Erix Texier for President

It’s always great to see my friends Eric and Laurence Texier. They are always a pleasure to have around and wonderful people to talk with. Conversation is never lacking and often goes into the wee hours. Every time I’m around Eric I learn something or he forces me to think about my positions, whether they change or not. Eric thinks both more broadly and more deeply about vine growing and wine making than just about anyone I’ve met. Combine that with a probing intellect and I’m on board for Erix Texier for President of Wine.

We gathered at Vin Rouge in Durham to have dinner and get into some wines. It was an unfortunate night for wines, as many of them showed poorly, even wines that I’ve had many times and can’t find an explanation in any damage, all the bottles were in perfect condition. The weather was crazy, it being pre-Sandy. It really felt and tasted like hurricane weather, as those from this part of the world will understand. Honestly, I think this really affected the wines, although I have no scientific proof ,I have theories on low and high pressure, etc.. Also, several of the wines showed better a couple of days later after the low pressure had passed.

But it is just wine and Sandy did much more than that to many people. Fortunately, everyone i know ended up OK. Do your best to support those that did not.

N.V. Diebolt-Vallois Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs

Good, but a bit sweeter and more wood marked than I remember. Good texture and zip.

2010 Landron Muscadet Amphibolite

A flat and disappointing bottle. Not sure what the deal is here, we barely touched it.

2004 Éric Texier Condrieu Janrode

I don’t normally drink viognier, but when I do, it’s Texier Condrieu. Seriously, most viognier is laborious and heavy, not this one. Still lithe and deft, even after this many years in bottle. Maybe doesn;’t have the zing it did as a younger wine, but it isn’t old. It’s not young either. I doubt anyone has any left but my friend Ken, but if you do, this would be great at Thanksgiving.

2001 Huët Vouvray Sec Le Mont

I don’t remember anything about this, but I know it was opened.

1999 Weingut Knoll Riesling Smaragd Ried Schütt

This bottle was muted and strange in contrast to a smashing bottle a few months before. It showed better a few days later.

1999 Franz Hirtzberger Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Honivogl

Like the Knoll, this came across as stunted. Five days later, the remainder of the bottle was good, if not the show stopper I was expecting.

1999 Éric Texier Brézème Mise Tardive

This was the focus of the evening as Eric doesn’t have any bottles of this remaining and this was my last one. This has been a temperamental wine for its entire life with bottles ranging from terrible to profound. This particular bottle was a very good bottle. It was meaty and smoky, but in a graphite way, not a bacon way with dried darker fruits and a really seamless texture. It had a savory bottle weight to it and a cool hint of lavender on the nose. This bottle showed great balance on the palate between the acids, savory and fruit notes and the last remaining tannin (not much). It was the texture and the inner mouth perfume where this shined. Glad that I saved this bottle and even happier I got to open it with Eric.

1999 Ogier Côte-Rôtie

Aromatically stunted and a bit wood marked on the palate. Four days later this was fading. Oh well, a bottle wasted.

2008 Éric Texier Côtes du Rhône-Brézème Vieille Serine Domaine de Pergaud

Sandy totally kicked this beautiful magnum in the face. The palate was refined and silky, as we’ve come to expect from Eric and this site, but there was absolutely no nose to speak of. Well, that all changed  four days later when I finished the rest of the magnum, again while cooking at home. The nose was buoyant with herbs and flowers around what I have begun to think of as the savory Brézème core. There is something very special about these vines and even in difficult vintages like 2008, they have something very interesting to say.

2011 Marcel Lapierre Morgon

I’ve been drinking tons of this as it is so delightful now. This bottle was decidedly blah in comparison. Still, it was Lapierre Morgon, which is like pizza, always good. It was finished that evening.

2001 Philip Togni Cabernet Sauvignon

Reduced and crappy. I couldn’t get past that and didn’t touch another drop.

1986 Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon Eisele

This was a real bummer because I had a really wonderful bottle with Sophie a few months back and I always like to try at least one bottle of American wine while Eric is here.

1999 Amiot-Servelle Chambolle 1er Les Amoureuses

Another muted wine, this wine was a bit angular as well. There was fruit buried on the palate, but not much could be discerned. Three days later, I drank the rest while preparing dinner, and wow, what a difference. Although I imagine it would have been brighter had I opened it and consumed iut the same night, the nose had layers of fruit, woodsy not-quite-sous-bois aromas and more fruit and spice on the palate with the beginning of the umami thing that has come to characterize good Burgundy beginning to hit its stride. Too bad Sandy fucked this very good wine.

LA Drinking

Dinner with old friends at a Cantonese place in Monterey Park. Huge spread of whole fish, lobster, prawns, suckling pig, duck, etc. etc. Amazing meal, great time.

2002 Domäne Wachau Riesling Smaragd Singerriedel 1.5L
Taking on a slightly golden color, it still maintains a sense of freshness even while taking on some weightier, more herbal notes. It still a sting of those yellow and green fruits, but a sort of softer mineral underpinning and notes of flowers and honey. It still has some structure, but only enough to hold it together, not so much as to hold anything back. I do not see anything to be gained by further aging, unless you just like old wine flavors, as it seems to be in a very pretty and balanced state for current drinking. My favorite wine on this occasion and I probably drained at least half the magnum.

2008 Melville Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir Carrie's
My friends had brought this back from a visit to Melville (which is a very pretty property with a nice tasting room and gracious folks). It is a bit high octane for me, but it wasn’t so far out of whack that I couldn’t enjoy it. There is a woodsy quality to the wine that makes me suspect whole-cluster fermentation, at least in part. The fruit was savory and not jammy, despite the high alcohol, but the texture was a bit thick for me. I’m happy to try these wines, but this would be tiring to drink and I’m not a buyer.

2005 Giuseppe Quintarelli Veneto IGT Primofiore 1.5L
While this was very good, it was a bit blockier than I would have liked. This had a real savory quality to the red and blue fruits. In fact, I think the fruits played second fiddle here. Maybe this will age into something a bit different because it seemed to close down towards the end of the night.

2008 Venica & Venica Collio Malvasia Bianca
I’ve missed the reliable presence of this producer in my market. I’ve always been a fan of the range, but have a soft spot for the seductive malvasia. Floral, spicy and almost raunchy it is a perfect fit for LA drinking. Seductive and a nice compliment to the food. I would drink this more often if I could.

Dinner with a colleague, and I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed these bottles over dinner with a colleague and his wife. This was a nice treat for me as I generally don’t socialize with folks from work, but this particular colleague I’ve really enjoyed getting to know and he has been an invaluable ally while getting situated here.

2001 Nikolaihof Riesling Federspiel Vom Stein
My last bottle and a very good showing. While I may have preferred it younger for the zippiness and mineral character of youth, it has settled into a nice yellow-fruited vaguely honey-suckle/floral mid-life roundness. Quite delicious and should be drunk soon if not now.

1996 Domaine de Courcel Pommard 1er Cru Grand Clos des Épenots
This bottle showed very well, in a quiet, mature and understated way. I generally find this wine to be among the most elegant in Pommard. My colleague’s wife, who claims to not really like red wines quite liked this. As she put it, it’s very velvety and not heavy, in fact, it has that beautiful weightless quality that we all love in red Burgundy. I’ve been pretty happy with Courcel wines and they are still relative bargains. This wine can be consumed now, but I think it will continue to show well for a while.

Other folks don't know shit

Dinner at the Vin Rouge bar with a couple of friends.


1996 Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile
While not shimmering like a recent bottle of the1995, this was certainly a very good bottle. It has started to take on some secondary notes and isn’t the limestone brick to the mouth that it used to be. No signs of the imaginary premature oxidation. Really, when will this thing go away? I’m sure it’s true for some wines (I did buy Jean-Marc Pillot Chassagnes, yikes), I’ve experienced it myself, but anytime anyone has a disappointing and most likely heat-damaged white wine, the cry of “pre-mox” (that’s what they call it) comes out. Calm down. Wine gets horribly mistreated all the time from the second it leaves the winery cellar (sometimes, even on the loading dock at the winery itself). No sense in making something more mysterious than it needs to be. Not sure this is ready to fully dive into yet, but worth trying if you have multiple bottles.

1996 Olga Raffault Chinon Les Picasses
Really kind of boring and on the wrong side of its aging curve. It lacks any remaining structure and the flavor profile really isn’t all that interesting. Compared to other 1996s I’ve had over the past few years, this is not in the first or second tier. Probably should have been consumed years ago, but instead I listened to people who said it was way too young and kept this bottle as an experiment. They don’t know shit. When it comes to cabernet franc, I’m the man.

Don't age Federspiel

2001 Nikolaihof Riesling Federspiel Vom Stein
This was aromatically lovely, but not the crystalline, perfect beauty that it can be. I think this is maybe a year or so late. Don’t get me wrong, it is still an excellent wine with lots of flowers, fruits, and a sense of being in some mountainous field from a movie. I’ve said this many times, but there is a vitality, and alive-ness to Nikolaihof wines. This is maybe my favorite estate that I have never visited. One day I will make it to the Wachau.

1995 Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape Vieilles Vignes
Once again, this wine disappoints. For whatever reason, it has never fulfilled the promise it showed as a young wine. It’s not flawed, or bad, just completely non-descript and uninteresting. Oh well.

I still drink German riesling

VLM at home with nothing better to do than order Chinese and watch Generation Kill.

2004 Willi Schaefer Graacher Domprobst Riesling Spätlese #9
I bought at least a case of this on close-out for something like $16, which is surely a crime somewhere. I’ve been a big Schaefer fan for as long as I can remember buying German wine, and always find the Spätlese beautiful. I’ve been really happy with the fairly angular 2004s, although this has softened a bit since my last bottle. Plenty of fat still on the bones, so it should be better in a few years, keeping in mind that I probably like most of my Spätlese on the younger side than most.

Good Grouper

Made a simple dinner of broiled NC grouper with buerre blanc. The grouper was supposedly spear caught off the coast of NC. I have no idea if it is true, but I saw the whole fish at my brothers and it had a hole through the head. Anyway, very high quality fish.

2001 Pierre Peters Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut Cuvée Spéciale Les Chétillons
This was just OK. Frankly, I enjoyed a bottle of the Brut Reserve recently more than this. It could be the vintage, but it seems to lack drive.

1997 Prager Riesling Smaragd Achleiten
Cork was soaked, so this probably saw some heat at some point. Still in pretty good shape, although rounder than I expected from Prager and this site.

1997 Freie Weingärtner Wachau Riesling Smaragd Achleiten
There was something off in this bottle. Maybe it was premoxed! Seemed like it was OK at first, but gradually slid down hill.

2002 Huët Vouvray Demi-Sec Le Mont
This was the most horribly flawed bottle I can remember in a long time. Some sort of combination of sewage, bleach, and vomit. It was so aggressively and stunningly awful that I was bewildered.

1995 Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Emile
Again, a bit of mustiness right when opened that blows off nicely. This was a really grippy version of Frédéric Emile, especially in comparison to a recent 1997. No sign of the mysterious premature oxidation here. This showed really well with lots of minerals and only a hint of kerosene. I kept this in the fridge and enjoyed the rest 4 nights later when it was even better. Without a doubt, the best bottle of 1995 I’ve had and one of the better Frédéric Emile in recent memory.

1990 Château Suduiraut Sauternes
Really pretty mediocre. It was dominated caramel and crème brulée notes. It seemed to lack structure and precision. Too bad, I haven’t had good Sauternes in a while.