The best bottle of our whole trip to Paris was a 2005 Rouquetaillade La Grange — and I am ashamed to say that I didn’t order it. In fact, my poor traveling companions had got so disgusted with my selections that on day four my dear friend Mark (and thank goodness he is still my dear friend after all those liquid disappointments) spotted a bottle of red on a neighboring table, determined that the French people who were drinking it were enjoying it, and told the waiter we wanted one of those.
 
Mark was embarrassed, but I was wholly impressed. First, I was so relieved he had taken the slack reins from my hands and steered us in a new wine direction. Second, I was staring at the wine list of this great bistro we default to every time we’re in Paris, mostly because of its excellent calves liver, paralyzed. I’d been ordering wines all week based on familiarity and recognition — so, Bordeaux from wineries I know — and time after time we’d been disappointed. The wines tasted thin and young. I even ordered a Haut Marbuzet from a vintage I’d collected and sampled from my own cellar, but for some reason it tasted like a shadow of this wine I know and love. So clearly my strategy wasn’t working.
 
Out came the Rouquetaillade La Grange. The waiter opened and poured … and it was delicious. Balanced, with good fruit but also that dry, earthy taste that comes from cabernet blends made in Bordeaux’s cool, almost seaside locale. It seemed somehow more vivid and satisfying than all the lifeless reds that had preceeded it on our trip. It was also half the price.
 
Then, the next day (because all my traveling companions had to leave on early flights) I found myself having lunch alone at a wine bar in the Buci market. I tried a variation of Mark’s wine-selection strategy, which was to order a glass of something cheap and completely unfamiliar. It turned out to be a cru Beaujolais and went beautifully with my pate.
 
So here’s the theory I came away with.

I haven’t written since July, but I have a good excuse: on July 19 my mother — who, although she was not a connoisseur, loved wine and helped trigger my development as a student of wine — was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. As a result I’ve spent the last five plus months fighting, caretaking, squeezing out every drop of meaning from every moment, grieving (she died on November 11), and not writing. Or at least not writing about wine.
 

Though we did, of course, drink some in her twilight hours. My mother loved chardonnay: the bigger, the butterier, the better. Normally she’d have something merely quaffable, at least to her, for lunch. (I have no idea what to do with the 1.5 liter bottles of Glen Ellen “Reserve” I cleaned out of her pantry. And I hate to think what the non-reserve tastes like, or if it even exists.) But considering the circumstances I convinced her to help empty my cellar of all my Kistler chardonnays. I know some wine snobs are horrified by Kistler’s full-throttle versions of this varietal, but I have a lot of respect for their commitment to single-vineyard bottlings, that is, to wines that try – even in the midst of all the ripe fruit flavors that can come from this grape plus California’s warm climate – to express the individuality of place. Kistler’s chardonnays are not subtle. But they are always different from one vineyard to the next. And especially to Mom they were always memorable, always a “wow” wine.
 
Click here for some more of the comfort wines we drank during Mom’s last days: (more…)

A recent trip to France convinced me that, ironically, the best place to drink French wine nowadays is in California. Let me give you an example: a red wine from Cairanne in the Southern Rhône, a 2007 Côte du Rhône Villages from Domaine Catherine le Goeuil, which I bought at Kermit Lynch Wines in Berkeley last week for $23. I love this Cairanne. It’s a mouthful of ripe red plums, earth, and that brambly Southern Rhone “garrigue” flavor. It’s got delicious aromas of framboise, blueberry compote, asian spices, and licorice. It’s totally dry but tastes sweet on the palate, enough to go *great* with the BBQ sandwich I am now enjoying. Clean, fresh, slightly soft mouthfeel, though not lacking in heft. I haven’t enjoyed an under-$25 bottle of wine this much in a long time.

Why is this wine so exemplary of my new theory? Click here to find out (more…)

Last night the Ladies Tasting Society met to blind-taste five red varietals, that is, wines made primarily from, and named after, one grape variety (for example pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon). It was an exciting and highly competitive tasting, since not only did the ladies score ourselves based on how many aspects of the wine we could detect correctly (grape? vintage? French or Californian?), the wine types were also vying with each other to be our favorites of the evening.

One lady and one grape prevailed. Click here to find out who and what (more…)

With the exception of an occasional mimosa — and only when the sparkler destined for adulteration isn’t one of my favorites — I’ve never been much of a wine-cocktail drinker. Oh, and then there’s the sangría we serve every year at our Fourth of July pool party (again, made with zinfandel of a quality that wouldn’t highly recommend itself for savoring alone).

That’s because wine, to me, already represents a finished work of art. In my opinion, the ultimate mixologist is the winemaker: she worked hard to source the best ingredients, blend at the perfect levels, and serve in a pretty package. Why would I want to muck up her creation by throwing soda pop at it?

But I surprised myself last night not only by serving “Late Harvest Wine and Campari Cocktails” before a dinner party, but by improving the recipe with a stealth ingredient. For my recipe, click here: (more…)

Used to be that when one heard “Rhône,” one thought, “red.” That’s because 90 percent of the wine that comes from France’s Rhône River valley — and all the really famous stuff, like Côte Rotie — is indeed red. Châteauneuf du Pape, although it can come “blanc,” is hardly ever seen in stores or on wine lists as such, and most people would be hard-pressed to name one grape variety that’s used to make a white Rhône.

The other reason whites from the Rhône are so underappreciated is because, for a long time, they deserved it. A red winemaker’s afterthought, they suffered from all kinds of horrible-sounding blunders including volatile acidity, oxidation, or just plain old funky flavors.

All of that has changed. Partly thanks to new winemaking technology like stainless steel tanks, winemakers in the South of France are making crisper, more balanced, delicious, and fragrant white wines. More importantly perhaps, American drinkers are increasingly fanatical about grapes native to the Rhône such as syrah, mourvedre, and viognier (“anything,” as the so-called Rhône Rangers put it, “but chardonnay”), and more people are looking to the original whites of the Rhône — Condrieu, Châteauneuf du Pape blanc, Côtes du Rhône blanc — to escape the ennui induced by having to order one, more, glass, of, pinot grigio, please … zzzzz.

The Ladies Tasting Society popped the cork on a pile of white Rhônes, with divided results: (more…)

Despite the attacks waged by Wine Dictator magazine on poor Dry Creek Valley, after visiting 10 standout Dry Creek producers a couple weeks ago during their Passport party weekend, I remain thoroughly charmed. Although the chief California editor believes Dry Creek lacks a signature varietal, I think it’s clearly zinfandel–in fact, two zins and a cab blend made from grapes from the Rockpile AVA at the northern end of the valley were favorites of the day, so I’d even go further and say that Dry Creek has a signature grape and at least one premier cru-ish terroir. Finally, the Wine Dictator insists the valley lacks a flagship winery, too, but after tasting our way through up-and-coming Mazzocco’s delicious line-up, I’d say that even if it’s true, it won’t be for long. Or was it just the belly dancers? I’m not sure.

For our faves of the weekend, click here: (more…)

I’m sitting here drinking a delicious glass of 2006 Chateau St. Jean Robert Young Chardonnay. It’s rich, with plenty of vanilla and nutmeg, perfect as a nightcap without food, kinda like dessert. I have no complaints, except: why oh why am I falling back on chardonnay? Because yesterday — in good part because I’m preparing for an upcoming meeting of the Ladies Tasting Society, where we’re focusing on whites from the Rhône region in France — I ordered a Chapoutier Côtes du Rhône blanc Belleruche ($10 per glass at the Fairmont in Santa Monica, $11 retail), and totally loved it.

Why? Click here to discover: (more…)

Dry Creek Valley just can’t get no respect. Lately James Laube, the chief California taster for the Wine Dictator Spectator magazine, has been pointing thumbs-down on the entire appellation, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and dairy farms tucked into the northwestern corner of Sonoma county. Dry Creek, he laments, has an identity problem: it lacks flagship wineries to bolster its reputation, as well as a signature grape to serve as a rallying point for fans.

On the occasion of the Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley’s Passport weekend, I spent last weekend tasting up and down the creek. And although there’s some truth to Laube’s assessment, click here for some important exceptions to the dictator’s rule: (more…)

I learned this Easter that, when it comes to pairing with honey-baked ham, there is only one wine better than gewürztraminer — and perhaps only one that is more obscure and challenging. (“Oh, I don’t like gewürz-whatever,” I always hear, “too sweet.” Just you wait…)

I learned my lesson thanks to the beauty of the leftover. You see, at Easter dinner proper, my family polished off a “yummy” (in my father-in-law’s words) bottle of Gundlach Bundschu’s 2007 “Rhinefarm Vineyard” gewürztraminer. It was utterly dry, perfectly balanced, and medium-bodied; but its tastes were so life-sized it came off big and candied. Flowery, nutty aromas greeted us, and were followed by complex flavors of apple, pear, lychee, and a little lime on the fresh finish. It went just perfectly with our ham, which I served with a spiced pear relish.

Guess what, though? The GunBun gewürz got blown off the table by a wine I’d never even heard of before that I drank with leftovers the next day for lunch. For the mystery contender, click here: (more…)