The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Domaine D'Arton Les Hauts 2011

Domaine D’Arton, a white blend from the Gascony region of France, is great cheap wine, even by the Wine Curmudgeon’s exacting standards. It’s not only on a level with the Gascon wines in the $10 Hall of Fame, but it also demonstrates that wine doesn’t have to come from the same old places and be made with the same old grapes.

The D’Arton ($9, purchased) is an odd blend, even for Gascony, made with mostly colombard and fleshed out with sauvignon blanc (not the region’s best grape) and gros manseng. The result is a dry white with some lemon peel in the front, yet underneath is that wonderful white grapiness that makes Gascon wines so distinctive and so much fun to drink. It's the kind of wine that doesn't require a critic or a sommelier; just a simple dinner or an evening on the porch, friends and conversation.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way, for all the doubters and chardonnay drinkers out there.

Is this a Thanksgiving wine? Is the Wine Curmudgeon a crank about cheap wine?

Planet Bordeaux II: More French wine you can afford

Anyone who says the French don’t understand social media or the importance of cheap wine need to note the Planet Bordeaux promotion that has been going on for the past couple of years. Almost all of the wines I’ve tasted as part of the campaign have been well made – several even better than that – and have cost around $10. Plus, we got to tweet about them.

Friday night’s Twitter tasting featured six whites and two roses. The Twitter conversation was quite lively, as these things usually are, I wasn’t able to add my curmudgeonly wisdom after the first couple; my Internet connection has been spotty for the past month or so, and it was up and down on Friday. Still, the wines were impressive – more, after the jump:

Planet Bordeaux Twitter tasting tonight

We’re doing eight French wines – six white and two rose, all costing less than $11. And who said wine prices were going up?

You can follow the tasting on Twitter at the #PlanetBordeaux hash tag or follow me at @wine_curmudgeon. (And, in one of those bits of irony that I appreciate, Moet & Chandon -- yes, that Moet -- follows me on Twitter now. Guess someone there needs a solid $8 bottle of wine when they're tired of all that $100 Champage.)

The event starts at 6 p.m. central. The Other Wine Guy, who recently celebrated the birth of his first granddaughter, will be on hand to help taste the wines, but he’ll probably make me do all the tweeting.

Those of you who prefer wine reviews that are longer than 140 characters can check out the blog on Monday, when I’ll post a more traditional account of the tasting.

Mini-reviews 41: Eurl Patrick, Fougeray de Beauclair, Chateau Massiac, House Band

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:

• Eurl Patrick Barrière Village 2010 ($10, purchased): I bought this wine because I didn’t expect it to be worth drinking (I am the Wine Curmudgeon, after all). But it wasn’t French bad – green and tannic. Instead, it was California bad – overripe and extracted, without tannins or acid, and made in the grocery store style.

• Fougeray de Beauclair Bourgogne 2009 ($20, purchased): Another attempt to find drinkable red Burgundy for less than $40 with mixed results. Slightly rustic (pencil lead on the front and a rough, interesting finish), but not much fruit, even for Burgundy, and a bit thin in the middle.

• Château Massiac Minervois 2008 ($15, sample): Surprisingly fresh and fruity (black cherry?) red blend from southern France that includes syrah. But still dark and almost brooding; I'm not sure how it would fare with Americans used to Central Coast merlot.

• House Band White NV ($10, sample): This white blend takes full advantage of California's plethora of cheap, quality grapes and solid winemaking skills. It's dry and fruity, but not overdone in any way.

Expensive wine 44: Jean-Marc Brocard Chablis Vau de Vey 2010

Those of you who insist on drinking chardonnay that tastes like it was flavored with vanilla and a national park full of oak trees can skip this review. The rest should pay careful attention.

That’s because this wine is chardonnay from the Chablis region of Burgundy in France that is made without oak and that takes the idea of unoaked chardonnay one step further. Regular visitors here know how much the Wine Curmudgeon appreciates white Burgundy, though Chablis sometimes gets short shrift given my preference to Montrachet.

This is not meant as a slight to Chablis, as the Brocard ($35, sample) demonstrates. This is classic Chablis -- clean, crisp, green apples -- at an incredible price. Everything that makes quality Chablis is here, from the minerality on the nose to the telltale acidity to the long finish. Best yet, this is a $35 wine that will age and only get better over the next couple of years as its fruit and acid blend and mellow. In this, it will demonstrate why a wine doesn’t always need oak to get better.

Serve this chilled with a classic bistro dinner – roast chicken, fried potatoes, garlicky green salad, and apple tart. And if you’re starting to wonder about holiday gifts, I know at least one wine drinker who would enjoy getting a bottle.

Mini-reviews 40: Red Newt, Rene Barbier, Quincy, Steelhead

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:

• Red Newt Cellars Semi-Dry Riesling 2011 ($15, sample): This New York white, which I tasted as part of a Finger Lakes Twitter event, didn’t have as much varietal character as I expected. More sweet than anything else, without enough fruit or minerality to balance the sweetness.

• René Barbier Mediterranean Rose NV ($5, purchased): The best of the three Rene Barbier wines (and the most difficult to find), made more like a New World rose with strawberry fruit. Highly recommended.

• Domaine du Adéle Rouzé Quincy 2010 ($20, purchased): French white from the Loire is imported by the always reliable Charles Neal. Lots and lots of lemon; the wine may require a little more time in bottle to even out. Needs food, and probably seafood (boiled or grilled shrimp, steamed mussels).

• Steelhead Red 2010 ($15, sample): California blend is heavy on the cabernet sauvignon, so it needs beefy food. But it has lots of character and oomph, as well as blackberry fruit and dusty tannins.

Wine of the week: Chateau Saint-Florin 2011

What makes this French white blend interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about it. It doesn’t have a cute label, no one wrote glowing prose about it, and there isn’t a hip and with it QR code. It doesn’t come from an especially fashionable region of France and it’s almost impossible to find any reference to it on the Internet.

None of which matters in the least. The Saint Florin ($10, purchased) is a solid and sturdy white Bordeaux, a blend of semillon and sauvignon blanc from the Entre-Deux-Mers area within Bordeaux – a part of France where dozens of wines like this are still made that offer value and quality. Call it an honest wine from Jean-Marc and Catherine Jolivet, who are fourth-generation winemakers from Soussac in Bordeaux and own another small producer in Entre-Deux-Mers.

The Saint Florin is fresh and clean, with some grassiness, a little citrus and a sort of stony finish. Plus, it's just 12 1/2 percent alcohol, and all of this makes it a terrific food wine. I paired it with with shrimp and linguine, and I don’t know that the result would have been all that much better with a more pricey Sancerre or a sauvignon blanc from Napa.