I GET A lot of interesting questions, yet I always have trouble with this popular query: "What's a good wine to bring as a gift?" Why so tough? Because it's virtually unanswerable without knowing the recipient's preferences. Which, unless the question is coming from my relatives or close friends, I usually don't. So this season I'm going to make it easier on myself, leaving more time for nog-fueled festivization. I'm going to limit myself to one category of wine and let the corks fall where they may.
If there's one trend I've noticed among the people who ask the question, it's that the men almost always want a red, priced above whatever they consider an everyday-drinking threshold. I have no idea why this is, and I'm not sure I really want to know. But, you tint-loving and buck-spending fellas, you're in luck, because this is your column. I'm sticking to reds, and arbitrarily setting the quotidian foundation at somewhere just north of $20 - though nothing on this list should hit the triple-digit range.
In other words: gentlemen, start your wallets.
Among wine geek circles (and those are some tipsy circles ... more like wobbly ovals, really), the Prestige Nebbiolo-based reds from the Piedmont in Italy - Barolo, Barbaresco, and others - have long been undervalued versus their quality. That's changing - and quickly, thanks to increased attention from some of the major critics and the rapidly declining dollar. One can go traditional, which means a long-aging wine that's rather difficult to enjoy in its tannic youth but absolutely unparalleled in its maturity; or modern, which means a supremely aromatic wine with a silky, seductive texture. Taking the former approach is Brovia, a producer with decidedly old-school labels and a matter-of-fact approach to their craft, which creates wines of real character but with an unquestioned demand for long years in the cellar. Their single-vineyard Barolos - Rocche dei Brovia, Garblèt Sue', and Villero bottlings - and their Barbaresco Risosordo are pure representations of a classic style that's hard to find these days. But don't drink them now, or anytime soon; 15 years is not too much from a decent vintage (which, of late, is anything not from 2002 or 2003), and more will be required of the best years.
On the other hand, sometimes an impossible-to-dislike charmer is the perfect gift. For that, one might look to the incredibly polished wines of Gaja, also based in the Piedmont. Most of Gaja's wines are impossibly expensive, but a delicious and fairly easy-to-find exception is the Langhe "Sito Moresco," which delivers a beautiful combination of Nebbiolo-derived aromatics (crushed flowers, earth, truffles) and lush red fruit that simply cannot be denied.
The top reds of the Northern Rhône (all 100 percent syrah, or very close to it) have also grown increasingly dear, but one classic subregion remains an unloved and unruly stepchild: Cornas. It's hard to describe the appeal of these animalistic wines in print, because writing about raw meat, blood, slow-cooked herbs, and charred berries doesn't really sound all that appealing unless you have hyena ancestry, and my favored shorthand of "meat liqueur" for this style of wine isn't really all that much better. But the wines of Cornas are as accomplished as they are wild, and the best bottles of the region age and develop beautifully, drawing sophistication from each year of their development until they become something much more amenable to polite company. Key producers include Verset, Clape, and Voge, but above all Allemand.
Also made from syrah, and as ageable as any Cornas but at a significantly lower price, is the Edmunds St. John Syrah Bassetti from San Luis Obispo County in California. Okay, so it's not from a legendary vinous paradise on par with the Napa Valley, but this is about as good as domestic syrah gets, with power and complexity to spare. It's fairly appealing now, but give it time and it just might make your gift recipient shed tears of joy. Or you could shed a tear now, because it's not going to be made anymore; the owners of the Bassetti Vineyard have decided to sell their grapes elsewhere, which is sure to diminish the quality of the resultant wine.
Finally, if you're in the mood for something decidedly unusual, why not offer a red from Slovenia? Yes, Slovenia. What, you thought "unusual" would mean something from, say, New Hampshire? Haven't you learned anything from this column? The Cetrtic "Ferdinand" Rdece (the last word means "red") from the vowel-deprived region of Brda, which is situated along the Italian border north of Trieste, is a beautiful Bordeaux-style wine that, served blind, could fool anyone as to its origins. Or, given with its label visible, it can blind people with the sheer complexity of its character set. Which is its own kind of fun, I guess. @
Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.
