After our visit to Thierry Richoux in Irancy, we returned to Préhy to drop Andrea off for some much needed rest. Ted and I paused beside a war memorial across from the Airbnb and stared at it with solemn fascination. In many towns and often on the side of the road, there are statues and monoliths to commemorate each of...[ read more ]
We headed back over the hills toward Provence, passing through Montpelier and Nîmes again. Our goal was to visit a small producer who does a great ten dollar organically farmed wine that Ted said, “tastes alive,” which he had just a couple days earlier mentioned was nearly impossible for such a cheap bottle. So he wanted to see the operation...[ read more ]
I woke at seven thirty and had finished demolishing a fresh pile of baguettes by eight, when we hit the road. Our destination for the day was Domaine du Pas de L’Escalette, in the Languedoc, a major wine producing region in the south of France that stretches from Provence up to the Pyrenees Mountains, with Spain along one border. Many...[ read more ]
On the night of our visit to Les Carrières de Lumières and Van Gogh’s asylum, dinner started at ten. By then I was starving and as luck would have it, it was yet another Provençal feast. There were as many oysters as I could eat, pulled from the Mediterranean, and they were delicious yet some of the saltiest I’d ever...[ read more ]
I went down to the kitchen on the morning at La Fabrique and there was a huge pile of baguettes that Sonya had brought from the baker’s long before I woke. It was a heaven of the best bread in the world and I wanted to just hug all the loaves to my chest like a cluster of little friends....[ read more ]
It was time to head south for Provence. We had a hundred and thirty-miles to go to reach the legendary La Fabrique, in Graveson, a place I’d heard Ted talk about for many years, and while it’s normally a two hour drive, it was the Friday before Easter, so we were looking at more like three. We quickly hit Los...[ read more ]
As evening approached, we were on our way to see Ted’s good friend Nico Rebut, a former sommelier of great talent and repute who has since become a very successful wine distributor in Paris. Each week, he makes the five-hour drive or train ride from the Alps to Paris, his primary market and where he also consults quite a few...[ read more ]
Ted comes from a deeply religious background and after he left the fold, he shifted his faith to that in nature, and he believes that the most conscious winemakers cede control to this bigger force. But as Masson had touched upon with his need for flexibility during tough times, this clearly presents a quandary when people need to pay the...[ read more ]
Masson took us to his production building and gestured quickly at his variety of medium-sized wine tanks (none of his wines are vinified or aged in oak barrels) before leading us into his cellar, a dark, ground-level little room adjacent to the one with all the equipment. The walls were roughly spackled, with rounded corners to the ceiling, giving a...[ read more ]
Just to the south of Apremont is Mont Granier, a colossal roughly-hewn trapezoid of limestone with a thick evergreen forest at its base. Its sheer cliffs suggest the usual erosion and fall away, but in 1248, the entire twenty-three hundred foot north face of the mountain broke off. The resulting rockslide rumbled across many miles, destroyed five villages and killed...[ read more ]
On my third day I woke to find Ted and Andrea quietly pecking at their laptops in the living room, having already gone for a run down along the quays. I made myself some eggs and pod coffee, ate the last of our bread and not to be outdone, banged out a quick workout with my TRX in my room;...[ read more ]
We headed south toward Mâcon, where we would sleep for the night before continuing on the next day to the Savoie department, up in the French Alps. It was a straight shot and about an hour to our destination, through mostly flat and featureless fields. A high point came when we reached a tollbooth and Ted achieved a small and...[ read more ]
Crédoz took us back to his house, a 300-year-old cement-faced structure with slatted shutters, which he planned to renovate soon and turn into a bed and breakfast. I thought the change a good idea, since the building was a bit homely and seemed hastily built, an appraisal that Crédoz seemed to share. But it stood over the real attraction: the...[ read more ]
As the road into the Jura Mountains got steeper, a cliff loomed to our left like a slanting wall of neatly stacked flagstones, done by some midcentury architect with a sense of humor. Each layer of limestone had been laid down as sediment over countless years and then striated vertically every foot or so as the mountain pushed skyward. We...[ read more ]
I meant to write something about my experience in Corsica last year, but I was overwhelmed and couldn’t get it together. I went with my wife, Andrea, and Emmanuel (Manu) Gagnepain, a very well-respected enologist and viticulturist who quietly consults with a large helping of top clients in Corsica—Abbatucci, Vaccelli and Sebastian Poly are a few highlights. We made twelve...[ read more ]
The first leg of our trip that started in Champagne and ended in Paris was marked by a lot of rain and cold—sometimes freezing temperatures, and our last days in the Loire Valley were no exception. We started with a fantastic visit with Francis Crochet and one of the world’s most interesting viticulturists, François Dal. We discussed different soils in...[ read more ]
After four solid days of wine tasting, great hospitality and excesses (mostly with the Collets) in Chablis, we are off to the Loire Valley tomorrow to visit François Crochet and a new producer in Pouilly-Fumé. Chablis was as great as usual and the group we visited is optimistic about 2018. Why optimistic so early? Because it’s still cold! The last...[ read more ]
Our morning started at Domaine Simon Bize with Chisa Bize. This domaine has always had one of my favorite labels in Burgundy and it would've been one of the last I'd ever hoped for a change. Chisa pulled out some bottles to taste and lo and behold a new label! Somehow she managed to improve what was already a timeless...[ read more ]
It’s week two of our ten weeks in Europe visiting our producers and things are going well. Today we sampled the very promising 2016s from the Côte d'Or with Maxime Cheurlin, Amélie Berthaut and Bruno Clair. Bruno Clair is letting more and more whole cluster sneak into his wines these days. Every 2016 we tasted was singing from the first barrel to the...[ read more ]
After a great first week in France, we continue with another solid day in Burgundy. Anne Morey (of Pierre Morey) gave us a preview of the 2017 vintage. According to her father, the legendary Pierre, it could be one of the best white vintages of his lifetime. That sounds good to me! Plus, it was my first time setting foot...[ read more ]
Greetings from Europe! J.D. Plotnick (my travel partner for the next three weeks) and I arrived in France and had a good first day back on the wine trail. First, we had two enlightening visits in Champagne, one with Sébastien Mouzon (Mouzon-Leroux) and another who shall remain nameless until we can get him to sell us some wine—fingers crossed! We...[ read more ]
Over the last couple of decades, despite the persistent churn of changing wine trends, some vignerons steadfastly affirmed their terroir vows. No matter how unappealing their honestly crafted wines were to some, these vignerons resisted the temptation to cater to critics that awarded high scores to hulking wines and so were lost in the shuffle during those darker days of...[ read more ]
Remington Norman’s book, Rhone Renaissance, hit the shelves in 1995, at the apex of wine’s age of extraction—a time when bigger became better and subtlety was drowned out by the dark and unnaturally dense. I recently dusted it off and smiled as I thumbed through the names and pictures of producers whose legends have since skyrocketed. Then I came...[ read more ]
This month’s shipment is perfect for August, and, no, it’s not crisp whites or juicy rosés. Rather, it’s all red wine. Hot as the days may be, if you’re like us, you’re keeping your kitchen cool by cooking outside and these reds are the kind of savory, spicy, meaty wines that perfectly accompany grilled or barbecued foods with a little...[ read more ]
During the last Ice Age meltdown, the Rhône flowed torrentially through today’s Northern Rhône Valley. It stripped chunks from the eastern edge of the Massif Central and left few remnants of its granite soils on the left bank, which are exposed in the northern part of Crozes-Hermitage as well as Hermitage’s western flank. Directly south of Hermitage, an expansive alluvial...[ read more ]
If we were posted up at the local wine bar together and I turned to you and said, “Are you familiar with Tegernseerhof, Weszeli, and Malat?” you might think I was talking about some art-rock group from the 1970s, or perhaps a Soviet agitprop theater troupe. Well, Tegernseerhof, Weszeli, and Malat are, indeed, from the East, just not that far....[ read more ]
On our way back down to Leo’s improvised shelter, Andrea and I debated if we had time to taste Leo’s wines because we had to drive back to Santiago. It was past five and what would normally take five hours to drive in any normal car would take us seven. We knew we’d have to take it easy out of...[ read more ]
Welcome to the June club, which features three wines from three producers. The wines have many differences, but, more crucially, they have a few things in common. This month’s exploration is perhaps a bit less technical than in past clubs, but it’s no less interesting. Best of all, the wines are delightful. Actually, “delightful” may be too limiting, perhaps depriving...[ read more ]
“You need to find the proper mother for your wines… and a vineyard’s geology is the number one consideration,” Pedro said, as we drove towards his vineyards in Guarilihue. What was true 450 years ago when the Spanish Conquistadors settled in Concepcion is still true today. They recognized that Itata was a perfect mother for their vineyards because of the soil...[ read more ]
Pedro held out a slab of granite that had decomposed almost completely into some kind of dense mudstone. Each mineral crystal was in place as if it were still solid rock. It was amazing; the soil was completely eroded in place. The rock bent a little before breaking with very little effort. It was a fragile soil that was...[ read more ]
Off-roading through a bumpy, hilly and winding dirt road for what seemed an eternity, we headed into the Itata Valley wilderness, our destination an ancient granite vineyard surrounded by pine and eucalyptus. Along the way we were joined by one of Pedro’s grape growers, Juan Palma. Juan comes from a family with a 300-year-old lineage, centuries of passed down vineyard...[ read more ]
As Pedro said, “Chile is deeply wrong with wine,” the tempo of the Wayne Shorter seemed to pick up. “Chile has a great geology, with different climates, but the wines are mostly the same… but in a bad way,” he said , pushing his glasses up the ridge of his nose (he does this about every minute while he...[ read more ]
In early January of 2017, Andrea and I left Chile’s capital, Santiago, to meet the renowned terroirist Pedro Parra for the first time. Five hours into our drive, we exited Ruta 5 at Chillán to leave Chile’s long Central Valley and drive west, away from the breathtaking Andes, which form the border with Argentina. We continued toward the Pacific...[ read more ]
Welcome to the April edition of the club! This month we have wines and a theme that are not only near and dear to our heart, the wines and theme are near and dear to each other. That is, the wines are Chablis, and the theme is rocks. If there’s a wine that appears to more transparently regard its soils...[ read more ]
The two prevailing names for zucchini suggest a split personality. The Italian name, which we obviously employ in the U.S. too, Zucchini, is a sort of silly word that sounds a bit like a clown who performs at kids’ birthday parties. (Oh, yes, there it is: http://www.zucchinibrothers.com/ ) On the other hand, the name favored by the French and English,...[ read more ]
