Don't fuck with the Monkey...

or I will control YOUR MIND!!!!!

Pretty cool. Kinda makes me wish I'd stuck with Neuroscience. I guess we can't have it all.

Eric Nicolas needs cooler weather

A little back story on this. Sometime around the turn of the century, I was motoring around France visiting some vignerons, a few of which are represented in the US by my good friends Joe, Denyse, and Kevin at Louis/Dressner. Well I was going to Baudry and Breton and he suggested I stop by a producer they was thinking of representing and tasting through the wines. I believe it was the 2000 in barrel (could have been 2001). The wines were stunning and Eric was very hospitable. When I asked to buy a few bottles to take back to friends in Paris, he got quite embarrassed and apologized because he had no wine to sell! He gave me a 500mL of the 2000 Jasnières Les Rosiers which impressed my friends just as I expected. Eric and his wife are practicing some amazing viticulture that has resulted in some brilliant wines. As you’ll see below, I think that 2004 was not their best year (I didn’t like the reds either), but I think they are committed and have a long view and I will continue to buy and try the wines because when they are good, they are very, very good.

2004 Bellivière Jasnières Les Rosiers

If you are like me, you love Bellivière chenin, and the Jasnières in particular, for their nervy, lacey interpretation of chenin. The 2002 Rosiers and Calligramme were totally sublime and standouts in an excellent vintage for chenin all over the Loire. Well, the 2004 hasn’t held up to those standards. Instead of the nervy, incisive, etched chenin, there is a big, almost sugary version. It smells correct, but not complex and complete in the same way. It is a bit ponderous and one dimensional. This has held over two bottles in the last 10 days with one of them followed over a couple of days to make sure. That bottle didn’t fall apart, but it didn’t change in interesting ways either. All I can hope for is that Eric Nicolas gets a nice cool vintage with lots of sun and a long hang time. These can be among the most compelling wines made in the Loire. In 2004, it just isn’t the case.

Excellent Spanish whites

My good friend André Tamers of De Maison Selections was in the LA area, so I went up to Santa Monica to meet him for dinner. We went to this new Basque-style Tapas place called Pintxo on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a fun little joint and I wish them success. I’d maybe cut down on the bread, but the fried little fishies and peppers were great. We were having fun, so the notes weren’t detailed. André is a friend, so you might think I’m biased (he doesn’t, because he hears all the shit I give him), but his Northwestern Spain portfolio contains some of the most exciting wines in the last few years.

2007 Ameztoi Rubentis

You have to ask? Again, maybe the Spanish rosé of the vintage for me and will be in the fridge all summer. Ameztoi is really hitting all the right notes for me over the past few years. Txakoli in kegs is the next big thing. Remember, the vlm-tr is a taste maker!

2006 Do Ferreiro Rebisaca

A distinct step down from the Albariño for me. The wine is fine, I guess, just not something to drink when the Albariño is around. The comparison is probably unfair. Lots of reliable palates (like Josh Raynolds) like this more than I do.

2006 Do Ferreiro Albariño

Maybe the best vintage of this excellent wine to date. Really intense and driving with a saline drill through your jaw. Killer.

2006 Do Do Ferreiro Albariño Cepas Vellas

Profound. The minerals almost completely mask the fruit. I don’t always prefer the Cepas Vellas to the regular wine here, but this year, for some reason, there is a gulf in class, and given the high quality of the regular, that is saying something. I think I’ll throw a couple bottles in deep storage just to see what happens.

2006 Emilio Rojo Ribeiro

Here’s the thing about this wine, it isn’t the most powerful or the most intense, it has a feathery like beauty of taffeta layered nuance. One really interesting trait of this wine is that it reminds you of other wines, like Puligny Caillerets, Achleiten Riesling, and Savoie Altesse without being exactly like any of them, it is at once very much reminiscent of these wines, but its own thing entirely. I’m not really sure what more I have to say about this wine, I’ve posted several glowing notes and this one is no different. In case you can’t tell, this is the white wine that I am currently infatuated with. I could drink my body weight in this if there were enough of an allocation.

Sunday Monkey dinner

A quiet Sunday evening at home with nothing to do but make myself dinner and watch Cracker, the next BBC show in line on my Netflix (tried MI-5, but was really put off by the slickness, the lameness, and all the jump-cutting…MAKE IT STOP).

2005 Louis Boillot Bourgogne

The saturated and sparkly ruby color winks at you from across the room. No surprises there as you would think that 2005 would produce healthy, frolicking wines. I have high expectations from someone married to Ghislaine Barthod, who I think makes one of the two or three best Bourgogne in all of the Côte d’Or. Seems to have a nice, sappy, vibrant cran-cherry fruit framed by woodspice. Fairly well balanced and not too tannic. All in all, a nice wine and good with the mushroom frittata, but is is really worth $30? The first time I bought a Bourgogne rouge in quantity was the 1995 Barthod, for which I paid about $15 a bottle. That wine served me well, in fact, I just drank the last bottle in September 2007 with FlaJim at his place in the mountains. Unless $30 becomes the new $20, I think that this pricing structure could cause some long-term problems for producers. What happens when the scores dry up (or capital does) and there just aren’t people willing to pay $30-35 for Bourgogne as hostage wines for Premier and Grand Cru (I think this is an even bigger problem for villages level wines)? There will always be a market for Volnay Caillerets and Gevrey Cherbaudes from Boillot, but I really believe you can’t have a sustainable model that way.

The Monkey gears up for Summer, another recommended white

After the success of John Downing of Hi-Times with the Benito Ferrara Greco I thought I would try another reasonably priced white that he was into. In my experience, Weissburgunder (aka pinot blanc) can produce wines of real creamy body and interest balanced upon an underlying structure, or they can become top-heavy shapeless mashes. It is a very fine line, I think. I wonder if it is a hard grape to know when to pick or whether there is actually more breathing space in terms of getting to the sweet spot. To date, my favorite expressions have always been from Austria.

2005 Ignaz Niedrist Weissburgunder Alto Adige - Südtirol

I consumed this wine over three days in the fridge and it didn’t seem to suffer at all over that period. It also seems to thrive at maybe 50-52° after being out of the fridge. This has that quality that David Schildknecht calls a “creamed corn”. It is a sort of sweet, but earthy yellow fruit quality, I think, married to a creaminess. I find it an apt descriptor for pinot blanc. I even enjoyed a glass of it by itself, which is unusual for me. Around $20 and worth owning a fair bit at that price. Not sure age will add anything to it, although it might uncoil it the wine a bit. I prefer it the way it is now.

No way Lyle Fass is recommending wines this good.

In case you missed it

So, two weeks ago or so Eric Asimov interviewed me for this article in the NY Times wine section.

It brought a whole bunch of new traffic to the VLM-TR which seems to have dies down now so I feel comfortable commenting on it, and there many points I'd like to make, but I'll limit myself to a couple.

First, the articles on preferences that caused the uproar shouldn't have. All they do is show that wine, like cars or anything else where people make choices, is subject to the same lack of rational thought that humans exhibit in all sort of other arenas. Logic and probabilistic reasoning are not natural to most people, they have to be learned, the fact that it also applies to choices about wine shouldn't surprise anyone. Dan Ariely*, a professor at MIT, makes that point, but I don't think people understood it judging from the comments on Eric's Blog.

Second, I've gotten a lot of shit for the La Tâche vs Beaujolais comment. The context was a little lacking. The point is that wine is not a cocktail to me, I don't sit around drinking wine, that's why god created scotch and gin. Wine is part of a meal. In that case, there are instances where a fine Cru Beaujolais might be a better choice than La Tâche. This is precisely why I have very little cabernet sauvignon in my cellar, it is just too limited at the table. To not appreciate this is to misunderstand something fundamental to the enjoyment of wine. In our bigger, better, faster, MORE! culture, this kind of thinking can get lost in the shuffle. If 2002 Coudert is good with a dish, then 2002 La Tâche is better and 1934 La Tâche better still. To me, this misses the point entirely, though I grant that La Tâche is a great wine and I never pass up the chance to drink it.


* An interesting anecdote, I overlapped with Dan in graduate school at UNC. I was even in an individual choice behavior seminar with him taught by Tom Wallsten. Dan was already a rising star then and has had an exceptional career since.

2005 Chinon on steroids

These showed up in the local market, and although I have some in the cellar, I thought I would pick one up to try. The Clos Guillot is the Baudrys newest vineyard site (although there is another on the way) and it has a fine exposition near Chêne Vert. It is also where Baudrys small planting of Franc de Pied cabernet franc is located. These vines are afflicted with phyloxera, so the wine will eventually cease to exist. It is a full south-southwest exposition, IIRC, so the vines get plenty of sun and the grapes were very ripe in both 2004 and 2005. I found the 2004 a bit loose for my tastes, especially with the elevated alcohol.

2005 Baudry Chinon Clos Guillot

This was really dark and brooding looking, like a barrel sample. The opaque purple is a bit unusual as cabernet franc is generally not that dark, but it is 2005 after all, the vintage where everything was pushed to the extreme. The alcohol is more than 14.5%, which is very, very high for Chinon, in fact, the wines were the ripest that anyone could remember. Maybe this is the Chinon to introduce your Cult Cabernet or spoofy right bank Bordeaux loving friends to. It is dark, loading with deep fruit, large scaled finishing with tons of tanning and has a mouthfeel that is a completely new experience in Chinon. Complete mouthcoating tannins. There was a trace of heat for me, but it was intertwined with a licquer-like sappiness, so maybe it has the balance to stay in harmony. I’m not sure what kind of advice to give on this wine. It could age into something more balanced, but will always be outsized, IMO. I have half a case and check in 5 years from now. Worth buying at least a few if you plan on following the vineyard. Other folks are more into it than I am and they could be right.