huevos con vino

One of my friends pointed out this article in the New York Times tonight.  It seems the “Socialist” mayor of Paris, France is set to auction off some of the city’s wine supply, enough to raise nearly $1M US.

That’s a lot of good wine!

I can’t imagine having a job that includes, as part of my staff, a wine buyer, handler, archivist, and all-around oenologist.  It’s sort of like having a state sommelier.  Nice.

I think I agree with their wine expert, by the way: Why not drink some of these wines?  The idea that they are “far too valuable” to consume is complete rubbish.  Once connoisseurship shifts from consumption to collection…well, that’s just boring.  Even though he ended up destroying it at the end of the movie, Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off let the 250 GT California out of the garage long enough to make its ownership worthwhile.  Right?  Better that than Jay Leno’s storage facility.

On a different note, instead of having some wine tonight, I had a bottle of Chimay Blue brought directly from the EU to go with my Iberian molé chorizo and 5-year-old Gouda.  I know it sounds like I was celebrating something, but really that’s just a typical Sunday night for me.  I swear.

I’m putting together the final list of wines to bring with us this Christmas.  I want to ensure we’ve got a few bottles for the annual family wine tasting, a few bottles as presents, and a few really good bottles for consumption at dinners, functions, etc.  Here’s what I’m thinking so far with regard to the good bottles:

• 2004 Radio-Coteau “La Neblina” Pinot Noir - Hell, I have 7 bottles, why not bring a couple?
• 2003 Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Classique - I love this wine, my in-laws love this wine, why mess with a proven favorite?
• 2004 Sea Smoke Botella Pinot Noir - A dark horse, possibly something I want to keep for a while, but at Christmas dinner it could be great.

Whatever I ship over to my in-laws’ place, I’ll need to do it soon as I want the wines to settle for a month or two before we open them.  Better get cracking!

Some friends and the wife and I went to The Cellar Bistro last night, which is easily among our favorite local restaurants.  It’s a great place that I’ve talked about here many times before.  As always, last night was fun because the food was good, the owner knows us by now, and the company was terrific!  It’s hard to complain about a dinner where there are 5 people and you’re the only guy.

I thought about which wine to bring and realized that my lone personal bottle of 2004 Ramian Page One Grenache would be an excellent choice.  I was right!  The ladies gobbled it up, which was the idea of course, but I also loved it.  One of the women in particular seemed to drink all of her Grenache as soon as I poured it.  A woman after my own heart!.

Anyway, to the wine, which I have reviewed here before (we decanted it and let it sit for 20-30 minutes first):

• Aroma: Brilliant red fruit - strawberry, raspberry, red cherry.  Lively but also with a fascinating, subtle tar aroma behind the fruit at first.  This aroma left after 20 minutes in the decanter. 
• Flavor: Slightly sweet but in a good way.  Rich and full, with the same “bright” red fruit as promised on the nose. 
• General impression: Again, very impressive wine, especially for $15/bottle.  That’s less than $180/case if you get a discount, and at those prices I could see buying a case just to have it around for

I love this wine!  It’s very strange to me, though, that other CellarTracker! users aren’t quite as into it.  Here are a couple quotes from user comments on this wine:

• “Don’t get your expectations too high and you’ll likely enjoy it. Light, very fruity, NOT complex. The boss didn’t like it at ALL.”
• “Better on day 2 as it had shed some of its initial harshness”

I find these comments odd because I don’t see this wine as “harsh” or “not complex” at all.  It does have some depth and complexity, particularly at the $15 price point.  You can’t expect a $100 wine for $15, or at least you can’t expect that level of complexity.  Still, I think this wine would stand up well to a tasting with $40 and $50 wines.  I know I have had a few that weren’t nearly this good.

But, in the end, it’s all about personal preference.  I suppose mine is for Ramian! 

On another note, I received my 6 bottles of 2004 Radio-Coteau “La Neblina” Pinot Noir today!  Very exciting stuff.  I’m still not sure what I’ll do with all of these bottles: sell a few, trade a few, drink a few…the possibilities are interesting to me.  Again, Radio-Coteau (like Ramian) is one of those wineries that just makes very drinkable wine.  I’m not sure I’d say that their wines are fabulously complex, but they’re also drinkable right after their release to market.  That has to count for something, right?

I was perusing the Internet this afternoon and I noticed something interesting with regard to the 2005 Arthur Chardonnay release.

Apparently, it’s almost sold out.  That was fast!

I mean, seriously, the venerable Veronique released this wine on or about October 1st, with 1700 cases hitting the marketplace all at once.  Even if you subtract about 500 cases for the DDO Direct club and other winery reasons, that’s plenty of Chardonnay to go around…right?

I guess not.  The winery is limiting customers to 3 bottles per purchase.  Same with the 8,907-case Pinot Noir Classique, their most “basic” Pinot Noir.  Either they really are close to selling out their entire stock in the same year, or else they’re just trying to drive up sales.  I believe the former.  I love all of their wines and I see their name on more and more restaurant wine lists, so clearly they’re in demand.

Anyway, with all the hubbub and demand I thought I’d try one of my 3 bottles of 2005 Arthur Chardonnay tonight.  First, what were we having for dinner?  A good question, and it was something I made entirely myself at home, so it was fun for us:

• Roast whole chicken with apple and cinnamon stuffing
• Yukon Gold potatoes roasted in the pan with spiced cider and green apples
• Seared green beans with gray salt and artisan olive oil
• Baby romaine lettuce leaves with freshly sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, Kalamata olives, and golden Bartlett pear slices
• Toasted local sourdough bread

Quite a feast, really.  Here’s what I thought of the wine:

• Aroma: Ripe green apple and melon essences.  Some secondary honey and almond aromas; the winery Web site backs up my almond thought, which makes me pleased.
• Flavor: Still needs to complete its internal balancing act.  The acid is a little strong, the color is perhaps a bit pale for a Chardonnay (looks almost more like a Sauvignon Blanc right now), but this wine seems fit for aging for a few years, interestingly enough.  Veronique was right!  This wine does need 5-7 years, apparently.
• General impression: A lovely Chardonnay.  It could use more time in the bottle yet as it had a slightly thin aftertaste, but part of that I think was due to the excessive chill of the fridge at first.  It paired fairly well with the chicken dinner, but a Pinot Noir would have been more exciting.

Overall, a good Chardonnay that will become much better if I am patient enough not to drink my other bottles.  I just need to clear some space for them, although I don’t have a good white wine storage solution right now.  I’m essentially focused on the red.  Ahh well, more wine in my future then!

Well, true to expectations we had some very nice wine tonight at my friends’ house.  After poking around in the wine cellar (such as it is) for several minutes, we decided to try something different than the Pinot and Cabernet Sauvignon we’d been drinking lately.  My friend had two bottles of 2002 Grgich Hills Napa Valley Zinfandel, so we opened one and drank it with some marvelous cheese and crackers.

Here are my notes on this wine…and I have noticed that my accuracy and depth of review notes are both improving slowly but surely!  Very exciting. 

• Aroma: A very interesting combination of a dusty, flinty essence plus blackberry and lush black cherry, with some black plum as well as some slight spice.  A typical Zinfandel nose, in my estimation.  I can see the “black pepper and cloves” that the winery tasting notes mention, too.
• Flavor: Fairly well balanced between black fruit and a spicy, somewhat acidic backbone.  After about 90 minutes this wine really exploded into a juicy, flavorful array of black fruits and tannins.
• General impression: A very nice Zinfandel that opened up after about 60-90 minutes to reveal a wine with some good depth and complexity for its $28/bottle winery asking price ($20 is more realistic on the aftermarket).

So, it was a very nice $20-$30 wine.  The Grgich Hills is well behaved for a California Zinfandel, actually…I was expecting stronger spice and less rounded character than I got.  I was pleasantly surprised.

I also swapped out a few wines and brought home the following for imminent consumption:

• 1 bottle each of 2000 and 2002 Paracombe Cabernet Franc
• 2000 Paracombe Somerville Shiraz (!)
• 2 bottles of 2003 Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Classique

I look forward to finding an excuse to open each of these wines soon!  The Somerville Shiraz ought to be stunning; Wine-Searcher.com lists 3 bottles of the 2000, ranging from $60 to $75 per bottle.  Nice.  2000 was a great year for Paracombe as well, although I look forward to tasting the 2002 and 2003 Cabernet Franc releases as a point of comparison.  This Somerville Shiraz is special, though: Only 100 cases made, a 95-point rating from Wine Advocate, and another 10+ years of potential aging time.  Cool!

After receiving my DDO Direct allocation and my LA Wine Co shipment, things have quieted down considerably.  I haven’t really tried any new wines this past week, although that could change tonight as I’m heading to my friend’s house.  This is the friend who has 18 bottles of my wine in his basement, according to a recent CellarTracker! report.  That’s almost scary: I have 1.5 cases of really good wine (including my Hestan, Diamond Creek, Paolo Scavino, and Paracombe) sitting miles away from my place.

Of course, I have nowhere to put those bottles of wine in my place, so I am indebted to my friend for lending me his space.  I think I might swap out some bottles tonight, perhaps to clear the Domaine Drouhin Louise out of the shorter-term wine fridge in favor of the older Paracombe (including the Somerville Shiraz).  I think I can swap 4 bottles from site to site.  Nice.

In other wine-related news, I’m starting to put together my top 10 wines of 2006.  Such “top 10″ lists are always flawed and subjective, but I’m going to do it anway, damn it.  A quick scan of my trusty, nerdy Excel spreadsheet tells me that some early contenders are:

• White/Rosé/Champagne

• 2002 Leeuwin Artist Series Riesling
• 2005 Odisea Muse Rosé
• NV Pommery Champagne Brut Royale
• 2004 Serra da Estrela Albarino
• 2003 Stag’s Leap Chardonnay
• NV Veuve Clicquot Demi-Sec Champagne
• NV Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut Champagne
• 2004 Wind River Cellars Columbia Gorge Viognier

• 2004 Hirsch Pinot Noir
• 2000 Domaine Drouhin Laurène Pinot Noir
• 2003 Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir
• 2003 Domaine Lignier-Michelot Morey St. Denis
• 2004 Morgan Rosella’s Vineyard Pinot Noir
• 2004 Radio-Coteau La Neblina Pinot Noir
• 2004 Sea Smoke Botella
• 2004 Sea Smoke Southing
• 1997 Williams Selyem Coastlands Pinot Noir

• 1999 Brunello di Montalcino Poggio di Falco Tenuta Collalli
• 2004 David Bruce Petite Sirah
• 2000 Galtarossa Amarone Veneto
• 1997 Joseph Phelps Insignia
• 2004 Odisea TI Tempranillo
• 2004 Odisea Two Rows Garnacha
• 2004 Ramian Page One Grenache
• 2000 Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2001 Terra Blanca Onyx

• 1966 Porto Rocha Colheita Tawny
• 1976 Porto Rocha Colheita Tawny

Note that these wines were not necessarily released to the marketplace in 2006.  This list is really meant to show which wines I drank and loved in 2006 regardless of their release date.  Worth noting, I think.  Clearly I like the Pinot.  I have 9 listed and I could add another to make a top 10 Pinot list for the year.  Some hard choices will need to be made, I guess.

Anyway, I’ll release the highly anticipated final top 10 as we get closer to 2007.  Only a couple months to go, in fact!  Amazing how time passes, particularly when you drink a lot of wine.