Category — Wine

During the recent troubles, I worried that one of my favorite wineries, Château Musar, in the Bekaa valley, might suffer losses.

It has always amazed me that they have managed to produce wine year after year. They have only missed three vintages, 1976, 1984, and 1992. In 1992, the grapes were not up to standard.

Anyway, I decided to write to them to see if they were all right, and got the following answer:

Many thanks for your very kind thoughts and concern.We are deeply grateful for your prayers and your messages of support. All Chateau Musar’s team are well and continuing their great work. The winery and the vineyards are doing well and we expect a very good crop for the 2006 vintage.
Best regards

Château Musar

Keep these folks in your thoughts!

For people who are having difficulty locating their wine in the United States, you might want to contact the importer:

Broadbent Selections, Inc
2088 Union Street
Suite 2San Francisco
CA 94123

Telephone: 415 931 1725
Fax: 415 921 0596

(Broadbent Selections was nominated for importer of the year by the Wine Enthusiast last year, and the other selections are really interesting too!)

And visit their blog at www.vilafonte.com.

The following posting came from Paul Ahvenainen, Korbel’s Director of Winemaking, in response to my posting, in which I suggested that the Champagne should be used only by wine producers in the Champagne area of France. In his response, Mr. Ahvenainen suggested that this is the view of the self-righteous. My position is that when we receive accurate information from wine producers, everyone, including the producers, is better off.

There is an interesting article that deals with the subject in depth in Wikipedia. Click here to read it.

While I do not agree with his position, it seemed to me to be fair to give the “other side” visibility in this debate.

Mr. Paul Ahvenainen’s comments follow:

God I just love the web! Anyone can say just about anything and actually have it read. Unfortunatly, the web hasn’t figured out a way to filter for accuracy.

Here I am on a Monday morning, pressing a few hundred tons of chardonnay for future Korbel champagne, and up pops another blogger verbally wagging his self rightous finger at me and all the hard working people here at Korbel.

Everyone is entiled to thier opinion. Let’s at least get a few facts straight.

1. The question of regional place names growing into common usage goes far beyond champagne or other wines. Take the term cheddar, is it a place or is it a style of cheese? I think that most sensible people would say that once a term like cheddar comes into common usage to represent a particular style of cheese, regardless of where the cheese was made, it is available for usage. I don’t think the US consumer is clamoring for Kraft to drop cheddar from its cheese line anytime soon.

Ask yourself this question: If, without saying anything, a friend at a party hands you a traditional flute of pale fizzy wine as you walk in the door, in your own mind, what did you just recieve? For 99% of people, the honest answer is, “a glass of champagne”. Clearly the term champagne refers to a style of wine, not just a place.

2. Korbel’s use of the term champagne is permited by both US and EU regulations. The French don’t like to admit it, but they just signed a treaty within the last several months, clearly (however relucantly) acknowleging the long usage of the term champagne outside of the Marne Valley. Essentialy, the EU is agreeing that the term is in common usage now, but are trying to bring the usage back under thier control. That’s just not going to happen. Cheddar will always be a style of cheese. Wine with bubbles will always be champagne.

3. Don’t buy into the Moet & Chandon propaganda machine. This isn’t about wine or small growers toiling in the soil. It’s about a competitive market place, major corporations and MONEY. I have seen reports circulated in France that converts “California Champagne” sales into euros, very large numbers of euros.

You did’nt also buy into Moet’s Dom Perrignon fairy tale, did you?

4. Korbel has been using the term “California Champagne” for over 120 years. Nobody cared until we became a major player in the US market in the 1970’s.

5. I have been associated with Korbel for over 20 years. In that time, I have never met a consumer who was confused about the origin of our products. Our identity is firmlly based as an American / California producer.

We are proud to offer the US consumer a choice, and a great value.

Too bad about the White Star, your loss.

Paul Ahvenainen
Director of Winemaking
Korbel Champagne Cellars
Guerneville CA, USA

That’s right. The winner is Moet. Korbel just lost a sale

I have just bought a bottle of Moet & Chandon White Star. Actually, I was looking for a bottle of California sparkling wine, but I decided not to because I became irritated by Korbel.

I have had Korbel’s sparkling wines before, and I have enjoyed them. But today I noticed that they continue to mark their offering with the word, Champagne, in addition to indicating that they are made in the methode champenoise. I carefully looked at all the other bottles, and I noticed that all the respectable companies in California (Piper Sonoma, Gloria Ferrer, Codorniu Napa, Mumm) call their wines in this class sparkling wine. The exceptions to the rule tend to be at the very low end of the market, including some of the wines from New York State. It seems to me to be silly that Korbel wishes to join the ranks of Cooks, Totts, Taylors, and Great Western.

So to express my irritation, I decided to buy a bottle of the real thing!

I would be interested in comments from readers. In my opinion, there is no need to call a wine Champagne when it clearly does not come from the Champagne area. Let me know if you agree, and if you do, please boycott these wines! If you don’t please let me know. I would be interested to hear from you. In the meantime, I am looking forward to drinking a wine that truly deserves to be called Champagne.

In my previous post, I noted how much information Ridge gives to its consumers. I wish Korbel would give us the same respect!

If you were to ask me which were my top ten American wine producers, Ridge would definitely be in the list, and it would probably be near the top.

Although I have more experience with their Zinfandel based wines, I have always enjoyed their Cabernet very much indeed too. But I must admit to approaching this bottle with some trepidation. Although, I had kept it in good condition, the recommended “bottle age” was “five to ten years” so I was afraid I would be drinking it after its expiry date. This fear increased when the cork broke as I was opening it. But I was able to salvage it without dropping a single piece of it into the dark red liquid.

To the nose, you could immediately tell that this was a rich, long, deeply-flavored wine that would refuse to “go away” even if you wanted it to. The flavors were deep cherry and cassis with a hint of cigar box and tobacco. The presence of a little Merlot and Cabernet Franc were suggestive of a Bordeaux although the richness and a tiny bit of sweetness distinguished this wine as distinctly Californian.

I absolutely loved this wine, and comments from all who tasted it about its silky smooth finish suggested we were drinking it at absolutely the right time. A very well rewarded wait!

I once visited the winery in Cupertino. After a long drive up the mountain, you are welcomed to a friendly tasting room with well-informed presenters. I remember being very amused when the mail man dropped off his letters and was rewarded for his pains with a sip of Cabernet Sauvignon. I remember thinking how very civilized that was. And how European!

One of the marvellous things about Ridge is how well they document their wine both on their website, and also on the bottle. The text on the bottle is below:

1991 SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS CABERNET SAUVIGNON
82% CABERNET SAUVIGNON, 15% MERLOT, 3% FRANC

SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS

ALCOHOL 12.9% BY VOLUME

PRODUCED AND BOTTLED BY RIDGE VINEYARDS, INC. BW 448817100 MONTE BELLO RD, BOX 1810, CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA 95015

91 Santa Cruz Mountains Vineyard, bottled March 1993

On Monte Bello Ridge, our vines are divided between two vineyards—Santa Cruz Mountains and Monte Bello. The former extends from the thirteen hundred foot elevation upwards and includes the old Jimsomare Ranch, as well as those vines higher on the ridge which typically produce more supple, less tannic wines. The 1991 was initially aged in new, air-dried, american oak and finished in two-year-old barrels to maintain the balance between spicy oak and berry fruit. The inclusion of merlot and a small amount of franc added further complexity. A lovely wine, enjoyable now, it will develop more fully with five to ten years of bottle age.

After a recent post about Blanquette de Limoux, a good friend of mine, Suzy, suggested I try a sparkling wine, Gruet, from the state where she lives, New Mexico. So I was delighted to find Gruet’s Blanc de Noirs when I was shopping at Balducci’s in Alexandria recently.

Made in the traditional methode champenoise, this is a remarkably refined sparkling wine. It has the tiny persistent bubbles that characterize very good bubblies. It also has that attractive toasty flavor with red berry notes — something between strawberries and raspberries. Its color is typical of blanc de noirs. Made mostly with Pinot Noir, this wine has a dark straw color with a suggestion that, if it blushed a little more, it would become pink — in the sparkling wine world, people talk about salmon!

This is an exceptionally nice sparkling wine at a very fair price (about $15.00). A highly recommended low-priced alternative to Champagne!

Thank you, Suzy, for such a wonderful suggestion!

I recently proposed a scoring system for rating airlines on their wine service. The system is based entirely on price, and, although it is certainly flawed in many ways, it should give the traveler a sense of whether the airline considers offering top wines to first and business class passengers a priority.

For example, if a wine lover has a choice between flying United and Singapore Airlines, the fact that Singapore spends more than twice as much on its wines should help.

I ranked a few airlines, but a reader recently discovered a silly mistake I had made when trying to rate Singapore Airlines. The score, which is the simple sum of the value of its Champagne, its leading white wine, its leading red wine, and its dessert wine should have come to USD 280 rather than USD 250.

With this correction, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific are equal in spending more on wine for their first class passengers than any airline I know of.

I would love to hear from readers, who have airline wine lists so that I can add to the airlines I have scored. (I wonder what kinds of wines Emirates is offering these days in First Class!)

To see my scoring system, click here.

To see my score of Singapore Airlines, click here, and for Cathay Pacific, click here. And click here, for my report on United’s First Class.

Clay Station, Viognier, 2004

This wine is delicious, and excellent value for money at around $9.00. It has complex flavors of honey, and butterscotch. The fruit is marvellous with notes of peaches, apricots, and passion fruit. I simply love this wine, and will seek it out in the future.

I very much like bubbly wine, but frequent drinking of Champagne can get very expensive very quickly. But the alternatives often seem disappointing. I rarely enjoy Spanish Cava, and I have been disappointed by a number of Australian sparkling wines. So when I am in the mood for a sparkling wine, but want to spend less than Champagne, I usually seek out a Californian. (I like the products from Mumm, Chandon, and Piper Sonoma, for example.) An alternative that can be a little bit more difficult to find is Blanquette de Limoux.

I also have a very special affection for this wine because when I was about 12 years old, we took a holiday in the Carcassonne area, and we visited many of the Blanquette makers. So these wineries were the first I ever got to visit!

Last night we had a bottle of the St. Hilaire, 2003. It was simply delicious. Very dry, with apple, pear and citrus flavors. It seemed a little fuller-bodied than I expected, and I wondered whether that was because of the intense heat wave in France in 2003. Highly recommended at only about $10.00 a bottle, and very different from Champagne. (Blanquette de Limoux must be made of at least 90% Mauzac, and the balance is usually Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc while Champagne can be made in any combination of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay.)

It is so interesting that the monks in this region claim to have invented the traditional method for which makes Champagne famous.

Vintage Wine
Fifty Years of Tasting Three Centuries of Wine
Michael Broadbent
Harcourt, 2002

I used to read books about wine all the time, but, more recently, I have tended to read the Wine Spectator to try to make sure that my information about wine is up to date. I was recently at Daedalus Books, a wonderful bookshop (with mail order service) in Columbia, MD, and I found Michael Broadbent’s book for only $10.00. I bought it, and it has given me more pleasure than any book that I have read for a long time. (I went to Daedalus yesterday, and noticed one copy left on the shelf. You can also get it from Amazon for about $37.00

Originally trained as an architect, Michael Broadbent entered the wine trade in 1952, but he is most famous for starting and running the wine department at Christie’s, the auction house. During the fifty years between his start and 2002, more value must have passed through this man’s lips than almost anyone in the world!

Consider for a moment that he sold a bottle of 1787 Lafite, which was owned by Thomas Jefferson, at auction for $105,000. Although that particular bottle became damaged “due to the heat of spotlights” in the Presidential Memorabilia section of the Forbes Museum, Broadbent has tasted this particular vintage of Lafite twice, and he describes the second tasting as “tawny, no red, a dark brown flaky sediment; nose was restrained and although oxidised opened up quite richly with residual fruit traces; a touch of sweetness on the palate and acidic, acetic finish.” If you like this kind of stuff, this book draws from 85,000 notes that meticulously describe the wine, the occasion, and an interesting cast of wine drinking companions. No wonder calls Broadbent “a more diligent wine archivist than we wine lovers deserve.”

This is the ultimate wine blog and reading it really is a humbling experience for little bloggers like me. Broadbent has had the discipline to make and keep notes thousands of times during a period of fifty years. Another thing that sets him apart is that people like him have the talent, which combines an outstanding palate and extraordinary power of written expression, to document their impressions of wine at the first tasting. In contrast, I rarely feel confident about putting my thoughts about wine into written form until I have tasted a wine at least three times.

Broadbent tastes the best, and he makes no apology for doing so. He explains himself by telling his readers, “My wife, Daphne, and I drink wine every day. Life is short, we do not waste our time on bland indifferent wines; we would rather share half a bottle of something with character and quality than share six bottles of plonk.”

A gratifying thing about the book is that Broadbent seems to admire the kinds of wines that I like. The chapters of the book are organized into the major regions of the world with three chapters devoted to single producers, Chateau Musar, Vega Sicilia, and Mas de Daumas Gassac. Like me, he seems particularly fond of that wonderful wine from Lebanon, Chateau Musar, which he describes as “excellent, and distinctive, albeit idiosyncratic.”

His amusing anecdotes describe encounters and tastings with the rich and famous, and he provides a list of people at the end of the book for people who have not heard of his friends and professional associates. Like a litany of famous wine lovers, this list includes (among many, many other famous people) Anthony Barton, (owner of Leoville Barton), Jancis Robinson (my favorite wine writer), Andrew Lloyd Webber, Georg Riedel (maker of the famous Riedel glasses), and Robert Mondavi.

The stories include personal moments such as the time he toured Germany on a Vespa motor-scooter with a “laudable ambition, at that time, to make love — necessarily furtively, and at night — in a famous vineyard.” They also include moments, where, as an honored speaker, he has had to describe horrible wine with tact and diplomacy, such as when he had to talk about Chateau Lafite, 1864, in Memphis, Tennessee:

On decanting, it became obvious that the wine was indeed ‘pricked’. In order to save the situation, I smelled the wine and nodding sagely, handed it to my host, John Grisanti, for the first sip. He nodded as if approvingly. I then said: ‘This is a very old wine. The grapes for this wine were picked during the autumn of 1864, which was when General Sherman, whose troops were based in Memphis, went marching across Georgia leading his Union troops into battle with the Confederates.” I added: “Tonight you are tasting not just wine, but history.”

I wondered where he would stand as a British critic and member of the wine trade on the apparent rivalry between the Americans, who favor scoring wine like college essays, and the British, like Hugh Johnson, who always suggest that these scores are absurd. With characteristic tact, Broadbent simply says that the “100-point rating system is flawed because it is inflexible and does not allow for bottle variation and context.” He does, however, make a jab at the fashionable cult wines that inevitably suggest some of the wines from California:

Oscar Wilde defined fox hunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” A propos certain ‘cult’ wines and modern ‘global’ reds, I am inclined to change the last word to “undrinkable.”

Is Broadbent talking about Parkerized wines here?

I adore this book, and I admit to being a bit of an oddball in my passion for wine, but, if you think you might enjoy going through notes of the world’s ultimate wine written by the world’s ultimate critic, you must buy this book.

This report uses the approach to scoring airline wine service described here.

These were the leading wines served in Business Class on Continental during June, 2006.

Champagne: Charles Lafitte NV $30
White wine: Chateau Lapugeau $14
Red Wine: Chateau Lalande, 2002 $8
Dessert wine: Quinto do Noval $10

Total Score: 62

I must admit that I have not flown Continental in years, and I based these scores on information on their web site. I had not heard of many of their wines and could not get prices on them. Usually, I regard an airline’s Bordeaux wines as their “leader” but I could not get any information on their red Bordeaux.

This is the lowest score I have made since looking at this issue, and, based on this information, I would avoid flying Continental.

Incidentally, Continental uses the spelling Bourdeaux on their site. Everybody has typographical errors, but I suspect that this one reflects their interest in wine.