We are getting started early on New Year's Eve--dropping in a brief post to wish everyone a Happy New Year. We're staying in this year (saves money on the babysitter) and we've already gotten into the Bott-Geyl Crémant d'Alsace. Our kids are old enough that we are willing to let a game of Trouble drag on until 10pm on New Year's Eve (those are my four pieces still stuck at the beginning!), especially when we can have something to drink.

Crémant d'Alsace is a long time favorite of mine, in part because it is one of the the best sparkling wines to drink any time--affordable and delicious. I treat Crémant in the same manner I would a Prosecco (a sparkling wine--also the name of the grape variety--from Italy) or a Cava (sparkling from Spain): it is proof that one SHOULD DRINK BUBBLY OFTEN, because few things can make us as happy as a good glass of sparkling wine.

In the Glass
I love the Bott-Geyl Crémant, by the way--it is dangerously good...it is so easy to drink that I could polish off the whole bottle myself, but that never ends well! It is a crystalline wine with peals of flavor that points to a fair amount of some of Alsace's noble varieties in the mix (Crémant d'Alsace is most often a repository for Pinot Blanc...not considered "noble" in Alsace). Special thanks my friend Denise for showing me the way to the Bott-Geyl!

I'll finish by repeating myself--drink sparkling wine often (and this one would make a great choice!)--because you don't need to celebrate to have bubbly!

Happy New Year!!!

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I tasted a handful of excellent estate-bottled Champagnes last week that were magnificent. Champagne is synonymous with luxury, and that is largely thanks to the masterful worldwide representation of the region by some famous name Champagne houses. The wines that I tasted were certainly luxurious, but as far as Champagne is concerned they were a bargain. Of course, we're talking about Champagne, so the idea of what is a bargain is rather skewed. Land costs more in Champagne, and getting the grapes off the vines is not cheap, and of course the process of making sparkling wine isn't terribly inexpensive, so all this conspires to bring the price of Champagne up more than anyone would like, but there is certainly no Sparkling Wine better than a first-rate Champagne.

The line-up:
Jean Milan Carte Blanche--a spectacular Blanc de Blancs (i.e., all Chardonnay) that is even drier than it has been in the past. I have tasted this wine many times through the years, and I am newly dazzled by the purity of its expression, which was--once upon a time--sort of soft and diffuse because it had more sugar (more along the lines of Veuve Clicquot, which is itself technically a dry wine, though it tastes rather sweet to me). This is more vivid than it was formerly, and would be well attuned to some fine oysters, or caviar of course.

René Geoffroy Cuvée Expression--A dynamic little spice bomb...at least the nose gives that impression. I understand that this wine has more Meunier than Pinot Noir, which probably accounts for that and the strawberry-rhubarb quality in the background. It has an excellent earthiness in its flavor profile--an excellent drinking experience.

Vilmart Grand Cellier--all the tell-tales of a luxury cuvée: broad-shouldered wine with long, robust flavors which leaves a Great Impression. Barrel-fermented, so this significant character is going to be a feature. It has a silky plushness yet is well defined and pointed. Has a brioche quality that keeps drawing me back to the glass, do doubt because it is a suggestive flavor, not an obvious one. Remains one of my favorites, and isn't priced like the luxury cuvées at about $70 (I know, I know--that's no small purchase, but other luxury Champagnes are over $120, so it's all relative).

Jacques Lassaigne Cuvée le Cotet--Also a barrel-fermented Champagne, it is not as vivid as the Vilmart, but it is also $20 less. It is a richly appointed wine, beautiful in its expression of a pain au chocolat series of flavors--croissant and chocolate that are continuously emerging over each other--a very cool effect. A really wonderful wine.

H. Billiot Rosé--A wow wine for sure! Rosé of Champagne is typically more expensive than its white sibling, and this one is around $70, as I recall, but it's dynamite. This wine is historically made with a small percentage of still red wine to make your glass rose-colored, and its red-fruit qualities are hard to beat. This is usually one of my favorite Rosés of Champagne, and judging by the fact that I didn't feel like writing anything down because it was so captivating, it remains so.

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This video has nothing to do with wine, though it does recall my former vocation. It has made the rounds many times, but it is just as amusing on the tenth viewing as the first.

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Thank you to the many of you who asked me to post this piece: it is an essay that I wrote for the print edition of The Pulse of the City the week after the long arms of Hurricane Ike--not yet satisfied by the destruction of Galveston, Texas--laid waste to a large portion of the power grid covering the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys in September 2008.

--Power (Loss) Provides New Perspective--

The power is off in my house as I write this. It’s been off for a while and no doubt will be off for a few more days yet. I’m actually writing longhand, which is not my typical way of writing these days. The house is quiet, my family is asleep, and it would be hard to not enjoy the poetry of a moment like this. The scratching of my pen is the only sound this side of my breathing, and the candles in the center of the table gird me and my surroundings in an appetizing red-yellow glow. I’m drinking red wine. It is beautiful, but it is really not what I wanted to open. I’d rather drink something white, but since refrigeration becomes a problem when the power is out, I have chosen to curl my fingers around the stem of a New Zealand Pinot Noir--it is as fragile and tensile as any good Riesling, but it grows beefier with every sip, until I have some water, and then it seems edgy again.

I’m not trying to indulge some pretentious nonsense. This is just an illustration of how I am interacting with wine at the moment. It reminds me of the slightly thrilling sensation of driving alone at night: self-aware, open to knowing the impact we have on our surroundings and the way our surroundings affect us. We are not usually in this state (or at least I am not), so we are not usually decoding the messages our senses are receiving.

We are so assaulted by information that it has become a cliché to mention it. We barely have time to process what we get paid to do, much less concern ourselves with such avocational topics as wine. We’ve been primed to turn off some receptors, which allows us to sit through an exciting action film or watch a friend embarrass himself. Turning our senses back “on” is not easy, but doing so allows us to be immersed in the world and the world to be immersed in us. This requires a lot of energy, but I’ve found it to be worth it.

So what the heck does this have to do with wine? Well, only everything! Wine is one of the few things that engages all five senses at once, while at the same time stimulating the intellect (provided the wine is of genuine interest for one reason or another). It is perfectly easy to slurp down wine just for fun, but it is more rewarding to let the wine both tell its story, and help shape the story of drinking it.

I realize that this runs the risk of sounding like snobby new-age esoterica, but think about how you interact with food and drink. Does it interest you only for sustenance; do you like it for all of its facets, warts and all; something in between? Either way, it will affect the way you remember the food or drink, as well as the way you relate the experience of it.

Back to the story here--that New Zealand Pinot Noir which is getting more muscular with each sip is really a delight to drink. It is the Olssons Jackson Barry Pinot Noir, and I would recommend it for its multi-layered complexity as well as its ability to overcome a big hurdle. As I said, I didn’t really want to drink this wine. When I realized the refrigerator wasn’t going to get my wine cold, it was either rally and find something else to drink, or go without wine altogether. I obviously chose the former, and in doing so, though it was not intentional, I have gotten to relate the experience of it.

After all that, if Hurricane Ike hadn’t treated our fair city like Tina so that I had to make a choice, I would be drinking Champagne right now. And with those bubbles tickling my nose and a working overhead light, this would have been an entirely different article.

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I'm not sure this is actually "news"--it certainly isn't of the "Oh, the Humanity!" variety--but it touches the nerve that controls my distaste for/distrust of Yellow Tail and other critter wines.

I'm not a fan of savvy marketing techniques when it comes to wine (other packaged goods, shampoo, cross-your-heart bra, second-rate beer, sure...the memory of a good ad almost makes Bud Light taste like something). One of the attractions of wine for me--albeit a secondary one--is that as an agricultural product, it doesn't bear a slick promotional campaign very well. So, Yellow Tail is Crowdsourcing the name of their new unoaked Chardonnay. Frankly the world needs another unoaked Chard like it needs a hole in the head, and I'm afraid that Yellow Tail is jumping on this bandwagon a bit late. Crowdsourcing refers to getting your users to name your product, which should mean that the brains on the business have been drained of originality, but probably is an attempt to drive consumer loyalty.

If you choose to enter (please don't), your prize will be a CASE OF THE WINE. Oooooh, that's an anticlimax! They've probably tried something like "Gotta Get Me Some Tail" as a slogan, so, if you are keen to enter, I imagine that something similarly punny for the name of the Chard would be the winner.

I pass this around because I loathe this kind of approach to wine sales, and I want to convert you to my side. I'll spare you the diatribe I just deleted, which was reasonably persuasive but too long and no one was going to read anyway. I hope you can infer my position....

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