When white Burgundy wins

From time to time, as my regular readers know (I am aware there is only a few of you and I thank you all so much!), I pull out a wine from my closet because I sense its time has arrived. Feeling all Orson Wells-like, I was sure that time was arriving for a white Burgundy I had lying in the gloom of my closet. But first some background.

I don’t have an inexhaustible fund for buying and closeting, er, cellaring wine, particularly when that wine cellar is my closet. So I do my best to find what I hope to be outstanding wines at reasonable prices. Burgundy is traditionally known as the premier appellation for Chardonnay when it comes to white wine, but Burgundy is also traditionally known for its price. Some of us may need a guide, a compass to help us know when an inexpensive white Burgundy might be worth buying. And what is an “inexpensive” white Burgundy?

My threshold is about $35. When I see a white Burgundy for that price, my interest is aroused. But it’s not just the price point. Remember the Wall Street Journal wine columnists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher? They “invented” the classic “Open that bottle night,” a night when you have that special wine lying around and you need an excuse to drink it rather than save it until it spoils. Gaiter and Brecher had some very sound advice when shopping for white Burgundy.

There were two particular appellations in the Burgundy region they suggested as the most consistent, and when you’re looking at prices in the range of $50 and more for white Burgundy, it’s not unusual to pay that much for a rather disappointing wine. But, Gaiter and Brecher guided, if you focused on the appellations of Chassagne-Montrachet and Pugliny-Montrachet, you could hardly go wrong.

That sage advice has guided me with virtually all my purchases of white Burgundy. Granted, I haven’t strictly followed this rule. But as a general guideline, it has served me well. So I was understandably delighted when I found a 2007 Pugliny-Montrachet from the very consistent house of Joseph Drouhin for $30.

This wine had a creamy floral nose with pear and bright citrus. It was delicious with bracing mineral and lime followed by a fresh, clean finish. It was really delightful. I served it with poached cod and it was exceptional. The poaching recipe comes from the pages of some women’s magazine, maybe a Ladies Home Journal or Better Homes & Gardens. The page looks like it was circa 1970. And while the recipe is for poached sole with hollandaise, the preparation works excellently for poaching cod.

It’s pretty simple. Just heat up 2 cups of water with a sliced carrot and sliced celery stalk, add half an onion sliced up (recipe calls for 1 small onion, but most onions these days are fairly large), 1 lemon sliced up, some pepper corns, 2 bay leaves and some fresh parsley or cilantro sprigs. I used cilantro. Also, a teaspoon of salt.

Let this simmer for at least 10 minutes. I actually let mine simmer for about 20 minutes while I prepare other items or enjoy a bit of cheese and crackers with my guests. After this has simmered, remove all the ingredients and discard. Poach the fish in the remaining water covered for about 4 minutes or until the correct doneness, when the fish easily flakes but won’t completely fall apart. Serve the fish with sliced lemon and garnish with more parsley or cilantro. I didn’t bother with the hollandaise.

It was a delicious meal. I rate this wine a 9.5 using my scale at the left.

A wine bar weekend

On Saturday a new friend of mine and I went to a wine bar in Lincoln Park and sampled two of their flights, one white and the other red. My friend, Andrew, wanted to learn more about wine and the wine bar was a perfect solution.

D.O.C. Wine Bar has many locations throughout Chicagoland, and like many wine bars, offers you the opportunity to sample flights of similar wines so you can get an idea of what a region offers or what a varietal offers. It’s a great way for neophytes to learn about varietals and regions, as well as learn the techniques to discern flavor differences and test your pallet. For more experienced wine drinkers, these wine bars can present opportunities with their various flights to sample new wines you may be unaware of, as well as give you opportunities to sample varietals that you might normally not purchase.

The abbreviation D.O.C. in Italian is for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, and is the equivalent to France’s Appelation D’Origine Contrôlee. It reflects a wine region’s denomination designation, and for the DOC, this is defined by the geographic area of production and specifies the varietals that may be used for wine making in order to earn that designation. This board also controls the minimum alcohol content in the wine, the maximum allowable yield with the grapes, and specifications for aging.

For our tastings, Andrew and I started off with three wines in the “Euro trash” flight, a curiously named trio of varietals that I am aware of, but haven’t much experience drinking. I tapped my notes into my iPhone as we drank, and below is what I chronicled.

Strele 2009 Soave, Vento, Italy: Light nose, orchard fruit, apple, peach, a very light flavor, not too sweet, very fresh and crisp, juicy.

Reventos 2009 Muscat/Macabeo, Penedes, Spain: Nose more rustic, longer finish, more herbal, fruit gradually exposed, a curious, almost medicinal flavor, not unpleasant.

Chateau Moncontour 2009, Chenin Blanc, Vouvray, Loire Valley, France: Light, fresh nose, juicy, spicy apple, light finish, best of the three.

Andrew and I both agreed we thought it interesting how the three wines were ordered. The Soave presented juicy and delicious orchard fruit followed next by the Muscat, which was decidedly more herbal and even a bit suppressed. Andrew didn’t care much for it, but I thought it good, though very different from the first. And then the Chablis placed itself right in the middle, having both the light juiciness of the orchard fruit, but still presenting complexity and mineral qualities.

We thought, then, that the ordering was deliberate, so when we ordered a Pinot Noir flight next, we anticipated a similar progression. Before tasting, I explained to Andrew why Pinot Noir can be so beguiling, how difficult it is to grow and how delicate it is to craft into good wine. Nebbiolo is also like this, which is why red Burgundy and Barolos can be such huge disappointments at times: both tend to be expensive, and both varietals are very similar in character. So when Burgundy or Barolo is made well, these wines are extraordinary. But when made poorly, they can be enormous duds.

Nieto 2010 Pinot Noir, Mendoza, Argentina: Can’t peg the nose, the smell is familiar, but can’t name it. A very young wine, thin, watery, no finish. Color a beautiful transparent ruby.

Block Nine 2009, Pinot Noir, California: Light berry nose, bit of spice, tannin noticeable, longer finish, a hint of cinnamon. Tasty, but nothing special.

Vincent Sauvestre 2008, Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France: Nothing on the nose, literally sans smell, bright fruit, but again diluted.

With this flight, we experienced the ephemeral quality that is Pinot Noir. All three wines were generally disappointments in my book, although I must say it was curious to see a Pinot Noir from the Mendoza region of Argentina. If I hadn’t of done this, I wouldn’t have known about the fact there are growers dabbling with Pinot Noir in Argentina.

Repeat visits to wine bars like this are a good idea because the tasting flights do change periodically, so there will be something of interest. And the bottle selection can be relatively deep, although rather expensive, particularly for the higher end wines. For example, D.O.C. has a Chassagne-Montrachet that goes for $116 a bottle, and a Chateuneuf-du-Pape that goes for more than $300.

All in all a delightful experience and one that shall be repeated.

Are there similar wine bars in your area? Tell me about them and your experiences by leaving a comment. What new wine have you discovered through similar tasting flights?

A ho-hum Puligny Montrachet

Is it possible for a white Burgundy to be, well, mediocre? What about a Puligny Montrachet? Can this appellation be mediocre?

I first learned about the white Burgundy appellations of Puligny Montrachet and Chassagne Montrachet from the Wall Street Journal wine columnists John Brecher and Dorothy J. Gaiter, whose lovely columns brought the elegance of wine to the hoi polloi. Their advice was you hardly could go wrong choosing a wine from either of these stellar appellations along the Cote d’Or, so evening finding a “cheap” Puligny was a good buy. Cheap, of course, is relative. When most of these wines retail from $60 to $80, and many commanding much more, a cheap Puligny or Chassagne would fall in the $30 range. And by and large, that advice has been sage, whether it be a white or red Burgundy; there was only one caveat. Let it be a good year.

So in my closet has been a 2004 Puligny Montrachet by Olivier Leflaive. Wine Spectator rated the year 2004 for white Burgundy with a 90, so I figured that would mean just about any white Burgundy from that year would be good. I selected this wine because I thought the price was at least reasonable at $40.

The trouble is, one comes to have certain expectations with a wine at certain price points and from certain places of origin.

I enjoyed this wine (yes, I did enjoy it) with my friend Curt during a meal of broiled sword fish and our usual accompaniment of vegetables. It had all the wonderful brightness of a white Burgundy on the front end: the brilliant mineral quality, the light and vivacious taste of apples and pear. But on the back end, the finish, this wine was decidedly lacking. Another one of those all tits and no ass types of wine. Which, considering the origin of this wine, made it even more disappointing. If I want to drink a disappointing Chardonnay, I can do that with just about any California bottling and for $10 rather than $40.

But I have to admit, I did enjoy it. It wasn’t awful, or even bad; just disappointing. And that does happen from time to time.

So I shall rate this Puligny Montrachet with a 5.5. Alas, it had such promise.

Dionysius smiled

During a recent excursion to Binny’s in Schaumburg, Ill., I was delighted to find so many high quality wines priced relatively inexpensively. By that I mean when you can find a 2005 red Burgundy for just $30, that’s a good deal. There was also a Puligny-Montrachet by the same producer, Joseph Drouhin. I showed this 2007 vintage to the fellow at the wine desk and asked if he was familiar; he admitted he was not, but said the producer had a solid record. I thought, what the heck, I’ll take it. I showed him the 2005 red Burgundy I found for $30 and commented that was a very nice price, to which he replied that with the 2005 vintage, you just about can’t go wrong with any of the red Burgundies.

I took a look at some other wines and was about to leave when the same guy asked me, “Did you take a look at this one? It normally sells for $100, but it’s the last bottle.” Frowning, I looked at the mark down. My eyes lit up! It was marked down to $30! “We were holding some of these for a guy, but he never came by to pick them up, so we put them out.”

I grabbed the bottle thinking that any white Burgundy that normally retails for $100 is an absolute bargain at $30. But what did I have?

In the car I called my friend Curt to brag about my find. But when I tried to tell him what wine it was, reading from the receipt, I was a bit flummoxed. “It’s Beaune Mouche something or other, but fercryingoutloud! It normally retails for $100 and I got it for $30!” We immediately made plans to have dinner the following night and drink this bit of luck.

Of course, you all know what the wine is based on the label scan I have with this post. But I didn’t know a thing about this wine until I got home and did a bit of research. And was I ever pleasantly surprised.

This 2006 Clos des Mouches from Joseph Drouhin is from the Beaune appellation within the Cote-D’Or region of Burgundy. It’s name is quite interesting. Literally, Clos des Mouches translates as “closed flies.” There are a half-dozen little flies on the label, but this translation probably isn’t accurate. Does it mean the vineyard is closed to flies? Or have the flies closed the vineyard? If someone can help with a better translation of this whimsical name for this wine, please do!

What I read about this wine indicated that when released, it was considered wound up a bit tight, that it would need some aging and probably wouldn’t be ready until at least 2010. From then it should be good until 2016. By virtually all measures, it was considered a 90-point wine. I was excited! So Curt and I planned our menu.

We settled on salmon filets that would be simply prepared by frying in a bit of olive oil. As sides, I sautéed in butter red, yellow and orange bell peppers with sliced zucchini, seasoned with one of those store-bought herb mixtures (sans salt). I also steamed some fresh asparagus, and we split a potato. A simple meal, but it was a perfect match with the wine.

My first sip nearly sent me into a state of euphoria; a crisp taste of honey and hazelnut with a lemon back that wrapped around your tongue with a bracing smoothness and just the barest hint of oak, coming through more like vanilla. And the finish rich and succulent, dry and fresh. There were subtle herbs, perhaps even a hint of melon. The color was beautiful like honey. The mineral quality gave it a clear, clean taste, and with the salmon and the sautéed vegetables, this wine was a match like no other.

Why can’t New World producers create Chardonnay like this? If some do, I haven’t found them.

This is another example of why you should speak to the folks at your favorite wine store, as there is no telling what extraordinary find they will direct you to.

Wine Spectator scores this wine with a 90. But I am giving this wine a 10 on my scale, the first wine of this blog to be rated this high. What a find! I feel blessed to have enjoyed this wine with a wonderful meal and a true friend!