The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Little James' Basket Press NV

Here’s a challenge to the California wine business, and especially those who think the Wine Curmudgeon is too hard on it. Use your incredible resources and talent to make a wine like this – a non-vintage red – instead of the buckets and buckets of boring, fruit-juice grocery stone plonk that you do make.

Because this French effort is not just a great cheap wine, but a great wine. As the guy at the store said to me when I bought it: “This may be the best bottle we have,” and his store has bottles that cost hundreds and thousands of dollars.

The point is not that California can’t make a wine as interesting and delicious as the Little James ($10, purchased, 13.5%). Regardless of anything else, California is probably the world’s pre-eminent wine region – the best weather, the best winemakers, the most money to spend. Rather, it’s that it has spent so much effort training consumers to buy wine with the name of the grape and a vintage on the label that it can’t conceive of anything else. If it doesn’t say Merlot 2012, no one knows what to do.

But they should. The Little James comes from a top-notch Rhone producer that mixes wine made with old grapes and wine made from current vintage fruit. The result is a $10 Hall of Fame wine: Classic Rhone barnyard aromas, red grenache fruit, some spiciness, and more tannin and acid than I expected -- a rough, though not unpleasant, peasant finish that speaks to a more traditional style of winemaking. A food wine for barbecue and burgers; highly recommended.

Wine of the week: Domaine du Tariquet Classic 2011

My mom enjoys a glass of wine now and then, and I’d like to think that I’ve helped her with that. She reads the blog, and is better informed when she walks into a liquor store to buy a bottle.

Which is one of the reasons why the Tariquet ($10, purchased, 11.5%) is the wine of the week with Mother’s Day coming up. Yes, I’ve praised this wine many times before, and it has been in the $10 Hall of Fame since 2009. But its great strength – and I don’t know that I’ve emphasized this enough – is that it’s table wine the way it should be but isn’t often enough in this country. You don’t need to be a wine geek to enjoy it. You don’t need to have piles of money. You don’t need to read the Wine Magazines or to parse scores.

All you need is $10. Good wine shouldn’t be more difficult than that, should it?

This vintage of the Tariquet isn’t as grapey, which is one of the things I always enjoyed about it. Look for more citrus, probably because this year’s blend has sauvignon blanc in addition to ugni blanc and colombard, the classic grapes of Gascony. But the wine is still balanced, clean and fresh -- very well made and not only among the best cheap wines in France, but in the world. Highly recommended. Drink a toast to mom with it on Sunday; I know I will.

Wine of the week: Domaine de Cabasse Les Deux Anges 2009

Rhone wines remain a mystery to most American wine drinkers, and not just because they have very French names and are often difficult to find on store shelves. It’s also because they’re made with grapes that aren’t cabernet sauvignon and merlot; for most of us, that difference is enough so we’ll buy something else.

Case in point is the Deux Anges ($10, purchased, 13.5%). It’s made with grenache, syrah, and carignan, and the name – along with the almost Baroque-like angels on the label – is enough to turn off any U.S. consumer who expects to see a cute animal or marketing-driven name.

The wine itself, like so much cheap wine from the Rhone, is a revelation. It’s accessible, yet still tastes like the Rhone -- juicy red fruit from the grenache, lots of peppery spiciness, noticeable tannins, and a bit of a finish. But it isn't too rough, which is often the case with this style of wine – call it rustic, the kind of wine someone in a Van Gogh painting would drink. How often can you say that about California merlot?

It’s a grilled meat or cheese kind of wine; highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2014 $10 Hall of Fame.

Expensive wine 47: Etienne Sauzet Puligny-Montrachet 2006

During the publicity blitz for the Cheap Wine Book and the Kickstarter project (Q&A explaining how Kickstarter works; Kickstarter link; What the book is), I did a virtual talk show with a group in Napa Valley. One of the questions I got was why I drink only cheap wine; what did I have against expensive wine?

The Wine Cumurdgeon is so misunderstood.

I don't have anything against expensive wine. I even drink it myself when the occasion arises. My point is that we expect everyone to drink expensive wine, whether they want to or know anything about it instead of realizing the limitations involved. It's like learning to drive -- you don't start with a Lamborghini, do you?

In fact, I told the people on the show, I look for the same thing in expensive wine that I look for in cheap wine -- value. And the Sauzet ($50, purchased) delivers on this count over and over and over. It's chardonnay from the French region of Burgundy, and specficailly the area called Puligny-Montrachet. In this, the wines are elegant and always in such balance that it's almost impossible to believe.

Sauzet is just one of many excellent producers from the area. The 2006, which I've tasted three times, has changed -- and for the better -- each time. Always, it's a mix of green apple fruit, spiciness (cloves or white pepper?) oak nestled in the background, and the  minerality that defines this wine.

This would make a lovely gift for The Holiday That Must Not be Named, as well as for any dinner with someone you care about.

 

Mini-reviews 44: Knez, Leese-Fitch, Camelot, Paul Blanck

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month

• Knez Pinot Noir 2010 ($30, sample): California red was OK as far as it went, but not very interesting. The various parts were there – pinot smokiness and some black fruit – but something was missing.

• Leese-Fitch Sauvignon Blanc 2011 ($12, sample): A stunning grocery store white that I’d drink again -- just 13 percent alcohol and almost no fruit at all (for a California wine, anyway). Lots of grassiness on the aroma and an almost flinty finish.

• Camelot Chardonnay NV ($7, sample): Lots and lots of fake oak, though it does taste like California chardonnay if you like lots and lots of fake oak.

• Domaine Paul Blanck Riesling 2011 ($18, sample): Disappointing, especially considering how much I enjoy Alsace riesling. Too sweet for the alcohol level, and though it had the requisite amounts of petrol on the nose and soft, ripe white fruit, seemed out of balance.

Wine of the week: Domaine de Pouy 2011

This Gascon white wine set me up for a 2013 Curmudgie. I saw it in the store, and immediately doubted whether it would be any good, and for no reason other than I was being stupid.

A guy I know at the store talked me into buying it, and the first thing I did the next time I saw him was to apologize for being so cranky. What’s the most important rule in tasting wine? Drink it before you judge it.

The de Pouy ($10, purchased, 10.5% alcohol) is another amazingly fresh, almost grapey wine from Gascony, made with grapes used almost nowhere else in the world. It’s one of many Gascon wines I’ve praised over the past several years, many of which are in the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame.

What sets the de Pouy apart is a green apple sort of citrus note that balances everything and takes the wine where most $10 wines don’t go. Yes, it’s a simple wine, but the best simple wines, like this one, aren’t overdone or insulting. That’s what makes them interesting.

Highly recommended; chill it and drink on its own, or with almost any kind of food that isn’t red meat, a cream sauce, or spaghetti. It should stay in the Hall as long as it costs $10 -- and as long as I don’t judge it before I drink it.

Two old-fashioned French wines for the holidays

In which the Wine Curmudgeon enjoyed two reasonably priced wines from Burgundy, a red and a white, that didn’t taste like they were made with the wrong grapes or came from California. In this case, old-fashioned does not mean outdated or not worth drinking. More, after the jump: