends.  In any case the Chardonnay, along with 35% Ribolla Gialla and 25% Friulano, pops in a way that only a proper Italian white can.

Made at Ronco Del Gnemiz, there’s some floral and faintly honeyed notes accenting bright, yellow stone fruits with an underpinning of minerality, but the freshness and lift that comes from these hills make a noticeable difference.  Sure, Italian varietals from Napa is probably more ‘cool’.  But this is a more compelling wine with an extra dimension over the very good Cali versions we have had.  This not only succeeds for itself, but opens the door for people to explore other great Italian white blends like Terlano’s ‘Terlaner’ and Vie di Romans.  Well done.

NEAR PERFECT (98 Points) DESSERT FROM HUET

“…2015 is an exceptional and historic vintage again at Huet (perhaps the best since 1997). I can only recommend to buy cases of all styles.” – Stephen Reinhardt, Wine Advocate #227, October 2016

It doesn’t take a lot to get us to talk about one of our favorite estates in the Loire, Domaine Huet.  What with the historic aspects, including Gaston’s story as a prisoner of war in Germany, the long success of the estate upon his return, the takeover by the Hwang family, and the eventual retirement fixture Noel Pinguet (he had been there since 1971) and the eventual taking of the reins by his former assistant Jean-Bernard Berthomé, there was never a lack of material to write about.

Of course, without the wine, there is no story.  Of course, we’ll be the first to admit that the timing of the winemaking transition over the course of a couple of difficult vintages did give us cause for concern.  Was Huet, one of our favorite estates, going to become ‘just another Loire producer?’  The thought was depressing.  But Berthomé hit back-to-back home runs in 2014 and 2015 and restored our faith.

As we said in an earlier piece on the 2015s, the 2015 Huet lineup serves as an exclamation point on what will be viewed as an important harvest for the Loire.   The recent Wine Spectator article on the Loire Valley in 2015 was glowing and the ‘Top Picks’ section looked like an advertisement for Huet with the top eight wines listed, and nine of the first 11, bearing the Huet label.  At the top of the list were Huet’s dessert (moelleux) offerings, destined to become modern day legends.  We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see one pop up in the Top 100, though quantities would barely justify that (not that such things concern the press).

A great Loire sweet is in a league by itself.  The complexity of late harvest Chenin Blanc and the pristine, precise acidity will enable these wines to age decades.  Great examples like this are rare because the conditions that must exist for this ripening process to occur in the place only happen once or twice a decade.  We fondly remember the historic 1996 and 1997 vintages and recently managed to scrape up a few bottles of Huet direct from their cellars from the great 1989 vintage (we still may have a few bottles).

What we’re getting at is that, for wines like this, and Huet in particular, this is a special moment.  These are best of breed, and, while they aren’t cheap, they are bargains compared to the elite Sauternes and Beerenauslese from Germany with whom they easily can stand.  The ‘Trie’ wines in particular are super labor-intensive, the result of multiple passes (or tries) through the vineyard.

This wine, however, is a little different, as the workers go through the vineyards and pick the heavily botrytized and/or raisined grapes first, berry by berry. This is why the 1ere Trie is called 1ere Trie – it is the “first pick.”

Let us reiterate…THIS WINE IS SPECIAL.

The wines from Huet’s Le Mont vineyard, from rockier soils, have a more pronounced streak of minerality and a firmer backbone that provides the structure for aging. The Wine Advocate’s Stephan Reinhardt had the Huet Vouvray Le Mont Moelleux Première Trie 2015 pegged as his favorite, noting, “This is super clear, ripe and aromatic on the nose, highly elegant and with lovely flinty flavors. Intense and concentrated, with great finesse and vitality, this is a highly elegant and perfectly balanced wine with a persistent grip and salinity. Great balance and harmony. 98 points.”

It is the Wine Advocate’s highest-scoring Loire Valley white wine for the outstanding 2015 vintage. It literally gets no better. And at $64.98 for a full bottle, it’s certainly one of the great values in world-class dessert wine that, incidentally, could potentially find itself cozying up to some spicier Asian preparations after a decade in the cellar.

Get this world-class gem while you can, historically wines like this come long once a decade.

LITTLE ITALY, PART ONE: DOLCETTO

Dolcetto days are here again.  It has been tough couple of years for Piedmont.  While Nebbiolo is king, the everyday wines like Dolcetto and Barbera are the mainstays of the vintners as well as fantastic food choices for us Americani.  The problem for both was back to back ‘stinker’ vintages.  Yes, thanks to some late sunshine, the 2013 Nebbiolos have been juicy, complex and dazzling.  Everybody is looking forward to the Barolos and Barbarescos.  But the Dolcetto and Barbera, often planted in the lesser sections of some of the top vineyards, got hit with untimely rain and couldn’t hang on until the sun shined.  As to 2014, it was all kinds of difficult across the board.

For those reasons, there simply hasn’t been very many choices for the category …that is until the 2015s started showing up.  It’s a brand new day, with ripe, plump and engaging examples of both started to show up on supplier lists.  The success of 2015 hit Piedmont as well, and the Dolcettos are no exception.  We dare say that the turnabout seems even greater here than most other European regions.  Whereas in Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhone were also pretty good in 2014, in this part of the world it was not.  So the difference between the 2014s and 2015s borders on staggering, the salient point being we have some seriously good Dolcetto at hand now.

The Piemontese love Dolcetto for its outgoing fruit, food versatility, and attractive pricing (the Piemontese are notoriously frugal).  You can even put a slight chill on it for service on warmer days, and it will play with virtually anything from a hearty Italian stew to a plate of salume.   It’s one of Italy’s best ‘little’ reds,  and we’re  pleased to have not only good stuff to sell, but really engaging juice to drink thanks to 2015.  To that end we have three fine, fresh examples from some of our favorite sources.

The story of Olek Bondonio is a little unusual.  Olek, who has eastern European roots as well as Italian, visited the estate he currently operates in summer as a child.  He then made his name as a competitive snowboarder before becoming a winemaker.  His family has been involved here for some 200 years but Olek only started making wine here in 2005.  His Barbaresco comes from the Roncagliette, perhaps better known by the name used by his neighbor, Sori Tildin.  He is very ‘hands on’ when it comes to working the vineyard but he is all about letting the vineyard shine through.

The Olek Bondonio Dolcetto d’Alba 2015 reflects that attention to detail with a great purity to the fruit and inviting scents of blue fruits, violet, and a little almond skin.  Sleek and polished, the expressive fruit of the vintage is perfectly punctuated by fresh acidity and the kind of lift that makes this an easy quaff.   It’s what Dolcetto is all about, with the extra added attraction of coming from storied dirt.  The vines are 30-50 years old, all is done with native yeasts and gravity flow, and it’s bottled unfiltered.

Andrea Bosco is the passionate young owner of Bosco Agosatino, named for his father and founded by his grandfather in 1904.  Again here all of the juice is state grown, all within the confines of La Morra, and the surface area of the estate is around 10 acres.  The hillside faces south west and it composed of clay and limestone, and 70% of the Dolcetto vines are over a half-century in age.   The fermentation is controlled and done entirely in stainless steel to both preserve the gregarious fruit and prevent the extraction of unwanted tannins.  As you may have expected, Andrea’s single-vineyard Agostino Bosco Dolcetto d’Alba Vantrin 2015 is something of a fruit bomb with effusive blackberry and mulberry character, a streak of minerality and earth, and just enough cleansing freshness to keep things on point.

Finally, it’s hard to talk about things like Dolcetto and Barbera without mentioning perennial all-star Luca Currado who seems to do everything well all the time.  Granted the young vignerons above have established themselves as players but no one is more passionate than the folks at Vietti.  While Luca’s Vietti Dolcetto d’Alba Tre Vigne 2015 isn’t necessarily as ‘aristocratic’ as Olek’s (serious dirt for Dolcetto) or as ‘big’ as Andrea’s, it is plump, engaging and very likely to disappear while whatever the discussion is continues.  Friendly and harmonious.

It’s great to have Dolcetto back on the shelves, and this time around we have some great Dolcetto thanks to our network of proven producers and the gloriously decadent 2015 vintage.

 

 

The Price is Right?

Being in business today is challenging.  We could go into a lot of detail about costs of doing business, fierce competition, and the constant exposure in a world where everyone has an opinion and posts it on Yelp without fear of recourse no matter how outlandish, incorrect or vindictive.   Are we bitter?  No, we’re doing fine in these turbulent waters. That’s just the way it is, and everyone has to deal with it.

The world is a different place than it was a few decades ago, and technology has sped up the cycles of change and empowered the everyman to speak his mind whether they know what they’re talking about or not.  Again, that’s just the way it is. Back in college (about 100 years ago) we recall being in some pretty heated discussions in business school about the coming age of consumerism.  It just seemed like the children of the 60s questioned everything, including whether or not companies could run roughshod over the public with impunity any more.

What followed were drastic changes in consumer laws, Ralph Nader, and having to sign a mountain of paperwork just to have your teeth cleaned.   It’s a better world, right? Company practices are much more consumer friendly and fair (United Airlines not withstanding) and things like the ‘cooling off period’ and liberal ‘return policies’ are all there to protect consumers against themselves.  Even so, there still seems to be an itchy trigger finger when it comes to decrying someone’s business practices.

“you should always assume stupidity and ignorance before maliciousness”

It’s as if there is some sort of mass paranoia that all businesses are out to deceive the public.  These days it only takes a couple of chat-room threads to turn something into a full blown brouhaha.  Yet in this day and age, when the consumer is allowed every opportunity to back out of a purchase, retailers are vilified for things that could have just been mistakes by employees.  We jumped to the defense of a competitor for being slammed on the news for ‘deceptive practices’ because some shelf talkers on wines were misplaced or were for a prior vintage.   If it were intentional, to what end?  Ticking off consumers is not good policy.  Likely errors or lack of diligence by employee were the cause. Our creative director Patrick has a good saying that “you should always assume stupidity and ignorance before maliciousness”. Seems like a pretty useful mantra for life in general, no?

This particular rant came about because we recently read Amazon was being chastised for misstating the ‘regular prices’ on items to make their ‘sale’ price look more attractive.  We can’t imagine why a company that visible and that clearly in a position of power would do that.  The accusation apparently stemmed from them quoting ‘regular prices’ that were not actually out there.  Apparently some conspiracy theorist found a price that was a couple of bucks lower somewhere (without noting if there were special discounts from the manufacturer, coupons, club membership allowances or any one of a thousand other tactics used to make people think they are getting a deal) from the other source.  Suddenly Amazon was a bad guy.  Really?  Frankly, in the end, all that really matters is the final price, and whether it is 38.9% off or 41.6% really isn’t the issue.

Clearly Amazon doesn’t need our help.  They surely have a phalanx of lawyers for this sort of thing, and maybe they didn’t actually, or intentionally, do anything wrong.  But there seems to always be someone willing to rattle a saber and defend the common man, and some news agency looking for a headline.  That is the world we live in.  Hey, a lot of folks offer deals in the wine business, too, and use ‘regular price’ as a barometer to demonstrate the magnitude of the discount.  No doubt there are people that are ready to pounce there, too, on some perceived misrepresentation of price.

Now we aren’t saying all wine merchants are saints.  Quite the contrary, some shoot prices for merchandise they don’t actually have and some, yes, state an inflated price to make their deal look juicier.  For our part, we make every effort to find a real price before we bring it up.  With wine, there are industry wide standards for pricing, although even those are becoming more ‘fluid’ as wineries trying to sell direct to consumers undercut their own retail prices with gimmicks like club member prices etc.    So if the ‘retail’ price per bottle is $200, but anyone can call up on the phone and ‘join’ a ‘club’ for no cost and get the same bottle for the ‘membership price’ of $175, what then is the real price?

For the record, the standard markup for the wine industry is as follows, and we aren’t going to confuse the issue by calling the result a ‘markup’, ‘mark on’ or ‘margin’.  If a wine costs $10 wholesale (before any discounts or allowances), the ‘list’ price is $15, whatever you choose to call it.  Other businesses (jewelry, clothing, luxury accessories, etc) are substantially higher.  When a retailer buys direct from the winery, on a wholesale basis, that structure is traditionally the assumption. Now once there are other parties involved (like a distributor or broker), the numbers can play out a little differently because there are more fingers in the pie and different parameters.  The ‘base’ price can change and that might cause the presumed ‘retail’ to be a little different.

Thus if a distributor took a little extra bump, say $11 wholesale, and there was no winery price guidance, then the ‘stated’ retail price would be more like $16.50.  A very common occurrence is on out of state shipments, where the f.o.b. (freight on board) price of wine from California to say Texas, or Washington to California, is slightly higher than the direct ship price within the state.  Given a higher cost, a retailer might state the ‘retail price’ based on a higher cost.  Re they inflating the price?  Not necessarily.  Imports are even dicier because of the varied shipping cost not only from the point of origin to the U.S., but to whichever coast or parts in between the wine eventually goes within the U.S.  So what’s the real price?  It’s not always that easy to determine.

We get it.  There is a lot of skepticism about how businesses operate.  There are a few bad apples, this is true.  But sometimes actually determining the ‘retail’ price isn’t that easy.  Are we defending Amazon?  Not exactly. More to the point, while we aren’t naïve, we don’t think everyone is out to get you.  People are far too inclined to point to a couple of minor mistakes over thousands of products and suggest there is institutional deception happening.  Yeah, we have a few people that do that in our business, too, but only a few.

In the end if you are getting a superior product for a better price, isn’t that the issue?  But what about those price search engines like wine-searcher?  Well even those aren’t definitive for establishing a true ‘list’ price because the range can sometimes be 40-50% between the top and the bottom of the range of a wine’s price, and that’s without even knowing if all of the prices are backed by actual physical inventory or what the provenance of the particular wine is.

We try our best to be accurate.  Usually a winery will have a posted price on their website and that’s our first choice to represent as ‘original retail’.  If we can’t find the winery pricing, or in the case of imports where there isn’t a relevant price listing, we’ll consult the reviews which usually list a suggested or ‘full markup’ retail price.  We also try to say where we got the price whenever possible if it is the context of an article.  If we are making the point that something we are selling is a ‘percent off’ of an original price, we do the research to find an appropriate price comparison that we are comfortable with.  Wines come and go, but integrity and trust are long term plays.

Finally we’d like to make the point.  Yes we have been doing marketing for a long time.  We understand how it works.  Back when we started the ‘one price’ system, offering our best price ‘bottle one’ (which was pretty novel three decades ago), it took some consumer education.  Many consumers had gotten used to the fact that, under regulated ‘fair trade’ pricing in California (which ended in 1979), they got a discount for buying twelve bottles or more.  They would point out that ‘store XYZ’ gave them a 10% discount when they bought a case.  After calculating their ‘discount’ at XYZ, our price was still lower.  What really matters in the end is what you actually pay, not the real (or imagined) percentage discount you received to get there.  Happy Weekend.

CABERNET QUARTERLY

It has truly been quite busy in Q1, what with all the hot releases rolling in from Europe (2015s from France and Italy for the most part and 2014 Bordeaux) after a couple of relatively quiet years on that front.  Here at home we are also experiencing an unparalleled string of successful vintages (at least in our memory) from 2012 through 2016.  Given all that is happening, with things coming at us ‘hot and heavy’, including some eyebrow-raising deals on all sorts of things, there simply haven’t been enough hours to talk about everything.

This has been, as you might have surmised given our comments on the domestic front, a wonderful time for Cabernet fans.  Wines that would have easily ‘made the cut’ a couple of years ago, qualitatively are middle of the current pack, and the stuff we do purchase is excelling in a much tougher field.  So, we deemed it time to take a breath and talk about a few gems that we loved, grabbed, but haven’t had time to get around to.  It’s a lovely list that Cab drinkers can truly sink their teeth into.

Martin Ray, the wine brand operating under the name of one of California’s early pioneer winery owners, has built itself a serious business with meticulous winemaking and careful sourcing of fruit.  They do well on a number of different fronts from Cabernet to Chardonnay to even, dare we say it, Rosé.  They have access to a lot of different fruit and certain lots will be set aside to create something special when the opportunity presents itself.   The Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon Diamond Mountain 2013 is one of those wines.  Made from 100% Cabernet from two well-known estates, this displays full throttle, almost chewy Diamond Mountain fruit honed to a perfectly civilized yet still rich Cabernet.

Very engaging stuff, as well it should be for an $80 list price, this one not only got our attention but tickled the fancy of James Suckling who typically doesn’t spend as much time on California wine.  His enthusiasm was evident here, “Breathtaking aromas of wet stones, blackberry and black currant follow through full body with seamless tannins that fill your mouth and last for minutes. Gorgeous wine. Why (wait)? But will age incredibly well….95 Points!”  Given the extreme prices of Napa Cabs these days, a lot of which is pretty ordinary, we didn’t blink at the $59.98 fare for this classy red.  Actually, based on performance, it actually represents something of a deal.

The Roberts + Rogers Cabernet Sauvignon Louer Family Napa Valley 2013 maybe one of the most impressive Cabernets you’ve never heard of.  Though they have been around since 2004, they only got noticed by Robert Parker with their 2012s.  Even if you sort by scores, by the time you get past all of the $150-and-up micro-boutiques that you can’t buy (even if you have the money) that he reviews these days, you would be several pages in before you got to this classy 95-point, $60 gem.

‘The Bob’ certainly wasn’t lost for words here, saying “The 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Louer Family is a blockbuster of power and elegance. Young, exuberant and youthful, with a dense purple color, notes of charcoal and smoke from the barrels interwoven with copious quantities of blackberry and blackcurrant fruit. This lavishly rich, full-bodied, multi-dimensional wine is still youthful and coiled tight, but has enormous upside and promise. Give it several more years of cellaring and drink it over the following 20-25 years.”  It has unwound a bit since that review (Dec. 2015), but it is a definitely ‘home run’ on the uber-quality scale whether you drink or hold.

Given the current run of vintages, most folks have forgotten that Antonio Galloni called 2010 Cabernets “…magnificent, viscerally thrilling wines loaded with character and personality.”  Here we have a later release from the vintage, now with some bottle age, that shines brightly in the Palazzo Proprietary Red Right Bank Napa Valley 2010.  Yes, it’s a ‘red table wine’ made of 72% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and the rest Cabernet Sauvignon, but it will please Cabernet drinkers as well as anyone else that’s a fan of serious Napa reds.  Oh, yeah, there’s that 96+ from Robert Parker with comments, “The 2010 is another wine of great intensity but coiled, very tight, with high levels of tannin. Sensational in extraction and richness…it shows fabulous density, richness, and intensity. Perhaps it will evolve somewhat like the brilliant 2005…”   We also have some of the Advocate 97-point Palazzo Cabernet Franc Napa Valley 2013

One doesn’t necessarily think of reds wine when the name Chalk Hill comes up, but their red program has made a quantum leap in recent vintages under the ownership of William Foley (yeah, the Chalone, Sebastiani, Las Vegas Golden Knights guy).  Behold the Chalk Hill Estate Proprietary Red 2013.  This has more Cabernet than the Palazzo (45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Malbec, 12% Petit Verdot and the rest Carignane, Syrah and Merlot), but, again, its Cabernet-ness isn’t the point.  It’s about great juice.

Parker’s words are pretty compelling, “This is another titanic effort from proprietor Foley. A spectacular dense-purple color and sweet toasty oak intermixed with licorice, blackberry, cassis and graphite are all present in this profound first-growth quality blend that should age effortlessly for 25-30 or more years. This is a stunner and a revelation. 95 points.”  “First-growth quality”? “A stunner and a revelation”? Ever the cheerleader for great wine, those are still rare words and high praise from Parker.  The juice is in the bottle, but the descriptors definitely got our attention.

And we still wonder what Mount Eden has to do to get the Cabernet respect it deserves.  They made one of California’s greatest Chardonnay for decades before people really caught on.  But they also make some pretty fine Cabernet from the Santa Cruz Mountains.  The Mount Eden Cabernet Sauvignon Estate 2012 is a dual 94 (from Wine Advocate and Antonio Galloni) and made up of 78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and the rest Petit Verdot that also boasts moderate alcohol as Cabs go (13%).   Jeb Dunnuck calls it, “…beautiful. Giving up lots of black and blue fruits, tobacco leaf, sweet oak and graphite… nicely concentrated and focused, with fine tannin and impeccable balance. It shows its class on the lengthy finish as well.”

Finally, this Pritchard Hill pioneer has had no problem keeping up with all newcomers to the Napa Valley, and the Chappellet Cabernet Sauvignon Signature 2014 is another in what has been an impressive string for this winery.   The 2014, from another outstanding vintage, was given one of Robert Parker’s highest scores thus far for a series that has long finished in the money.  A 94+ from Parker (as well as a 93 from Vinous), Parker’s review also made the point that this is a “…profound Cabernet Sauvignon that actually sells at a bargain price for what is in the bottle”.

When these are the types of things that we haven’t had time to get to, it is truly a special time.  Good hunting.