Jura and Savoie Tasting

Monday night I went to a highly educational brown bag tasting of a few of the wines of the Savoie and Jura. As usual there were two flights - four whites and then four reds - and since we did not know what the theme would be (or if there was a specific theme) for the first flight, it was fun to guess what common thread might be looping its way through the wines.

First, a primer on the wines of the Jura and Savoie, since I realize that sometimes I skimp on background regional information. As an aside, as time allows and my mood dictates, I'd like to begin providing better context for the wines I describe here -- I mean, you can't taste wine in a vacuum, man. [For the bona fide wine cognoscenti and assorted other impatient readers who wants to get to the tasting notes, scroll down a bit and you will find them.]

Located due west of the Swiss border, the vineyards of the Jura extend north to south just a hair longer than the Cote d'Or, which would be about 30 miles. Not a large region, especially considering how much of it is covered by wooded areas, not vineyards. Not too far to the west lies the Saone River and then, Burgundy. The southernmost reaches of the most southerly part of Alsace, the Haut-Rhin, is about 100 miles to the northeast of the Jura. There are four appellations: L'Etoile, Chateau Chalone, Cotes du Jura and Arbois. Given the proximity to Burgundy, it is not surprising that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are grown. Savagnin is a regional specialty used for making the sherry-like vin jaune and sweet vin de paille, as well as occasionally being blended with Chardonnay to make a wine sous voile ('under a veil,' or 'flor,' tufts of yeast which protect the wine from fully oxidizing since the barrels are not topped off, in order to produce a delicious, slightly oxidative style). These sous voile wines are like blue cheese, you may not get them at first and then you'll either fall in love or still not get it. For reds, Poulsard is very light in color and sometimes deliciously earthy. Trousseau is blockier and a bit richer. The Cotes du Jura does champagne method sparklers, mainly from Chardonnay, and they do them very well.

Savoie lies in more mountainous terrain, to the southeast of the Jura and closer to the Swiss border. There is one basic overlying appellation: Vin de Savoie. Grapes most often used for white wine include Roussette, also known as Altesse, Jacquere, and Chasselas. Mondeuse (peppery, assertive) and gamay are common for reds. Bugey Cerdon is the delicious, slightly sweet, sparkling rose which many people have been enjoying of late.

Here were the wines of the evening, starting with whites:

2006 Frederic Giachino Vin de Savoie Abymes
Crisp flavors of apple and pear skins, with a creamy, slightly oxidative aspect. Not sous voile, just leesy and rounded. My initial guesses ranged from jurancon, to grenache blanc, though the subtle, crisp alpine aspect of this wine gives it away as neither. No one could call this one.

2006 JF Quenard Chignin Roussanne Vieilles Vignes
Deep golden color, with a roasted nut, honeyed aroma and full, dry flavors. I was convinced that we were dealing with Roussanne here. Not my favorite grape variety and I was accordingly quick to call out that I didn't like the wine. How did Roussanne make its way up from the northern Rhone, I wonder?

2003 Jacques Puffeney Melon Que Rouge Arbois
Spicy meyer lemon flavors with some mature notes. I was guessing cote chalonaise with bottle age, maybe '02 because the combination of acidity and richness was so appealing. This was my number '1,' even though I mistakenly suspected it to be Chardonnay and prepared myself for the embarrassment of picking a Chardonnay based wine that wasn't Chablis or Champagne to be my favorite of the flight.
2004 Domaine de Montbourgeau L'Etoile
Super mineral and earthy. Some white flowers. It was like a richer, Chard mid-palate influenced fino or manzanilla sherry. Good nutty finish. Whilte it's probably not going to end up as powerful and convincingly tasty as the 2002, I like this wine quite a bit.

REDS

2004 Jacques Puffeney Pinot Noir
Sour cherry and spice on the nose and palate. Great acidity, interesting iron ore minerality, and terrific elegance. I thought Poulsard, it turned out to be PN. You were right, Mark, well done. Mmm...this was my red of the night.

2005 Jacques Puffeney Trousseau Cuvee 'Le Berange'
A darker color, richer and more intense on the nose. A bit blocky and four-square on the palate with mixed berry fruit. Persistent though. Young wine. Kudos this time to Nadia, for calling trousseau - I know Martine would be proud!
2004 Jacques Puffeney Poulsard
A bit of a cooked quality to the cherry fruit aromas. Foresty on the palate. Lots of finesse and elegance on the finish. For some reason I was thinking Mondeuse, recalling a great bottle of Jura wine that at the time I remembered as Mondeuse but really was Poulsard. I posted on it nearly a year ago here.

2003 Jacques Puffeney Arbois Vieilles Vignes
Pinot Noir, Poulsard and Trousseau. Terrific building floral flavors on the palate, with a touch more elegance than the Poulsard. Some licorice on the finish. Again, I wanted to say it was Mondeuse.

So the reds turned out to be a Puffeney extravaganza - not a bad flight! We enjoyed the remaining wine with some amazing pan seared and oven finished chicken and potatoes (I learned that Gary used to be in the catering business and let me tell you, dude can cook). When will you be hosting your next PMW tasting, Gary?

As always, thanks to the gracious host and the entire group for staying on the ball, coordinating busy work and personal schedules and tasting wine together on a Monday night.

Jura State of Mind

Gary Roshke of the Bay Area based Jolivin Imports hosted a terrific Savoie and Jura tasting last night, the details of which will be published here a little later this week.

In the shop today we tasted a most interesting Canadian pinot noir, a 2007 bottle of Henry of Pellham from the Short Hills Bench region in Ontario. Who knows maybe it’s just because I had the wine last night, but it reminded me a lot of the 2004 Puffeney Pinot Noir. Very pretty wines, both.

Blogger is messing up (again) and I lost a bit more of this post, but it was kind of boring anyway so no big loss. More blogging later. I'm tired and frustrated with blogger, annoyed with my imac, pissed off at Comcast. They all suck. The only thing good coming out of this computer right now would be the 'Television' channel on Pandora. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Good night.

23 YEAR-OLD ROSSIGNOL HAUTE-COTE-DE-NUITS? YEAH I’LL TAKE ONE OF THOSE.

It is something of an insider’s (read: wine industry) secret that a certain long standing San Francisco restaurant, owned by a prominent out-of-town restaurateur with a list formulated by one of North America's 96 master sommeliers, has a burgundy list to die for, with stocks on wines that are virtually impossible to find elsewhere, at prices which reflect what they might have cost over a decade ago. So I ventured to this restaurant with my girlfriend after checking out the SFMOMA Frida Kahlo exhibit as well as some truly bizarre contemporary Chinese art. It was a perfect evening of geeking out: the lady on contemporary art and myself on Burgundy.

Since the idea was to get a bottle of something really unique, which would probably not be inexpensive, we decided to sit at the bar, forego ordering food, and make some dinner late night at home. The choice was difficult. ’95 de Montille Volnay ‘Champans,’ some older Raveneau, various 1er crus from all over. And I could go on – the point is that I have never seen as many varied vintages of burgundy on one list at such reasonable prices. Cost of entry will start at around $90, and goes as high as you want to take it. I went with a botte of '85 Philipe Rossignol Haut Cotes de Nuits and it was a gamble that worked itself out. Counting on the reputation of the producer (whom I mistakenly confused with Nicolas Rossignol, a great producer of Savigny-les-Beaunes), combined with the strength of the 1985 vintage in Burgundy, I figured that my chances were at least 50-50 that the wine would still have life and provide an interesting drinking experience. A beautiful, soft, medium ruby color, I held the glass up to my nose, breathed in the perfume, and knew that all would be well. Very delicate, cherry, floral, dark truffle and cocoa powder notes abounded on the nose. Flavors on the palate were at first mainly of sour cherry with a ton of mineral. While the flavor deepened to include umeboshi paste (made from super tart, salted Japanese plums), I couldn't help but notice the intense minerality and saltiness of this wine. Furthermore, the tannins were fine, but increasingly firm. It appeared as though the fruit were drying out, leaving acidity, tannins and saltiness in their wake. While the wine is clearly on its downward descent, it was amazing just to be able to taste a humble village burgundy with so much bottle age.

Drinking mature wines could become an expensive habit, I'll need to closely monitor my consumption.

Thanks to Luc for the tip about this mystery restaurant's bar and ridiculous burgundy list.

BOSTON - Long time (REPRISAL!)

In case you missed my earlier post, or were too lazy to click on the link, here is Boston in all of their long time, bearded, big haired, open satin jacket glory.

ROCK! YEAH!!!!!!!!!

Does a leaky capsule always indicate bad wine? A surprise from the SCM in '79

One of my favorite things about working where I do is that we buy lots of wine from private collections. The way it works is that we (rather, my co-worker Joe) will inspect a cellar's condition, check out the wares, and if there are wines of some perceived value in the marketplace that have been well stored, Joe will make an offer. As he will offer to buy entire collections, not just cherry pick the highly sought after stuff, there may be some '78 Amador zin mixed up with all of those nice '78 burgundies and napa cabs. We take it all in. Which means that every so often we come across some really interesting stuff on the shelves of the old and rare section in the shop. Sometimes, a few bottles are leakers, have low fills, and never make it to the shelf. I spied one such bottle whilst bullshitting with the great Joe Z yesterday, and asked his permission to open it. He obliged, I opened, and here's where it gets interesting....

The wine? A magnum of 1979 Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard Cabernet. Nearly 30 year-old wine produced from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from Bates Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. To be honest I don't recall the fill exactly, though it was at least upper shoulder (i.e. almost filling out the rounded part of the bottle, but not making its way into the narrow neck part). A decent fill for a bottle stored almost 30 years in a private cellar. However, the foil capsule and area below it was sticky with what was clearly wine which had leaked out of the bottle. Upon cutting the foil and catching a whiff of the cork, my hopes dwindled. It smelled very oxidized, port-like but sour. When I pulled the cork, or most of the cork (I needed to push down a crumbly portion into the bottle) I promptly poured a small amount into a glass. The color was still deep and did not suggest a wine well past its prime. On the nose there were notes of intense dark fruit, some spice, cedar; the wine was more than alive, it was alive, kicking, screaming, and begging for attention. When I tasted the wine, it had all the vibrancy, flavor intensity and freshness of a wine half its age. Loads of sweet dark fruits, hints of prune, and a strong cola aspect came across on the palate, which also still had some tannin structure. While the wine was not the most nuanced or complex, it certainly reminded me of a few things:

1.) Wine is sometimes as resilient as it is fragile
2.) CA Cabernet can pack a whole lot of richness and flavor, and still be under 13% alc
3.) Santa Cruz Mountain wines, when they're good, age every bit as well, and often better than, wines from Napa.

What a cool experience. I ended up pouring myself a glass to go with my lunch of leftover Bastille Day lentils and bread. After lunch I returned to the sales floor, one happy wine dude.

UPDATE: This very day, almost to the minute (ok, it was several hours earlier - David is apparently more of a morning person than I am, and he's on the east coast) David McDuff over at McDuff's Food and Wine Trail happened to post a TN on a bottle of '87 SCMV Cabernet. This just might be the most unusal wine blogging coincidence of the year.

24 - some favorites of the past day

Dinner of savory lentils, green salad, bread and cheeses, served with good, honest red wine

This was how we celebrated Bastille Day at the homefront. Puy lentils, sauteed with garlic and chorizo, accompanied by a large salad, a trio of cheeses (which were, come to think of it, mainly Spanish) and bread. Our wine accompaniment, though, was absolutely French, and a wine I have written up a few months ago: Beau Thorey Vin de Table 'Bogus,' a delicious, biodynamically made, low sulphur wine from Pic-St-Loup, consisting of grenache, syrah, carignane, oeillade, alicante, carignane blanc, and perhaps others? According to the bottle it is produced 'a echelle humaine' which you can probably deduce means 'a human scale.' 40-80 year old vines yield great fruit concentration and aromas which are intensely redolent of lavender, other flowers, and mixed berry fruits - especially olallie berries which are sort of like mulberries. A light, nuanced pretty wine on the palate, with gentle acidity and excellent overall balance. 12% alcohol. Perhaps it was not assertive enough for the lentils, which were very full flavored and seasoned with pimenton. Not the best match, but it worked ok.

1997 Kalin Cellars Pinot Noir Cuvee DD Sonoma County

'97 is the current release for proprietor Terry Leighton's sonoma pinot noir. So they are even slower than LdH in releasing their wines. Not that super late releases make the wine good, but you've got to support people who are holding back their wines a decade because that's when they think they'll begin to taste the way they should. Besides the fact that this is delicious, and released ridiculously late, I don't know much about the fruit source, vinification, or other pertinent details of this iconoclastic wine [after a bit of research I can say that the fruit comes from David Demostene's ranch in the Alexander Valley. Wine is fermented in wooden cuvees and aged in 50% new French oak]. Bright, but developed, nose, with red fruit jam and burnt brown sugar nuances on the palate. Racy, mouthwatering Pinot Noir, with the acidity and structure to possibly age another decade. Who knows, maybe longer. I recently drank a bottle of the '79 Kalin Cellars Santa Barbara Pinot Noir and that tasted great. You should try this wine, Robert Parker gave it 91 pts and said that he should review Kalin Cellars' wines more often....

'Foreplay/Long Time'

A classic rock radio staple, Boston truly brings the rock here, with some prog flourishes as well. Specifically I'm a big fan of the breakdown section with hand claps (love those hand claps), and the bass playing, especially the repetitive quarter notes - further proof that sometimes just playing the same note over and over again sounds really good. If songs this good were played on the radio in succession, I might develop tendinitis from banging my steering wheel too often.

Facebook

I had been more aloof, as opposed to resistant to, the whole facebook thing until recently. It's amazing how so many people come out of the woodwork. People I barely knew in high school, cousins galore, fellow wine bloggers...who could be next?

Bastille Day Special! A 3rd growth Splurge at the new French local

Saturday night I headed to L’Ardoise, with a recently purchased bottle of ’99 Chateau Lagrange St Julien in hand (well, in backpack to be more precise). Conveniently located on Noe St, between the Castro and Hayes Valley, L’Ardoise is a small, cozy, classic neighborhood bistro. Since there are only about 40 seats and the warm, congenial atmosphere occasional encourages lingering over a leisurely meal, you may need to wait 10-15 minutes for an open table, even with a reservation. Another couple who was waiting ahead of us left. Unfortunate, as they probably would have eaten very well if our meal was any indication.

While we waited for a table, we were given a glass of sparkling wine and some complimentary frites at the bar. Everyone was friendly and apologized for the wait: our hostess, the owner, our server to-be. We enjoyed the fries with a very mild aioli (which seemed all the more tame compared with the head of garlic version I made earlier in the week). The sparkling wine, however, was cheap cava from Segura Viudas, which we probably would have been better without - we both suffered minor headaches later in the night, which I am tracing back to the cheap bubbly. Which brings up my major gripe with the otherwise spot on L’Ardoise: the wine list. There is very little of interest, especially by the glass. We followed our comped glass of headache bubbly with a so-so ’06 Chablis and a strangely medicinal Bordeaux Blanc (sorry – mediocre wine and no note taking means that I forget the produers for both). Wines by the bottle mainly consist of mediocre French, and industrial, boring California wines. Exceptions would be ’05 Tempier Bandol, ’04 Jasmin Cote-Rotie and ’04 d’Epire Savennieres, which are all fine but not exactly things I’d want to drink now, even with food; they’re too young. Oh, ’01 Chateau Meyney St-Estephe is good, but not exactly a value at $78. Hopefully, a wine rep in the SF area is reading this and will help L’Ardoise to re-tool their list with Muscadet, chenin, cru Beaujolais, etc.

Dinner was delicious. A succulent petite filet mignon, cooked rare, accompanied by an intense red wine reduction, and served with crisp, thinly sliced, fried potato rounds drizzled with white truffle oil. The intermingling of truffled potato and juicy, cooked to perfection beef is just a ridiculousy delicious, elegant flavor combo. I know, it all sounds a bit decadent but at $27 it’s a steal to me. Some people like BMWs, Diesel jeans…I like eating and drinking well, you know? We also had some haricots verts and sautéed baby spinach, both tasty and adding some necessary nutrients to this beef and potatoes dinner.

As for the wine…it showed young but very well. St. Julien, along with St Estephe and Moulis-en-Medoc, is generally amongst my favorite communes. 3rd, 4th and 5th growths are usually more to my liking than 2nd’s (as of yet I do not know from the first growths, I hear they’re a bit expensive these days). So the 1999 Lagrange, a 3rd growth St. Julien, was quite enjoyable. 1999 left bank bordeaux are generally very juicy, fruity wines, and the Lagrange did not prove to be an exception. It showed lots of savory dark cherry fruit on the nose and palate, with a bit of noticeable development – a touch of wet tobacco on the nose, some roasted and raw meat on the palate. Tannins are smoothing out and fairly well balanced with the fruit, but could use another several years to soften and integrate just a bit more. Overall, though, this is a tasty drink. Not a mind blowing bottle of claret, but solid. At $40 plus $15 corkage, it was a good deal.

And I feel the same way about L’Ardoise. What it lacks in exciting wines it more than delivers in the quality of food, service and typical neighborhood French bistro ambiance. Stop by and celebrate Bastille Day, the continuation of the Tour, or finishing another day at the office. You’ll be in good hands.