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Navelli, Abruzzo. Home to CantinArte’s high altitude white wines. (Download complete pdf here) Two months at a time was how I used to do the rounds with our growers. Winter and spring. Summer was too expensive and a fight for good lodging. Fall is too unpredictable with harvest to plan far in advance with most growers waiting for the right time, nerves on alert, hopes high but wearing a stoic face in case of disaster. That was all back before almost every year was hot and early. I arrived home to Portugal in time for Thanksgiving week, obviously not a thing here. During fifteen days on the road I passed through the Loire Valley Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc country (skipping Sauvignon zones–no time this trip), Chablis, Champagne, and added more belly weight and a constant redness to my eyes in Piemonte, as the vines were strangely still green in most of the Langhe toward the end of November. Milan to Porto, an easy direct flight home, I thought, started in Monforte d’Alba at seven in the morning on a crisp, clear, Alp-majestic Sunday morning. Thirteen hours later I descended into a deluge in northern Portugal that started a month ago and hasn’t let up since. I thought I’d have half a Sunday to prepare myself for the coming catchup week, but airports and planes and the unusually extensive delays when you’re tired don’t make for great recovery. Photo from Monforte d’Alba, November 2022 I can’t sleep on planes. Other than one time on the way to Chile it hasn’t happened again for more than ten minutes. I used to fly to Europe three times a year for a month each time when we first started our company. I figured that since I struggle with jet lag as much as I do that I may as well make it worth it by staying longer. Los Angeles (starting in Santa Barbara) to any EU destination is a real slog, a big disadvantage compared to East Coasters. Eventually I extended to two two-month trips in the last three years before I suggested to my wife and my business partner and co-owner and cofounder of The Source, Donny, that I move to Europe full time. Everyone was for it, surprisingly, and during a two-week vacation in Amalfi Coast’s perfect fishing village, Cetara, my wife opened the door with, “I could live here.” We landed on the first of September in 2018, a precise date our visa required of us, but after three months in Salerno, the major port town to the east of the Amalfi Coast, I knew Italy wasn’t our final European destination. Now I prefer to travel in the summer, but this fall trip was a necessity because I’ve done so much scouting and bringing on new producers. I also need to keep up with everyone already on our roster. Last year, having packed a foam roller and nicely padded yoga mat (both necessities now to keep me loose while my body atrophies along the way), I took a six-week solo road trip from Portugal and on through northern Spain, southern France, northern Italy, into Austria, then boomeranging back to Germany, across into Champagne, then directly south through France, a right at Barcelona and back home by the first week of July. It was quite a loop and one of my most memorable trips to date. Despite higher costs, summers are the best time for my work on the road. Long days to grab as much visual candy as possible, nicer weather, light packing, and happier moods thanks to lighter summer fare, an all-you-can-soak-up supply of Vitamin D, and heightened spirits in hopes of a successful coming harvest. 2021 has a lot to offer. While difficult in some places, it put the “classic” back in many wines, despite the losses, though I guess losses are classic too. 2022 was the opposite of 2021. Brutally hot by European standards. However, the upside was that in many places the grape yield was very high, a good offset for what could’ve been a gargantuanly alcoholic vintage turned out not so extreme, though many producers, including Dave Fletcher, said he’d never seen such perfect fruit—no rot, no disease, clean and pretty. The balance of wines in each region is far from determined, but at least for the most part there’s wine to sell after the shortages of 2021. Vincent Bergeron, one of our new producers in Montlouis, explained that he had too much fruit and it was even more stressful as a short vintage because he wasn’t prepared to receive such an overload. 2021 was exactly the opposite. Everyone wants a “normal” harvest each year but we all know that the new normal is that everything is unpredictable. Feast or famine. After two weeks with a party of four (one very light drinker that understandably didn’t pull her weight!), seven meals back-to-back with at least two bottles of Nebbiolo on each table (three the majority of the time), plus cantina visits before and after lunch, five different orders of Vitello Tonnato (top honors to Osteria La Libera, though La Torri and Bovio were a close second, all with different styles), seven orders of Plin in many forms (we couldn’t resist it during every meal, and top spot goes to La Libera again, though all were delicious), and six orders of Tajarin (top spot a tie between La Libera and Osteria Unione with only a slight textural difference in the pasta as the deciding factor), and without a doubt the best steak tartare at L’Eremo della Gasparina. It’s now Tuesday morning, and I’m still hurting a bit but craving a little Nebbiolo. I’ve not written since last month’s newsletter and I’m happy to finally be stationary. As usual, there are so many things to talk and think about re: all that’s happened this year. It’s Thanksgiving week and I have a lot to be thankful for, though I don’t really get to that complete gratitude moment until the week between Christmas and New Year’s when I really feel like I’m left alone to focus on cooking and non-business talk with my wife. But like summer’s promise and the anticipation of the coming harvest and the mystery of opening nature’s unpredictable gift box for the growers, I can’t help but look toward 2023 and what’s coming our way with our new producers. In January, I will share with you a little teaser for what is on the horizon for the first half of the year. There are about fifteen new producers, almost all of whom have never been imported to the US before. You know, wine importers either continue to grow or they get poached to death, so I gotta shed this plin and tajarin weight (and the weight gained on the stop in France beforehand) and get back in the office to prepare for next year. There’s always a new fire-breathing dragon on our heels and promising new winegrowers to be found. I love this job, and though it’s a privileged and fortunate métier, it’s rarely a carefree party. Well, not until Saturday dinner. California Events Friday, December 9th, San Francisco retailer DECANT sf’s 4th Annual Winter Fête from 5pm – 9pm. Join shop owners Cara and Simi along with The Source’s Hadley Kemp for this Champagne and caviar pure drinking-and-eating event. Among many other fabulous bubbles, Hadley will pour some from us, including Charlot-Tanneux, Pascal Ponson and Thierry Richoux. Call for a seat at (415) 913-7256 Saturday, December 17th, Pico at The Los Alamos General Store Bubble Bash- Champagne & Sparkling Wine Tasting from 2pm – 5pm. The Source’s Santa Barbara representative, Leigh Readey, will be pouring at their outdoor tasting event in the Pico Garden and chef Cameron is splurging on caviar and oysters. $40 per person, tickets available for purchase at  https://www. exploretock.com/picolosalamos/event/377637/bubble-bash New Arrivals The short list of arrivals not covered here in depth are the new releases from Wasenhaus and a reload on Artuke’s entry level ARTUKE Rioja and their insane value for such a serious Rioja, Pies Negros. Further along I go deep on two new producers, Champagne’s Pascal Mazet, and Abruzzo’s CantinArte. And included is an overview of Arnaud Lambert’s newest arrivals (too many good things there, so it’s a little lengthy), along with Dave Fletcher’s non-Nebbiolos. New Producer Pascal Mazet, Champagne Thirty hours in Champagne is not enough time. I made stops exactly one week ago to Elise Dechannes in Les Riceys, and a new project in Les Riceys we’ll be starting with in the spring, Taisne-Riocour (a true linguistic challenge to pronounce properly in French), as well as Pascal Mazet in Montagne de Reims, before I jotted off to my hotel at Charles de Gaulle. I am as completely smitten with the Pascal Mazet wines as I was with Elise Dechannes’ the first time I tasted them, though the style is very different from Elise’s Pinot Noir-based Champagnes. Mazet's is the land where Pinot Meunier leads the pack. The lovely and humble Catherine and constantly smiling Pascal Mazet established their domaine in 1981 with 2.5 hectares from her side of the family—enviable holdings in premier cru land on the Montagne de Reims communes Chigny-les-Roses and Ludes, and a grand cru parcel in Ambonnay. Even with such scant vineyard land, Pascal and his third son, Olivier, keep it interesting with six very different wines, soon to be only five. Most of the vineyards are gentle slopes facing southeast at 150m altitude with chalk bedrock alternating with calcareous sands and clay topsoil. They’re easy to spot: green jungle patches amid neighboring vineyards growing on desolate soil. Little by little the Mazets improved their work. The purchase of a Willmes press in the 1990s gently increased the juice yield while reducing gross lees extraction at half the pressure of other presses. Organic conversion started in 2009 and was certified in 2012. Defining elements of their style are fermenting and aging in 225-liter barrels (of at least 15 years old) for eleven to fifteen months and their NV cuvées blended with wine from their 5000-liter “solera” foudre (continuously topped each year with new wine since 1981), followed by extensive lees aging in bottle—a minimum of six years, but often eight. The blends with the solera, Nature and Unique, are bottled only in particular vintages. If the wine needs dosage (to their taste), it is labeled as Unique, if no dosage, it’s Nature—each vintage is one cuvée only, and not the other; for example, 2013 and 2015 are Nature, 2014 is Unique. Dosage of all the wines is decided on taste and wine profile of the vintage. “Scraping,” rather than tilling, is done with a very small tractor (lighter than one ton) to manage superficial grasses and weeds rather than deep gouging that can destroy deeply embedded flora and fauna habitats. While not interested in fully pursuing biodynamic practice, some similar concepts and treatments are employed, like plant infusions for vineyard treatments made from nettle, horsetail, yarrow, dandelion and consoude (known as Symphytum in English), a flower with a multitude of medical uses for animals (including humans!) as well as plants. Pascal (left) and Olivier Mazet At age of twenty-seven, Olivier Mazet took full control in 2018 after completing his university studies in 2014 with an engineering degree specialized in viticulture and enology from the Ecole Supérieur d’Agriculture, in Angers. Olivier’s long view is focused on agroforestry to improve biodiversity in and around the vineyards to help their resilience against disease, improve soil structures by letting nature do a lot of the work—with its billions of years of experience and knowledge—and to try to better cover their viticultural carbon footprint. Olivier’s older brother, Baptiste, also joined the team in 2020. The vineyard collection is about 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres) of Pinot Meunier, 46 ares (0.46 hectare) of Chardonnay, and 23 ares of Pinot Noir, all with an average age of forty years (2022), and 22 of sixty-year-old Pinot Blanc. The yield from their 8000-10000 vines per hectare (similar to Burgundy) in a normal year is around 55hl/ha. Mazet’s solera foudre is a singular experience. I asked Olivier for a taste of it during our first visit together. He looked to Pascal, who seemed surprised by the request, but he agreed to fill a small bottle to taste. When out of the room, Olivier raised his eyebrows, smiled, and said “It’s very unusual that he lets anyone taste from the foudre.” Over the years I’ve often thrown out the descriptor for extremely minerally wines that, “they taste like liquid rock!” This wine was a recalibration of that description in that I would say it was equally rock and metal. It truly was like tasting liquid rock and metal, almost no fruit at all—purely elemental. Never in my entire career have I had a wine so specific as that. What surprised me the most was how unoxidized it was and the purity of color, like looking through the prism of a diamond, the flickering reflection of the sun off the glistening sea. Its taste I will never forget and will always recognize in the mix of Nature, Unique and Originel, the wines to get dosed with this vinous nitrous oxide. The foudre “Nature” comes from all of their parcels and is a blend of 45% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir. 60% is 2013 vintage wine while the remainder is from their single 50hl “solera” foudre, with zero dosage. “Unique” mirrors “Nature,” though it comes from an entirely different vintage base wine, as mentioned earlier. The grape mix is the same, as is the amount of vintage wine, this case from 2014, while the remainder is from their single 50hl “solera” foudre, with 4g/L dosage. “Originel” is composed of 35% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Blanc, and 15% each of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, all from two different plots: Chardonnay from “Les Sentiers” on chalk and clay, and Pinot Blanc from chalk and sand (with correspondingly earlier ripening) of “La Pruches d’en Haut,” an originel plot that was listed as a terroir of Champagne before the 1800s. 60% of this wine is from 2013 and 40% from the “solera” foudre, with 3g/L dosage. “Millésime,” as the name suggests, is Mazet’s vintage Champagne. The 2015 is a blend of all the different parcels with a mix of 45% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir. It’s aged exclusively in 225-liter French oak casks of at least 15 years old, with zero dosage. CantinArte, Abruzzo I will be the first to admit I am not an expert in Italian wines, despite working in and visiting Italian producers regularly since 2004 and a one-year residence in Campania; it’s a country hard to master if it’s not your main focus. I improve every year but the depth of this peninsula and its islands and mountains can be overwhelming. Abruzzo, for one, is a region I haven’t even tried to wrap my head around (though I don’t have the time yet to dig in like I’d like to) because of its vast expanse and my lack of I’ve been to Abruzzo twice, and other Italian wine regions like Piemonte thirty, if not forty times. I have a grip but still feel like an advanced amateur in Piemonte, so you can imagine how I feel about Abruzzo. I can talk about a few of the big names in Abruzzo and their unique styles (and complain about their strangely high prices), but I can’t speak about the appellation as a whole—maybe only on a flashcard level. For this reason I’m glad that our new Abruzzo producer CantinArte (which I competitively tasted among other wines in the region to figure out if they truly were a stylistic match for us in taste and philosophy, before opting in) has their own small section of Montepulciano grapes in Bucchianico, in the Province of Chieti. It’s about ten kilometers from the Adriatic on a soft sloping southeast exposition (a preferential direction for freshness!) on deep clay topsoil, which is helpful to mitigate arid weather through good water retention. Plus, it’s in the middle of nowhere high up in the mountains with mainland Italy’s most consistently clean air (a unique fact), with no one else nearby. While Francesca Di Nosio’s husband Diego Gasbarri developed his career as an engineer with a degree in Environmental Engineering (an expertise quite useful for their organic vineyards and olive tree groves) and built his small company from scratch in Civil engineering, she was bitten by the wine bug in her teenage years. Her first inspiration was her grandparents, who made wine only for the family’s consumption. Her studies in university were initially focused on Latin and Ancient Greek, and later Marketing and Communication, but a trip in her teenage years to UC Davis in 1988 with her father sparked an interest in winegrowing that eventually grew into a spiritual and cultural bonfire. Eventually she went to France to work in vineyards around Lyon and then a year at the biodynamic Chianti Classico cantina, Querciabella. During her time in Greve in Chianti, she became convinced of her future in wine and went home to start CantinArte with the Montepulciano vineyards her grandparents planted in the 1970s. Francesca Di Nosio, CantinArte Curious about all things, Francesca loves most her connection with people, the talks about culture and wine and food. A mother of two, she remains a complete romantic overflowing with hospitality and kindness and gushing with an eagerness to please. (Anyone would laugh if they heard some of the enthusiastic and fun voice messages I’ve received from her over the last two years.) When asked what she would like for people to feel about her wines, the take away after mentions of mineral freshness and uniqueness was that she wants people to feel their joy. What else? CantinArte’s 740m white wine vineyards The vineyard project high up in the mountains where they’ve planted Pecorino and Pinot Grigio are in Diego’s familial neighborhood, Navelli, a gorgeous old rock village in the Provincia dell’Aquila, an hour drive up into the mountains from the Adriatic to a completely different setting from their Montepulciano vineyards. These new vineyards (first vintages bottled 2021 for both varieties) are at an unusually high altitude for Abruzzo viticulture at 740m (~2,400ft). At first, they thought maybe it was a gamble to go so high, but the results are beyond promising. This place is perfectly suited for these white varieties with a bedrock and topsoil that have an uncanny resemblance to those of the Côte d’Or (a place I’ve dug around in for years): fractured, stark white limestone rocks from a different geological age mixed with reddish-brown clay atop limestone bedrock. They are some of the most striking examples of both varieties I’ve had, and not surprisingly unique with their tense, mountain acidity and even some petillance in the 2021 Pinot Grigio IGT Terre Aquilane “Colori” that gives it extra charge. I remain perplexed by this Pinot Grigio (not only for its bubbles) with its vinous capture of clean mountain air, sweet green herbs, sweet lime and green melon fruit. I’m constantly surprised when I think about this wine (often) and what they did differently than others, outside of spontaneous ferments, low total SO2 (less than 60ppm), and organic farming at super high altitude. I know, Ted Vance, the perpetual wine sales guy, now waxing lyrically about Pinot Grigio? Don’t write it off so easily. This stuff is different, and I guess one shouldn’t summarily dismiss any grapes from the Pinot family when they are done in a serious way! Though the Pinot Grigio is captivating, most will likely go for the 2021 Pecorino IGT Terre Aquilane “Colori,” not only because it is a more classical variety from these parts, but also because it is likely viewed as more complex. High altitude Pecorino works, and the biotypes Diego selected for the plantation originate from northern Abruzzo at very high altitudes— mostly in territories without much commercial production but rather from families who produce for themselves. Here, the brine of the sea in the wine is exchanged for a cold mountain, herb-filled aromatic breeze. This variety seems to have a natural salinity anyway, so you won’t miss much there. The difference between here and 400m down and closer to the sea is that the mountain wines will have a little less oxidation, higher pH levels (3.10-3.15 for both Pinot Grigio and Pecorino), more angles than curves, pungent rocky mineral impressions due to the rockier soil with little topsoil, and the effects of a massive diurnal shift at the high altitude—summer days around 35C (95°F) drop to 16°C (60°F) at night—and without the big spice rack imposed by more heat and solar power closer to the sea at lower altitudes. This white wine project seems to be Diego’s thing more than Francesca’s—it’s his home turf while closer to the sea is hers—and his new Pecorino experiment out of amphora I tasted a little over a month ago caught me with my jaw on the floor, yet again. I can’t wait to see if that one gets into bottle in the same shape it is in amphora! Diego Gasbarri, CantinArte  CantinArte’s two parcels of Montepulciano in Bucchianico sit around 300m (~1000ft) and were planted in the mid-seventies, with another part in the early 2010s by Francesca and Diego. The younger vines are used for the Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo and the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Ode” and the older vines for their Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Rosso Puro. I admit that my greater initial personal interest in Abruzzo was to find a mesmerizing Cerasuolo rather than an Abruzzo red or white. I’ve had a few Cerasuolo from names that most in the trade know well but can rarely find—let alone afford—that give me a stir while others can be a lot of fun to drink, but most are innocuous wines. I find that the most compelling reds and whites of Abruzzo are so often crafted in such an individual way at very specific cantinas under the direction of uniquely special people that it was hard to imagine finding another inspiring standalone superstar in a sea of Trebbiano and Montepulciano. My interactions with CantinArte’s Cerasuolos, like the 2020 Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, and the 2019 before it, hit the mark. I also found that in classical style for this category with high quality producers that they are quiet and tucked in upon opening (the best often need decanting to get past too much gas, and, well, we don’t have all day when we’re ready to drink rosé, right?) which is further exacerbated by a cold serving temperature straight out of the fridge. But with some time open, the structure of this twenty-four-hour skin maceration concedes its authority in CantinArte’s Cerasuolo to fresh red spring fruits and the joy Francesca wants us to experience. It’s a wonderful wine when it hits its stride (half an hour after opening) and maintains a very focused direction. A perfect Sunday lunch wine served at a red wine temperature, it will bloom with the promise of spring into a leafless autumn afternoon meal with good company. Today being Thanksgiving (at least as I write this segment on a dreary, rain-filled Portuguese morning), my mind screams, “Everyone knows that Beaujolais is a fabulous match for today’s traditional fare, but bring on the Cerasuolo!” It’s made in a straightforward way in steel tanks and with grapes organically farmed close to the sea at 300m on clay, facing southeast. The 2019 was a very good but the 2020 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Ode” may even be better. My first interaction with these fully destemmed reds on day one was very good but the second day was always another level for both—first day expected, the second a good surprise for a variety that often seems to put all the cards on the table in short order. Its freshness afterburner (even more so than the first day) demonstrates how picking is prioritized on the earlier side in the season along with rigorous sorting. For these reasons, they show little to no sense of desiccation or brown notes in the spectrum of fruit (a concern for me with young wines from these sunny parts), just a minerally, cool and refreshing palate texture, and ethereal aromatic qualities on top of its natural savory earthiness. Ode is more of a straightforward approach with stainless steel fermenting (10-12 days) and aging (12 months) and is void of tweaks that make it feel heavy-handed, using unique techniques rather than relying on excellent and conscious organic farming with an environmental engineer’s eye for detail. And of course, the joy of the family behind it. The 2010 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Rosso Puro” comes from the vineyard of Francesca’s grandparents planted in the 1970s. Since the beginning, even prior to the organic certification in 2014, only copper and sulfur were sprayed in the vines when she first started. Francesca says that the main difference in the vineyard is the evolution of the yeasts from the vineyards without any synthetic treatments. As mentioned, this wine is grown on clay on a southeast face, and was destemmed during its three-week fermentation/maceration and raised for three years in no new oak, instead with some first year and mostly older used French oak barrels. This southeast face is key for the freshness of both reds and their Cerasuolo. Though Rosso Puro is one year short of being a teenager, it’s in its middle age, its prime, and perfect now. It’s a good introduction to southern-Italian wine style—even though it’s from the center of Italy—with reminiscent notes similar to aged Aglianico in Taurasi, minus the thick-boned structure. There is very little of this wine available and we expect the 2013 to arrive with our next order. Arnaud Lambert, Loire Valley There are few who candidly share their process with me as much as Arnaud Lambert does, and I had yet another great visit with him a few weeks ago. Perpetually on the move, he always has something new to share about his progress. We had lunch in Saumur at Bistro de la Place in the center of town. It was cold and drizzly. Perfect for a lunch of foie gras and trotters—my usual “light” fare in France; it really is hard for me to stick with “clean” eating in that country. Arnaud asked me to pick the wine and I was pleasantly surprised to see a bottle of 2018 Domaine de la Vallée Moray’s Montlouis “Aubépin,” a wine and producer unfamiliar to Arnaud, furthermore quite unfamiliar in the world as of now, though that won’t last. The sommelier perked up when I named the wine. He came back and poured. I said nothing, just waited. Arnaud took his time, eyes in contemplation, swirling the glass, then sloshing the wine around in his mouth. It was a very impressive first glass (which means the second will be even better!) and I knew he was taken long before he said anything. He commented how remarkable it was for 2018, a difficult vintage with depth and stuffing, which this wine has in spades. During my previous visit with Arnaud, Romain Guiberteau and Brendan Stater-West, I talked about the new producers I’m starting to work with in Montlouis, including Vallée Moray. I was happy to share this bottle. Hopefully Arnaud will come with me to Montlouis on my next trip to meet Hervé Grenier, the humble master who crafted this gorgeously deep Chenin Blanc, among other unexpectedly fabulous and authentic vinous creations. Hervé’s wines will be on offer in January, though the quantities are painfully small. Chenin Blanc Everyone’s lucky to have access to this bigtime lineup from Arnaud. It’s serious juice from recent vintages that he feels have moved well into the direction he’s pursued since his start, tweaking and experimenting along the way to find this specific line. Oak decisions on Chenin Blanc are milder than the recent years—a conversation we’ve had regularly. The previous years were good, and often great, but sometimes time is needed to punch through the oak when the wines are young. Eventually they make it through but perhaps at a cost of some delicate nuances. One thing I’ve noticed with the Saumur wines we work with is that there is often a lot of intensity and vibration rather than rhythmic melody. Arnaud has doggedly sought and seemingly found his tune, a taming of the shivering intensity of this area of Saumur, highlighting the vinous quality often left behind or beat down by the wood in its youth. The innocence of Midi always stood as the north star to his range of Chenin for me, with its crystalline purity, captured joy, and echoes of Arnaud’s deeply hued and thoughtful Belgian bluestone eyes. There are a few goodies arriving from Arnaud’s entry-level Chenin spectrum. 2021 Clos de Midi is more than just a good opener for the range. This year is second to none compared to every young wine I’ve had from this vineyard in the middle (midi) of the slope. I asked Arnaud for more entry-level white, and while it’s almost impossible to increase the quantity of Clos de Midi, he proposed his 2021 St. Cyr en Bourg Chenin Blanc. This all comes from his organic parcels in St. Cyr en Bourg (home to Coulee de St. Cyr and Les Perrieres, just across the way from Brézé), and is made the same as Clos de Midi, in stainless steel. You can’t go wrong with any of Arnaud’s 2021s. The triumphant trio of Chenin Blanc starts at the blocks with 2020 Clos David, a straight shooter and in all ways minerally and rocky, followed by the powerful and usually slow to evolve (though this year is a little more extroverted than years past) 2019 Brézé grown in deeper clay soils atop tuffeau bedrock, all anchored by the 2019 Clos de la Rue. Each is worthy of any serious wine program, though the Brézé is extremely limited. 2019 is likely the best bottling of this wine I’ve had (when young), but Clos de la Rue remains king for me year in and year out after tasting these wines since the 2009 vintage—the Brézé cuvée first bottling was 2014. Seemingly without limits in evolution and a constant rediscovery from one glass to the next, Clos de la Rue is poised with balance and deep core strength. Though Clos David is the bargain cru at the price, and Brézé the muscular unicorn with only two barrels made, Clos de la Rue is the must-have in the lineup. Cabernet Franc Arnaud is in perpetual internal war over his reds. I’ve often pushed for Clos Mazurique to be the guiding light: matter over mind, and hand. Over the years Arnaud reduced his extractions, starting in 2012 with fewer than one movement each day down from three during fermentation—a good decision and still upheld though with even fewer now, only around three vigorous movements for the entire length of fermentation and extended maceration. Next was zero sulfiting until after malolactic fermentation, which turned out to be far less risky than expected. (All one must do is go into his freezing barrel room to know that almost nothing will grow in those wines, only the most resilient of cellar molds on the outside of barrels and the tuffeau rock walls and ceiling.) Eventually that evolved into a solitary addition only at bottling with not a milligram before. The total sulfite levels today are around 25ppm (25mg/L). Both steps were crucial in his evolution. Most recently, however, is the approach on new wood with less is more. This step is more recent, but if there were ever a vintage to digest the new oak entirely, it would be 2019. It also helps that the top red wines, Clos Moleton and Clos de l’Etoile, with about 30% new oak, were in those same barrels for thirty months to eventually shed most of the undesired wood nuances and wood tannins. Considering the pH levels of these wines, they will never flaunt the wood as other higher pH varieties. I don’t really know why that is, but I’ve observed it, as have many other winegrowers. Newer wood tames, manicures, and sculpts. All good things with Bordeaux and Burgundy, I guess, but not for me with Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. In some ways, newer wood forces manners and etiquette, though I find the nature of Cabernet Franc to be earth-led, with sunlight, spring flowers and spring fruits, a little bit of untamed beast, and maybe even a little solemnity. It’s not at all a confectionary variety with a party personality, so I don’t find that it melds well with sweet, vanilla, toasty, resiny, smoky new wood on it. New wood often neuters Cabernet Franc’s most alluring attributes (as it does other wines), trading out the wild forest, underbrush, and wild animal for stately statue gardens and their regularly trimmed shrubbery. The style works anyway with Cabernet Franc caught somewhere between Burgundy, Bordeaux and the overly polished and utterly boring (again, neutered!) versions of new-wood Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage. Indeed, Saumur rouge and Saumur-Champigny are not the Northern Rhône Valley’s rustic, burly, salty, meaty, bloody, metal, minerally type—though that is what I often want it to lean more toward, though only toward, without succumbing entirely. I think most of us have a good idea of what would happen if one goes full Tarzan with Cabernet Franc. And this variety isn’t Red Burgundy: celebrated, predictable, still exciting (sometimes when young, but mostly with older wines from cooler years), but rarely unexpected, even when the very best show their might, excluding producers like Mugnier, and Leroy (may she live forever, though I can no longer afford or justify the cost to drink anything adorned with her name and crown.) Can these overly crafted wines be a little too good? Like Tom Brady-too-good? So much so that you don’t want it anymore? That you should root for someone else? An underdog such as a Cabernet Franc? I find that Saumur and Saumur-Champigny are often a reflection of its residents, their good manners, happiness and generosity, their contained, clean and well-dressed but slightly casual presentation and warmth; it’s only the weather that brings the chill here, not usually the people. I almost moved to Saumur. I love the place; its gorgeous tuffeau off-white castles and even its simplest tuffeau structures and barns. It’s easy to navigate in the city, much of which was rebuilt after World War II, though not as badly damaged as other Loire Valley cities like Tours. I always feel safe in greater Anjou and Touraine. I don’t mean only from a physical safety perspective but rather that I never feel rushed, like I’m not going to get run over, harassed, or impatiently talked to when my French isn’t on point. Maybe the soft rolling hills and the serenity of the river soften them. Maybe it’s that they lost too many people and things during WWII, which forced a lot of familial and city reconstruction that made them humbler than some other French wine regions? I feel Arnaud continues to move closer to embracing the earthen, well-dressed beast Cabernet Franc can be, despite his reference points and training in Beaune and seeming desire to be closer to a Burgundy wine in overall effect. It’s not a bad objective to want to walk beside Burgundy, though I’m still confused even when I use the term “Burgundian” to try to bring understanding to the style of a non-Burgundy wine. I think I used to know better what I meant by it. Cabernet Franc from Saumur and Saumur-Champigny somehow expresses its dark clay and rocky limestone topsoil and tuffeau bedrock. In the best examples it seems like they drop the clusters on the vineyard ground, toss in some aromatic brush and herbs, wild berries, mash it up a little and then throw them into fermentation bins with the grapes, thereby collecting all that earthy and wilderness nuance. That’s where I see Arnaud going in overall profile, and I do hope that’s where he ends up. Cabernet Franc is an easy grape in many ways when good table wine is what’s wanted, but despite its agreeability its inspiring renditions only come from top sites grown by top minds and hard workers. Farming is crucial and the wines need to be left alone in the cellar to sort themselves out and be put to bottle without much of a mark of ego, neglect, bad taste, or indecision. Intention with Cabernet Franc is crucial. Epic never happens here by accident. Leading off the red range are Arnaud’s two impossible not to like wines (if you have taste for Loire Valley Cabernet Franc!): the 2021 Saumur-Champigny Les Terres Rouges and 2021 Saumur Clos Mazurique. Here you will find Arnaud’s best red wines that have ever borne these labels, no doubt about it. I said it while tasting with Arnaud a few weeks ago, and he agreed. He explained that he found a new way! (As he always does every single year.) They are gorgeous and follow a line of truth for this variety expressing the purity of their terroirs through simple, more-thought-and-less-action winemaking, all a concession to the organic farming (started in 2010) and the need to work with the vine’s nature instead of against it. I shouldn’t spend so much time on them because despite a good number of cases of each arriving, all of them already have a devout following in our supply chain and they’re all expecting their usual share. Perhaps these two reds, like Clos de Midi, are now out of most by-the-glass ranges, but for the price sensitive section of the wine list’s bottle selection, they will be stars for those who are still concerned about the tally on the bill in the face of an increasingly more expensive world. Comparing the hills of Brézé and Saint-Cyr through the lens of Arnaud’s wines is a testament to the validity of terroir. The hills more or less look the same in shape, though Brézé is far more attractive with its forest cap and the famous Chateau de Brézé’s ancient tuffeau limestone walls encircling it like a crown, compared to Saint-Cyr’s slope capped off with the industrial Saumur winery co-op on top, which Arnaud’s grandfather helped establish. The big difference between them is that Saint-Cyr could be described as more homogenous in soil structure with a lot of clay topsoil on most vineyards, while Brézé is a patchwork of many different topsoil structures ranging from almost pure calcareous sand (Clos David), sandy loam (Clos Mazurique, Clos Tue Loup, top section of Clos de l’Etoile), clayey loam (Clos de la Rue), and clay (Brézé cuvée, and bottom section of Clos de l’Etoile). Both hills have tuffeau bedrock and most of the Cabernet Franc parcels have deeper clay topsoil atop the roche-mère. Think of clay-rich sites as a George Foreman-like wine, clay-loam as Muhammad Ali, and sand as Oscar de la Hoya. The pity of this lineup of reds is the missing comparative between Brézé’s Clos du Tue Loup and Saint-Cyr’s Montée des Roches (gravelly loam), the latter of which is not on this boat. Arnaud’s 2020 Saumur “Clos Tue Loup” was raised in only older barrels for a little over a year. I’ve always loved this wine for its higher tones, deep red fruit and cool mineral palate. It embodies what I love the most from this hill and the balance of power. The big hitters, 2019 Saumur-Champigny “Clos Moleton” (Saint-Cyr) and 2019 Saumur “Clos de l’Etoile” (Brézé) are clear demonstrations of somewhat subtle terroir differences that make quite an impact on the final wines. Same bedrock but different topsoil. As mentioned, Clos de l’Etoile has two different soil structures. The upper section is sandy loam and the lower section, clay. This combo makes a wine with great structure but also a little more lift than its near twin on the other hill. By contrast, Clos Moleton is atop a big slab of clay. Like Foreman, it’s formidable, methodical, powerful, intense, with a little chub and a fun personality, especially with more age. L’Etoile is a heavyweight, no doubt, but much faster hand and foot speed and equipped with a silver tongue: Ali. 2019 is one of Arnaud’s greatest achievements in red which makes the miniscule quantities of these two powerhouse reds unfortunate. When you pull the cork do it for a table of two (for sommeliers) or at home with a good friend and a nice long conversation, rather than at a party. Evolution is key here and these heavyweights need twelve rounds in the glass to put on the full show. Fletcher, Barbaresco (Non-Barbaresco wines) Holding up the rear of this newsletter (the caboose, if you will) is the Aussie expat living in what was once the Barbaresco train station, Dave Fletcher. The difference between Dave and many other foreigners making wine in Langhe is that he works a tiny, one- man operation with a little help only when he really needs it, unlike the millionaires buying all vineyards that are on the market for double the previous year’s going rate. His day job since 2009 has been at Ceretto, working as a cellar hand where he eventually became their full time winemaker, pushing organic and then biodynamic farming on them, with great success as they are now under both cultures. I finally visited Ceretto on this last trip in mid-November and I cannot believe the style change he helped instill. The wines now are crystalline, bright, aromatic, almost no new wood (around 50% new when he started but now less than 10%), and graceful, like Vietti’s new style. Dave’s renditions of Barbaresco under the Fletcher label are the real deal. They’re not from big botte because he doesn’t have the volume from any Barbaresco cru to fill one because there are only about fifty or so cases of each made. He’s a real garagiste, or I guess I could say stationiste because he lives in and ages his Barbarescos (in the underground cellar) in the train station he and his wife, Elenora, bought and renovated. I love being in that building, where they did their best to preserve the layout on the first floor, ticket window and all. It’s easy to imagine it filled with Italians traveling away from their home in these hills to Turin for work, after having abandoned their multi-generational vineyards to enter manufacturing jobs just to survive. It was a sad time then and the Langhe was the poorest area in all of Italy after WWII. Things have changed. Despite its current overflow of riches, the vast majority of the Piemontese still carry on many generations of humility, warmth and comradery. It remains for me my spiritual Italian homeland. Dave has pushed his Chardonnay on me for years. They were always good and often I didn’t let him know it because even though I liked them I thought our customer base would think, “Aussie Langhe Chardonnay? Wtf, Ted?”, when Aussie Barbaresco was a tough sell to begin with. I was convinced that Chardonnay might turn the Piemontese traditionalist buyers off from his Nebbiolo wines. I’ve come to realize that that was just me standing in the way, with good intentions of course, to protect and help build Dave’s traditional Piemontese style wines in the market first before letting in his irrepressible Down Under. Dave’s 2021 Chardonnay C21 exemplifies what he’s capable of and his New World versatility and open mind. He’s proud of this wine, and he should be. He loves Burgundy, and he’s followed its stylistic line with his vineyard planted on extremely high pH limestone soils (though here its sandy topsoil compared to Burgundy’s clay), his early picks to preserve tension (this vintage August 21, but he says this is the new norm) and prefers grapes without much direct sun contact—more green than golden. It’s Burgundian in style in that its 30% new oak and the rest in older oak casks. If one were to serve it blind—things we only do with non-Burgundy Chardonnays to try to fool each other into thinking its a Burgundy—especially after it was open for thirty minutes with a little bit of aeration in the glass before my first sniff and taste, I may have a hard time going away from Burgundy, though probably not within the Côte de Beaune. It’s not really New Worldy (mostly because of the similar calcium carbonate influence as Burgundy) but rather somewhere between the style of PYCM–though a little tighter and not fluffed up–and JC Ramonet, but less toasty and lactic. Perhaps its softer textural grip would give it away and take you right back to the Langhe, but I doubt it, unless you know well Langhe Chardonnay. It’s a good wine indeed, especially at its fair price for this category and quality. Definitely worth a look for those craving that fairy dust that’s so hard to find outside of Burgundy’s Chardonnay wines. Orange wine is in, and Dave’s 2021 Arcato is a dandy. He prides himself on craft and he’s sharp on technical tastings, so you kind of know what you’re getting here when you mix early picked 75% Arneis destemmed and crushed, and 25% Moscato whole cluster fermented and macerated, and a final alcohol of 11.8%, labeled 12. It’s a very technically sound wine from a classical point of view, but it’s also delicious and intriguing, a joy to drink. I like it a lot. Not so quirky, just well done and with a lot of personality from these two grapes, one on the neutral and understated side and the other more flamboyant and abundantly aromatic as a still wine. He also nailed the label for this fun wine category—a retailer’s dream etichetta for this category. I’ve been a fan since my first taste of Dave’s Barbera d’Alba made with partial whole clusters. His new rendition, the 2021 Barbera d’Alba comes from a vineyard in Alba with sixty-year- old vines. He said he had to do a lot of sorting because of Barbera’s soft skins, which tend to shrivel a little more than other regional red grapes. The 2021 shows a little bit more mature development on the red fruit due to the heat spike, and he intends to do two picks in the future because of the variability of maturity on the vines. This is delicious stuff and a fun reboot for this ubiquitous Piemontese grape with southern Italian origins.

Prádio vineyard in Ribeira Sacra It seems that just about everyone I know who didn’t get Covid prior to the recent holiday season has done so since, but somehow my wife and I have successfully evaded it despite an extensive pre-holiday tour around California to say hello to as many of our friends and customers (many of whom were also very good friends, along with some I hope will be falling into that category). We again wish all of you the best of luck with your health from our homebase of Portugal. Keep drinking good wine! I think it helps… We have a lot to talk about this month, so let’s dive in! New Arrivals Spain Fazenda Prádio, Ribeira Sacra First on our list of arriving producers is the new darling of Wine Advocate critic Luis Gutierrez:  Fazenda Prádio, from Ribera Sacra, run by former professional Spanish fútboler, Xabi Soeanes. We did a very quiet opening with his top red wine from 2018, Pacio, but with only 20 cases to spread around it was hard to justify a big promotion; we’ve been waiting for the 2019s to arrive, because we’re getting a lot more of them and we’re really excited about it! We’ll start with a snapshot of what’s done in the cellar because it’s the same for all the reds, and it’s very straightforward. Fermentations are natural and take place in granite lagars (rock vats) with varying capacities for about seven to ten days. Most of the barrels used for aging are 500L, old French oak and the élevage usually runs about eight months, simple production methods that showcase this architecturally terraced granite and schist terroir that overlooks the Río Miño. The first wine in the range is made of Mencía, the most famous grape in Ribeira Sacra. It’s this grape’s approachable nature that makes it broadly appealing and Prádio’s rendition has a great deal more layering and complexity than the typical Mencía due to its very shallow topsoil composed entirely of the granite and schist just centimeters below the surface. Prádio has just a few hectares and they’re shooting for the highest quality with this wine, which makes its modest price quite a deal. Right now they only have nine hundred vines of Merenzao, which produces a very sensual, aromatic wine with a fine mouthfeel of good natural acidity and little in the way of tannins. In France’s Jura, Merenzao is known as Trousseau. Elsewhere in Northwest Iberia it seems to have a hundred synonyms and turns up in many unexpected places. This wine is delicious and perhaps the most aromatic of the range. The only challenge is that my wife is so fond of it, which makes it hard to keep around the house when they produce so little of it. In the Jura, this grape is grown mostly on limestone terroirs which bring a broad palate feel and roundness compared to the finely etched lines of striking mineral textures imposed by these acidic soil terroirs. Once you taste it you’ll agree that the world would be a better and kinder place if everyone drank more Merenzao. Another fabulous grape that is seemingly only found in Northwest Iberia is one of my latest obsessions, Brancellao. Xabi has three thousand vines but this variety produces a much smaller yield than most, perhaps due to its open cluster shape and wider node spacing on the shoots. Its skin color is very pale and the wines take on very little color and tannin. Its winning attributes are its fresh acidity and beguiling-but-delicate aromas of fresh red fruits and soft spice notes. Xabi believes that this is one of the most important grapes for the area, and I totally agree. One of Galicia’s most untamed and perhaps most promising red varieties (in my opinion) is Caíño Longo. Prádio’s version of the variety combines all the elements of this truly great grape: good structure with its exuberant acidity and medium tannins, a wide range of aromatic and palate complexities, and that sort of inexplicable nobility and extra aromatic and palate dimensions shared by the greatest wine grapes of the world. The challenge for each grower is to break Caíño Longo’s acidity/phenolic ripeness code. The acidity can be monstrous if not picked perfectly, and if picked a little late, much of its high-toned red fruit and floral characteristics can quickly go to a more rustic side—a true asset when in balance with other fresher characteristics. Xabi believes that his Pacio Tinto, a calculated blend of all the red grapes, is the most complete wine in the range, and I might agree. While they have some single-varietal wines, his strong belief (shared by almost every winegrower in Ribeira Sacra) is that the sum of multiple parts make a better wine than single varietal bottlings. This is also a regional historical perspective, and it is due to the variability of the indigenous grapes in Galicia that seem to be exceedingly influenced by each season and furthermore by the great diversity of bedrock and soil types, aspects, altitudes, etc, of each individual vineyard. When one grape on the farm struggles, there are others that thrive. This is surely part of the reason the grapes of Galicia (and in much of Portugal) are so commonly blended. Indeed, they are fascinating on their own, but when blended together the dimensions are perhaps more subtle while the entire breadth of the wine is magnified. Pacio has it all and nails all the facets of palate and aroma. If you have each of the single-varietal wines before drinking this one, you will see how they harmonize together. New Arrivals France Arriving this month are wines from regions and producers that everybody wants. We can never seem to get enough to keep up with demand in these categories without momentary holes in continuity along the way. And while we usually have very solid allocations from each of these producers, don’t wait to get ahead of the game on these because they tend to disappear relatively quickly. Maxime Ponson, the mind behind Champagne Ponson Pascal Ponson, Champagne There was such a massive shortage of Champagne over the holidays! I was in California for a visit and you couldn’t even find the usually ubiquitous Veuve-Clicquot Yellow Label, even at Ralphs! (Not that any of us were looking to buy that…) But it wasn’t because Champagne’s stocks have run dry; it’s because those darn freight delays just won’t go away. But we cut a deal with the marvelous and young Maxime Ponson to bring in a massive shipment that was dispatched in August in hopes that it would make it to California for the holidays. Yes, you read that right: we ordered it in August, thinking that was enough time to receive it before Thanksgiving… It didn’t end up arriving, but it’s doing so now!  The new arrival of Maxime Ponson’s Extra Brut “Premier Cru” Champagne (dosage 7g/L) comes from his family’s organically farmed vineyards in La Petite Montagne, a subregion of Champagne’s Montagne de Reims, located west of Reims, the region’s capital. La Petite Montagne is home to some regional luminaries and top talents, like Prévost, Brochet, Savart, and Egly-Ouriet. They tend to seven different communes and only on premier cru (1er Cru) sites where they have seventy parcels that make up 13.5 hectares, the oldest of which being seventy years old and the youngest just recently planted. The bedrock here is chalk which Maxime says is softer than the chalk found further south on the Côte des Blancs because it’s more of a tuffeau, an extremely porous, sand-rich, calcium carbonate rock, similar to what is found in Saumur and other wine regions of the middle Loire Valley. The wine is a blend of 70% Pinot Meunier and the rest equal parts Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Best to get on the train soon because the shipping delays continue… François Crochet in "Le Petit Chemarin" François Crochet, Sancerre Another wine that has been in very short supply due to freight challenges and is always in a high demand is Sancerre. François Crochet’s 2019 single cru whites are finally arriving, and despite the overall riper character of the vintage (a perfect year for those of you who like a little less green in your Sauvignon Blanc), we can always count on François to be the one who still finds the freshness with his very early picking—something he’s put into practice since he took over from his father. Crochet's "Les Exils" vineyard composed entirely of silex From most elegant to most powerful of Crochet’s range, we start with Le Petit Chemarin. This wine has quickly moved to the top of the range for me based solely on its bright mineral characteristics and elevated aromas—a profile that has yet to be exhausted within my general view of wine. It’s substantial but flies high and always maintains a dainty but ornate frame. Next is Le Chêne Marchands, the flagship of the winery and the grandest cru in Bué, Crochet’s hometown. My challenge with this wine is that it’s always at the top of the range and sometimes I want his other wines to finally pull ahead of it, the way it’s fun to sometimes see an underdog beat the champion. Le Chêne Marchands is perhaps the most well-rounded in the range and has big mineral characteristics, medium-to-full structure and an endless well of fine nuances and broad complexities. Le Grand Chemarin is often marked with more stone fruits along with sweeter citrus notes than the others in the range. It has a more expansive body and bigger shoulders than many of the rockier limestone sites, like Le Petit Chemarin and Le Chêne Marchands. It’s perhaps equally as full as the next wine, but maybe with more fruitiness. It might share the title of most powerful in the range limestone terroirs with Les Amoureuses, but in a denser and stonier way. Les Exils is the outsider in François’ range of Sancerre single-site wines. It’s grown on silex (flint, chert) on a more northerly facing slope, while the others are all on variations of limestone, with more sun exposure. Les Exils is perhaps the most minerally concentrated of all, with mineral impressions that are heavy and dominant in the overall profile; perhaps flintier than the others (a seemingly natural characteristic influenced by its soils) and with less fruit presence and a grittier mineral texture than what the limestone vineyards impart to their wines. Les Exils is always a favorite because it’s a bit of a marvel of minerality in itself, especially when tasted with the rest of François’ exciting range. Les Amoureuses is perhaps the most upfront and powerfully expressive wine in the range. It has the biggest shoulders of all, and this is most likely due to its numerous clay-rich topsoil and limestone bedrock parcels. Each of its dimensions are strong and seem to tuck any subtleties further into the wine. It’s a perfect Sancerre for four or more people who want to break the ice at lunch or dinner with a nice refreshing glass that never stutters after the cork is pulled. The Chablis premier cru vineyard, Fourchaume Christophe et Fils, Chablis Sebastien Christophe’s 2019 premier crus are finally docking. We thought we’d get them a lot faster after a small batch arrived some months ago, but we decided to hold them to wait for the rest in order to make a proper offer. Sebastien’s Fourchaume vines planted by his uncle in 1981 are located in Côte de Fontenay, a lieu-dit situated on a perfect south face toward the bottom of the hill and next to the property’s dirt road at about 120-130 meters in altitude. This is by far the most muscular premier cru in the range, with an abundance of classic and complex Chablis characteristics. Montée de Tonnerre is directly ahead with Mont de Milieu on the next hill over Located south of the grand crus and the noblest of premier crus, Montée de Tonnerre, is Mont de Milieu, one of the most versatile premier crus in Chablis. Although it’s not much talked about, on that side of the river the slopes clearly have a tremendous amount of the Portlandian limestone that have made their way down the hills and are set in place by the sticky marne (calcium-rich clay) on Kimmeridgian marl bedrock. These soil elements and the south-to-southwest aspects on this side of the Serein River often have greater palate weight and roundness, and fewer intense mineral components than many of those across the river on the left bank, depending on each vineyard. Mont de Milieu has a great range of characteristics that put it in the stylistic center between the right and left bank. Finesse is its main game, but it has plenty of thrust that drives home its complex range of subtleties. Montée de Tonnerre is the flagship wine of Sebastien’s range (the grand crus, Blanchots and Preuses, are on their way soon as well), partly because it’s the most famous premier cru in Chablis, and for good reason. It demonstrates class and balance in every dimension from the acidity, fruit, mineral, seriousness, and pleasure. Sebastien’s parcel is located in the lieu-dit Côte de Bréchains, within the Fyé Valley. Its western aspect and deep marne mixed with Portlandian scree and Kimmeridgian marlstones contribute to its broad range of complexity and appeal. It shares nearly the same south-southwest aspect as most of the grand crus and largely the same soil structure as Les Clos; however, it’s topsoil is not as deep above the bedrock as in Les Clos, though it’s still deeper in most parts than the closest premier cru, Mont de Milieu. (Keep in mind we’re speaking in terms of mere centimeters in difference vis-a-vis topsoil depth.) While this could be mistaken for a photo of U2, it's Arnaud Lambert (left), Romain Guiberteau, Peter Veyder-Malberg (Austrian luminary with the glasses), and Brendan Stater-West (far right) Arnaud Lambert, Saumur Everybody wants Arnaud Lambert’s wines now, but there was a time not too long ago when no one had heard of him, when Brézé was just an obscure name on bottles produced by Clos Rougeard, which were readily available and collecting dust in many wine shops prior to around 2012. Arnaud and I talk a lot about wine and life. Normally I spend two to four days with him each year in Saumur—sometimes twice a year—and we meet up elsewhere as well. Arnaud is one of our company’s cornerstones. It could even be said that he is our company’s most O.G. producer. Our first contact was in 2010 when we first started The Source, soon after we tasted a few of his wines that he had shipped to our friend’s house in Provence. It was my first “sourcing” trip before I’d purchased a single bottle of wine to import, and I was there with the well-known, former sommelier Tony Cha. I went to France on that first trip with an empty portfolio and came home with thirteen, and Lambert was one of them. I would’ve never guessed that my interest in finding a “clean” Cabernet Franc to import from the Saumur area would lead me to the relatively unknown hill of Brézé and to what seems like the beginning of the redefinition of modern-day, dry Chenin Blanc. Clos Rougeard had their “Brézé” white but it was very rare (and hard as a nail in its youth…), and the rest of the hill had been almost lost to history. There is so much to tell about this chronology, but Arnaud’s entrance into our California market predated Guiberteau by almost two years. Somehow Arnaud and The Source have been on the same trajectory since our first meeting and we frequently talk about those times. My most vivid memory was of us standing in Clos de la Rue on a very cold day, when for the first time he told me the story of Brézé and the historical crus to which he’d been handed the keys. It was at that moment that I knew I did the right thing by leaving wine production (or at least delaying it for a couple of decades) to become a wine importer. I was so excited by the story that I could hardly contain myself. I wanted to fly home immediately and tell everyone about Brézé’s history, and I did. Of course, it took a few years before we jumped from Arnaud’s basic Saumur white and red into the single-cru wines, starting with the 2012 Clos David and 2012 Clos de la Rue. By the time those cru wines arrived, Guiberteau had already made his mark in the States, I believe his biggest initial splash was in California. And prior to Romain lighting our world on fire with his 2009 Clos des Carmes and 2010 Brézé, no one really gave Saumur white wines much attention; oh, how quickly things can change… On this container we will finally have our restock of Lambert’s Cremant Rosé and Cremant Blanc. Make sure to lock in what you need because while we have a good chunk to start, it gets dispersed very quickly. The same could be said for the arrival of his entry-level reds, 2020 Saumur-Brézé “Clos Mazurique” (no, Saumur-Brézé is not an official appellation, but it has a nice ring to it, no?) and the 2020 Saumur-Champigny “Les Terres Rouges”. On the Chenin Blanc front (always an exciting one!), we have some of our “exclusive” bottlings arriving. These are the result of many discussions I’ve had with Arnaud about exploring special plots inside his vineyards to see if there is a notable difference in quality. The deal was that we would taste the wines together each year and decide if they should be bottled or blended into other wines. In any case, I committed to the purchase of these fun and adventurous experiments and now we have four different small production bottlings: Montsoreau, Bonne Nouvelle, Brézé, and a Clos du Midi aged in old French oak casks and bottled in magnum. Two of those special bottlings have arrived. 2018 Saumur-Brézé “Bonne Nouvelle” and the 2020 Saumur-Brézé Clos du Midi “Special Bottling”, both of which only have two barrels in production—roughly 40 cases of each wine made in total. Our challenge with this bottling of Clos du Midi is that it’s normally bottled in magnums to differentiate it from the normal bottling, but this year he put it in 750mls and put the same label on it, which makes things a little complicated… It comes from further up on the hill inside the Clos du Midi where Arnaud says this section generates more power in its wines. The normal bottling is aged in stainless steel for eight months while this version is raised in neutral barrels for eight months and bottled and stored for six months before release; the difference is striking. The regular Clos du Midi is a fabulous wine with its straight lines, gorgeous mineral nose and easy accessibility, but this version of Clos du Midi has more thrust, slightly softer edges and a deeper core strength. Clos David dirt, a sandy mix of tuffeau limestone and tiny shell fragments 2019 Saumur-Brézé Clos David is arriving and that should prove to be another knockout for this vineyard. There is also a small reload of the fabulous 2016 Saumur-Brézé Clos de la Rue, which sold out pretty quickly once it was put on the market. Bruno Clair, Burgundy The 2017 Bruno Clair wines are finally arriving after their two-year delay. How fun it is to receive wines from this fabulous estate and this wonderfully fun vintage! It’s good timing for everyone who’s maintained their allocations over the years because the press finally pushed Clair into the upper tier in the recent 2017 vintage blind tasting. “Back to Burgfest: 2017 Reds – Blind” written by Vinous’ Neal Martin, posted on January 18th, and in it, Clair seems to have really stood out among many important producers (around 250 different wines tasted over five days), including the likes of Jean-Marie Fourrier and Armand Rousseau. A happy place: Estournelles St.-Jacques and Lavaux St.-Jacques (left of the long wall), Clos St.-Jacques in the center, and Les Cazetiers on the other side of Clos St.-Jacques. Clair’s Clos St.-Jacques received 97 points (and according to Martin, was the top between the five producers—for the second year in a row—who have parcels from this very special vineyard), Bonnes Mares 96 points, and Chambertin Clos-de-Bèze 98 points. Not a bad haul for a blind tasting! While blind tasting has its merits, for me it’s not an end-all be-all judgment. But what can be ascertained from this kind of tasting at this moment is that the wines are showing great now—not surprising for this vintage and not surprising for Clair either: we’ve been beating his drum for years. Most of it has already been allocated, but if you feel you missed the boat, please let us know. We’ll do our best to find some strays. Simon Bize Our minuscule quantity of 2018 Simon Bize wines is also arriving. These wines are in great shortage for us and will be allocated to those who have a history of following them. Bize did very well in 2018, a vintage that matches this winery’s historical style under the hand and mind of the late Patrick Bize, where structure leads in the wine’s youth and builds to greater complexity and a drinking window that will likely be a few years down the road when compared to their more red-fruited 2017s. I love this domaine and I love the wines every year for the spirit they contain. The versatility of the premier crus of Savigny-les-Beaune makes this appellation one of my favorites and I know no better producer than Simon Bize. Many of Bize's great premier crus are in this photo, including (from right to left, generally) Aux Vergelesses, Les Fournaux, Les Talmettes, Aux Grands Liards (not a 1er Cru), Aux Guettes, and Les Serpentières. Far in the background, on the top of the hill toward the left center, are the vineyards for Bize's Les Perrières Bourgogne wines.

The first time I stood on the hill, I didn’t think much of it.  It’s a quiet place just outside of the famous French wine town, Saumur.  To tell you the truth, there wasn’t much to admire besides a quaint, but lifeless, chateau sitting on top of it. This insipid wonder attracts droves of tourists every year to snap photos and walk away with a lousy souvenir wine from the chateau.  Indeed, the recent history of this chateau is one of making downright terrible wines. This hill, however, has a glorious history that has been almost completely forgotten –until now… My addiction to this hill began about four years ago. During my debut as a wine importer, I spent six months chatting it up with various people in the business about producers that could be interesting for me before I pulled the trigger on my maiden voyage in search of the holy grail.  Amongst my group of “sources”, was a friend back in Virginia who also runs an import company.  Although he was only 26 when I met him, this guy had developed a remarkable and enviable palate for wine.  He told me that he drank many great wines throughout his life because his father was a serious wine collector.  It must have been nice…  My first taste of wine was not one of privilege.  I grew up in a small town in Montana, called Kalispell.  Most people thought I said “cow’s bell”, or “cattle smell”, when they asked what the name of the town was.  I suppose both names could make sense after meeting a hick like me.  Because Montana wasn't exactly a mecca for wine lovers, my first contact with wine was an unforgettable bottle of Manaschewitz.  It was one of the worst things I can remember putting in my mouth as a kid, and believe me, I put a lot of disgusting things in my mouth back then.  After I snuck a taste, I couldn’t understand why my parents would drink this thing that seems like it should have been poured over our salad.  Given my first encounter with “wine”, it’s a miracle that I ever drank another glass of the stuff.  I must admit, however, that I’ve never had another sip of Manaschewitz.  Maybe I should give it another go, just to be fair; after all, it was probably open for at least two months, and I think I was about eight years old at the time.  Anyway, my buddy back east told me about a few producers; one in particular caught my attention.  He said that they were somewhat of a newcomer to Saumur, which is an area that specializes in two grapes: Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc.  He seemed pretty surprised that no major importer had picked them up yet in the States.  It was a good lead, so I put an email together and sent it off to Domaine de St. Just, fingers crossed. You’d be surprised at how fast people sometimes respond to this sort of inquiry; most of the time, if you ask to buy their wines on the spot, they put it together and send it to you without much ado.  Of course, you have to pay in advance, but that’s about it.  At any rate, the owner of the domaine, Arnaud Lambert, wrote back immediately and invited me to visit the estate.  I asked if it was fine with him to send samples to my friend’s house, in Provence, as I wasn’t planning on going to the Loire on this trip (even if the wines from this place were top notch).  This was the only producer in this region that I had the beat on, and it was pretty far out of my way.  Believe me, a thousand kilometers out of the way is a long distance to go only to find disappointment. By the end of 2010, I set off for France with proper financing to start importing wines to California.  My first stop, whenever I travel to France, is at Pierre and Sonya’s house in Provence, called La Fabrique.   Before I arrived, I made sure that it wasn’t a problem for them to receive samples sent for me –little did they know how much was on the way. Before my arrival, they sent me a message saying that, over the last couple of weeks, they had amassed about 11 boxes of wine.  Admittedly, I also was a little surprised by how much wine showed up.  I was going to be there for only two nights, so I proposed that La Fabrique throw a party.  They thought I was insane when I told them that I was going to open all the bottles at the party because they only had gathered 15 people for it.  It was a lot of wine, but in the end, only about a dozen bottles were worth drinking and most of them had been made by the hand of the same vigneron.  The truth is, most of what we importers taste is pure junk; the good wines ones are only good, and the great ones are rare. A couple of hours before the party started, I began pulling corks to taste them all before everyone arrived.  There were many that weren’t even fit for an outfit like Cost Plus.  Then, I put my nose in the first white wine from St. Just, and I knew, straight away, that if the rest followed suit, I would have to reconsider making the journey to Saumur.  I slowly worked through the entire range of his wines, looking for reasons not to go, but from top to bottom, they were all seamless.  My friend was dead on and I was sure that I had found my first producer.  I’ve been a fan of this area of France forever and these were some of the best wines I’ve tasted from there, period.  The Chenins were clean, expressive and straightforward –and they weren’t too Chenin-y, if you know what I mean.  Their Cabernet Franc wines from Saumur-Champigny were perfectly on par with what I wanted out of this grape: pure, clean, terroir-driven with charming bright red fruits.  Honestly, I was more excited about the reds than the whites because I feel that, not only is Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley one of the most authentic terroir wines in all of France, but it is also, in commercial terms, a little easier to sell than Chenin Blanc. The problem I have with this area, however, is that a lot of the highly revered producers make wines that can be a little funky, and that’s not the type of horse that I want to get behind. Arnaud sent another box of samples from a different estate, which was also from Saumur.  He put a note in the box telling me that he just started to work with this estate and that he’d like me to consider them as well, but because I was already sold on Arnaud’s wine, they sat in the box until the end of the tasting. In addtion, some of their labels were lousy and only served to further my lack of interest.  Without expecting much, I arranged these other wines for a quick tasting.  I didn’t expect to care much about them after I tasted the little gems from Domaine de St. Just –boy, was I in for a real shocker. I pulled the cork on the first white, and took a sniff that was loaded with minerals and high-strung citrus fruits.  I had no idea of what was about to hit my mouth.  When my brother Jon and I were kids, we dismantled a power cord and decided that it could be fun to stick the metal prongs into a wall outlet, with our bare hands.  We weren’t the smartest kids, and perhaps that moment in my life explains a few glitches in my system.  Anyway, this wine brought me back to that moment as it unleashed some serious liquid wattage into my mouth.  This little wine was more than an attack on the palate –it was an assault.  I was all puckered up and my head went sideways.  It felt like I just brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth out with a glass of Chablis.  After a few more tastes, however, it became clear that there was something magic inside this angry little wine.  I’ve always been a sucker for abuse, so this was right up my alley. I opened the second Saumur white, Clos David –it was like Meursault on crack.  The first wine was all tension; this second wine was also intense, but it was endowed with more body and finesse. It was a more tamed beast, but a beast, nonetheless.  Like the first wine, it tweaked my mouth in every direction, but that didn’t stop me from coming back for more.  Every sip felt like I was getting smacked in the face by a furious, but sublime, French girl –I loved it!  As I continued to taste, I kept thinking: “Are these wines just freaky good, or picked way too early?”  I didn’t know because I’d never tasted anything like them before.  They were somehow regal and barbaric at the same time; yet, it seemed like they came from a noble terroir.  The rest of the wines followed suit with overwhelming tension.  The reds had bright red fruit and flowers in aroma with an acidic backbone enviable even for a fine red Burgundy from a classic year.  Every one of them was intensely acidic and penetrating, but once you made it through the pain, they were deep and pure. Although it is hard to believe, it’s still possible to find nearly abandoned or chemically destroyed vineyards all over Europe that were once owned by the elite classes of the past. Many of these precious grounds have been passed down generation after generation, only to fall from grace at the hands of a few misguided, or opportunistic, bean counters who put profit at the top of their agenda.  They are the ones who manufacture cheap and industrialized imposters that are sold to tourists who think that they are walking away with a wine that, based on historical merit, was once suitable for a king.  These wines, in reality, are only paupers dressed in a king’s clothes.  There is a quiet hill and chateau with this story of abuse that has now lasted for over a half-century.  It could be the greatest forgotten hill of our time; the hill is know as, Brézé. I saw the name “Brézé” for the first time on a bottle of white wine made from a well-respected, but underground, producer best-known for their red wines from Saumur-Champigny, the wine is called Clos Rougeard.  I never paid their white wine much attention because it’s a rare bird and it's not usually hanging out at your local wine shop.  I remember having it once before, but it didn’t catch my attention, so I never took the time to taste it again.  The truth is, I visited Arnaud, not for the Brézé wines he had sent me, but for his Saumur-Champigny reds and his entry-level whites, which were much less physically taxing than the Brézé wines. The first time I visited Arnaud was January of 2011.  He first took me to his vineyards in Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg.  Nothing makes me happier than visiting vineyards.  He was proud to show me that, unlike his neighbors, his land was full of natural grasses and herbs that grew freely between his vines. Moreover, his soils were thriving because he treated them respectfully and spared them synthetic chemical treatments that kill most of the bad (and good) micro-organisms.  As we stood on this limestone hill, called Saint-Cyr, I remembered the energy I felt it in his wines the first time I tasted them.  We spoke at length about the appellation and he pointed out that, historically, these vineyards have soils that are more suitable for white wines but had been planted to Cabernet Franc before he and his dad bought them back in 1996.  Before their time, red wines were more profitable, so it became an economical choice to make the switch.  As we finished our tour of Saint-Cyr, he mentioned this “Brézé” wine again as he pointed south and insisted that we go there to look at the vines before we head back to the cellar to taste. We drove to this unsuspecting hill about three kilometers across the way from Saint-Cyr.  There was only a gently sloping alluvial valley that separated the hills of Saint-Cyr and Brézé, but I can assure you that the taste of their wines gives the impression that they are miles apart.  Our first stop was at the Clos David –the Meursault on crack.  Arnaud walked me into what appeared to be a clos; it had old broken down walls that I could easily jump over from a stand still.  It wasn’t an impressive vineyard to look at.  The vines were tired and seemingly unattended.  The vineyard seemed to be held together by a thread and it looked like a cemetery of old vines. Arnaud plunged his hands in Clos David's soil and pulled a pile of chalky white and brown soil full of small limestone fragments.  He put his hands full of soil close to my face for inspection.  He gave me a faint smile, and, quite embarrassed, he said: “I brought you here to show you what damage has been done to these vineyard over the last century.  Look at this topsoil… it’s dead, completely dead…”  He told me that it was going to take years for any noticeable changes to take place in the topsoil.  The underlying limestone, which holds the magic of these terroirs, had been penetrated long ago by these abused vines, and that’s what keeps them in the game. He pointed out, however, that through the years of abuse with chemical treatments, most of the development of the root systems had stayed close to the surface and didn’t have the power to dig much further than what they had done half a century ago.  We went to another special parcel called Clos de la Rue, where he told me stories about the trading of bottles between Chateau de Brézé and other estates like Chateau d’Yquem, bottle for bottle.  Each of these special parcels were, in the past, owned by France’s elite society and they were sent throughout the royal courts of Europe.  At the time, they were known as “Chenin de Brézé”, and they were considered to be of the best white wines in all of France. While on the hill, Arnaud emphasized the importance of a concept that I seemed to have overlooked; the uniqueness of old walled vineyards, called "clos."  Over centuries, vineyards change through erosion that result in a loss of soil.  With the case of a vineyard surrounded by a wall, however, the historic soil structure remains while the rest of the vineyards around them, through centuries of erosion, can lose a significant amount of their ancient topsoil.  That simple concept hit me like a ton of bricks.  These enclosed vineyards are a geological and historical time capsule.  They preserve the impression the wines had when they were regarded centuries ago as an important site. I was dumbfounded and saddened by Arnaud's story of Brézé.  I could sense his animosity towards the more recent owners of this once great land.  After the Second World War, they destroyed the life of their once magnificent terroirs.  As we stood in the vineyard, my mind went back to the wines I had tasted in Provence and it started to make sense.  The wines were taking only what they could find with the root systems developed as young vines over 60 years ago.  They mostly expressed the structure of their deepest, stark-white chalky limestone soils, and not much more.  The soil on top – mostly sand and clay – which usually feeds the wine with body, breadth and generosity had little to give.  They were on a fast-food diet, yet, somehow, the terroir still fought through.  As I walked between rows, looking at the damage, I began to recollect the staggering power my mouth felt a week before in Provence. I realized that what I had tasted were skeletons of what the wines used to be.  The vineyards seemed like they were on their way out as many vines were missing and the remaining survivors were fighting a tough fight.  I had only tasted their skin and bones –but what powerful skin and bones they were.  I looked at Arnaud with disbelief and disappointment.  A smile began to grow on his face.  He looked at me and declared with a contemptuous tone: “Now, with the children out of the way, we’ll see how great this hill is back in the hands of men.” That moment will stay with me forever and writing down Arnaud’s exact words sends a chill through my body. Hearing stories about the former glory of Brézé was exciting.  Arnaud explained that he had signed a 20-year lease on the vineyards.  He let a few more kittens out of the bag when he told me that this historic wine hill was once considered one of the greatest wine producing communes in the entire north of France, and one of the two best of the Loire Valley –the other being Savennieres.  He added that there were only three other producers bottling estate wines from the hill: Clos Rougeard, Domaine du Collier and France’s newest darling, Romain Guiberteau.  Arnaud is originally from Normandy, so these guys had to fill him in on the legend of Brézé.  He told me that there are records at the Chateau de Brézé of the historical affairs of the hill which likely give insights on the production of its wines throughout the centuries.  Arnaud and others have asked to see them, but the owner of the Chateau dismissed their request, likely out of spite for Arnaud’s growing success with the vineyards that their incompetence let go to pasture.  The history is there, but he won’t let anyone have a look at it. To add to this incredible story, Arnaud told me that the rest of the farmers who own quality parcels on the hill sell their grapes to the local co-op because they have no reason, let alone means, to produce commercial wines.  What goes on with this hill is unbelievable and Arnaud, at times, he had to stop his account to laugh with me about how absurd it all was.  Brézé had been neglected for so long that even the locals, who own a piece of this unique place, throw their grapes into a collective wine that is probably sold down the street at Super U for three euros.  What is this madness?!  Don’t they know what they have?  Clearly, they don’t.  The good news, however, that the story of this once glorious hill now rests in the capable hands of a man determined to resurrect this hill of historical vineyards.  Once the Chateau de Brézé rises again, so will the rest of the hill. After we finished our tour of some of the clos, we went back for a taste.  At this point, I was chomping at the bit to get some of these wines back in my mouth.  As soon as we got there, we tasted the St. Just wines, which I was already set on importing.  Then we started the Brézé bottlings.  On my first smell and taste, I better understood the electrical current that flowed through my mouth.  All that these unstoppable terroirs had to give once again began screaming in my face, calling attention their glorious past.  After 65 years of punishment and neglect, the wines made in these suppressed vineyards still shined.  I was all in. Not surprisingly, on my last year on my visit to Brézé, Arnaud had more things up his sleeve.  He told me that the fruit for both of the “entry-level” cuvées, that were simply labeled "Saumur," come from individual historical clos, the Clos du Midi for the white, and the Clos Mazurique for the red.  You’ve got to be kidding me!  He finally decided to reveal this to me on my third year of selling the wines?!  I almost flipped out at him.  I was beside myself that he didn’t put the name of the clos on the label!  Here, we are talking about this hill and it’s glorious collection of clos, and he’s got this cheap entry-level wine made from a historical site with historical pedigree that he puts into a generic bottling?!  I was flabbergasted.  “Arnaud, what else are you not telling me?” I demanded.  I felt like a death row lawyer dealing with a man who was keeping secrets that could exonerate him.  He explained that he had just acquired over 20 hectares of land that he did not have a market for.  He had to choose which vineyards to put in the most energy and money.  He simply chose to use the two largest crus as the entry-level wines.  Crazy…  Don’t get used to the cheap prices, they won’t last.  I promise you.   In 2009, Arnaud and his father Yves signed a deal with the Comte de Colbert for the rights to the vineyards of the Chateau de Brézé.  They knew what was needed to nurse the vines back to health.  The first trip to the vineyards with Arnaud felt like the sad beginning of an epic movie in which our hero would inevitably triumph as he humbly stood upon the hill after reinstating her glory.   Since the day they gained control, they started the process of converting to organic farming with the idea to eventually move into a biodynamic practice.  When I asked why he didn’t go straight to biodynamics, he explained that moving the vines into a real biodynamic culture within three years was simply impossible.  He pointed out that because the topsoils of all the vineyards were desolate and void of almost all microbial life, making such a bold move at an early stage wasn’t the right way.  He further explained that he didn’t want to fabricate the soils by introducing a bunch of foreign microbes to supercharge the healing process.  He believes in the terroir and feels that nature needs to find her way again into the vineyards.  He estimated that, in ten years, he would be able to assert with confidence that his vineyards were performing at the level of a healthy biodynamic environment.  Last year, six years after they started farming organically, he expected to finally see some natural grass growing again.  Each time Arnaud tells me something disturbing like that, he looks at me out of the side of his eyes, with a smirk, and his head pointed down as though he felt responsible for what took place before him.  Indeed, what happened here is embarrassing; sadly, it’s not uncommon. What makes it especially disheartening, in this case, is the negligence with vineyards that possesses such a rich history. Last year, I had dinner with Romain Guiberteau and Arnaud Lambert, both of whom I import to California.  We went down to Arnaud’s cave, below his house, to taste his 2012 single-vineyard wines from both hills.  After four years of organic farming, the whites were simply off the charts.  After we tasted, Romain needed a smoke, so he and I went outside and started to chat while Arnaud stayed in the cave to organize a few more wines to taste.  Romain took a long draw of his cigarette and leaned into me as though he was going to tell me a secret.  He quietly said in French: “Yes, I have ONE (Clos des Carmes) of the greatest vineyards on the hill…  He has the other EIGHT…”  He stared at me as he pointed his finger towards the cellar where Arnaud was and continued: “He’s a great winemaker and he’s just getting started.  My vineyards have been in organic culture already for over ten years and he’s just converting them now.  Just wait, he’s the one to watch.  He has them all…”  Hearing this confession from one of the hottest young vignerons in France was unreal.  It was a wonderful insight into the character of Romain Guiberteau.  He’s a selfless, passionate man interested in the success of his friend Arnaud, as are the other vignerons on the hill, Antoine Foucoult and his father and uncle from the Clos Rougeard.  I haven’t met anyone from the Foucoult family, but Arnaud told me that he feels like they are all in it together with him; like a band of brothers.  It’s impressive. Two weeks ago, I was in Saumur to pay another visit to Arnaud and Romain.  We further discussed the nature of the wines produced on this hill and my purchase of the 2010 basic Saumur white and red from Chateau de Brézé a few years ago.  I revealed to them that I only started to find success with the Brézé wines at the start of 2013 and that I hardly sold a single case the first 18 months as they sat in my warehouse.  I was a little afraid to show the wines at first because they were taut for so long, but when we unleashed Guiberteau into the California market last year, it helped prime the market’s palate for the wines of Chateau de Brézé.  The wines from Romain shocked (literally) everyone and, by that time, the Brézé wines finally relaxed and started to put their cards on the table.  They were a perfect follow after Guiberteau floored the market and were welcomed with the same enthusiasm.  That night, we all agreed that the wines from Brézé need much more time in the bottle before being sold.  That’s why Romain already sells his high-end cuvées three or four years after the vintage date.  The next morning, I could see anguish on Arnaud’s face.  He told me that, because of our conversation last night, he decided that he was going to ask the bank for more money in order to make the wines age longer before releasing them.  It’s this kind of stuff that makes Arnaud special.  He never ceases to impress me as his commitment to the success of this hill is inspiring. Two weeks ago – almost four years after my first visit – Arnaud and I walked the vineyards again.  I wanted to spend more time in the vineyards to get a better understanding of each clos.  As we walked through, the vineyards were showing signs of new life.  We reminisced what has happened over the last years that led up to this point.  As we bent over to admire new life emerging after a lifetime of abuse, we smiled and grabbed piles of dirt and rock from each sight to inspect its renewing quality. The natural grasses were popping and the life of the soil was being nursed back to health.  The vineyards are changing, so is Arnaud.  He is a different man than when I met him four years ago.  Since then, he’s had a rough patch with the tragic early passing of his wife and his father just a year after my first visit with him.  It's a hard story to hear from such a wonderful guy.  As we carried on, I realized that the dark cloud, cast over Brézé and Arnaud, is lifting more and more with the passing of each year. Four years ago, I stood with Arnaud at the Clos du Chateau vineyard on the very top of the hill without realizing that this place would become one of my most unexpected love affairs with wine.  It's heartwarming to see that the other great producers from the hill, rather than competing with Arnaud, act as his strongest supporting cast.  They all know of this almost forgotten history that has been silenced for decades inside this mysterious hill.  They are all anxiously waiting to see what Arnaud unearths as he nurses her back to health.  There is something stirring on this little hill, and soon, the wine world will remember her name; she is Brézé, the greatest forgotten hill.

Amalfi Coast in the Summer of ‘22 Last month I finished a new Audible favorite, easily in my top three best experiences of all time on this app, though it should be noted that I only began my subscription last year. The Book Thief just tied A Gentleman in Moscow, and as soon as I finished it I got it on Kindle too and read it cover to cover in short order (of course after relistening to the last chapter three or four times; in addition to rewinding to many more chapters that had nuggets I might’ve missed). Another is Surrender, narrated by the author, Bono, which is full of bedtime stories told by what sounds like a leprechaun drinking beer in a Dublin pub, his voice scratchy, and almost completely worn out. It includes tales from before the start of U2 and follows a lifetime of incredible stories that would defy belief if they were about a rock band of any other caliber. From doggedly getting themselves signed by a record company (after delivering their demos by bicycle) to meetings in the Oval Office, reluctantly suckered into a charity concert by Pavarotti, and with every accent attempted by Bono himself, all woven into the story of a young man and his brother and father who never got over the unexpected early passing of his beloved mother, Iris. (Do any of us ever get over our mother’s passing?) Aside from the obvious advantage Bono has with his one-in-a-billion talent for entertainment, the narrator of the audio version of The Book Thief, the lively actor, Allan Corduner, was second to none. Or maybe he tied Bono. There are few audible books I recommend more than The Book Thief. I didn’t know they released a film adaptation in 2013 starring Geoffrey Rush until I was halfway through it and beaming with enthusiasm to share it with my wife. Andrea is a voracious reader and a sucker for romantic war stories and historical fiction. As a Portuguese language student, she decided to read the bible-sized Portuguese novel, Diz-Me Quem Sou, with its 1,104 pages, in small print. She lugged this five-pound tome everywhere for almost a year and her eyes are getting rapidly worse, as are mine. I finally bought my first reading glasses at the end of June, but not until I completely wore out the frame of one of her two pairs over the last year. Since it was published in 2005, I thought it possible she had already read it, but when I asked her she said, “No, but I watched the movie,” popping my balloon and then moving on to some pressing detail about the renovation of our endless Portuguese countryside rebuild that will likely be ready for us just before we die. “You must listen to this book on Audible!” I insisted, and she still seemed uninterested… “But mi amor, there is no way that movie can possibly stand up to the actual words of such a great book, and the narration is the best. You’ve listened to Bono and Prince Harry, you have to listen to this one!” One day she will thank me for pushing her so hard. If Allan Corduner narrated a thousand books, I’d listen to them all. He told with great impact Markus Zusack’s story about the intense grief, stress, and brutality of war, and balanced it all with moments of much-needed hilarity when the main character, Liesel, is out of the direct line of fire. His comedic handle on the sometimes sharp and jolting quality of exaggerated German accents often gave me a solid ab workout between free-weight sets while I was surrounded by a bunch of solemn Spanish and Catalan bodybuilders who shot confused looks at the American guy who was giggling and sometimes wiping away tears of laughter as I lifted. But I hit pause out of caution during heavy sets for fear that Allan might pierce my focus underneath too much weight, as it did while I was benching (almost dropping it on my chest) as Pfiffikus was introduced: “Geh‘ scheiße!” Salnés area of Rías Baixas with the Parque Nacional Marítimo-Terrestre de las Islas Atlánticas de Galicia in the background Speaking of Spain, we finally have a new boatload arriving from the peninsula with a lot of goodies, only maybe too many all at once. We will stagger their release, but you can expect to soon be tempted by Prádio and Augalevada’s long-awaited new releases, Portugal’s Arribas Wine Company and a Mateus Nicolão de Almeida restock, and more surprises that will be covered in September. But first, we will begin with perhaps our biggest Spanish superstar, and then we’ll follow that with one of the Loire Valley’s greatest talents. I know of very few European winegrowers outside of Ernst Loosen who taste as much European wine outside of their home country as Manuel Moldes, though Ernie’s access to epic wines with age seems unparalleled. I rarely mention a wine to him that he doesn’t already know. And the ones he doesn’t know, are often unknown outside of the village in which they’re made. After more than a dozen years making wine, Manuel is no longer only tinkering with ideas, he’s mastering his craft, especially with Albariño. In my book, he has matched the likes of growers like Arnaud Lambert and Peter Veyder-Malberg, the latter of whom I sent some of Manuel’s bottles, and he’s a big fan now too, as is Arnaud after meeting him in Saumur some summers ago while on tour with me. We are lucky to have such talents in our collection of US growers and even luckier to have Manuel as a close friend—the same with Peter and Arnaud! On my last visit with him two months ago at his brother’s restaurant, Tinta Negra, I left frustrated by my level of Spanish comprehension. I’ve studied at least four days a week for more than two years now, but I totally bombed. Even if he is one of the most difficult to follow out of all those with whom I speak Spanish, it seemed like my mind was out to lunch. However, I understood him perfectly well when he smiled and turned to Andrea and said in Spanish, “What happened? He lost his Spanish…” I was relieved when my wife told me on the drive home that Manuel speaks Galego half the time and she too has a hard time understanding him sometimes. And she’s a native Spanish speaker! We’re going to kick off Moldes’ lineup Burgundy style with reds first and then dig into the whites. Manuel Moldes, 2020 2021 was the season across Europe for continental/Mediterranean climate zones that have been missing the tension in their wines over the last decade; it was mostly cold all summer—perfect for fresher fruit qualities, low pH levels, and vibrant acidity. Rieslings across all countries are at their best, with impeccable balance. Burgundy and Chablis delivered wines from what seems like a long-gone era, though many had to chaptalize (at least in Chablis)—historically a very common adjustment for vintages with less sugar. (No one wants to talk about that kind of thing anymore, but let’s be honest about it, eh?) The Loire Valley hasn’t seen such a perfect Chenin year (at least qualitatively) for a long time. 2021 is a vintage I’m definitely going to stock up on. Even if Côte d’Or prices are almost entirely outside of my budget now, there is a wealth of great wines out there outside of Burgundy to drink early and to cellar long too. It was a perfect season for the 2021 Bierzo “Lentura.” This far western area of Castille y León is a geological transition zone at the foothills of the Galician Massif and the expansive high desert of northern Spain. Geologically it is both, though perhaps a little more associated with the Galician Massif from its mostly slate-derived soils in rock and powder form: slate rock up on the steep hills, and a lot of slate-derived clay, silt, and sand pulverized by quartzite cobbles on the valley floor below. Here, summer daytime temperatures can reach 40°C (104°F) on any given day while the nights can drop by a full 20°C (35°F). The oceanic influence is blocked from Bierzo by the Galician mountains toward the west and the Cantabrians toward the north, making it much drier compared to the neighboring Galician appellations like Monterrei, Valdeorras, and the eastern portion of Ribeira Sacra. Winters are freezing and go as low as -10°C, but with little snow because it’s not such a particularly precipitous area. It’s perfect for viticulture, but the wines can often be very strong, and may similarly be described the way Hemingway wrote about Corsican reds in A Moveable Feast, “you could dilute it by half with water and still receive its message.” Surely he meant those Corsican reds with the likes of Nielluciu rather than Sciaccarellu, or however it is you want to spell those two grapes. “Lentura” is much fresher tasting than the fuller vintage wines that came before. It’s composed of 60% Garnacha Tintorera/Alicante Bouschet, a grape not related to Garnacha/Grenache, and, sadly, only occupies 2% of Bierzo’s surface area. I’ve come to like this variety a lot for its high acidity and tannin, inky color, and virile nature. We’re in an age of elegance (which I love) but with that pendulum having swung so hard in the direction of gentle wine, perhaps one day it will swing back to favor grapes like Garnacha Tintorera, which gives varieties like Syrah a run for the money on wildness and surely on bigger natural acidity. It’s a great balance for the remaining 40% Mencía in the blend, which is naturally more suave but with far less acidity. If I’m being honest, I’ve had just a few experiences with Bierzo wines that got me excited about the appellation, but if more were made with a predominance of Garnacha Tintorera like Manuel’s, that would probably change. But since it covers only 2% of the surface area of vines, it ain’t enough for a full-scale revolution. The first vineyard is in Valtuille at the bottom of the valley on fully exposed gentle hills at around 500 meters on red clay and quartzite cobbles. The other is from the famous Corullón, one of the most impressive wine hills in all of Europe. This legendary local vineyard faces east at 750m, applying a g-force weight to your face as you try to balance and look up at what tops out near 1000m, quickly. One needs to be mountain goat-surefooted with every move in all directions—up, down, sideways—with its precariously slippery, paper-like slate shards and greasy clay that keeps the rock stuck to the hill. With an average vine age of over seventy years and the extremity of the terroir and Manuel’s mind hard at work in these organically certified vines, the value here for such a wine is tough to top. The 2020 Acios Mouros is different in structural style than Lentura and benefits greatly from its extra aging before release. 2020 is another great year for Rías Baixas red and white wines, which is not always the case because the reds benefit from a warmer season to soften the piercing high-tone vibration. A masterfully blended, harmonious ensemble of red grapes with distinctive personalities, it leads with the highly acidic and gorgeously aromatic and softly balsamic red Caiño Redondo (70%) and the other 30% split between the tannic, acidic, ink-black beast, Loureiro Tinto, and the suave, rustic, floral and lightly reddish-orange colored Espadeiro. Grown on granite and schist bedrock within view of the Atlantic, their naturally intense varietal characteristics are amplified by their spare metal and mineral-heavy soils and the natural saltiness that seems to be imposed by this oceanic climate. While Lentura is more generous with a little chalkier tannin chub that softens its structure and minerally body, Acios Mouros can be tough love at first taste for those not calibrated to this red wine of the highest tones. Neil Young-level feedback upon opening, it evolves into a long, hypnotic Gilmour finish. I love Acios Mouros, but my wife has to gear up and strap in to prepare for its first strike. She wants to relax and sit back at the end of her day, but this wine makes everyone sit up straight and pay attention. These 45-55-year-old vineyards sit between 20-80m altitude and are purely Atlantic in climate—two more notable differences from the continental climate and high altitude of Lentura in Bierzo. It’s no secret that Manuel’s big ticket is his Albariño range. He’s simply reached a new level for this grape variety and few from the area match his wines’ value, and almost no one can touch them on intellect and craft. (They’re also dangerously easy to gulp down.) I believe the quality of his work must now be counted among those of the world’s great, rarified-genius white wine producers, luminaries like Olivier Lamy, Peter Veyder-Malberg, and Klaus-Peter Keller, to name just a few. Manuel’s starting Albariño, Afelio, has made solid jumps from one vintage to the next and offers a value rarely matched for elegance and substance, though Arnaud Lambert’s Clos de Midi from our portfolio comes to mind. Afelio is a blend of dozens of parcels with an average age of over fifty years (2023). The parcels face in all directions at 15-90m on a mix of expansive terraces and flat plots on granite bedrock and topsoil. Over the years he gradually moved toward more aging in older barrels to polish its framing and lend greater depth and more subtle nuance to the wines compared to when they were raised exclusively in steel vats. Manuel has made a habit of snatching up as many agreements with landowners whose vineyards are on schist as he can; it’s an extremely rare soil type for this part of Galicia where most of the land is granitic. Now, schist single-plot are the only Albariños he bottles as single-site wines while almost every other producer is bottling only granite-based wines. The original schist site in Manuel’s range goes into A Capela de Aios, which put Manuel on the map under his other label, Bodegas Fulcro, where it’s labeled as “Fulcro O Equilibrio.” Tasted next to Afelio, one might think it was a different variety if it wasn’t for the consistent high citrus notes and ripping acidity that few white wines maintain while remaining completely balanced and delicious. It’s fuller in body than Afelio (and most of the range) and more deeply salty, more metal than mineral, and slightly more amber in color. One could say they almost are as different as Loire Valley Chenin Blanc grown on schist and those grown on limestone. It comes from a south-southwest facing terraced vineyard at 80-90m planted in the 1940s and 1980s on fine-grained pure-schist topsoil and bedrock. As with all the wines, it goes through natural fermentation, and like the other “parcela” wines, it’s aged in old 500-700L French oak for 9-11 months. Schist The newest vino de parcela is Peai, pronounced the P.I., as in Magnum P.I.—a TV reference that may be lost on some of our younger colleagues in the wine business—sorrynotsorry. Made similarly in the cellar to A Capela de Aios, Peai comes from a west-facing terraced vineyard at 65-70m with 40-45-year-old vines on rocky and coarse schist topsoil and harder schist bedrock, while the bedrock of A Capela de Aios, by contrast, is severely eroded and softer. Peai is notably more structured and broader-shouldered compared to the other wines in the range; referencing white wines, think of Tegernseerhof’s burly Kellerberg compared to the gentler Loibenberg, or Veyder-Malberg’s beefier Buschenberg compared to the fully structured but finer Brandstadtt. Peai’s first year bottled alone was with the stellar 2020, and this 2021 is only an inch up in quality because there was only an inch of daylight to start with from the inaugural vintage. As Dunas On the subject of the rarest soil types in Rías Baixas, As Dunas is perhaps the most unique of all. Comprised of a few adjacent parcels that are less than a kilometer from the beaches west of Sanxenxo and Portonovo on pure schist sand, it’s like a beachfront dune—fine-grained, as much desert as a beach. On a soft slope, it was acquired only recently (first bottle vintage 2019) and the grapes were split between Manuel, Rodrigo Méndez, and Raúl Pérez. I believe these are now the three most expensive white wines in Rías Baixas, with Manuel’s maintaining the best price of the bunch; however, it isn’t the third rung in quality—that’s for each taster to decide, if bottles of each of these rarities can be found in order to make the comparison. The parcels are on that gentle slope, facing south-southwest at around 50m, originally planted in the 1940s and 1990s. As Dunas is deep, and showcases a broad range of delicate aromas, with some of the more distinguished veering slightly toward sweet balsamic notes, sweet mint, and exotic spices, on a surprisingly structured frame for a sand terroir. Perhaps the original cornerstone of our company is Arnaud Lambert. He remains one of the three growers still left from the original roster of French wines imported in our first year; the other two being La Roubine and Jean Collet. There are also fewer growers we’ve written about more often than Arnaud Lambert, so I will try to keep this portion of the newsletter short. New Crémant label Always in high demand are Arnaud’s Crémant Blanc and Crémant Rosé. They are a great value and deliver on quality and price, like all of Arnaud’s wines. Due to the chalky, sandy soil and cold climate, Saumur has always had the potential to deliver high-quality bubbles, but the financial incentive to compete with Champagne never materialized. The cost of production for serious wines would be more or less the same, and Saumur could never compete on price, though it can also be said that the cost of land is much more expensive in Champagne. Compared to Champagne, Arnaud’s Crémants have a gentle and inviting rawness and simplicity because they’re aged in steel for six months then bottled, dosed between 4-8g/L, and aged for a short time prior to release. Like most Crémants across France, they are typically relegated to by-the-glass programs, and there are few (I don’t know of any, really) that maintain a useful place on a bubble list in the middle price range. Believe me, we’ve tried to sell Crémant bubbles between Champagne prices and those that fit the by-the-glass price range and they move at a glacier’s pace, which is still slow despite climate change. Due to the smaller allocations of the past, the wines have mostly been on lockdown with many accounts. This year we have more, so if you want a piece of the action, tell us sooner than later. After asking for a by-the-glass option for those who are priced out of Clos de Midi (or are short on allocation), Arnaud offered us the 2022 “Les Parcelles.” This 100% Chenin Blanc is labeled as a Vin de France because Arnaud supplemented the cuvée with some Chenin outside of Saumur due to all the frost damage in 2022. However, it’s still composed of 85% of the young vines from his top parcels and is aged in steel for six months prior to bottling. Given the pedigree of that 85% (and you can be sure that Arnaud is buying top-quality fruit if he has to buy), this wine is another steal. Formerly known as Clos de Midi, the 2022 Midi has also arrived. The authorities in France have begun to enforce a new rule that limits the labeling of wines with a clos, most likely to protect the concept of the word from overuse. Surely there’s a lot more to this story, but in any case, all of the vineyards labeled as a clos chez Lambert were all historic walled vineyards. We could sell a thousand cases or more of Midi every year, but we don’t have nearly that quantity; it has become one of our most pursued wines because of its quality for the price. It’s always tense and ethereal, and, like Manuel Moldes’ Albariño “Afelio,” it simply over-delivers on expectations and shines in terroir expression. It also doesn’t hurt that it is one of the region’s most celebrated crus and drinks far too easily. Montsoreau is a special wine Arnaud makes exclusively for us. Initially, we committed to only a couple of barrels each season but recently asked if we could have more to make up for our reduced allocations of Clos de Midi, and this increase should come about in a couple of years. The newly arrived 2018 was somehow overlooked along the way and we were finally able to bring it over. This parcel comes from a specific plot in the Saumur-Champigny commune Montsoreau, just next to the Loire River about 500 meters from the limestone bluff overlooking the Château de Montsoreau. While much of this plateau has a deep clay topsoil before the white tuffeau limestone bedrock, this small plot is almost pure white with a thin tuffeau sand and rocky topsoil with tuffeau bedrock, which makes it perfect for Chenin Blanc. Because I’m a big fan of Chenin aged in neutral barrels and for a shorter period after finishing primary fermentation, this wine was aged for one year in old French oak barrels prior to bottling. Montsoreau is usually more powerful than Midi and closer to his Les Perrières bottling from the Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg hill. I wouldn’t wait long to try to claim a case or two of this wine, since he makes only 48. Like Midi, Mazurique is one of Arnaud’s most coveted wines because it’s a red that delivers well beyond what’s expected of its price. The coldest of Arnaud’s red crus, it stylistically lands somewhere between a low-alcohol, high-altitude Beaujolais, and a Hautes-Cotes de Nuits Pinot Noir, minus any oak—only steel here. Mazurique’s varietal characteristics are more subtly delivered than many young, high-pedigree Loire Valley Cabernet Franc, and its shallow rocky topsoil of sand and clay on tuffeau limestone bedrock renders an expansive but finely textured palate in full harmony with its spirituous nature. To have Arnaud’s Mazurique and Les Terres Rouges in a tasting together is to witness a clear demonstration of the merit of soil terroir in wine. Both are made the same in the cellar and are harvested from vines with an average age of about 45 years and raised only in steel with almost a full hands-off practice on extractions during fermentation. They are almost within view of each other, with most of the parcels of Les Terres Rouges on the Saumur-Champigny hill, Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg, facing Brézé across the way, where lies Mazurique. Even though Les Terres Rouges has no red soil (as the name might suggest it does) it’s a light-brown clay and sandy topsoil on tuffeau limestone bedrock. While Mazurique can be found in the clouds, Les Terres Rouges is more earthy and richly fruited. For some reason, perhaps the greater clay content(?), all of Arnaud’s Saumur-Champigny wines from Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg are darker, rounder, fruitier, and more accessible when young than those from Brézé only a kilometer or two across the way. Brézé wines (the reds labeled only as Saumur) are almost always redder hued than black, though with plenty of darker shades. They’re more vertical than horizontal, in need of more time in the bottle, and more time to express themselves when first opened, compared to the Saumur-Champigny wines. Hailing from Brézé on a mix of orange clay and coarse, microscopic shell-filled sand on tuffeau limestone bedrock, Clos de l’Étoile is indeed the star of Arnaud’s Cabernet Franc range; that is if one is in search of his fullest and most age-worthy wines. Its complement from Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg across the way, Saumur-Champigny “Clos Moleton,” is vinified and aged the same with 30 months in barrels and then another six in bottle before release. Moleton, as previously explained about the differences between Brézé and Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg, is fuller and rounder than l’Étoile, but not by much. Perhaps a regular note of difference between them is the tension and slightly wilder notes and x-factor in l’Étoile. Based on tasting old wines from Arnaud and his father, Yves, before they had as great a level of craft as Arnaud has now, this is a wine that may age better than you and me, but will also deliver an enlightening experience upon opening now.

Before the 2014 vintage, I suggested Arnaud begin to isolate the most interesting parcels of Chenin Blanc that haven’t yet been made into single cru wines to explore for new and previously overlooked talented parcels. The plan was to make two barrels from each site, observe and taste them through their élevage, and if we were both pleased with the results, I guaranteed that I’d buy and sell them in California. There are four in total: the first was in 2014 and bottled under Domaine de St. Just, simply labeled Brézé, followed by a barrel-aged Clos du Midi bottled only in magnums, and finally we have today's Bonne Nouvelle and Montsoreau which in 2016, their first vintage, were a great success. There are only two barrels of each of these wines made for the entire world and all the wines are in California. The Wines Lambert’s vineyard area in Montsoreau is largely planted up on a plateau that sits above the Loire River on flatter sites with deeper clay composition—often between sixty centimeters to a couple meters deep, preferential topsoil depth and composition for Cabernet Franc. There is also a special, nearly pure tuffeau limestone site within his familial Montsoreau vineyards with almost no topsoil from which he makes this superb Chenin Blanc. While inside the Saumur-Champigny appellation, to bear the appellation name “Saumur-Champigny” a wine must be made exclusively from Cabernet Franc, and it’s for this reason that this wine is labeled as a Saumur appellation wine. Arnaud’s Montsoreau Chenin Blanc is a wine with more opulence and flash than usual. Balanced out by a dense core and somewhat gently polished square edges, when compared to Lambert's white wines from further south of the appellation in the colder zones, like Brézé and Saint-Cyr, the Montsoreau is more upfront and rich in body. Aged similarly to Bonne Nouvelle, in order to preserve the voice of the vineyard terroir, it’s aged one year, in two 228-liter old French oak barrels. Like the Bonne Nouvelle in quantity, there are only roughly five hundred bottles produced for the entire world. Rarities? Indeed. Bonne Nouvelle comes from the now famous Saumur commune, Brézé. The topsoil here in this commune varies greatly, even within sections of the same clos (enclosed vineyard), but the bedrock is tuffeau limestone, a sandy, very porous white rock. Generally speaking, Arnaud’s Chenin Blanc sites on Brézé have a larger mixture of sand and clay than the Cabernet Franc sites, which prosper more from deeper clay topsoil with less sand. The sandy soils of Brézé render white wines with more high tones and the wines tend to demonstrate a strong lead of polished and straightforward mineral impressions with less quirky characteristics than many other Chenin Blanc grown in the Loire Valley. In French, Bonne Nouvelle means good news—a suitable name for this wine. Originally this single clos on Brézé was used for sweet wines, and in 2016 Arnaud committed to our experiment of making a still wine from the vineyard, and we’re so glad he did! The vineyard is just next to Arnaud’s top Cabernet Franc vineyard, Clos de L’Etoile, and is on a uniquely coarse, rich, deep orangish-tan limestone sand derived mostly from small seashell fragments and the underlying tuffeau; interestingly, it looks a lot like the topsoil composition of Château Rayas. The result is a white wine of aromatic lift, deep texture and savory characteristics. As with Montsoreau, there were only two barrels made (roughly forty-five cases) and all are sold exclusively to The Source.

Anchovies from Cetara, Italy We’re still in renovation purgatory with our countryside rock house (lifelong dream number one), a Notre Dame de Paris-level timeline that started only months before the pandemic hit. Even with such a long way to go, we’re still happy living in Europe, though a process like this will test even the most patient and optimistic saint. I’m mostly the first two of these, but certainly not the last. Perhaps the top European perk for us Epicureans is the availability of the best ingredients. My wife and I miss a lot of things about the US, and some farmers’ markets can equal some of ours, but Europe is generally tough to beat. As I write this in late August, the spectacular taste and color of the figs in Spain are dizzying and they cost the equivalent of only $2-$3 per pound. Chanterelles are $7 a pound (dried to the point where a full produce bag weighs that much), fresh sardines are $5, mackerel $4, and on and on. Some European countries simply dominate certain food categories. The Usain Bolt of cheese and poultry is France: no one else is even close. The battle between seafood and fish is without a clear winner, but many believe the raw product frontrunner in Western Europe is Spain. The most compelling argument that tips the scale in Spain’s favor outside of the three Atlantic fronts and a thousand miles of Mediterranean coastline is what comes from Galicia’s Rías Baixas (though the endless variety of Sicilian and Sardinian fare would be two of Italy’s many parries); the uniqueness of the four Galician estuaries (rías) offer marine life a plankton overdose, leading to monstrously sized and extremely flavorful goods all the way up the food chain. Costa Brava Sardines: more lean than the fatty Portuguese ones, but just as good. The salt-cured food category echoes the Federer, Djokovic, and Nadal debate: sausage is anyone’s game, and all the contenders are as different as tennis’s Big Three. Spain wins on land with cecina and jamon like France does with cheese. Italian anchovies can match the Spanish in taste, though Spain has many more high-end producers in Cantabria that market themselves well. Like all anchovy-producing countries, the disparity may be attributed to their cultural approach. Spain takes anchovies more seriously than any country as a stand-alone food, a sort of luxury good meant as the center of the plate it adorns. Italians see anchovies as more of a potent support in their orchestra of ingredients for a million different dishes, and it’s rare to see them as the dish alone. Iberico pork (pictured below), Galician beef, lamb, goat and cochinillo (suckling pig) are legendary in Spain. Spain is so far ahead of the European pack on four-legged fare there is almost no chance for a successful coup. Indeed, there are always outliers in Europe—individuals or small zones that do it perfectly—and arguments for other non-European countries, but Spain as a whole on meat is what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Even though this looks like beef, it’s “presa” from Iberian pigs. The next top perk for epicureans interested in vinous exploits is the European restaurant wine list. Prices in most restaurants lacking Michelin stars are still appropriately marked up because growers know where their wines are shipped directly in Europe and they visit their clients all over the continent. For example, French growers understand that in places like Paris, Bordeaux and Lyon the cost of living, rent and labor is much higher and have far more affluent customers passing through. They also expect to see higher markups because restaurants want to keep exceptional wines in stock long enough to maintain their reputation for having a great list. Beef from El Capricho and Bodegas Gordón on the border of Galician in Castille y Leon. The countryside is the best place to drink. Prices are much lower because the owners know their top growers on the list may drop in for a visit, especially if they’re local. And if they are in fact gouging with big city margins, they may get a reduction of or lose their entire future allocations. I imagine that few growers are happy to see their 15€ wine on a countryside list at 200€ per bottle. While Europe wins on restaurant wine lists, it doesn’t always win in the retail market. A good fine wine store in the US is often a one-stop shop for wines from all over the world and the others are very local, though that’s changing with the addition of the online marketplace. The access to the many now unaffordable growers, like Chablis global megastars Dauvissat and Raveneau, are the same jaw-dropping prices online in Europe as they are anywhere in the world. Twenty years ago, the wines from Dauvissat and Raveneau were easier to attain at a decent price. Even if they were gray marketed by US retailers at the time, they were marked up only a touch more than what the official importer charged. This duo of Chablis royalty was once slightly obscure and mostly known to insiders. Kept relatively quiet among the wine trade, they offered enlightening grand cru and premier cru experiences for low-paid wine professionals and wine lovers without Montrachet prices. But if you want them stateside, that markup is now more of a shakedown. The last bottle of Raveneau I ever bought upon release in the US from their official importer was a 2010 Montée de Tonnerre at LA’s Silverlake Wine, where it sat on their shelf for anyone to buy for around $100—today, the 2019 and 2020s are online starting around $500-$600. These days it’s only window shopping in the States on the Raveneau and Dauvissat front for most of us. And I marvel at the prices on lists and wonder why people think wine—a bottle of fermented grape juice—should command so much, especially if they started from the cellar door for far less. Romain Collet, who’s close to the Raveneau family, always shoots me a smirk when we speak of Raveneau and the absurdity of second-market prices because he knows his ex-cellar prices are the same as theirs. I think we in the business can only blame ourselves for letting our insider wines go to only the highest bidders now. We aggrandized these special wines on social media to sell them (and ourselves) more effectively and to make a few more bucks on tiny allocations. And in these pursuits, we priced ourselves out of the game. I remember how disheartened I was when one budding wine retailer boasted to me that they were converting all their Bordeaux drinkers to Burgundy—like they were doing all of us a favor. The famous Bordeaux enologist Emile Peynaud said something like, “People drink what they deserve.” Maybe in his time, that was truer, but this catchy snark hasn’t aged well with big money willing to pay any price for certain wines. Before the pandemic, there were still a lot of deals to be found with hard-to-get wines from European retailers, but those days are over now too, at least for the elusive ones from France and Italy. The most recent batch of goodies I snapped up before the prices went bonkers on every inevitable name destined for that list were those of Lamy and Lafarge. I had a few good European sources for Lamy and one for Lafarge, but those have dried up too. I’m not sure what happened to Lamy’s second market pricing earlier this year, but his Saint-Aubin wines online jumped about 300% in a matter of months, and the grand cru somewhere around 600%. I was waiting for the 2017 Lafarge premier crus to be released so I could make one last grab I could almost afford. I knew Lafarge was soon to be on my never-able-to-afford-that-again list for many reasons. The first was the passing of Michel Lafarge and the anticipation of something similar to what happened to the Barolo prices with the passing of Beppe from Giuseppe Rinaldi. Then there were the oncoming challenges with the hot 2018 through 2020 vintages (which Lafarge did much better than I expected with the 2018s compared to other top growers—some of my favorites of the vintage; 2019s are already out of my range). Ultimately, the rise of Lafarge was inevitable and long overdue. I’m surprised it took much longer than many other Burgundy producers did, though as of late the style is more upfront than in the past. I secured a decent supply of the 2017 Lafarge Volnays, and a few months later the same French retailer had a restock of the same 2017 premier crus for exactly double the prices I paid. So I’m out now for good. With all this madness surrounding wine pricing and exclusivity, and while people with more dollars than sense want to cellar and stroke their preciousss, and claim them as part of their wine museum or brag about their entitlements on their Instagram feed (can we stop that one already?), there are growers making extraordinary wines right under their noses in the same appellations that give those juggernauts a run, not only for the money but the quality too. In Chablis, that’s where our main feature of this month comes in: Domaine Jean Collet. Before our dive into Collet, there are a few more arrivals you need to know about before what’s left of them vanish: 2022 François Crochet Sancerre (Blanc) 2022 Arribas Wine Company Saroto Branco 2022 Arribas Wine Company Saroto Rosé 2020 Château Cantelaudette, Graves de Vayres Rouge “Sans Soufre Ajouté” 2016 Château Cantelaudette, Graves de Vayres Rouge “Cuvée Prestige” We also have the new 2021 starters in the classic range of Katharina Wechsler. Katharina got married last month and I was able to attend the wedding at the couple’s home and winery. I tasted her new releases and verified that she’s continuing her ascendency with her already spectacular wines. The 2021 Rieslings are silly good. What a year for European white wines! There will be more about everything new in next month’s newsletter, including more off-dry wines, the grand crus, and the Cloudy By Nature range. In the meantime, the following wines are back! 2021 Wechsler Riesling Trocken 2021 Wechsler Scheurebe Trocken 2021 Wechsler Riesling Trocken “Kalk” (formerly Westhofen Riesling–all from Kirchspiel) Because Alexandre Déramé works both of his domaines alone in the cellar and with limited help in the vines, I encouraged him to use his name on the labels of his two domaines, Domaine de la Morandière and Domaine du Moulin. Extremely humble by nature, he resisted. Then he asked for advice from his family and friends and when they pushed him to do it, he caved. Progress! I was skeptical at first when presented with the 2022 Pinot Noir Rosé but quickly realized it’s far too good for the price to ignore. I’m only sorry I didn’t know about it until this last year. Its label is not yet converted to his new design, but what counts is what’s in the bottle. All things in good time, right? The wine is simple in a perfect sort of rosé way: drink it, don’t think it. It ain’t gonna change your life, but you may hold it up to a light and say, “Damn. That’s one mighty fine Pinot Noir rosé for the price.” The 2022 Domaine du Moulin is the first year of this wine we’ve imported. This is Alexandre’s familial domaine in Saint-Fiacre-sur-Maine, west of Mouzillon-Tillières and closer to Nantes. Its shallow topsoil is sand and silt derived from the underlying bedrock of granite and schist. It’s a lighter, fresher, and easier wine than those from Mouzillon-Tillières, home to the following two Muscadet Sèvre et Maine wines. All of Déramé’s wines are made in a combination of steel and impressive underground glass-lined concrete vats. Also arriving is the 2022 “Le Morandiére,” from vineyards inside Mouzillon-Tillières on the eastern side of Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, across the street from Les Roche Gaudinières (L.R.G.). Similar to L.R.G, it’s on gabbro bedrock (pictured), a pale green and black intrusive igneous rock developed through the slow cooling of basaltic magma under the earth’s surface. However, the topsoil is different and composed of sand and silt with fewer loose rocks. The vineyard renders extremely solid wines, and for the price, it represents an extraordinary value with big-time chops in the context of other Muscadets. Because of the lighter topsoil, it’s ready for enjoyment much earlier than L.R.G and is aged for a shorter period and released just prior to the oncoming harvest of the next vintage. Gabbro The 2017 Les Roches Gaudinières “Vieille Vignes” comes from Déramé’s three hectares in Les Roches Gaudinières. The bedrock is gabbro but the deep topsoil is rich in clay with a lot of bedrock fragments. The vines are a mix of massale selections and old biotypes with three-quarters from 80-year-old vines and the rest fifty years old. This magnesium and iron-rich rock, the clay-rich and rocky topsoil, and the old vines with their extremely low natural yields of 25-30hl/ha at most in any year impart a dense power to its wines, obliging extensive cellar aging to reach the beginning of its decades-long drinking window. Once it’s there, it’s an extraordinarily powerful Muscadet. Alexandre ages it in glass-lined concrete tanks for three to five years followed by at least two years in bottle before release. It has tremendous aging potential, as demonstrated by the many old vintages we’ve imported (starting with the 2002 release ten years past its vintage date) and the surprising freshness it maintains after many years. Who knows what can be credited for its longevity, but there’s something special about this vineyard. Before this summer’s sweltering heat, Romain Collet shipped me some boxes of his 2021 premier crus along with some 2019s I wanted to check in on. My first tastings of the 2021s out of vat and again just days before bottling convinced me that we finally had a true classic on our hands. Though the yield was down 30-40% on average because of spring frost, and the work especially difficult in the vineyard due to mildew during this cold season, the vigilance and remembered experience of how to manage cold years despite the last two decades of hot ones paid off. After nursing two bottles of each 2021 premier cru over a few days with each one, there is no doubt in my mind that this is my favorite young Chablis vintage in more than a decade, if not much further back. Jean Collet’s premier crus have always been priced fairly with unexpectedly high quality, even in tough years. The only problem has been that they used average corks in the 80s, 90s and 00s, so those are a mixed bag—oxidized or epic with a few in between. Last year I had some premier crus from the 1980s over lunch with the family (and some 2010 magnums in another lunch) and they were stunning. In the last few years, their wines have crept up in price, partly due to so many losses by frost, hail, and mildew. 2017 and 2018 had decent volume but 2019, 2020, and 2021 were very short. Another reason for the slightly increased prices is that I convinced Romain that if he finished the full conversion of the domaine to organic certification to include the Chablis V.V. (nearly 100 years old) and the premier crus Montmains, Montée de Tonnerre and Mont de Milieu, no one would complain about paying a little more for the wines. (The Chablis AOC, the premier crus Vaillons, Forêts, Butteaux, and the grand crus, Valmur and Clos, have already been certified for nearly a decade.) Regardless of the increase, the wines present even more value because Romain continues to quietly raise his own quality bar above most of those in Chablis. Collet is one of Chablis’ most consistent growers. I’m not saying that just because we import them. This is coming from a Chablis lover and drinker of nearly thirty years, and I want you, likely another fan of this appellation, to know. Throughout Collet’s forty years of working with one of the US’s most historically important French wine importers, Robert Chadderdon, they were considered one of the appellation’s top domaines. Today, the wines are even better under Romain’s direction—along with the improvement in corks! In cold years they’re classically tight and fine with more thrust than expected. In warm ones, they continue to impress and often taste like a Chablis-Côte d’Or hybrid without losing the classic Chablis mineral nuances, tension, and tighter framing. This consistency in warmer years shouldn’t surprise us given that their average vine age is well over fifty years and they’re tended to by a family with a decorated history of growing grapes since 1792. After taking the helm at twenty-one years old and still only in his thirties, Romain Collet often mentions his luck. His grandfather, Jean Collet, replanted most of the family’s vines before he retired, and their collection of 40 hectares of vineyards is enviable, especially their massive premier cru holdings in Montmains and Vaillons. When Romain is a grandpa himself, his premier cru and grand cru stable will likely average 80-90 years old. Lucky for him indeed, and for us. Collet’s style is not that of razor-sharp Chablis, and one only needs to spend time drinking with the family to know why their wines express weight and balance somewhere between Chablis and the Côte d’Or. They drink a ton of Côte d’Or whites and reds and even more Chablis and Champagne. They’re not only Chablis-minded, they’re also Burgundy-minded on a global level. I had the pleasure of dining with one of the wine world’s most well-educated and respected writers a few years ago. At one point, I said that I appreciate that Collet isn’t uniformly formulaic in their approach in the cellar with each vineyard. They do things differently with each site based on the location’s assets. The writer thought the contrary, that the lack of consistent cellar styling in the range—as in everything in steel, or everything in wood, or everything in whatever—is what holds them back from full recognition. I went quiet. Not because I didn’t have a follow-up argument, but because I like and admire this person and wanted to continue to enjoy our conversation. I would ask, why should a grand cru with 80cm of clay before bedrock be treated the same in the cellar as the premier cru Montmains with only rock and organic matter and no clay at all? Does it make sense that a pure rock vineyard should get the same vessel treatment as a heavy clay vineyard? I think not. The genius and versatility after two hundred years of passed down knowledge from working in the vines, three generations of winemaking from Jean to Gilles to Romain, and their constant tasting and drinking wines from outside of Chablis, make Domaine Jean Collet stand out. They also spend a tremendous amount of time in Japan and other markets selling and eating and drinking well, which is not something every grower does. Romain continues to make wines that build on the traits and qualities of each site, rather than an inflexibility (and what some may consider a lazy approach) for the benefit of the terroirists who expect Burgundy domaines to have particular earmarks from a universal cellar style, which Collet does have but with their own unique flourishes. They break the modern Burgundian mold by vinifying some wines in steel, some in large old foudre (80hl), amphora, concrete vats and eggs, and mostly used wood. In fact, the only wine with any first-use oak is their Sécher (also spelled Séchet and Séchets). Due to all that woodiness, we haven’t imported a single bottling of Sécher since the first vintage of their wines we imported, in 2007. Sécher has become an ongoing joke between us: Will Romain eventually break me down until I import this 100% new oak wine? Sometimes it’s compelling, but there’s almost no chance. (Though at least in 2021 they put half of it in amphora.) I’m glad they put all the new oak barrels on that single cuvée instead of tainting numerous wines in the range with it—kind of a genius move if you ask me. I’ve learned so much while tasting Collet’s wines that they’ve made me a better taster, a better importer, and a more open-minded wine lover. Diversity is one of their truest assets; it keeps things interesting, not only for us but also for them. Each of their wines has a mood, and if you know what to expect because you’ve done your research on each terroir, you can almost anticipate how Collet will work with it in the cellar and how the final wine will taste: rockier sites get big, neutral aging vessels while those with more clay age in smaller format barrels in order to “sculpt the clay,” and as mentioned, none of the wood is new with any wine except Sécher. The constant cellar tweaking guided by Romain’s supertaster talent (he won an under-25 national blind tasting competition in France at age 19) leads to the baby steps we’ve witnessed over the years as they better their range each season, come hail, frost and extreme heat. Coming off the more opulent profiles and less acidic snap of the previous six vintages, 2021 has a more classic balance. Led with savory herbs, sweet grass, delicate pastureland floral notes, taut but sweetly aromatic yellow-green citrus, high-toned stone fruit, iodine and flint mineral nuances, this has been my favorite vintage in overall style since those of more than a decade ago. It was a tough year, but as mentioned, the growers in Chablis didn’t forget how to manage a cold, wet, and long season. Collet started picking at the end of September and finished on the sixth of October—late compared to recent vintages. Considering how late they picked after the loss of 30-40% of their 2021 crop to frost, which would theoretically speed up the maturation of the remaining fruit once the vines come out of their shock from the hail, this should still make it a strong vintage for those in search of what’s considered a truly classic style. If Collet’s 2021s are any indicator of what’s to come, the classicists will be very happy, even though there was chaptalization on many wines across the appellation to get them up past 12% alcohol with many picked so late, conditions that lead to potential alcohol of only 10.5-11.5%. Chaptalization was always a known element with classic Burgundy wines (pretty much every year that wasn’t a scorcher) but in the last warm decades we don’t talk about it much anymore; alcohol levels are naturally high because it’s gettin’ hot. I can’t be any more convinced about how this vintage is tailored to my personal taste. Consistent with my first cellar tastes and pre-bottling run, the first day open the 2021s exhibit a more delicate frame and are highly nuances with fine delineation, even if sometimes a little quiet—an undervalued quality these days of a freshly opened bottle that leads to an exciting journey of evolution if the proper time is granted. The acidity is present but not jarring, and the aromas are delightfully nostalgic for those who remember young Chablis from before 2000. (I can only go back to 1995 when I first discovered wine, and Chablis didn’t cross my path for about a year after that when I first went into a Scottsdale Arizona wine shop called Drinkwaters, where the owner, whom was either an Aussie or a Brit, kindly walked me over to his dusty wood bins filled with old Dauvissat, thereby sending me on my Chablis journey.) After only five minutes Collet’s 2021s begin to ascend, and they don’t stop. The problem is to try to save some for the next day to see how they extend their depth. On day two, they flesh out and become even more harmonious. Few made it to day three, but at this stage in their evolution, they seem invincible. It’s a pity that wines like these are finished so quickly when their best moments, as with any good wine, are far more than two hours after they’re opened. As a side note, I had many bottles of Collet’s 2019s this summer. Butteaux and Valmur started out with pronounced wood notes upon first taste and prompted me to recork them and put them back in the fridge where they remained in the penalty box for a day or two. But after that, they were simply awesome, and if blinded at that time, many experienced tasters might easily place Butteaux as a grand cru and Valmur’s classification was unmissable for any taster that made it as far as Chablis. On day one, Montmains, Vaillons and Montée de Tonnerre showed very well. And on day three, all the 2019s were equally stunning. This leads me to believe that this vintage has the guts to cellar well and wade its way out of the rich weight of such a solar-powered year and rest solidly on its unusually high acidity for such a warm year. Before the brief overview of each wine and their respective terroir elements that influence the distinction inside this group of wines, there are a few universal commonalities. They all go through natural fermentation and complete malolactic fermentation. All are lightly filtered and fined, and most, if not all, are below 13% alcohol this year. None of the wines we import are aged with first-use oak barrels in the mix, though some, like the grand crus, show nuances of newer wood notes in their first moments open because they receive mostly second and third-year wood. Those wines with rockier soils generally are aged in more neutral vessels and those with a greater clay percentage and deeper soils are aged in futs de chêne—228L French oak barrels. We have our usual lineup of premier crus, starting with Montmains, a selection of fruit from the original Montmains lieu-dit that sits closest to the village, on the rockiest soils the Collet’s have for this designation. As one would expect from this topsoil-spare site, this is one of the most minerally wines in their range and Romain exemplifies its character with a steel élevage. 2021 is a season that pushes Montmains into even higher-toned territory and it’s more mineral than usual. Given the track record of Collet’s cellar-worthy wines, Montmains is one of their most successful. I’ve had bottles from the 1980s that have been stunning and are still at their peak. I believe this wine will age gorgeously for decades. Part of the Montmains hill is subdivided into two more well-known lieux-dits (that can be labeled as Montmains as well, though that seems rare these days), Forêts and Butteaux. Here we find more topsoil in both sites compared to the rows closer to the village. Les Forêts’ young vines usually prove to be the most exotic of their range while Butteaux with its old vines and heavier topsoil with massive rocks in the mix is one of the stoutest, and in a blind tasting, it could easily be mistaken for a grand cru on weight and power alone. The 2021 Les Forêts was fermented and aged in cement eggs. Just before bottling was the only time it was aromatically slightly closed, but still explosive and juicy sleek on the palate. After more than a year in bottle, it’s wide open now and shows well for days—always better on day two. The 2021 Butteaux was fermented in steel, then aged in old barrels (5-10 years old). It also had a closed nose right before bottling but a big mouthfeel of plush fruit, chalky tannins, and frontloaded texture. Today, it’s full, beautiful, and ready. Like all the 2021s, I expect these two to age very well in the cellar, and I cannot recommend enough that the classicists buy as much 2021 Chablis as possible. We’ll never know when another one like this will come around again. The long hill of Vaillons parallels Montmains just to the north, separated by Chablis village vineyards on the same Kimmeridgian marls as the premier crus but they face more toward the north—the sole reason for their village classification instead of being appointed premier cru status. Vaillons is often my “go-to” Chablis in Collet’s range of premier crus when I want a balance of everything, and 2021 is no exception. Just prior to bottling it was the most mineral-heavy in the entire range and a little tighter on the palate than the others. This is still the case with the two bottles I had over the summer. They are classically wound up and ready for a longer haul and a more patient drinker compared to Les Forêts and Butteaux. Its minerally asset is likely due to the rocky soil, and it has good body because of its 40% clay in the topsoil, which always keeps tension there no matter the vintage. The majority of the vineyard faces southeast with some parcels facing directly east, taking advantage of the morning sun with less of the baking evening summer and autumn sun. Though not as hot as the right bank with the grand crus facing more toward the west, it shows its breed with a constant evolution rising in the glass due to the many different lieux-dits parcels blended into it. I believe that Collet is the owner of the largest portion of vines on this expansive premier cru hillside, making for a sort of MVP character without anything missing due to the large stable of parcels to choose from. The Collets have the advantage with their fabulous collection of vineyards from both sides of the river, though most of their premier cru land is on the left bank. While the left bank wines close to the center of town could often be characterized as more mineral-dominant than those next to the village on the right bank, there are indeed exceptions. I’ve often said that Mont de Milieu is one of those wines that, though it’s on the right bank, it’s a little south of town and very left-bank in style compared to the grand crus and many of the other right-bank premier crus around the grand cru slope. There are also few who bottle Mont de Milieu. Over the years this wine has always been good but less impressive than many in Collet’s range, at least to me. These days, I lament the small quantities we are allocated (which, along with the small size of their parcels, has been locked in by our past purchases) because the most recent versions are starting to fight for top billing in the premier cru range. There is no doubt that the 2021 version of this wine is one of the best of the vintage in its youth, if not the top premier cru after bottling and more than a year afterward. We were severely shorted in 2021 on this wine and will cellar it for some years before releasing it with a batch of other aged 2021s. There is no greater call in the Chablis premier cru world than Montée de Tonnerre. Yes, it’s like a grand cru in some ways, mostly in how regal it is, but it is its own terroir as well. Positioned between Mont de Milieu and the grand cru slope, just a ravine away from Blanchots and Les Clos, it finds the balance with a gentler slope in many parts than the grand cru hillsides which have many different aspects and greater variability between the crus. For us mineral junkies, Montée de Tonnerre thrives best in the coldest years. In hot ones, the soil saves freshness but the mineral punch gets tucked further into the wine. While it’s celebrated so highly among Chablis, and people always talk about how much they love the “minerality” of Chablis, this cru is one I find to often be least dominated by strong mineral impressions compared to many of the other premier cru sites; it’s there, but it doesn’t particularly stick out by comparison. This is likely because of its greater soil depth before bedrock contact—especially the further one goes down the hill. One can see on a vineyard map that the bottom quarter of this hill, under the lieu-dit “Chapelot,” is not a premier cru classification, which is likely due to heavier soils at the bottom rather than its exposition. The same can be said about many of the grand crus with deeper topsoils: less mineral impression dominance and more horizontal, while those with shallower topsoils are more mineral heavy and vertical. 2021 highlights this super-second’s shortcoming on mineral qualities (of course, only within the context of other Chablis premier crus), and this year it’s off the charts. My recent tasting notes from a couple of bottles I drank this summer were the same as when I tasted them in the cellar just days before bottling. The short version: perfect balance with a bigger mineral nose and palate than usual, sweet greens, passion fruit, DELICIOUS!!! Like the grand crus, Montee de Tonnerre and Mont de Milieu are principally fermented and aged in two to three-year-old futs de chêne, with fewer older barrels in the mix. Collet also has (in very small quantities) the grand crus, Valmur and Les Clos. Their Valmur is situated at the top of the cru on its south side, facing northwest, which was less ideal for a grand cru decades ago but perfect for today’s shifting climate. Stout and minerally, I believe it to be one of the most consistently outstanding overall wines in our entire portfolio. The 2021 remains tropical but with bright and tense fruit. Valmur is a grand cru all the way, and 2021 should be the best year since the gorgeous 2012, which we tasted four months ago and found earth-shattering! Les Clos is its equal but gilded with Chablis’ royal trim and the sun’s gold, even in the cold 2021. The topsoil toward the bottom of the hill is deeper and richer, bringing an added advantage against the hydric stress of warmer years, but disadvantaged in fending off frost–though it’s the first to be protected when Jack comes to town. The 2021 is a little backward thus far (a good thing for such a young grand cru) and has a denser core than the Valmur. Les Clos also stands out of the range in style, leaning more toward the Corton-Charlemagne power and ripeness of fruit, golden color, and richness in body.