The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: 2006 Louis Latour Macon-Lugny Les Genievres

It's not often that one can find an $18 wine that will improve with age. These days, spend less than $30, and you'd better hurry up and drink it. It's as fruity and as interesting as it's going to get.

The Latour (about $18), though, is a welcome exception. It’s white Burgundy, which means chardonnay, and since it’s Macon, it means it wasn't aged in oak.

This wine is perfectly acceptable now, and the Wine Curmudgeon drank it last weekend (with mushroom and artichoke crepes – why are crepes so little appreciated?). It's still a little tight, with some spiciness typical of young white Burgundies. But let it sit for a year or two, and it will open up, becoming a fuller, richer, more complex wine. In fact, I’ll probably buy another bottle and let it sit for 12 months to see just what happens.

Technorati Tags: white wine,chardonnay,white Burgundy,Macon,Louis Latour

Roses: The good, the best, and the better

If it’s summer and you have $10, you can buy a pretty good rose – and sometimes even get change back. In fact, this may be the best rose season in memory. The Wine Curmudgeon can’t remember when he has seen more quality pink wine at an affordable price.

For some reason, the slowing economy and the weak dollar, which have pushed up a variety of other wine prices, haven’t done the same for rose. In addition, the “rose is hip, so let’s charge $20 a bottle” trend, which has been big the past couple of summers, seems to be running out of steam. There are still pink wines that cost that much, but the focus has returned to where it should be – quality stuff for $15 and much less.

Wine of the week: Robert Skalli South of France Chardonnay 2006

French wine, regardless of quality, has become ridiculously expensive. (Think weak dollar.) So when I tasted this chardonnay last week at a Skalli wine lunch, I could hardly wait to write about it.

It's well-made. It combines classic French style with a touch of New World green apple fruit. And, at $18, it's not ridiculously expensive.

How does winemaker Laurent Sauvage do it? He uses grapes from a less expensive region of France, the Languedoc, and can pick and choose which grapes to use to ensure the best quality. Because he is French, he understands the proper use of oak. Combine all that with vineyard management techniques that focus on maintaining acid levels instead of getting high alcohol, and you have a winner.

How big a hit was this wine? We had eight wines to choose from for lunch, and almost everyone picked the chardonnay. We ate it with chicken breasts in a dill sauce, and it was a smash.

Technorati Tags: Robert Skalli wines,chardonnay,white wine,French wine,the Languedoc,wine reviews

Wine of the week: La Vigne D'Argent 2005

The Wine Curmudgeon manages his inventory on some nifty software called CellarTracker, and one of its most interesting features is the ability to read what others write about wines that I've had. I especially enjoyed the comments for this wine.

It's not that other CellarTracker users didn't like the D'Argent, because they did. Rather, they were baffled by it. "Nice to experience a different kind of sauvignon blanc," wrote one. "I'm more familiar with 100 percent sauvignon blanc, and it was interesting to compare to this sauvignon blanc/semillon blend," wrote another.

In our increasingly review-oriented, score-driven wine world, the D'Argent (about $10) is an old-fashioned, very unhip kind of wine. Which means it's not going to be written up, which means people aren't going to try it. Which is a shame, because -- as the CellarTracker drinkers learned -- it's well worth trying. Forget about New Zealand sauvignon blanc  and grapefruit. This white Bordeaux has very little fruit flavor (maybe some lemon) and lots of flinty minerality -- all of which makes for a refreshing, food-friendly wine. It's what most sauvignon blanc was 15 years ago, and that's not a back-handed compliment by any means.

Serve it chilled with big summer salads, almost any shellfish, or grilled chicken marinated in garlic, herbs, and olive oil.

Technorati Tags: white wine,white Bordeaux,sauvignon blanc,La Vigne D'Argent

Father's Day wine suggestions

Call it barbecuing or grilling. Use a smoker or a gas grill or charcoal. Choose between beef or pork or chicken or vegetables. Regardless of which, though, it's part of the Father's Day tradition.

So what wine do you pair with kind of food? The classic pairing for grilled sausage is sweetish white wine like riesling or gewürztraminer. And the heartiest red meats, like grilled rib eye or smoked brisket, can take a hearty red wine.

But sometimes, how you’re cooking the food makes a difference. Grilled chicken marinated in olive oil, garlic and rosemary pairs with sauvignon blanc. But smoke that same piece of chicken with a dry rub, and it changes character entirely. Then, you’ll want a light red wine like a tempranillo or a beaujolais. And rose, of course, will go with almost everything except that grilled rib eye. The bright fruit complements barbecue’s smokiness quite nicely, in fact.

Tuesday tidbits 28

• Chinese wine drinkers: The price of high end wines just got a lot higher -- or it will, if all those newly wealthy Chinese wine drinkers throw their money around the way the experts expect they will. Or, as Reuters so poetically put it: "[T]he potential of the huge China market as a flood of newly minted consumers there chase Western lifestyle trends." One of the first tests of the Chinese willingness to overpay for wine is a key auction in Hong Kong this week, where a case of 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild could sell for $160,000.

• Siberian merlot, anyone? Just in case some of you were still wondering how global warming would affect the wine world, there is this from The Associated Press: "[B]y 2050, the world's premier wine-friendly zones could shift as much as 180 miles toward the poles." So long France, hello Quebec. Somehow, if and when global warming arrives, I think we'll have more important things to worry about than the quality of Siberian wine.

• Robert Mondavi: Much was written when Robert Mondavi died a couple of weeks ago, but one of the best pieces of writing didn't appear until last week, Jon Bonne's retrospective in the San Francisco Chronicle. It asks a key question: In a world where family wineries are being replaced by corporate labels, and with California so very full of its accomplishments, who will carry forward Mondavi's mission?

Technorati Tags: wine auctions,global warming and wine,Chinese wine consumers,expensive wine,Robert Mondavi

$70 wine: When is it really worth it?

I was drinking wine with a couple of friends last weekend and mentioned that they would enjoy the sparkling wine. One of them took a sip and said, yes, that was pretty good. But it doesn't taste like one of your $10 wines, she said. (Now I know how actors feel when they get stereotyped.)

The wine, of course, was not $10. It was Ruinart, perhaps my favorite bubbly and not cheap at all at $70. And, to add insult to injury to my reputation, the other bottle of wine that night was Domaine Borgeot Puligny-Montrachet Les Charmes 1999, which cost around $65.

Which raises the question: Is there something to these wines that makes them worth that much money? The answer is yes, but the point is not how much they cost, but what they deliver.

A handy guide to wine regions, part II

This is the second of two parts looking at ways to decipher the world's wine regions without making your head hurt. The first ran May 9.

A handy guide to wine regions, part I

This is the first of two parts looking at ways to decipher the world's wine regions without making your head hurt. The second part will run on Monday.

One of the most difficult concepts to get across about wine is the idea of wine regions. You can get someone to acknowledge  that wine is different depending on where it's from, but understanding that it is something else entirely. And I won't even mention there are more than 3,200 wine regions in the world.

Yes, they'll say, they realize cabernet sauvignon is different from merlot which is different from chardonnay. But doesn't all French wine (or California wine or whatever) taste the same?

No, it doesn't. But given how complicated wine regions can be -- Quick: Name the sub-AVAs within the Sonoma AVA -- and it's easy to see why people give up in confusion.

Which is why the Wine Curmudgeon exists. Wine geography does not have to be a barrier to buying and enjoying wine. It's helpful to know that the Rhone is divided into north and south, but not essential.

Wine of the week: Château LesTuileries Rouge 2005

Most wine drinkers see Bordeaux as a great black hole made up of wine speak, unimaginably high prices, and an incredibly complex system of chateaux and classifications.

Which makes this wine (about $15) all the more welcome. It's a merlot and cabernet sauvignon blend in the classic Bordeaux style, but without any of the pretensions noted above. Classic means it's not a fruit forward popsicle, full of blueberry and cola, like most inexpensive Californa merlots. Rather, it has less fruit, more earthiness, and tastes more interesting. I stumbled on this when I was looking for a red Bordeaux to use for my Cordon Bleu class tastings, and it more than filled the bill.

Serve it with most beef (hamburgers on the grill wouldn't be bad at all) and even some meatier vegetable dishes.

Technorati Tags: Chateau Les Tuileries.com,red Bordeaux,French wine,wine review