Liquid : Wine

Screw it

Thor Iverson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:49:00 GMT

Wine openers with a twist

“Does anyone have a corkscrew?” Ask this at any random gathering and you’ll likely be handed a medieval instrument of cork torture, the winged auger. Here’s how it works: you angle the “wings” upward, push the screw into the cork, and attempt to twist the too-tiny handle. You’ll have to push down, too, because the dull point of the auger won’t penetrate the cork without significant pressure. Finally, after the application of sufficient force, the auger descends — its passage completely shredding the interior of the cork — until it plunges through the other side and deposits a shower of cork crumbs onto the surface of the wine. You then clasp the neck of the bottle and the bottom of the corkscrew in one hand, while squeezing the winged levers together with the other. Given a new wine, this extracts the cork about a quarter of the way, after which you must tug and wiggle and twist and grunt until the mangled cork pops out of the bottle, a few teaspoons of wine chasing its release and landing on the nearest stain-prone surface (usually, your shirt). Or, the cork breaks, necessitating an 45-degree-angled approach for the second attempt (since the center of the cork is now completely stripped, and thus useless). If the wine’s old, the initial attempt at extraction causes the auger to rip back through the gaping wound opened by its entry, leaving a ragged cork still in the bottle, though one newly equipped with a tiny hole through which you can pour wine infused with a hail of cork dust.

(In case the previous paragraph is unclear, the winged auger sucks.)

What you really want is the workhorse of the uncorking industry, the so-called “waiter’s friend.” Shaped like a pocket-knife, it has a helix-shaped screw (wine geeks call it a “worm”) without that Cork-destroying central pillar, a one- or two-stage brace, and a small knife for cutting through the capsule (the metal or plastic prophylactic that covers the end of a bottle). Two-stage versions are the nicest, because they aid in the removal of the ultralong corks that tend to show up in pricey bottles. Even better are those with Teflon-coated screws, which slide in and out of corks with ease.

Feel free to make your own joke here.

If a waiter’s friend sounds like too much work, the Screwpull is made for you. It’s a worm with a handle that fits through a clothespin-shaped brace. Clockwise twisting pushes the screw into the cork, then extracts the cork into the welcoming arms of the brace, all without any sort of levering or pulling. If you go this route, you’ll need a foil cutter (sold separately).

The Bluray, highd-ef, home-theater version of the corkscrew is the Leverpull. It’s a Screwpull without the (minor) effort. I’d need a series of diagrams to demonstrate how it works, but it’s really slick (for the price, it had better be), and a skilled user can uncork a bottle every two seconds or so. However, buyer beware: there are dozens of cheap knockoffs, and the only alternative that seems to be worth a damn is the Rabbit. No, it’s not related to that Rabbit. Though if you can figure out a way to open a wine bottle with the latter device, send pictures.

Some corks are impossible to remove, no matter what kind of corkscrew you use. Either they’re too tightly wedged, or years of storage have adhered them to the bottle. That’s when the two-pronged cork remover, popularly known as the ah so, comes in handy. Two slightly curved metal protuberances are slowly wedged, via a careful rocking motion, between the cork and the bottle, after which a steady twisting pulling motion slowly removes the cork. Be careful, though: employed too aggressively, these openers can explode the necks of fragile bottles. If you think wine with floating cork is bad, try glass shards.

Now that you’re armed with the proper tools, here are two important things to remember. One, don’t use any sort of Teflon-coated corkscrew with those hard, rubbery synthetic corks; they’ll abrade the Teflon, making future insertions of the screw more difficult. Use a corkscrew with a metal worm instead.

And two, watch out for screwcaps. It’s quite possible to push a sharply pointed worm or a razor-edged foil cutter right through a metal cap. I’ve seen unsuspecting waiters do just that; the screechy metal-on-metal noise makes people at neighboring tables gawk and stare. Who wants that sort of audience for an unexpected screw?

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Sweet 100: 2008

Thor Iverson — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:37:00 GMT

Bring out your shopping carts

It was a hit last year, judging by a tripling of Massachusetts’s annual wine revenues and a commensurate escalation of my salary. (Okay, okay, none of that happened. Sigh.) And so here it is again: a list of 100 wines you should try. You’ve seen some of them before, perhaps, but consider this a second recommendation if so. Not a “best-of.” Not tied to any particular price range. And not with any agenda in mind. Just good wines. Let the drinking commence.
(A word on vintages: I haven’t included them here, as most of the wines listed are regularly solid performers, but the entries are inspired by recent releases I’ve tasted over the last year. You’ll still want to be wary of 2003s from Europe, when the extreme heat led to many highly a-typical wines.)

Italy
1. Monastero Suore Cistercensi S.O. Trappiste “Coenobium” (nun wine, but exciting and exotic; who knew?)
2. I Clivi di Ferdinando Zanusso Galea (reserved and mineral-driven, with class)
3. I Clivi di Ferdinando Zanusso Brazan (the Harry to Galea’s Prince William)
4. Tenuta Roveglia Lugana (spring fruit and bivalves ... really)
5. Bellotti “Cascina degli Ulivi” Gavi (swirling melon tea)
6. Bellotti “Cascina degli Ulivi” Gavi “Filagnotti” (sauvage minerality with a nutty finish)
7. Roagna Langhe “Solea” (a blend of chardonnay and nebbiolo — no kidding — that tastes like the best of both; stump your friends!)
8. Radikon Ribolla Gialla (a red in white clothing; thermonuclear Rainier cherries)
9. Radikon “Oslavje Riserva” (another red that’s white; unimaginably complex and stunning)
10. Castel Noarna Vigneti delle Dolomiti “Salvanel” (a blend, and it tastes like it)
11. Maule “La Biancara” Gambellara Pico (breath-taking minerality and post-hurricane desolation)
12. Mionetto “MO” Rosé “Sergio” (very much a red wine, but with bubbles)
13. Argiolas Isola dei Nuraghi “Serra Lori” Rosato (pink neon on a rocky beach)
14. Corte Gardoni Bardolino Chiaretto (summer in laser-beam form)
15. Martilde Oltrepò Pavese Barbera “la Strega e la Gazza e il Pioppo ...” (extremely ageable needs meat or the cellar)
16. Vajra Barbera d’Alba (freshly-baked but unsweetened pie in autumn, with precise acidity)
17. Vajra Langhe Rosso (simple yet beautiful; party wine for wine geeks)
18. Brovia Barolo Rocche dei Brovia (dried flowers and deep, deep roots)
19. Le Piane Colline Novaresi (delineated but feral, if that makes sense)
20. Le Piane Boca (tightlywound, aromatically stunning, very reserved)
21. Boccadigabbia Rosso Piceno (ripe berries and black pepper with broad shoulders)
22. Bellotti “Cascina degli Ulivi” Barbera “Mounbè” (wild and shocking red fruit; a throwback)
23. Pira Dolcetto d’Abla (big, big, BIG)
24. Hauner “Carlo Hauner” Salina (earth, flowers, dried honey, and stone fruit)
25. Roagna Barbaresco Pajé (roasted nuts, dandelions, red fruit, and gentle complexity)
26. Occhipinti Il Frappato (soil, strawberries, and flowers in crescendo)
27. Occhipinti “Siccagno” Nero d’Avola (espresso bean, licorice, black fruit, pomegranate ... you name it, it’s probably in here; this wine buzzes with electricity)
28. Bera Barbera d’Asti Ronco Malo (pulses with earthiness)
29. Mayr-Nusser Lagrein “Riserva” (quartz, verbena, and mint given a Teutonic chill)
30. I Clivi di Ferdinando Zanusso Galea Rosso (gray earth and black truffles)
31. Bera Moscato d’Asti “Canelli” (denser than most, with a sophisticated yet still-sweet elegance and real presence)
32. Fondiari “Mola” Aleatico dell’Elba (the kind of sweet red that might have sustained Napoleon)

Alsace
33. Mallo “Special Delivery” Pinot Blanc (light, fun, quenching)
34. Sparr Riesling Schoenenbourg (crushed flowers and chalk, with some residual sugar)
35. MeyerFonné Riesling Pfoeller (sandstone-textured with a hint of sweetness)
36. Albrecht Pinot Gris “Cuvée Romanus” (smoky pears)
37. Barmès Buecher Pinot Gris Rosenberg de Wettolsheim “Silicis” (shattered minerality, structured, and brilliant)
38. Ehrhart Pinot Gris Brand (pears and minerals; very ageable)
39. Mittnacht-Frères Pinot Gris “Terre d’etoiles ...” (minerality abounds, but drink soonish)
40. Mallo Gewurztraminer “Cuvée SaintJacques” (classic, with a bit of zing)
41. Mittnacht-Frères Gewuztraminer “Terre d’etoiles...” (see previous note)
42. Sparr Gewurztraminer Mambourg (intense and crystallized, with light sweetness)

Loire Valley
43. Roussel & Barrouillet “Clos Roche Blanche” Touraine Sauvignon “No. 2” (chalk as interpreted by sauvignon blanc)
44. Jessey “Domaine du Closel-Château des Vaults” Savennières “La Jalousie” (chalk as interpreted by chenin blanc)
45. Pellé Menetou-Salon Morogues Blanc (cold fruit and high-minded greenness, with sharp edges)
46. Augé “Domaine des Maisons Brulées” Vin de Table Français “Le Herdeleau” (sing it: pinot noir and gamay, live together in perfect harmony)
47. Joguet Chinon “Cuvée Terroir” (razor-edged green, with structure)
48. Richou Anjou “Les 4 Chemins” (wedge-shaped fruit wrapped in a garland of thyme)

Southern France
49. Miquel “Domaine de Barroubio” Vin de Pays d’Oc Muscat Sec (everything about the perfume says “sweet,” but it’s dry as a bone)
50. Côté Tariquet Chardonnay-Sauvignon Blanc (intense fruit salad)
51. Bonfils “La Chapelle de la Bastide” Coteaux du Languedoc Picpoul de Pinet (sharp and crisp, with hints, teases, and touches; a perfect summer wine)
52. Lafage Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes Blanc “Côté Est” (simple stone-baked pleasure)
53. Parcé Frères “La Rectorie” Collioure Rosé “Coté Mer” (explodes with flavor, but never loses its transparency)
54. Durand & Valentin “Château de Lancyre Pic Saint-Loup Rosé (roses, blood oranges, and lavender)
55. Iché Vin de Pays de l’Hérault “Les Hérétiques” (one of the great wine values; solid darkness)
56. Fonquerle “l’Oustal Blanc” Vin de Table “Naïck” (a strange blend with strange-but-wonderful complexity)

Champagne, Beaujolais, Burgundy, Bordeaux
57. Brun “FRV100” (unbeatable fun; soda for adults)
58. Larmandier-Bernier Champagne “1er Cru” Brut Blanc de Blancs “Vertus” (mineral soda as conceived by Frank Gehry)
59. Gaston Chiquet Champagne “1er Cru” à Dizy “Tradition” Brut (gritty and warming)
60. CoudertAppert “Domaine de la Chapelle des Bois” Fleurie (a prettier wine you’ll never taste)
61. Bertagna Bourgogne “Les Croix Blanches” (spicy red fruit that feels, but isn’t, carbonated)
62. Rieussec Sauternes (baking spices, butterscotch, and incredibly rich sweetness; not cheap, though)

Rhône Valley
63. Michel “Le Vieux Donjon” Châteaneuf-du-Pape Blanc (nuts, stones, and spices)
64. Delorme “Domaine de la Mordorée” Côtes-du-Rhône “La Dame Rousse” (plays way above its age bracket)
65. Perrin “Coudoulet de Beaucastel” Côtes-du-Rhône (ripe fruit, earth, meat, and a surprising drinkability)
66. Costières & Soleil “Sélection Laurence Féraud” Séguret (sundrenched dark berries and vine smoke)
67. Vignerons de Caractère “Domaine de la Brune” Beaumes de Venise “Vin Emotion” (reddish-hued quartz and smoked meat)
68. Texier Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge (classic, but with sharper acidity than most of its type)
69. Stehelin Gigondas (a brutish monster that needs a lot of time)

Spain & Portugal
70. Ameztoi Txakolina (crystals and lime; a brilliant distillation of light)
71. Santa Vitória Alentejano Branco (hides hewn from grapes, melons, and apples; a bracing white)
72. López de Heredia “Viña Tondonia” Rioja Rosado (utterly unique; the ’97 is the current vintage)
73. Primitivo Quiles “Raspay” Alicante (like being hugged by the earth while being fed berries; stunning)
74. Viños Piñol “Sacra Natura” Terra Alta “Viñas Viejos” (spicy red fruit in a blender with structure and zest; gluggable)
75. Telmo Rodríguez “MR” Málaga Moscatel (perfumed and quite sweet; Thomas Jefferson drank this wine’s ancestors)
76. Burmester “Late Bottled Vintage” Porto (balanced and full-fruited, with plenty of sweetness)

Germany & Austria
77. Laible Durbacher Plauelrain Traminer Spätlese Trocken (arctic gewürztraminer)
78. St. UrbansHof Leiwener Laurentiuslay Riesling Spätlese feinherb (elegant, soft, and incredibly long, with a great future)
79. JP Reinert Wiltinger Schlangengraben Riesling Spätlese feinherb (a laser beam with a quartz rod rammed through it, or vice-versa)
80. St. Urbans-Hof Piesporter Goldtröpfchen Riesling Spätlese (beautiful peach flower, with balance and purity)
81. Pretterebner Blauer Portugieser (a little red tease)

California & Oregon
82. Scholium Project “Heliopolis” Delu (one of the strangest, most wonderful whites you’ll ever taste)
83. Edmunds St. John “Heart of Gold” (an immediate white, with great character and bracing structure)
84. Easton Sauvignon Blanc (sauvignon blanc fruit done in an aggressive New World style)
85. JB Cellars “Margaret Anne” Arneis/Tocai Friuliano (pure, clean fun)
86. Edmunds St. John Gamay Noir Rosé Witters (there’s pink Beaujolais, too, but this is better)
87. Scott Paul Pinot Noir “La Paulée” (lush pinot in the first flush of youth)
88. Adelsheim Pinot Noir “Elizabeth’s Reserve” (big and fulfilling)
89. Calera Pinot Noir Jensen (the most accessible of Calera’s brilliant, sophisticated pinots)
90. Edmunds St. John “Rocks and Gravel” (the Southern Rhône with a laidback California vibe)
91. Tablas Creek Tannat (deep, dark, mysterious, and intriguingly murky)
92. Tablas Creek Vin de Paille “Sacrérouge” (a sweet dried-grape mourvèdre that tastes of figs)

New Zealand & Australia
93. Vavasour Sauvignon Blanc Awatere Valley (dry, chalky gooseberry)
94. The Crossings Pinot Noir (crisp to the point of whiteness)
95. Wild Earth “Blind Trail” Pinot Noir (an insane value, done in a burly style)
96. Wyndham Estate Shiraz “Black Cluster” (old vines make the difference; balanced, intense, and complex)

South Africa
97. Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc (rum, sodomy, and the lash)
98. Neil Ellis Sauvignon Blanc (stark, sharp, yet airy)
99. Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc (green under a spotlight; flawless)
100. Southern Right Pinotage (a fruit explosion that’s impossible to ignore)
Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Sipping Style

Thor Iverson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:37:00 GMT

The frontiers of fermentation

Now that it’s clear that cutting-edge liquidity can’t be left in the hands of financial types, it’s time for those of us interested in the liquids themselves to take that edge back. Usually, hipster quaffing is left to the cocktail set, or to the world of craft brews. Wine has so much bourgeois baggage (words can’t describe my dismay at the number of times per week I hear, “Oh, but I’m not a connoisseur”) that it’s risky to praise bottles that run ahead of the pack.
But what the hell ...

Jean-Paul Brun is a man who likes a good pun almost as much as he likes great Beaujolais. He’s managed both in his frothy “Terres Dorées” Mousseux “FRV100,” a light red sparkling wine made from gamay, the grape of red Beaujolais. (For those confused about the wordplay, say the last sequence of letters and the number in French.) It’s lightly sweet and fairly low in alcohol, with a burst of red berries and an excited-puppy appeal that just can’t be denied, though it probably won’t pee on your leg. Serve it with a light chill.

The appeal of the Ameztoi Txakolina, from Basque country in northern Spain, is definitely not its almost offensively lurid label. It’s the wine within, which tastes of ripe grapefruit and other zesty citrus (including the ever-exotic makrut lime), sugar crystals without any actual sweetness, vibrancy, verve, and a healthy dollop of fun. If you don’t like this, it’s possible that you don’t actually like wine. (By the way, it’s cha-ko-lee-nah.)

Whites from Jurançon in southwestern France aren’t new, but they’re virtually unknown in the States. Part of the problem is the range of styles, which range from dry to incalculably sweet; people don’t know what to expect. But the wines are full of site-derived flavor, are tasty in their youth, age wonderfully, and are remarkably agile with food. Two producers appear on local shelves, and I’ll concentrate on the dry versions. The first, Barrère “Clos de la Vierge” Jurançon Sec, tastes of herbs in the ultra-saturated air that lingers after a rainstorm, with a jittery, nervous texture that’s hard to pin down. (If I could, wouldn’t that description make more sense?) The second, Ramonteu “Domaine Cauhapé” Jurançcon Sec “Chant des Vignes,” is heftier, with pine nuts and bitter almonds alongside grass, pineapple, and a little tsunami of green apple.

If pinot noir was hip in the aftermath of Sideways, it’s now well into mass-market ubiquity. Gamay, from Beaujolais
or elsewhere, has pretty much never been hip. And a blend of the two from a region that’s not exactly world-famous for either? Crazy. From the heart of the Loire Valley in central France, the Augé “Domaine des Maisons Brulées” Vin de Table Français “Le Herdeleau” is just such a blend and brings the best of each variety to the fore: the brighter, racier red fruit of gamay and a deeper, blue-black berry component from the pinot. It’s sort of like a well-behaved older brother and a fidgety younger brother managing to peacefully co-exist for a few hours. And it’s very tasty.

Part of trend-setting is being the first to see the hidden qualities in an awkward misfit. And few grapes have failed to fit in as much as pinotage, one of the most derided wines in the world. While a few brave souls have transported it elsewhere, its past, present, and future lie in South Africa — a decision I’m sure they’d like to have back. When it’s bad (and it too often is), it tastes of varnish, paint thinner, and the sharp bite of tannic, acidic, and underripe grapes. But when it’s good, it’s absolutely fascinating, the sort of wine that makes people lift a Spock-ish eyebrow and ask, “What is this?” The Southern Right Pinotage from Walker Bay, which is just about as far south as South African vineyards go, turns that varnish into a benefit, polishing dark berries into a well-buffed glow, then adding fine structure and a little jig of complexity.

But that’s only drinking on the cutting edge. It’s possible to go farther: drinking on the bleeding edge.

On second thought, let’s leave that to vampires.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Sunny delights

Thor Iverson — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:18:00 GMT

Summer in Boston. It starts sometime in late June, dries up the remnants of the three months of rain that preceded it, and beats a hasty retreat a few days after the returning students have lugged their belongings from U-Hauls to their fourth-floor walk-ups in the full blaze of 95-degrees-and-humid afternoons.

For many, summer sipping means decorative, fruit-based cocktails with stuff sticking out of them. There’s nothing wrong with that, but some of us aren’t quite so willing to give up our wine. The problem is that not all wines work as well under the warm rays of the sun as they do in the fierce gale of a Nor’easter.

You’ll often hear wine types insist that heat is the enemy of wine. By this, they usually mean that storing wine at room temperature or above hastens its demise, but this isn’t the only reason that wine prefers cooler environs. When a wine — any wine — gets too warm, its alcohol sticks out like a drunken thumb. That nice, refreshing pinot noir from a few months ago starts to taste like cherry-flavored whiskey, while high-alcohol hulks like Port start to burn like Everclear.

Thankfully, the generous (and, incidentally, oenophilic) god Frigidaire has provided us with an easy solution: a nice quick chill. Throw everything — even those big reds — into a bucket of ice or the fridge for a few minutes, and the problem of excess heat goes away (at least for a little while; unless you’re a speed drinker, you’ll probably need to repeat this a few times over the course of a bottle). This is especially useful during grilling season. Nothing goes better with grilled meat and most grilled vegetables than zinfandel (the red kind, of course), but no grape is more alcoholladen: 15-percent-plus is the norm rather than the exception these days. So cool — not frozin — is the rule.

If circulated Freon isn’t on hand, however, you’ll need to reconsider your wine choices. Lower-alcohol wine — German riesling, for example — can help keep the heat down, but a steady diet of just a few wines can get a little boring. Instead, choose from a broader range of wines that welcome a good shiver. Here are a few ideas — decorative umbrellas not included.

Summer’s a traditional time for marriages, but here’s a non-traditional one (after all, this is Massachusetts): Domaine du Tariquet “Côté Tariquet” Chardonnay-Sauvignon, made in the same region of southwestern France as Armagnac. These are grapes not often seen together, because the latter’s neon fruit can easily overwhelm lightbodied chardonnay. Here, however, tasty tropicality and firm acidity are brought together with the faintest hint of sweetness.

From a land that knows something about summer heat, the Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc (from South Africa’s Western Cape) takes intense yet crisp sauvignon blanc flavors into the red zone, something that only happens with the best examples of the variety. Yes, that’s right: taste carefully and you’ll find a hint of bright red cherries amid the more traditional grass and Granny Smith apple.

A lot of older wines taste like a fading autumnal sunset. Here’s a youngster that tastes like sunrise: the Bellotti “Cascina degli Ulivi” Gavi from the Piedmont in Italy, all blossoming greenery and ripe summer melon in blinding light, good by the chug but complex enough for a long, contemplative sip.

When a California winemaker labels their wine pinot grigio rather than pinot gris, they’re doing one of two things: grasping at the huge market for the innocuous but popular Italian wine, or indicating that they’re not making it in the dense, spicy Alsatian style (in which case they would label it pinot gris). The latter is the case with the Palmina Pinot Grigio from Santa Barbara County, which is zippy and refreshing, something not often achieved by California whites. Expect green-tinged citrus and the faint tingle of herbs.

The Edmunds St. John “BoneJolly” Rosé is a pink version of this regularly delicious gamay (“BoneJolly” is a pun on Beaujolais, where gamay reigns) from El Dorado County, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. It’s a tasty burst of summery red fruit and it comes under screwcap, which makes it a perfect picnic wine; no longer does forgetting a corkscrew mean either recreating a bottle-smashing scene from West Side Story or going without.

Some wines don’t mince words. Such is the case with the Two Paddocks “Picnic” Pinot Noir from New Zealand’s Central Otago, a lighter,more refreshing version of their serious reds that’s just begging for a blanket on the Esplanade. This, by the way, is Sam Neill’s winery — just in case it amuses you to drink wine made by the guy who played the Antichrist.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Wine by the numbers: Meeting the burden of proof

Thor Iverson — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:41:00 GMT

NOT THAT anyone reading this ever engaged in the highly illegal practice of underage drinking, but remember when it was all so much simpler? (For your friends, I mean. Not you. You went to church every day, asked for extra-credit assignments, helped old ladies across the street, ate all your vegetables ... and certainly, never, ever touched the demon rum. Especially not when it came in convenient punch form.)

Theoretically, then ... back in the day, it was all about the alcohol. No one cared about grapes, or places, or (much) about brands. I suppose this is why my attempts to be the Disney Channel's wine correspondent have, thus far, failed to gain traction.

But where are we now? If you're reading this column - which means alcohol has to sound pretty darn appealing right about now - you're regularly assaulted with a barrage of unfamiliar concepts. Grapes, places, people, ham-handed chemistry - all the oenological minutiae that make up the incredibly detailed world of wine. It's enough to drive a person to drink. (But, hopefully, not the other way 'round.)

You'd think that wine being an alcoholic beverage would still be comforting somehow. And I guess it is, especially starting about halfway through the average bottle. But the fact is, modern oenogeeks can't even leave this simple facet of wine alone, and these days there's a fairly large controversy over alcohol in wine. Specifically, how much qualifies as too much.

Yes, yes, I know. Are you nuts? Possibly.

Here's the thing: wine exists at a lot of different alcohol levels, expressed on labels as a percentage. You've got your off-dry German riesling, or moscato d'Asti, somewhere down in the middle to high single-digits. There's the bulk of cooler-climate European wines, ranging between about 11 and 14 percent. And then you've got the bigger, bolder styles - mostly, but not exclusively, from the New World - starting at about 13 percent but sometimes leaping past 16 or 17 percent. With engineered super-yeasts, topping 20 percent is now eminently possible, though I've yet to see it myself.

Obviously, these alcohol levels have a lot to do with how many glasses a person can polish off before the other demons associated with alcohol (hangovers, regrettable dance floor behavior, repeatedly screaming "I love you, man!" in a stranger's ear) come to the party; a single person can fairly easily finish a bottle of light German riesling over a slow lunch, but one of the higher-alcohol brutes might be too much for a pair of people at dinner, even if they have no post-prandial plans other than sleep.

Alcohol levels in wine are going up. And up. And up. Since alcohol in wine is a function of sugar in grapes, it shouldn't be a surprise that global warming is partially to blame. (Here's another one of those auxiliary demons: Al Gore monitoring your wine intake.) But it's not the primary factor. No, this would be something a lot more fundamental: the winemakers' choice.

Why? A wine's body (the weight and texture of it in the mouth) is created by a few things, but the primary factor is alcohol. The higher the alcohol, the more body in the wine. And fuller-bodied wines win competitions, impress critics, and make a splash at tastings. Plus, as grapes with ever-escalating sugars hang on the vine, intensity and concentration of fruit also increases. This helps create the big, powerful explosions of flavor that are so popular in modern-styled wines.

Winemakers have good reason to believe this style is popular, but most often those who traffic in high-alcohol wines do it because they like the results. Not everyone does. For detractors, many (though not all) of these modern wines taste "hot" and deliver a burning sensation similar to that of hard alcohol. This is a sign of imbalance and can technically occur whether the wine clocks in at seven or 17 percent, but it's much more likely as that number rises. Consumer pushback has led to an occasional practice of lying on the label, claiming an alcohol level several percentage points lower than the actual one. And yes, this is illegal too.

So what about the future? Winemakers can pick earlier, but this means losing some of that fruit intensity. They can de-alcoholize their wine, an aggressive technique regularly practiced at hundreds of wineries in California alone but almost never revealed to the public. They can engage in a number of complicated viticultural techniques to slow down ripening. Or they can uproot and move somewhere cooler, where their grapes won't be so sugary by harvest time. This is an extreme response, but it has happened.

Or, I suppose, we could all drink less. Though that hardly seems like an ideal solution. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Twist: Bottle of the sexes

Heather Bouzan — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:36:00 GMT

WE'LL BE HONEST: if it has an alcohol content, we're happy to drink it. But some people get all snooty in the beer-versus-wine debate. Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, and Marnie Old, an accomplished sommelier, are two such people - but in their case, they decided to work out their differences, first in a series of wine- and beer-pairing dinners (no clear winner emerged), and then on the pages of He Said Beer, She Said Wine (DK Publishing, 2008; $25). The nicely illustrated tome has a back-and-forth rhythm that's easy to follow, beginning with a quick run-through of the essentials in "Wine Primer" and "Beer Basics," then moving on to pairing the libations with a variety of comestibles, including cheese, veggies, spicy foods, meat, poultry, and desserts. We like how specific they get within each category - sharp aged cheddar and Harpoon IPA; Casa Lapostolle chardonnay with a turkey club ... who knew? - while teaching us enough about each food and drink that we can determine substitutions, too. The book concludes with a how-to on hosting your own wine-versus-beer fête, complete with delicious recipes and, naturally, suggestions regarding what goes with what. Now that we've analyzed their arguments, our favorite pairings have emerged: we suggest beer coupled with summer afternoons, dance parties you'll cringe over tomorrow, and sneaky "work lunches," while wine enhances gossipy dish sessions and sniffle-inducing Lifetime movies. But that's just our opinion. Pick up a copy at Brookline Booksmith (279 Harvard Street, Brookline, 617.566.6660).

The Road Less Traveled: Examining the lure of the obscure

Thor Iverson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:23:00 GMT

AMONG A certain cadre of music fans, near-anonymity is a virtue. The tinier the fan base and the more micro-specific the genre, the better. A trio of yaks playing klezmer standards on didgeridoo? Sure, great - until they take their act on the road, that is. Then they're money-grubbing sellouts.

It must be acknowledged that aficionados of this type exist in the wine world. In their most extreme form, they're the ones seeking out bottles made in purely anecdotal quantities, famous winemakers' not-for-sale homebrew projects, wines made from ancient Etruscan recipes and sold in animal bladders plugged with oiled cloth, and even the (in)famous Jamaican meat wine.

Alternatives don't have to be that extreme, though. Part of the fun of visiting wineries is trying all the strange, experimental stuff that never makes it out of the tasting room. And for many wine geeks, especially those whose entire and somewhat soused lives are devoted to the stuff, there's something immensely appealing about the unknown. A new grape, a new place, a new producer - that, for some people (the author included), is enough to move a wine from the shelf to the shopping basket.

Of course, this sort of wide-eyed experimentation comes with a price. Most popular wines are reliable, and in fact that's one of the reasons they're popular. Buying blind means that one has to accept a certain failure rate. And that's if such wines can even be found; in the absence of importers, distributors, and retailers with a similar taste for the arcane, there's no hope of scything one's way through the vinous terra incognita. But there's a nice benefit, too: obscure wines don't have the critical acclaim or ravenous consumer base that lead to ever-expanding prices. Who can pass up the chance to be hip and abstemious?

Admittedly, obscurity is in the eye of the beholder. For some, grüner veltliner (a world-class white grape from Austria) is beyond the horizon, but for those on the bleeding edge of oenophilia, it's yesterday's news. Or, to paraphrase the old Yogi Berra line, "It's so popular, nobody drinks it anymore." But there are still, even in this everyone's-a-journalist era of information overload, some wines that remain virtually unknown, even to the cognoscenti. Here are a few that don't deserve to remain in the shadows any longer, wines to drink with - or without - those damned yaks wheezing into their didgeridoos.

The Piedmont, a region of northwestern Italy that roughly surrounds Turin, has some very well-known wines indeed. Barbera, dolcetto, moscato, and of course the highly-reputed Barolo and Barbaresco, are celebrated around the world, and have been for a very long time. But those are all in the south. The north, closer to the snow-capped mountains that give the area its name, is very nearly a blank slate. Some may have heard of Gattinara, thanks to Travaglini's semi-ubiquitous square bottle, but the rest of the area might as well be in Florida, as far as wine lovers are concerned.

Which brings us to Boca. It could be in Florida, based on its name, but in fact it's in the northeast corner of the Piedmont, just up the road from Milan's Malpensa airport. The wines - mostly red - are made from a combination of grapes that can include nebbiolo, croatina, vespolina, and uva rara. At least, that's what the law says. In practice, almost no one makes Boca, and what was in the 1800s a thriving wine industry is only now being resuscitated by a few dedicated producers. Chief among them is Le Piane, owned by a jolly Swiss gentleman who has resurrected old, abandoned vineyards and planted a few new ones, in a somewhat quixotic attempt to re-establish the region. These have just entered the Boston market thanks to Adonna Imports (their only other American presence is in Minnesota, which I just cannot explain; maybe they go with lutefisk), and lovers of the unique owe it to themselves to seek them out.

Boca, which is the top-of-the-line (and most expensive) red, is a structured, highly-ageable wine made from nebbiolo and vespolina, with the beautiful, floral aromatics of the former given a firm, slightly chilly edge as befits a wine made from these altitudinous vineyards. Be wary of the uncharacteristic 2003, but other vintages are immensely appealing. From the Colline Novaresi, a much larger region just south of Boca, Le Piane makes a pair of fascinating wines at a lower price. The first, called La Maggiorina, is a nebbiolo-based blend with such a striking minerality that it tastes more like a red riesling than any red grape with which I'm familiar. And the second, which simply carries the name of the winery, is one of the very few croatina-dominated wines made anywhere, and elevates that red riesling-ness to greater heights, with precision, delineation, and a burst of icebox roses. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Primavera Verde: Sauvignons put a spring in your sip

Thor Iverson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:38:00 GMT

IT'S NOT easy being green." So sang a triangle-mouthed frog puppet, once. Of course, at the time he had a hand jammed up his ... well, anyway, I'm not sure his plight applies to us.

Still, mention "green" in the context of wine and you've got trouble. A rather dismaying number of people, for whom any wine that doesn't taste like fruit pie slathered with jam is just no good, can't stand even the slightest hint of anything green. No grass. No herbs. No vegetables. Only fruit, FRUIT, FRUIT! One assumes that, as children, they hid their veggies under a napkin, spent hours picking out every last fleck of herb from their food, and did anything they could to avoid mowing the lawn.

But green elements are an essential part of a lot of wines. The problem comes from the arbitrary notion that "green" is a synonym for "underripe," which is usually considered a bad thing. The definition of ripeness has gotten rather extreme of late, sometimes causing wines that don't taste like fermented fruit syrup to be demeaned as, yes, green - and therefore underripe.

That's a shame. Many grapes - most of them white, though not all - have greenish hues as part of their essential natures, whether they're ripe or not. Sauvignon blanc. Sylvaner. Grüner veltliner. Sémillon. And, on the tinted side, cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon. It's not that it's impossible to eliminate green notes by letting these grapes hang on the vine until they're raisins, it's just that this rather misses the point of growing them in the first place. If one wants their cabernet to taste like zinfandel, why not just plant zinfandel?

The disappearing tinge of green is most missed in the spring, when our food is just starting to emerge from its rich, heavy, fat-laden winter slumber. Plants - fresh ones grown somewhere closer to us than Peru - finally re-enter the food lexicon. Primavera becomes a pasta topping that can be assembled from the produce aisle, rather than frozen foods. People burst into song for absolutely no reason. (No? Not at your house?)

And it's the time to drink sauvignon blanc. It's the most spring-like of grapes. The core of its character is a green-tinged, grassy blend of tart citrus juices. Bell and, in some cases, chili pepper can enter the mix. When pushed to overripeness, it tastes like canned tropical fruit salad, but there's still a lingering, and welcome, green edge.

In Sancerre, a French region where sauvignon blanc reaches its peak of complexity, grassiness is joined with minerality and restraint. Some of the very best bottles - in contrast with most sauvignon - can even age (five to 10 years). Producers to look for include the two Cotats and Thomas-Labaille. A short trip downriver, the Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon "No. 2" from the Touraine is a chalkier variation on the same theme, and a screaming bargain as well.

New Zealand is the other dominant player on the sauvignon scene (they call it "savvy" and serve it by the caseload at parties), and there the wines exhibit a youthful exuberance appropriate for such a young country - a forceful, in-your-face nature that brought them to international acclaim just a few decades after most of the vines were planted. Dog Point, Isabel, Seresin, and The Crossings all excel.

From Italy's Alto Adige, St. Michael-Eppan's "Sanct Valentin" bottling is exquisite, bringing even more intensity to a Sancerre-like paradigm, while white Bordeaux (typically a sauvignon blanc/sémillon blend) is admirably represented at the affordable end by Graville-Lacoste. Leaping across the majority of the hemisphere, Southern Right from South Africa is as impossible to ignore as any New Zealand sauvignon, with a somewhat more angular aspect.

And how about domestic sauvignon blanc? That's a little more difficult, since many producers still cling to an '80s trend of oaking and sweetening their sauvignon until it's pretty much indistinguishable from chardonnay to which similar abuses have been committed. Thankfully, there are exceptions. Di Stefano from Washington's Columbia Valley is a transitional style, halfway between the traditional and the overly-soft modern version, while Easton in the Sierra Foothills makes an especially floral example. But some of the best of all might come from Oregon, a state almost no one associates with the grape. J. Christopher's two site-specific bottlings, Croft and Maresh, are extraordinary, combing the complexity and sophistication of the Old World with the exciting exuberance of the New.

Sauvignon blanc can be a zingy and refreshing drink all by itself on days when the air doesn't provide quite enough of its own chill (you know, those warming spring afternoons ... which I'm given to understand are common elsewhere, even if they're unheard of here in Boston). But it's better when its exuberance is tamed by food. The best marriages include green vegetables (including the ever-difficult asparagus) and anything made from them, acidic ingredients (citrus, vinegar, tomato, onion), and raw seafood. Especially when wasabi's involved.

But is it the best match for singing frog? Shame on you for even thinking it. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Magnum Carta: What makes a wine list great?

Thor Iverson — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:27:00 GMT

THERE'S A restaurant in Girona, Spain, where the wine lists (yes, plural) are delivered on a rolling cart, because they're too heavy to carry and too bulky to peruse on the table. Most of the world's great wines are represented, they're all reasonably priced, and they're served flawlessly. It is, by any measure, a truly great list. Lists. Whatever.

There's a restaurant in Berkeley, California, where the wine list fits on a single sheet of paper, with plenty of room to spare at the margins. It's paper printed that day by someone who loves playing with fonts, but doesn't much care what they actually look like on the page. And it is also, by any measure, a truly great list.

How can this be? Aren't all the world's great wine lists like that first example? Giant cloth-bound tomes that kick up centuries of dust as they're dropped on your table? Forty vintages each of the grapey greats, with their names engraved on vellum by some poor quill-and-ink scribe in a dank cellar? You peruse, the sommelier hovers, "monsieur makes an excellent choice," and the ceremony proceeds apace?

No.

Defining a great wine list is a little like defining pornography: we know it when we see it (though wine lists that actually involve pornography don't usually contend for the title).

Length doesn't matter. (Hmm. I can't seem to get off this subject.) Wine novels can be excellent, but they can also just be long. Some of the best lists are short, focused bursts of creativity from a wine buyer who actually cared about quality over quantity. And yes, some of them are photocopied.

Along those lines, focus does matter. "Five Napa cabs? Check. Ten Bordeaux? Check. One Argentinean malbec? Check." Too many wine lists are done that way, and most of them are boring - the buffet lines of the wine world. Fine dining or corner diner, it doesn't matter; a good wine list is cooked to order. The wines match the philosophy, the style, the clientele, and most importantly the food - not some external and unrelated notion of what most people drink. Think about that the next time you're at a glorified lobster shack and there are five pages of cabernet.

Great wine lists are also up to date. I don't mean trendy, though some of them surely are: the current hipster thing is "natural" wine, which covers a vague universe of organic, biodynamic, and/or low-sulfur bottlings mostly coming from Europe (though that's sure to change). I mean that given modern computers and printers, there's no excuse for a wine list rife with sold-out stock and out-of-date vintages. Whether one sheet or Tolstoy length, a restaurant that can't afford to print a few dozen copies of a page as they sell through their bottles isn't a restaurant that cares much about its wine.

Though rare in the United States, for reasons that aren't quite clear to me, a variety of formats is also a hallmark of a great wine list. Magnums are fun and look impressive, but what about half bottles? A by-the-glass selection that's as interesting and wide-ranging as the full-bottle list? The best lists have them.

And then there's the organizational issue. Are wines categorized in a way that makes sense only to those who've studied the subject (that is, does the average diner know or care about the difference between a Pomerol and a Pauillac)? Or are they listed by ascending price? Neither is particularly helpful. Grouping by style (light, fruity reds, or full-bodied, powerful whites) is helpful, as are indications of the sort of food a given wine might enhance. This doesn't have to take place on the wine list, however; it can be shifted to the menu, which means a kitchen and a wine director that work together (which, if the wines on the list are any good with the food, already happens).

Finally, there's the issue of support. The greatest wine list in the world is useless without the people and technology to back it up. This means a temperature-controlled storage area (not open racking up against a hot ceiling). This means a cellaring scheme that saves staff from 20-minute scavenger hunts while diners' appetizers are icing over. And this means employees who can speak knowledgably about the list - whether that be a dedicated on-call wine expert or a well-trained waitstaff - and who know how to serve the wine. No overfilling glasses, no dripping in the diner's soup, no mindless use of ice buckets for wines that are already ice-cold.

And rolling carts? Not necessary. But, I'll admit, cool as hell. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Bumbling into Bubbly: A sparkling feet of imagination

Thor Iverson — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:10:00 GMT

"OH, I CAN'T. It goes right to my head!" And with this phrase, a thousand eager hands (attached to lusting hearts) reach forth, offering yet another glass of sparkling wine to their dates.

But is it true? Does sparkling wine really accelerate the careening path towards tipsiness and the easy abandonment of virtue? Yes, sort of. (I'll wait for a moment, while you all head out to the wine shop. Okay, let's continue.) The carbon dioxide helps blood absorb alcohol more quickly, or something; it's all too biochemical for me. The funny thing is, despite the many attempts our species has made towards concocting a seduction aid, this one - which actually appears to have some sort of effect - is an accident. Apparently, nature wants to encourage such behavior. And why argue with nature?

So what's that about an accident? Well, it's like this: you know how wine comes from yeasts fermenting grape sugars and turning them into alcohol? (Sorry. It's that nefarious biochemistry again. Just bear with me for a moment.) Anyway, one of the other by-products of this process is carbon dioxide. In a non-sparkling wine, this gas is set free before bottling. Even if it's not, there's no lasting effect; the bottle gets opened, there's a minor and momentary "prickle" of fizz, but eventually the wine ends up bubble-free. You'll see this a lot in light, crisp wines like German riesling or Vinho Verde from Portugal.

But back up a step. If there's leftover sugar, and there's even a single cell of living yeast, eventually there's going to be fermentation. And if this fermentation happens in an airtight container - say, a wine bottle - there's going to be carbon dioxide with nowhere to go. Wine folk call this "spontaneous refermentation" (wine folk are armed with the sexiest terms, aren't they?), and it's considered a grievous flaw, because it's usually accompanied by horrible aromas of rotting feet. Try that on a date and see how it works out for you.

At some point in winemaking's long history, this drew notice. We're not entirely sure where or when, but we do know that it didn't first happen in Champagne, and we also know that the monk Dom Pérignon had nothing to do with it (despite much mythmaking to the contrary). Eventually, winemakers were intrigued enough to try to figure it out. Because the thing was, the wines didn't always smell like fermented feet. Sometimes, they were quite nice.

Through much trial (and undoubtedly much error), someone figured it out. Whoever it was, thanks to centuries of aggressive marketing, the method is now associated with the international home of high-quality fizz, and so we call it the méthode Champenoise (Champagne method) or méthode traditionelle (traditional method), which these days has been refined to an efficient combination of art and science. Basically, it works like this: a still (non-sparkling) wine is made and bottled. Sugar and yeast are added to the finished wine, the bottle is sealed - usually with a crown cap, like on bottles of soda - and turned so that its top is angled downward, and the yeast and sugar are left alone together ... with or without romantic music. Dead yeast cells, having given their all, collect in the neck of the bottle - right up against the crown cap.

When they're all dead, the neck is flash-frozen and the cap, along with its attached "plug" of dead soldiers, is removed from the bottle, which is quickly recorded (with the same cork that you'd find in any bottle of wine, albeit slightly fatter). Pressure eventually forces the cork outward, which is why sparkling wines tend to have a little excursion into cork bondage in the form of a wire restraint. But the key point is that méthode Champenoise bubblies are the only wines that are "made" in the very bottle from which you drink them. Kinda neat, huh?

While this is how the majority of the world's best sparkling wines are created, it's not the only way. The second fermentation can be done in a tank, which is how Prosecco is made. It can be allowed to happen spontaneously under very careful conditions, and it's mostly limited to a few unusual French sparklers (like Bugey-Cerdon). And yes, wine can be carbonated like soda, though the producers that do this aren't exactly known for quality. A good way to spot this latter group is the appearance of the word "Champagne" on a wine not from the French region of the same name. Every country but the United States has agreed to forbid this, and only the worst US producers mimic the term.

And so, one of the most elegant and refined styles of wine in the world is an accident, subsequently perfected in order to avoid wines that taste like bubbly toe cheese. Somehow, I don't think we'll see that in Moët & Chandon's marketing campaigns. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Riesling Rocks: A grape that leaves no stone unturned

Thor Iverson — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:27:00 GMT

AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine once made a personal study of the great vineyards of Germany. His methodology: put whatever stones or soil he found there into his mouth, taste, and compare. Maybe he was part chicken and had some sort of vestigial gizzard, but - especially given that he was a dentist - it didn't strike me as the sanest activity. So what sort of oenofetish would drive an otherwise rational wine lover to gnaw on dirt? There's only one likely culprit: riesling, the grape that tastes like rocks.

Assuming one is moved to start talking about wine - for a living, or just to bore the crap out of your friends - most conversations eventually come around to fruit. The flavors you'll find in wines include cherry, blackberry, plum, grapefruit, gooseberry, apricot ... well, the list goes on (and on). Sometimes, better analogies are to veggies, flowers, and other things that grow.

But of the realm of wines that taste less like the plants and more like the stuff they're grown in, riesling is king of 'em all. It's a grape that, at times, may deliver vague suggestions of apple, a light alpine flower or two, or perhaps a nod in the general direction of some distant tropical fruit. But for the most part, it has very little inherent taste at all. What it does have is a keen interest in geology.

There are many grapes that are highly reflective of the site on which they're grown, but riesling is just about the most "transparent" of them all. Unlike chardonnay (another quite pellucid grape), riesling's winemakers hardly ever succumb to the impulse to burden it with the domineering flavors of new oak. So why does riesling taste like rocks? Theories abound. Contrary to traditional wine mythology, it's probably not because actual vineyard minerals are showing up in the grapes. But apart from that, who knows? Hell, maybe my gravel-munching friend was hot on the trail, before he chipped a bicuspid.

Riesling ages. When it's only average, it hangs in there for five or 10 years. When it's really good, the decades add up pretty quickly. And when it's both terrific and extremely sweet, there's very little chance that any of us will outlive it. Unless, of course, we swallow too many stones along the way.

The high acidity of riesling means it can stand up to crisp, high-acid cuisine, but can also slash through fat and cream like a razor. It has a ravenous affinity for pork of almost any type (a characteristic it shares with the author) and white asparagus, but fish, poultry, and root vegetables all work well. Tomatoes do not.

And now, if you're ready for a little oral geology of your own, here's a short primer on the where and the who of it:

Germany, as previously noted, is pretty much the fatherland of riesling. It used to be that the pride of the country rested with low-alcohol wines that demonstrated a brilliant poise between acidity and light sweetness, but these days Germany succeeds with every style in the book: sparkling, dry, off-dry, and sweet. Of the many German sub-regions in which riesling is grown, the most important are the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer (currently being shortened to Mosel; it's about the only thing on German labels that could be called "short"), Rheingau, Nahe, and Pfalz. And that's about as far as this column is going to go, because if I started explaining the ridiculously precise-yet-misleading German label nomenclature, we'd still be here when those really sweet rieslings were coming around to full maturity. Better, for now, to start with a few of the many excellent producers - JJ Prüm, Dönnhoff, Selbach-Oster, and Kesseler - and let their wines work their mineral magic. Then buy the 15-volume explanatory text and Rosetta Stone . . .

The rest of the Germanic (and post-Germanic) world also does brilliant work with riesling. Austria specializes in a structured, ageable, and quite dry style from top producers such as Nigl, Bründlmayer, Prager, and Salomon Undhof. And just across the border from Germany, France's historically-disputed Alsace region puts up what is probably the best challenge to Germany's worldwide riesling supremacy, with powerful, full-bodied wines that are no less age-worthy than their German counterparts. The region gained fame through the strength of its dry rieslings (plus a limited supply of luxuriously sweet interpretations), but taste trends and global warming have moved a number of the region's producers into a decidedly off-dry realm. The best names include Boxler, Weinbach, Becker, Sparr, Gresser, and most of all Trimbach (whose "Cuvée Frédéric Émile" bottling is the very essence of fermented bedrock).

Outside Europe, the prime sources for riesling are New Zealand (look for Pegasus Bay or Felton Road) and, surprisingly, Australia, where the massive, slick reds on which the country built its reputation are put away in favor of bone-dry rieslings with shocking levels of acidity. Availability is spotty here in the States, but Grosset is one of the can't-miss stars.

And, please, stick to drinking the stuff. Leave rock (in its solid form) to the professionals - whether geologists or lead guitarists. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

The Dating Game: Every wine has its year

Thor Iverson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:32:00 GMT

MY DINING companion looked up from the wine list, perplexed. "But it's supposed to be a great vintage."

"Yes, it is. Which is why you shouldn't order it."

He dropped the list on the table, exasperated. "Did anyone ever tell you that you make very little sense?"

"Sure, all the time." But on this issue, at least, I had a point.

Vintage is one of the least understood aspects of wine. Everyone knows what it means on a label - the grapes were harvested in such-and-such a year. And most everyone thinks they know what it means in the glass. Self-evidently, the good vintages are better than the bad ones. Right?

Not necessarily. First of all, it might help to understand what goes into a vintage assessment. It's mostly about the weather. Was it hot? Cold? Dry? Was there hail that damaged the vines? Frost that injured the grapes? A deluge at harvest? All these factors matter, because they affect the way in which the grape's various components 1) ripen, and 2) balance with one another, which forms the chemistry of the grape - and, thus, the taste of the wine.

When most people say a vintage was "great," they mean that it was relatively dry and unusually warm. This is thinking based on historical Old World viticulture, in which the best years were those during which the grapes were able to ripen, perfectly and without interruption. In an average year, that wasn't usually the case - and in a bad year, there might not be any wine at all. But that's the past. "Thanks" to global warming (and improved farming), truly bad vintages are virtually nonexistent, and much of what's currently considered average would have been acclaimed as recently as 50 years ago.

In much of the New World, it's exactly the opposite. Many - perhaps most - New World regions enjoy climates for which Europeans would have bartered their firstborn a century ago. So are the hotter, drier vintages still considered the best? It depends very much on whom you ask. Many vintners in such areas actually prefer cooler years, and their goal is to slow down and lengthen ripening, believing - correctly - that it leads to more complex wines.

Hot grapes are sugary grapes, which leads to high alcohol. Hot grapes tend toward simple-minded fruit. The wines that result tend to be big, dumb doofuses (doofii?), full of immediate jam-like pleasure, but providing little else. Tannin can also be excessive in hot vintages. This is the primary fault of many European reds from 2003, a year of unparalleled heat in which many vines simply gave up, stopped growing, and waited for Mother Nature to turn on the air conditioning - which, in some regions, she never did.

But these are things that concern the winemaker. What about you, the person who's going to have to drink all this meteorological data?

First, it's worth stressing that a vintage assessment is a generalization. The most important qualitative factor for a wine is still, and always will be, the producer. Some will overachieve, others will underachieve, and vintage is in no way a foolproof indicator of results. And so, to generalize:

The "great" years tend to need aging. That's need. Full of powerful structure that can obscure much of what's going to be great, these are bottles to put down and forget for years, and sometimes decades. It's not that they can't be appealing in their youth - it's that they're a mere shadow of what they'll eventually become. Wine folk have a word for premature uncorkulation: infanticide. Extreme, yes, but wine nuts take their babies seriously.

Top vintages are also expensive. And why wouldn't they be? Everyone who believes they're great will want to own them, driving demand through the roof. This is an effect that is magnified over time, which is why such absurd prices are paid for older wines (almost always great vintages) at auction. Your average oenophile billionaire will have a cellar stocked with only the greatest years. And why not, if he or she can afford it? But the rest of us need a different strategy.

Wines from less acclaimed vintages tend to be cheaper, certainly, but they also tend to be more accessible in their youth. Maybe they're not going to age as long and thus are "ready" sooner, or maybe the winemaker saw their more limited potential early in the process and took deliberate steps to make what he or she could from the materials at hand. In either case, for the non-billionaires among us, these are the smart buys in a restaurant setting: cheaper, easier to drink, and providing more of what the wine can accomplish at an earlier time in its life.

Which isn't to say that one should ignore the great vintages - only that a steady diet of them gets very expensive and requires a great deal of patience. And a big cellar, or at least a wallet fat enough to mimic one on a whim. Plus, what are you going to do while waiting for the great vintages to mature? Watch the Weather Channel? @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Double Trouble: Two wines are better than one

Thor Iverson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:48:00 GMT

LIKE SOME sort of tipsy Noah's Ark, the world of wine comes in pairs. Or maybe that means it's like socks. Or pants. You'll pardon me if I struggle with this whole simile thing; I'm a metaphor man, myself. Anyway: the point is that there are two kinds of wine.

"Yes, yes, we know. White and red - what, we needed some pasty-faced wine geek to tell us that? Where's the Sex column, anyway?" No, that's not quite what I mean.

Spend a lot of time among wine folk and you'll start hearing two words an awful lot: traditional and modern. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? It's not. Because what those words mean depends very much on who's using them and what their wine preferences are.

To the traditionalist, "modern" is pejorative. It means a wine made with a lot of deliberate adjustments - in the vineyard and in the cellar - to conform to a taste that admires fruit, size, and youthful smoothness over anything else. Oak is often a major (or dominant) component, while acidity is to be avoided. Most importantly, bigger is always better. And thus, a traditional wine would be one that follows an older path: the fewest possible winemaking techniques, no particular emphasis on fruit or size, and plenty of structure for aging if that's the wine's destiny.

To the modernist, of course, this is all nonsense. Modern wines have the benefit of our accumulated knowledge and seem to be what most people - or at least most Americans - want to drink. Why, they'll ask, is the fact that a wine takes 20 years to be drinkable a good thing, when one can get just as much (albeit different) pleasure from the wine right now? Traditional wines, according to the modernist, are rife with sloppy winemaking, biological flaws, and an aggravating and money-wasting inconsistency from vintage to vintage, or even bottle to bottle.

And yes, there are a few who happily embrace both styles. But not many. Most people, once they've discovered their own preferences, eventually sidle into one camp or another, gradually becoming louder and more strident about their preferences as they go along. There are trends, too: right now, traditionalists are the minority but ascendant, which is a counterreaction to a tsunami of modernist wines from all corners of the globe over the last few decades. And Noah's Ark gradually tips to the left. Must be all those missing socks.

But why should there be any struggle between the two camps at all? Because wineries have their fingers in the wind and their ears to the ground (which makes it hard to drink wine, by the way). A wine might amble along in a traditionalist mode for a century or more, but if consumers seem to be clamoring for the wines of their more modernist neighbor, it takes an iron will and complete financial security - surprisingly uncommon in the world of wine - to stick to one's philosophical guns. To the modernist consumer, this is just spiffy, because it means more wines that they'll like. To the traditionalist this is a disaster, for the same reason.

This is more than a theoretical struggle. Entire wine regions have undergone changes of late, to the delight of one camp and the agony of the other. Bordeaux is one of many poster children, and if one lifts one's ears from the ground and listens to the chatter in the wine world, pretty much every possible opinion has been aired on this subject.

"The wines are better across the board."

"No they're not, and most of the great wines are shadows of their former selves."

"You mean the green, bitter, underripe wines that never came around to maturity?"

"Yes, in preference to the oaky monstrosities that taste like they're from Australia." (And yes, this is what passes for angry debate in wine-geek circles.) Showdown at the Cabernet Corral! Corkscrews at 10 paces, then turn, swirl, sniff, sip, and spit!

But let's leave all that spitting behind for a moment and take a look at another divide in the world of wine, one that is - at least to me - more significant than that between the traditionalist and the modernist. And it gets far less press, because to even talk about it is to nibble away at its foundations and expose a good deal of the wine business for what it really is. It's the bifurcation between wines made as art versus wines made as product.

Clothes, cars, cheese: name just about any category and there will be a wide range of products. Some are targeted at the mass market (Levi's, Toyota, Kraft) and some are targeted at the specialist buyer (Jimmy Choo, Aston Martin, Jasper Hill Farm). "But wait," you might say. "Haven't you just separated products into cheap and expensive categories? Where's the insight in that?" My first answer is: be careful or I'll flood you with more Noah's Ark/sock jokes. But the second and more relevant answer is that things are a little different when it comes to wine.

The majority of wine (by volume) is made as a product. From a philosophical point of view, it's no different than, say, Kraft Pasteurized American "Cheese" (now available in three flavors: white, off-white, and yellow). The primary consideration of a company making such wines is to maximize profit, which is reflected in every step of the process. Grapes are purchased with an eye on quantity. Fermentation is carefully - and chemically - managed to achieve a specific result. Marketing studies and focus groups will have their say. Price points will be targeted and achieved, with a careful eye on the competition. Label and bottle designs will be as appealing to the target demographic (usually working-age women) as possible.

There's an alternative path to wine-as-product, too, this one coming mostly from the Old World. Some firms make wine simply because that's what they've always done, not because that's what they want to do. Grapes are still sourced by quantity, but almost nothing is done in the cellar other than transforming the grapes into wine as quickly as possible. Consumption of this sort of beverage used to be the backbone of the European wine culture, but now it's a dying market - which is why these are the people you'll occasionally see protesting a lack of support (that is, subsidies) from their national governments.

The wines that result from these processes can be, depending on the producer, good or bad, but their primary quality is their inoffensiveness. Wines like this will never be great, though of course that's not the point. If wine were no more than this, there wouldn't be books, tastings, poems, critics, wine expos - all the cultural satellites captured in the gravity of wine's orbit that give it special status as a beverage.

And wine as art? Can wine be art? Some of its practitioners think so. For them, wine is an expression - of the earth, of the grapes, of their own winemaking skill, or of whatever comprises their muse - and, just like art, while it would be great if everyone could immediately perceive how brilliant it is, the fact is that not everyone will. They're wines for the specialist consumer who wants to know and taste the grape, the place, the story in each bottle.

Mass-market wines tend to split very clearly along regional lines: from the Old World they're mindlessly traditional, from the New World they're relentlessly modern. Artisanal wines can be either traditional or modern, because what separates them from the mass market is the intent behind their creation, not their stylistic tendencies. And, perhaps in contrast to most other products, in the wine world price doesn't at all correlate to a wine's "artistic" component; there are horrifically expensive mass-market wines and dirt-cheap artisanal wines.

Is there spillover from one category to another? Yes, but not as much as you might think. Very, very few companies make both mass-market and artisanal wines, though many who make the former claim to make the latter. But beware: smaller production and a higher price alone do not make a wine artisanal. A mass-market producer can, and usually does, market-test and craft their $70 shiraz with the same tools they used for their $10 chardonnay.

So why does this matter to you? Consider how you buy wine. Do you buy by price? Because you like the label? Do you pick up whatever's available at the supermarket or corner store while you're doing the rest of your shopping? Then your choice is almost exclusively limited to mass-market wines. Or do you spend time browsing the aisles of specialist wine retailers, chatting with the staff, regularly taking home unfamiliar bottles on their (or someone else's) recommendation? Then you have access to artisanal wine, though most such stores will also carry plenty of mass-market stuff.

Or, think about wine writing. ("Why?") Okay, I don't have a good answer for that one, but the mass marketers don't really need publicity to sell their wines (they have advertising budgets), while the artisanal crowd needs press to even be noticed. Thus, when the wine press goes to tastings, it's mostly the artisanal stuff that's offered. Moreover, since we get to taste so much wine, we - like restaurant critics - become jaded by the same old, same old. We crave diversity. Since mass-market wines are, by nature, the very opposite of diverse, we end up craving - and buying for our own consumption - the artisanal. Thus, that's what we write about.

In the end, diversity is what it's all about. For people who just want "wine" (as opposed to beer, or soda, or water), there's something at the right price and style available pretty much everywhere. And for those whose interests are both broader and deeper, there are also plenty of wines to satisfy their curiosity. It's the best of both worlds. It's like having one's cake and eating it too. It's like that famous historical guy with the thing and ... the, uh ... other thing.

Sorry. Similes still confound me. But I've never met a metaphor I didn't like. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.

Rouge Gallery: Gifted reds for your holiday green

Thor Iverson — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:37:00 GMT

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.

Wine Dining: Pre-pairing the perfect feast

Thor Iverson — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:43:00 GMT

SIX COURSES in, I knew I was in trouble.

It was my introduction to wine, food, France. And, more important, to my girlfriend's family. I was in some forsaken little village in Lorraine, sitting at a table with her parents, other relatives, and their parents, eating freshly hunted wild boar and hand-picked chestnuts, drinking wines I couldn't even identify, much less pronounce. Every course came with its wine, every wine with its narrative, and I was absolutely hooked. (The girl was pretty nice, too.) But after a half-dozen iterations, I was feeling little other than existential pain, wondering if I would actually be able to stand at any future point, and how much a precipitous but happy collapse would affect my future prospects.

It was the most fun I'd ever had at a table, up to that point. ("At," not "on"; let's keep this family-oriented, shall we?) And it's what led me to write about wine. Fortunately (or un-), I've had even more fun since then.

No surprise: the French have pretty much perfected a procession of food and wine, each selected to enhance the other. It's an expensive proposition for a restaurant, because opening a bottle of wine for by-the-glass pours requires either by-the-glass pricing (your glass price = restaurant's bottle price) or full confidence that sufficient quantities of each wine will be consumed. But why pay restaurant prices when the same experience can be replicated at home?

In these days of take-out convenience, the idea of hosting a dedicated wine-focused party fills some with quavering fear, but it shouldn't. It's actually little different than hosting any sort of dinner party. All it requires is a shift in priorities. That is: the wine comes first, the food later. One can go crazy trying to find the perfect wine for a favored dish. But why go to all that psychic trouble when there's an easier solution? First, pick the wines. Then, match the food to those wines.

And here's finally a use for all those lyrical but otherwise useless tasting notes we writers generate - the ones that mention smoked pork, fresh honeysuckle, or grated blood-orange rind. These are semi-metaphorical descriptors for how a wine tastes, yes, but they're also helpful in constructing a wine-friendly dish.

To illustrate, consider an Alsatian gewürztraminer: cashew, lychee, peach, oil, cumin, and coriander. Perhaps some sweetness, and also, low acidity. Now, one might know that stinky Alsatian Munster (one of the most offensive-yet-delicious cheeses) is the classic match, but that's not something that everyone loves. So why not construct a dish based on the wine's inherent character? I've seared foie gras with diced lychees (available by the can), dusting the foie gras with ground cashews before searing. But more prosaic options like pork chops sauced with slow-cooked peaches and coriander would be just beautiful.

Or consider a Marlborough sauvignon blanc: crisp grapefruit, gooseberry, tropical fruit, hot pepper, and assorted greenery. This begs for fish, but with the appropriate accompaniments, like a homemade fruit salsa (see above shopping list) spiked with Serrano chiles, or a ceviche of tuna with jalapeño, lime, and basil. A peppery syrah cries out for steak au poivre, a mushroomy red Burgundy for slow-cooked meats with truffle oil.

This may sound difficult at first, but just think about the wines you like and how they taste to you. Is your everyday merlot fruity and full-bodied, like chocolate and blueberry? Serve it with meat in a mole sauce. Is your favorite riesling full of crisp apples? Roasted pork with caramelized Granny Smiths. Your Champagne toasty and lemony? Try smoked salmon on toast with a little garnish of lemon zest. The options are endless.

The only caveat is that truly wine-unfriendly foods must be avoided. These include: extremely spicy foods (vindaloo, hot salsas, much authentic Thai cuisine), artichokes (though sauvignon blanc or grüner veltliner work well), asparagus (see artichoke matches), and very sweet foods, with which even the sweetest wines do not pair well.

As for quantities, figure that a bottle will provide about six to seven reasonable pours. If you have more people than that, or expect to serve several glasses of each wine (which I do, but my guests are incorrigible lushes), you'll need multiple bottles. People will drink more at the beginning of the meal than at the end, sparkling wines (served at the beginning of the meal) will rapidly disappear, and sweet wines require lower quantities per person.

And if you feel yourself worried about personal verticality a few glasses in, don't panic. Unless you're the chef. In that case, it might be time to make a few well-placed phone calls to the local sushi joint. With which the best match is - let me remind you - New Zealand sauvignon blanc or German riesling. After all, a good host is nothing if not flexible. Even when horizontal. @

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.