Friday, April 23, 2010

Pannonhalmi Apatsagi, Pinot Noir 2007 (Pannonhalma, Hungary) $25, 12.5%

Wow. I really like this wine.

Blinded this on the train with the boys, and it was guessed right away as a Pinot Noir due to its pure, fresh red fruits and some wet-stone minerality. The word 'elegant' was used a number of times.

So varietal established, where is it from? Given the elegance, the debate started in Burgundy...a few decent producers were thrown out there, but when pressed for a commune, the gang settled on Bourgogne Rouge from a pretty good producer. New Zealand and Oregon were briefly considered and discarded because one would expect a little more extraction and concentration from these places (the wine was a pale ruby red).

Ha! A Hungarian Pinot Noir! Swing out with your bad self!


Pannonhalma lies about half way between Budapest and Vienna and is one of the smallest of Hungary’s 22 wine regions. This estate is an old monastery that grows plenty of traditional Hungarian grapes (Welchriesling, Ezerjó and Sárfehér) as well as international varieties like this Pinot Noir.

To me the Apatsagi would be appealing to Burgundy drinkers, though I didn't get any forest-floor-mushroom-whatnot earthiness that I typically get from that part of France. The acid was rather soft compared to a Burgundy as well. Still, the pure, bright red fruits (nothing green) were nicely framed by some sweet oak notes. That pretty fruit base was enhanced by a streak of minerality, juicy acid, and a fine texture, making the Apatsagi a delicious, unusual find.

(The wine is almost as pretty as these flowers.)

Transparency: this wine is imported by my employer.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Faiveley, ‘Les Lavières’ 2004 (Nuits-Saint-Georges), $50, 13% abv

Stood up on a Saturday night.

If a guy says ‘don’t worry, I’m not a player’, that means he’s totally a player, right?

Could someone remind me why I should be all enthusiastic about being single?

*sigh*

Oh wait! Ha! I just remembered: being alone means I can order up whatever wine I want without having to consider stylistic or budget preferences of my significant other!

Burgundy it is. (Nah nah.)

The evening is starting to look up.


The 2004 vintage was not a ripe year for Burgundy and some wines I’ve tasted are downright mean & green. I bought some anyway because it’s the clichéd wine to drink while you’re waiting for your 2005s to mature. Still, I have some friends who gag at the vintage the same way they would gag if presented with pureed White Castles at a dinner party (ha! You thought it was paté!!) But I’m not a hater on the 2004 Burgs because a) I’m not overly sensitive to green notes, and b) it’s nice to know that the wines of this under-ripe vintage were not Tammy Faye’d out to be something bizarre.

Faiveley is a fairly large (for Burgundy) vineyard owner and winemaker based in Nuits-Saint Georges. ‘Les Lavières’ is not a 1er Cru (as it is in Savigny-les-Beaune) , but a lieu-dit, or named vineyard without being all special enough to be classified. A few other producers (including Daniel Rion and Domaine Leroy) make wine from the same vineyard.

This Burgundy was not showing that green note typical of the 2004 vintage, though rather stemmy on the palate. Overall, I find wines from Nuits-Saint-Georges to be more towards the masculine side, but this wine was bursting with full-on strawberries, like the first strawberries of the season that are stronger in florals than ripe aromatics. And there was a really strange floral thing going on. Strange because it wasn’t white blossoms or red roses but it was so familiar. It was…fabric softener scent: fresh and borderline soapy.

Huh.

So not quite the happy ending I was looking for on this solo Saturday night either, but the wine paired just fine with last week’s episode of The Biggest Loser (courtesy of hulu.com).

Monday, April 5, 2010

Duck confit at Noah’s in Greenport

A new addition to the restaurant scene in Greenport, Noah’s, specializes in delicious small-plate seafood and a raw bar, but it was the duck confit that caught my eye. I’m predictable like that. And maybe ordering duck confit at a seafood-centric restaurant is not the best idea. Still, Long Island duck is as much of a local item as the seafood, so it’s not all that much of a stretch…

At first I was surprised that a duck confit dish would cost $23, but it turns out this is because two duck legs are served. I love duck confit of course, but maybe there’s a way to get a half portion next time?


The dish was served over a bed of lentils (with lardons of bacon) and bitter frisée. The duck meat was tender though not too ‘ducky’ or gamey in flavor. The dominant note of the dish was the earthiness imparted by the lentils with some relief via the frisée. I heart bacon, but it was lost as there is plenty of lovely fattiness in the skin of the duck, and the volume of lardons was not enough to season the dish. The skin itself was rendered and crispy.

So I do love my duck confit, but this is a fine example of why, in my opinion, a bright fruit acid counterpoint is important for a balanced dish.

PS – if you go there, have the gorgonzola rosemary French fries. Crazy cool little dish.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Dr. Loosen, Erdener Treppchen Kabinett Riesling 2005 (Mosel), $25, 8% abv

I drank this casualty first from the wet cellar because it has a twist cap, and my arms were exhausted from my first attempt of bucketing out water from the basement.

One thing I was really surprised by was the quality of inks and glues used for nearly all of the wet bottles on the bottom shelf of the cellar. That label barely shows any damage. If anything, importer labels that were later added were the only label that were sliding off as I moved them to drier grounds.

Back to the wine: fortunately, the Dr. Loosen showed no signs of damage. As I would have expected, it had a medium (+) intensity of dried tropical aromatics and was already developing a petrol note. A classic mineral aroma was also present. On the palate the wine is off-dry and has a slight spritz that augments the medium (+) acidity that cleans away the residual sugar and leaves behind a beautiful kaleidoscope of pineapple, ripe lemon, and wet stone flavors.

Easy to drink all night long at 8% while checking the progress of the water pump downstairs…

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Are wine bottles waterproof?

I guess I'll find out shortly.


I store most of my bottles in a pre-fab cellar room in the basement of my house in Greenport, NY. The house is about a block or so from the harbor. We've had a number of nor'easters visit us over the past two weeks. And I just learned what a "water table" is and how it works.

Six inches of water in the basement. It's presumably been there since Tuesday. I just found out on Saturday.



My cellar is slightly off the ground, so there's only about two inches in the cellar. Still, the bottom row was soaked, so I've pulled those bottles out to dry. Actually, I'm impressed at how well the labels have stood up. But the real test will be pulling the cork. And for even more fun, there were two German rieslings with twist caps.

So I'll let you know how it goes over the next few days.

Back to water pumping.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Lapierre, 'Cuvee Marcel Lapierre' 2007 (Beaujolais), $39, 13%

“Just looking.”

I was wandering the aisles of Astor Wine and Spirits (has anyone who reads this website ever been able to leave that store empty handed?) and I thought: I haven’t had much New World wine lately.

I’ll pick up something from the New World for dinner tonight.

Ok, New World section, here I come.




I can do this.




New World.






New.






New, new, new.






Nuevo.






Nuovo.






Neu.






Nouveau.




As in Beaujolais Nouveau.








Est arrive!






Ok, focus. New World.




What is Astor’s Beaujolais selection anyway? Oh look! Lapierre!

Oh! Lapierre was the wine of summer 2008! That was the summer I lived in Paris and the Morgon AC was easily available throughout the city and I could afford it. And the half bottles were novel: instead of the traditional sloping shoulders, they were bottled in tall thin bottles, like the way Canadian ice wine is usually bottled.



Anywhootle, that’s how I went from looking for a New World wine to Beaujolais.

Lapierre is a wonderful producer in Morgon who practices a minimalist intervention style of winemaking in both the vineyard and the winery. Most of their fruit is from Morgon, and the Cuvée Marcel Lapierre is one of their top bottlings. Indeed, my friend Nick Gorevic (the genius behind HomeWineSchool.com) worked the 2009 harvest at Lapierre and said the Cuvée Marcel Lapierre is not made in every vintage, includes a selection of the best grapes, and is released later than the regular AC bottlings.

I had it on a slight chill and gave it a quick splash decant. The underlying fruit profile of sour strawberries and black cherries was similar to my memory of the Morgon AC bottling though this was more advanced in tertiary development with respect to a dry earthy note and had was more round on the palate.

A really beautiful Beaujolais with my duck confit (what were you expecting I would have for dinner?) and though I would wait a few years before opening the next one…