Tag Archives: red Burgundy

Ask the WC 27: Pandemic wine sales, red Burgundy, wine competitions

pandemic wine
Binge drinking during the pandemic, baby!

This edition of Ask the WC: What’s the truth behind pandemic wine sales? Plus, looking for reasonably-priced red Burgundy and judging wine competitions

Because the customers always have questions, and the Wine Curmudgeon has answers in this irregular feature. You can Ask the Wine Curmudgeon a wine-related question by clicking here.

Hey, WC:
You keep insisting there hasn’t been been a spike in drinking during the pandemic, but I see stories all over the place that we’re drinking more at home than ever. What’s the truth?
Baffled

Dear Baffled:
There are a couple of things going on. First, alcohol sales in the U.S. are difficult to measure, since companies like Nielsen mostly only record sales at large retailers. So thousands and thousands of independents aren’t surveyed, and neither are most restaurants or wineries. So while supermarket wine sales did increase, no one knows about independents, and we do know that winery and restaurant sales tanked. The best guess comes from Silicon Valley Bank’s Rob McMillan, who says the gains and losses in the various channels evened out. That’s a difficult concept for most reporters to understand, and especially when the bosses frown on them doing actual reporting. So when they see a survey that says, “Supermarket wine sales up 40 percent,” they write that we’re all drunk. Second, many of the medical studies, including the one in your link, rely on the dreaded “Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test” — the one that defines wine with dinner as borderline alcoholism. Of course, given that definition, we’re binging ourselves to death.

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Dear WC:
I have never had a bottle of red Burgundy, the French pinot noir, since I’m put off by the high prices. Is there an American pinot noir that is comparable to the French? Or a reasonably-priced French red Burgundy that is easy to find? I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount, but when it gets into the hundreds of dollars, I can’t do it.
Looking for value

Dear Value:
That’s one of the great dilemmas in wine today, made worse by the tariff. There’s really nothing like red Burgundy in California, though Patricia Green and Panther Creek in Oregon have wines in the mid-$20s that are close, but only close. Anything decent for red Burgundy is going to start at $40, and even then there’s no guarantee. This is one of those areas where you need a local independent who can help.
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Dear Wine Curmudgeon:
I haven’t seen anything on the blog lately about you judging wine competitions. Used to like to read about all the wine you had to taste. What’s up with that?
Curious

Dear Curious:
I’m mostly retired from judging wine competitions. I had cut back before the pandemic; tired of the travel, for one thing, as well as tasting 300 wines in two days. That starts to wear on one after a couple of decades. I may still do some regional events, though I will wait until we’re mostly rid of the pandemic. And, honestly, so many competitions are dominated by Big Wine these days that I’m one of the last people that organizers want to judge that stuff since I don’t give out a lot of gold medals.

Mini-reviews 127: Black Friday wine 2019

black friday wine 2019Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the fourth Friday of each month. This month: a terrific red Burgundy for Black Friday 2019

• Joel Gott Pinot Gris 2018 ($12, purchased, 13.2%): This Oregon white is mostly OK for what it is, with some lime fruit and what tastes like a little fizziness. But there are better made wines at this price.

• Toad Hollow Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 ($17, sample, 14.1%): This California red from Lodi is $12 or $13 worth of cabernet, which is not a bad thing. It’s reasonably well made, with with brambly berry fruit and almost cabernet tannins (though the oak is out of balance). But $17? Only in the premiumization universe.

• Domaine Thenard Givry Les Bois Chevaux 2012 ($20, purchased, 13%): A Premier Cru red Burgundy, the second highest classification, that actually tastes like red Burgundy (French pinot noir) at a tremendous price. It’s getting a touch thin, but still has earth, some forest floor, and telltale lovely red fruit. Imported by Beverly Imports

• Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais Nouveau 2019 ($13, purchased, 13%): This French red, made from gamay, is a November tradition. The 2019 version from Drouhin is a little thin, but mostly Beaujolais in style and taste (berry fruit). Which means it’s missing the horrible ripe banana fruit that too many nouveaus have had in the past decade. Imported by Dreyfus, Ashby & Co.

Expensive wine 95: Maison Bertrand Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges Vieilles Vignes 2001

Ambroise Nuits-Saint-GeorgesHow does an entry-level red Burgundy like the Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges cost $50?

Want to know how much the wine world has changed since I started doing this? The wine person at the Washington, D.C. restaurant where where we drank the Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges said no, she didn’t get a chance to taste a lot of red Burgundy.

Sigh.

Here’s someone who is in charge of wine at a reasonably hip restaurant who doesn’t get a chance to drink red Burgundy. That never would have happened a decade ago. But these days, when even an entry-level red Burgundy like the Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges ($50, purchased, 12.5%) costs more than most people can afford, it’s a fact of life.

I was lucky enough to have the Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges because my pal and top-notch wine writer Lou Marmon brought it to dinner (DC has a fine corkage law). Lou bought the wine after it was released, paying about $25. That the current vintage has doubled in price since 2003 or so speaks to how silly wine prices have become for red Burgundy (pinot noir from the Burgundy region of France) and why the wine person doesn’t get a chance to taste them often.

The wine, of course, was delightful – earthy and foresty and spicy and everything one would expect from red Burgundy. But, as the Wine Advocate reviewer wrote 13 years ago, it was fruity and straightforward and relatively simple as red Burgundy goes. Except for the price, of course.

And yes, Lou and I insisted that the wine person and our waitress taste the wine, which they enjoyed. No sense in always letting us old white guys have all the fun.

 

$300 of wine after 108 years of waiting

$300 of wineTwo $150 bottles of wine to celebrate the Cubs’ World Series victory

A $150 bottle of white Burgundy and a $150 bottle of red Burgundy – what better way to celebrate the Chicago Cubs’ first World Series championship in 108 years than with $300 worth of wine?

The Big Guy brought the white, a 2014 Sauzet Puligny-Montrachet Champ-Canet Premier Cru, and I bought the red, a 2012 Chateau de Meursault Clos des Epenots Premier Cru. Neither were in my original Cubs wine post, but those wines — and which were $20 to $50 cheaper — were sold out.

Needless to say, we had never paid that much for a bottle of wine, which was the point. “It’s OK if you’re going to do this once every century,” said The Big Guy, and who was I to argue?

My other goal? Make sure the food was up to the wine, and it’s not being immodest to say that it was (or so the others at the dinner, including Lynne Kleinpeter and Kathy Turner, told me):

• A goat cheese and salmon timbale with the Sauzet, a chardonnay. The wine was young and fresh enough to handle the richness of the goat cheese, and it complemented the food exactly as I had hoped.

• Chicken breasts stuffed with mushrooms duxelles with the Epenots, a pinot noir. This was one of those pairings that shows why pairings matter – the wine made the food taste better and the food made the wine taste better. The Epenots, though still young, had some of that Burgundian mushroom and forest floor, and the bright red fruit did the chicken proud.

• An apple tart with a Fonseca 10-year-old tawny port ($32, purchased, 20%), a bonus because I like port. This is a more traditional style port – less fruit and more nuttiness, and not hot at all.

So were the Burgundies worth $150 a bottle? As delicious as they were, probably not. For one thing, both were still too young, and will need at least a decade before they’re going to taste the way they should taste. The Sauzet, in particular, was angular and disjointed (or at least as much as a classic white Burgundy can be), and only time will smooth out those rough edges.

That they weren’t worth what they cost isn’t so much a criticism of the wines, but of the wine business and how foolish high-end wine prices have become. The Big Guy remembers paying $50 in a restaurant for the Sauzet in the 1990s; that means the retail price has increased 10-fold in the past two decades. In other words, paying $20 for a cup of Starbucks coffee today. The best value of the evening was the port, given how much crappy port costs $20 and $30, and I’ll buy another bottle when this one is gone.

Hopefully, when Cubs manager Joe Maddon – a wine guy of no small repute – celebrates the World Series, he’ll have as much fun as we did on Saturday night.

Expensive wine 86: Louis Latour Corton Grand Cru 2004

Latour Corton Grand CruIt has always been difficult to understand the post-modern French haste to sell their wine birthright to anyone who will pony up too much money for a mediocre product. Why make overpriced plonk to get a high score when you can do it the right way and make something that has amazed the world for centuries?

Case in point is the Latour Corton Grand Cru ($365, sample, 14%), which is everything French wine has been and should be. This is red Burgundy, pinot noir from the Corton section in Burgundy, and any discussion of Corton involves hundreds of years of history and which particular spot on a hill in Corton the grapes came from. If that’s the starting point, why do you need anything else?

I tasted this wine at the Sunday night dinner for Critics Challenge judges, attended by the handful of us who have to stay an extra night. The judges bring wine (I brought some Texas, of course, which was well received), and competition organizer Robert Whitley adds some from his cellar. This came from Robert, and it was the kind of wine that makes you pause after a sip to wonder how it’s possible to make that kind of wine.

The Latour Corton Grand Cru was earthy and dark, but because 2004 was a warm vintage, it also had more red fruit than I expected. Yet those descriptors are almost useless, because this wine won’t be ready to drink for at least five or six years, and probably longer. That means it’s certainly delicious now, but hasn’t aged long enough to bring the whole into focus, and is too young for the various components to have come together. The best analogy I can think of? Marinating a piece of beef or chicken, where the ultimate goal is not to taste the marinade, but to make the beef or chicken taste better.

Highly recommended, and don’t worry too much about the price. That has been skewed by demand in Asia, where a bottle costs more than five times what it costs in Europe. I found this wine for €44 France, about US$60. Not cheap, but more than fair considering what you get.