Appellation Feiring
What am I looking for in wine? I'm looking for the Leon Trotskys, the Philip Roths, the Chaucers and the Edith Whartons of the wine world. I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue. With this messiah thing going on, I'm trying to swell the ranks of those who love the differences in each vintage, who abhor homogenization, who want wines that make them smile, think, laugh,and feel sexy. For better or worse, it seems as if I am a wine cop traversing the earth, writing and speaking my mind, drinking and recommending wines that are honest. Please check in frequently for news of my latest travels, travel, wine tips and rants.
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5 hours 52 min agoJune 11, 2010
15:00
The Ardeche
In the intro to The Battle, I mused that in the screenplay version of the book, I'd find a secret enclave of extreme winemakers. Together, we'd hook up and deliver purity back to mankind and wine. I thought that plot turn might have happened in a Loire limestone cave. I was wrong. The band of wooley vignerons most likely are in the Ardeche, the long stretch of interior Rhone land that stretches from south to north. Within that area, they possibly not only exist in my imagination but in the 250 meter high up . I went up there for the night with La Gramiere's Amy Lillard, who's vines were minutes away from bursting into flower and who's husband helped me find the source of the tumeric scent. We arrived an hour and- a -half late, never the less, with some good nature, Andrea Calek, bare-chested, shimmering with beads of sweat, fresh from the vines, slinked towards us in sarong like trousers, as if he were some exotic lemur ....
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
June 7, 2010
15:01
Rhone Aromatic Secrets
Jet lagged, I teetered out the train station, Matt Kling, Amy Lillard's husband picked me up in Avignon. So far, I've been to the station twice in my life but never set foot in that much touristed city. On the way to their house we stopped off so I could see the progress in the La Gramiere vineyard. All lush, beautiful and happy, the grenache seemed perky and pleased to be luxuriating in their hard limestone habitat. Wild mint, thyme filled the air. And then this curry. The curry I smelled in Chateauneuf when I thought someone was cooking but it was in the air. We went around the vineyards like pigs, rooting around for the culprit. Found! So exciting. Sorry for the inarticulateness, I could barely talk english. I was in need of caffeine, wine and food, but at least I got a good whiff....
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
June 6, 2010
06:05
In Which Our Heroine Meets With MrBigJ
Maybe it's because Neptune and Saturn and Mars and Uranus are pulling their shots but after I came back from California, I thought someone was playing a joke on me. That person was Fred Dexheimer, past sommelier and present cocktail wine ambassador and he send me as message through facebook. "I am w/ Dr Jay Miller in NYC. He is tasting thru 700 wines this week. He mentioned you yesterday and wanted to meet for a drink! I am not kidding! Would you like to meet him?" I had been seeing Fred's updates telling of his tasting through Chilean wines with Wine Advocate critic, Dr. Jay Miller and when this note popped up I was positive Fred was kidding. If Jay Miller, one of Bob Parker's best friends wanted to meet me, he probably would pack a gun. I started to look for that flak jacket I bought after my anti-Californian wine editorial a couple of years back. Several more emails later, I realized both Fred and Jay were serious. 'Ten Bells!' I threw down the challenge, thinking at least I'd have some defenders around me. 'Ten Bells it is!' Fred wrote back, then added, as long as there was...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
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June 4, 2010
00:00
The First Natural Kosher Winemaker? Part #3
Could this man who lives and vines in Santa Cruz become the world's first modern natural wine maker? He is certified organic, in a do nothing way. He picks when there's still acidity. He keeps the cap wet twice a day by bucketing over as well as punching. down. He doesn't use sulphur until after malo is finished--which he neither blocks or initiates. He is pulling back on oak but he does like the taste. Okay. But what he thinks is oak is another's stainless. He racks to bottle, done. Yup, he mostly adds yeast, but all he has to do is go native and then... But Benyamin has other concerns that conventional winemakers do not. What happens when the Jewish Holidays come along--as they always do--right in the middle of a ferment? "Yom Tov comes during the harvest almost all the time," he said, " I think G-d designed it to be a communal event. It's part of the 'tallying up' the spirit of the season (RH&YK) as well as zman simchatenu (Succos). Then, I just cover up the fermentation and go to shul, come back two days later and continue where I left off. From time to...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
00:00
The First Natural Kosher Winemaker? Part #3
Could this man who lives and vines in Santa Cruz become the world's first modern natural wine maker? He is certified organic, in a do nothing way. He picks when there's still acidity. He keeps the cap wet twice a day by bucketing over as well as punching. down. He doesn't use sulphur until after malo is finished--which he neither blocks or initiates. He is pulling back on oak but he does like the taste. Okay. But what he thinks is oak is another's stainless. He racks to bottle, done. Yup, he mostly adds yeast, but all he has to do is go native and then... But Benyamin has other concerns that conventional winemakers do not. What happens when the Jewish Holidays come along--as they always do--right in the middle of a ferment? "Yom Tov comes during the harvest almost all the time," he said, " I think G-d designed it to be a communal event. It's part of the 'tallying up' the spirit of the season (RH&YK) as well as zman simchatenu (Succos). Then, I just cover up the fermentation and go to shul, come back two days later and continue where I left off. From time to...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
June 2, 2010
15:01
Kosher Vigneron. Part #2
Benyamin uses a basket press the size of a large White Mountain ice -cream handcrank. He also has one of the more Lilliputian crusher/destemmers I've seen, made from redwood, with gleaming metal dowels. The device cried out weaver's studio rather than winemaker's. In step with this otherworldliness, the labeler looked like a torah scroll. Stacked in the rear were fanciful-painted panels of his Sukkah --the temporary lean-to-like structure he dines alfresco in for the holiday, that marks the marathon of holy days in the fall. I'd landed in an unpublished chapter of I.B. Singer's In My Father's Court. I was somewhere in the refreshing Carpanthians, turning over rocks on the hunt for dybbuks and I could smell the wild strawberries and the freshly milked cows. But as the wind kicked some California dust into my nose and I realized I was quite far from the Polish mountains and wild berries and nymphs and spirits of the forest. I was merely in a Santa Cruz contradiction. "Please don't touch anything, or we'll have a disaster," Benyamin instructed. To preserve the kosher status of the winery, anything that gets a fingerprint must be a fingerprint from a Sabbath observer. The fact that...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
June 1, 2010
00:00
The Kosher Vigneron of Four Gates, part #1
The morning after the nettle pizza and face-lifted 1964 Faustino @ Chez Panisse cafe, with importers/distributors and friends, Jose Pastor, Keven Clancy (I've decided everyone in California is named Kevin) and his wife Gillian, Jose and I traveled to Santa Cruz on a mission--this county's and perhaps the worlds only frum kosher vigneron. I keep on thinking of that head winemaker of Moet Chandon I squared off with (not pretty) three years ago. He told me he wanted to be a winemaker because of the lifestyle. That is what the wine world has been reduced to. Lifestyle. And not because someone wants to be linked to the seasons and the land, but the dinners and the travel and the marketing and the richness, especially if you've landed at MH. Like, you think I wanted to be a writer because of the extravagant lifestyle? Likewise, even though he started this whole adventure just because he wanted to make his own kiddush wine, lifestyle was the last thing Benyamin Cantz had in mind when he ended up with Four Gates Winery and certified organic vineyards. His first commercial vintage was 1997. Jose drove up a petite mountain and hooked off the main...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
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The Kosher Vigneron of Four Gates, part #1
The morning after the nettle pizza and face-lifted 1964 Faustino @ Chez Panisse cafe, with importers/distributors and friends, Jose Pastor, Keven Clancy (I've decided everyone in California is named Kevin) and his wife Gillian, Jose and I traveled to Santa Cruz on a mission--this county's and perhaps the worlds only frum kosher vigneron. I keep on thinking of that head winemaker of Moet Chandon I squared off with (not pretty) three years ago. He told me he wanted to be a winemaker because of the lifestyle. That is what the wine world has been reduced to. Lifestyle. And not because someone wants to be linked to the seasons and the land, but the dinners and the travel and the marketing and the richness, especially if you've landed at MH. Like, you think I wanted to be a writer because of the extravagant lifestyle? Likewise, even though he started this whole adventure just because he wanted to make his own kiddush wine, lifestyle was the last thing Benyamin Cantz had in mind when he ended up with Four Gates Winery and certified organic vineyards. His first commercial vintage was 1997. Jose drove up a petite mountain and hooked off the main...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
May 30, 2010
00:00
The NPA Tasting Room Opens
Kevin Kelley, winemaker for Lioco and his own, Salinia, and masterminded NPA (which kicked off the wine within 100-miles fresh direct deliviery in a can craze.) Swell wines. Swell guy. The '09 Sauvignon blanc is brill, even though he said he made it because he never had a California SB he fell in love with. We talked about what is a natural wine, the struggle, the definition, but I'm sitting on that one for another post. Most people think that he's dogmatic about no sulfur, but if the wine needs it, an the volatility goes nuts, or oxidation seems out of control he'll dose, starting at 10 parts per million and then he'll wait. Unlike Gideon he uses liquid S02, 6%, because it's easy to control. He never uses powder because he doesn't want the potassium. To add a touch of spice he recently opened his after-hours tasting room in his not too cozy industrial part in Santa Rosa. NPA going to be the only tasting room in an industrial park? Stop by for some Salinia or NPA--bring in your cans for a refill or buy new ones. Whatever. Friday & Saturday all day and on Thursday PM, stop...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
00:00
The NPA Tasting Room Opens
Kevin Kelley, winemaker for Lioco and his own, Salinia, and masterminded NPA (which kicked off the wine within 100-miles fresh direct deliviery in a can craze.) Swell wines. Swell guy. The '09 Sauvignon blanc is brill, even though he said he made it because he never had a California SB he fell in love with. We talked about what is a natural wine, the struggle, the definition, but I'm sitting on that one for another post. Most people think that he's dogmatic about no sulfur, but if the wine needs it, an the volatility goes nuts, or oxidation seems out of control he'll dose, starting at 10 parts per million and then he'll wait. Unlike Gideon he uses liquid S02, 6%, because it's easy to control. He never uses powder because he doesn't want the potassium. To add a touch of spice he recently opened his after-hours tasting room in his not too cozy industrial part in Santa Rosa. NPA going to be the only tasting room in an industrial park? Stop by for some Salinia or NPA--bring in your cans for a refill or buy new ones. Whatever. Friday & Saturday all day and on Thursday PM, stop...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
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Gideon Bienstock on Sulfur Addition and Natural Wine
(more Gideon Bienstock from Clos Saron) Where Renaissance is all grandeur of things past, Gideon's place was almost back on the kibbutz. Vines surround his house. He's a farmer who borrows from all philosophies. I'd be interested to see the soil in the heat and drought of summer, after the flowers drain from life. Gideon adds a smallish amount of sulfur at the fermenter and then never again. ' At first I was nervous the way I was about not inoculation. To some degree it is dangerous. When we released an 03 pinot, we had a party. I was pouring it, tasted it, I realized it had a problem, lactic spoilage, the finish was this mousy, dirty. We pulled it off the market--all 20 cases---and started to watch. After four months the wine gradually started to recover. We served it two weeks ago, we sold every bottle. I began to see that sometimes the wines show problems immediately but so far, everything has rebounded. At times I've thought am I crazy? Don't I want the safety of another shot so there's not bottle variation? For me the answer is seeing the wine before and after, sulfur would clarify the...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
00:00
Gideon Bienstock on Sulfur Addition and Natural Wine
(more Gideon Bienstock from Clos Saron) Where Renaissance is all grandeur of things past, Gideon's place was almost back on the kibbutz. Vines surround his house. He's a farmer who borrows from all philosophies. I'd be interested to see the soil in the heat and drought of summer, after the flowers drain from life. Gideon adds a smallish amount of sulfur at the fermenter and then never again. ' At first I was nervous the way I was about not inoculation. To some degree it is dangerous. When we released an 03 pinot, we had a party. I was pouring it, tasted it, I realized it had a problem, lactic spoilage, the finish was this mousy, dirty. We pulled it off the market--all 20 cases---and started to watch. After four months the wine gradually started to recover. We served it two weeks ago, we sold every bottle. I began to see that sometimes the wines show problems immediately but so far, everything has rebounded. At times I've thought am I crazy? Don't I want the safety of another shot so there's not bottle variation? For me the answer is seeing the wine before and after, sulfur would clarify the...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
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May 29, 2010
06:05
The Search For The American Vigneron: Gideon Bienstock
(In where our authoress goes rambling) *** I have a difficult time accepting the reality of California's new world---the industrial approach to winemaking, the surrogate mother approach to winemaking, the disconnected approach to winemaking. And so I was on a mini-mission to find more like Hank, people who grow their own grapes, till (or no til) their own soil, prune their own vines (or most of them) and then make their one wines. To hell with local and industrial, if it's local and hand tended, I'm interested. So that's how I happened on Gideon Bienstock a few years back. Over the years we corresponded. When I wrote theirrigation story for the SF Chronicle he and I had a very interesting dialogue and I find myself always using the below passage. **The very best fruits I have ever tasted were found in a deserted experimental farm established by the Russians in the Sinai desert. The trees (apricots, peaches, apples) were left unirrigated and unattended for years in the desert dunes. They were stunted, crippled, more like half-dwarfed bushes than like the trees we know, but the fruits, cherry- size apples and peaches - were so incredibly intense and concentrated in flavors,...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
May 28, 2010
00:00
On the Road to Natural Wine
Did you ever ride down from Lyon to the Rhone on the motorway and there past the toll is Vienne and its cliffs, granite, that shock back the sun. This was the same feeling I had when I first made the drive up those Sierre footed hills to the Beckmeyer grape and goat residence. There's terroir in those hills. And, Hank is a the medium that puts it into bottle. I talk alot about Hank Beckmeyer and I don't want to beat this one into the ground, but anyone reading my blog knows that I think he is extremely talented and wise as a winemaker. Those vines were quite different than in August. It was green. There were flowers. There was a lush, sensual wildness to it, screaming..... BRING ON ZERO SUMMER. Filled with bumble bee fresh clover and stinging sage, crushing profoundly underfoot. And the vines looked robust and dewey and almost prepared to take on the summer drought and deprivation. The day was cold, I wore mittens. And then we went to see Hank's new toys. Outside Caro, who is sort of taking a year off from making cheese (and our palates are screaming in protest) was feeding...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
May 26, 2010
00:01
Fizz-Geek Alert. Bermejos, non-dosage
Ever since I visited Walla Walla and spent a few days pondering porous volcanic rock with geologist Kevin Pogue I've been intrigued with its strange, coral-like texture and possibilities for grape growing complexity. I mean, yes on limestone, slate, schist and granite, but might not basalt also fit into to the parameters of great terroir? So there I was, about to leave San Francisco. And it wasn't merely the bread or the ginger shortbread cookies from The Cheese Board (which I forgot to get) or the amazing meal at Chez Panisse cafe (1998 LDH rosado!), or hanging out with sweet Luc @ Terroir or meeting Collin-Peter Casey and nodding my head over his inventive wine list at Baker & Banker, or having lousy Thai food, or seeing dawn reach across the bay with Venus disappearing... but, I was leaving in all of this sweet bitterness. At that moment the pop flew on a fancy bottle of Bermejos, a non-dosage, 100% Malvasia from basalt riddled Lanzarote, one of the strange, windy Canaries, closer to Africa than to Spain. They deal with the vine and the wind by either sinking nest like vines in craters ( mimicking the volcanic hills) or building...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
00:01
Fizz-Geek Alert. Bermejos, non-dosage
Ever since I visited Walla Walla and spent a few days pondering porous volcanic rock with geologist Kevin Pogue I've been intrigued with its strange, coral-like texture and possibilities for grape growing complexity. I mean, yes on limestone, slate, schist and granite, but might not basalt also fit into to the parameters of great terroir? So there I was, about to leave San Francisco. And it wasn't merely the bread or the ginger shortbread cookies from The Cheese Board (which I forgot to get) or the amazing meal at Chez Panisse cafe (1998 LDH rosado!), or hanging out with sweet Luc @ Terroir or meeting Collin-Peter Casey and nodding my head over his inventive wine list at Baker & Banker, or having lousy Thai food, or seeing dawn reach across the bay with Venus disappearing... but, I was leaving in all of this sweet bitterness. At that moment the pop flew on a fancy bottle of Bermejos, a non-dosage, 100% Malvasia from basalt riddled Lanzarote, one of the strange, windy Canaries, closer to Africa than to Spain. They deal with the vine and the wind by either sinking nest like vines in craters ( mimicking the volcanic hills) or building...
Categories: Wine Blogs in English
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