I had lunch yesterday with Ghislaine de Montgolfier, the somewhat impish but very elegant chairman of Bollinger, which has just released its first non-vintage rosé Champagne. Madame Lily Bollinger is of course responsible for the classic Champagne statement, "I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and I drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it— unless I'm thirsty." She also said, according to M. de Montgolfier, that rosé Champagne was the wine of the bordello, so Bollinger wasn't going to make any.

Well, things change. I don't know if they still serve rosé Champagne in bordellos, but Bollinger decided about six years ago that they would make some non-vintage pink bubbles. "Part of the problem," de Montgolfier said, "is that you need great red wine. The red wine makes the rosé. We have very low yields for our red, and use Burgundian techniques." Bollinger also, as the few and the lucky have experienced, makes a stunning red coteaux Champenois from vineyard in Aÿ, La Côte aux Enfants. I had it once, several years back; my memory is that it had Pommard-like muscularity, which surprised me. In other words, they've got no problems on the red wine front.

Anyway, the Bollinger NV Rosé Brut ($100) is very Bollinger—substantial generosity backed up with the spine to carry it off. The scent recalls wild strawberries and flowers; it's not a savory Champagne, more fruit driven, but the flavors are very pure. I liked it just fine, but it was overshadowed by the Bollinger 1999 La Grande Année ($115) that we also drank. Creamy and dense, with layers of flavor (sweet dough, apple, tangerine, spice, yeasty notes), this was simply stunning Champagne. So as much as the rosé is fun, I'd happily drop the additional bucks and drink the Grande Année. If I had the bucks in the first place, that is. Oh well!

The Tasting Room was getting overloaded with wine once again, so it seemed like a good time to taste through a passel of Pinots (which raises the question of whether groups of wines ought to have names a la "pride of lions" or "exaltation of larks", e.g. "crowd of Cabernets" or "symposium of Sauvignon Blancs" or "bog of fruit-bombs", i.e. "The wine critic fought his way valiantly through the fifty-bottle bog of fruit-bombs, but, in the end, his palate was obliterated and he drowned.").

In any case, moving right along, here were the winners out of the 22 wines we opened today.

2007 Cono Sur Pinot Noir ($9) This is labeled with the deeply terroir-specific tag "wine of Chile," but who cares—for nine bucks, it's surprisingly appealing Pinot. The nose isn't much to speak of, but it's got some appealing berry flavors, a leafy tobacco note, and the winery's carbon neutral, too. Can't argue with that. 

2006 J. Daan Willamette Valley Pinot Noir ($24) I know zip about winemaker (and owner, I assume) Justin van Zanten, save that he was assistant winemaker at Andrew Rich, but I'm interested to find out more. This is a graceful, light-bodied Oregon Pinot, the nose a bit faint at the moment, but with evocative floral-strawberry-raspberry notes and a hint of earthiness.

2006 MacPhail Anderson Valley Pinot Noir ($45) James MacPhail has been getting a lot of praise for his Pinots from a variety of wine writers, and based on this wine—one of his two basic cuvées, the other being a Sonoma Coast bottling—it's deserved. Floral, spicy aromas and ripe but focused flavors—sort of raspberry liqueur, if you can use that term without implying overripeness, which this wine isn't in the least. My note says that it "sorta glows"—in terms of flavor, not color—which if you ask me is something Pinot ought to do.

2005 Keller Estate La Cruz Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($40) This had a touch of reductiveness when first opened, but some good swirling got rid of it (decant the wine, if you buy it) to bring out pretty black cherry and cola notes. The black cherry continues in the flavor, along with brushy spice notes; plus it's got a silky, sexy mouthfeel that is really impossible to resist. Technically this comes from the Petaluma Gap area, just north of San Pablo Bay. Winemaker Michael McNeill is making some terrific wines here, white and red, and they're well worth checking out.

2006 Paraiso Vineyards West Terrace Pinot Noir ($40) I visited Paraiso ages ago when I was doing a story on Gary Pisoni, and thought at the time their wines were good but not much more. In the past couple of years they seem to have hit their stride, though—I thought Paraiso's 2006 Riesling was a steal for $14, and this Pinot was an unexpected star of this tasting. Very aromatic, with licorice, cinnamon and dark cherry notes, it's ripe and full-bodied, but those cool Santa Lucia Highlands winds must have had an effect, because it's also got a firm enough backbone of tannins to support the fruit. You could pay a lot more for Pinots that aren't nearly as good.

This is part three, which is to say the final, the last, the end of the wines for this dinner. Definitely more effort to chronicle them than to drink them, but such is the journalist's life. I'll recap the 1988 Bordeaux tasting from the F&W Classic in the next day or two as well—some amazing wines there, and some not so. Interesting lineup to say the least. Here are the final six from the Schoenfeld dinner:

2005 HDV Carneros Syrah ($50) I seem to have written "blueberry gravel," and while I'm not sure what that is, it does in retrospect seem like an appropriate phrase for this sweet, dense, California Syrah.

2005 Colgin IX Syrah Estate ($300 or so, if you can find it) Ink black, with gamy, savory notes on the nose (and not a little wood), then a powerful, super-extracted, black-fruited Syrah, with fierce tannins and a slathering of cocoa-oak. Impressive, yes. Delightful, well. If you like being hit in the face with a mallet, sure.

2002 Standish Shiraz ($80) Dan Standish sources the fruit for this wine from the eastern side of Barossa, on sandy soils. The aroma was toasty and hard to read in an odd way; the fruit, though, was lovely sweet blackberry, with luscious, fine tannins and a lot of grace despite its size. I wrote that it was "very all fruit all the time," which it is, but I was impressed anyway.

2002 Glaetzer Amon Ra Shiraz ($80ish) OK: the Standish is very good Barossa Shiraz. This is great Barossa Shiraz. A chunk of the fruit comes from 150-year-old vineyards in northwest Barossa, a windy place with sand over clay soils. The scent suggests black olives, chocolate and blackberries with an overlay of red currants, and the flavor follows along those lines, and just fills the mouth. I know plenty of people who would write this off just because it's a blockbuster, New World Shiraz, but I suspect they're also the sort of people who wouldn't understand why driving a Maserati is more fun than driving a Prius.

2000 Fabiano Amarone Della Valpolicella Classico  Pleasant, tarry Amarone but no great shakes. The fruit reminded me of cherry cider, and it had a nice little nip of citrus acidity on the end, but Romano Dal Forno ain't quaking in fear over this one.

2002 Kaesler Old Bastard Shiraz ($160, more or less) I know this is supposed to be up there in Amon-Ra territory (or even more culty, who knows), but to me it shot over the top: superrich elixir of blackberries and sweetness, so ripe and gobular that any nuance seemed drowned in the richness. Perhaps pleasant on pancakes? You got me.

And that's it. No more wines. Just your average little wine dinner in Boulder. I may be recovered enough by May for the next one. We'll see. 

Just to keep going with what I started the other day (or what we finished the other night, depending on how you want to look at it), here are the red wines—and two rosés—from the wine dinner Bruce Schoenfeld hosted on the Tuesday before the 2008 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. (Photo again by Jeremy Parzen.)

1997 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rosé General agreement could be found around the table that this wasn't the most impressive version of LdH's rosé around; I was part of that gang. Nice enough, with a kind of old book-dried strawberry scent, watermelon-strawberry fruit and a creamy texture, but it didn't have the depth some other vintages have had.

2007 S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Grenache Rosé All ebullient ripe raspberry fruit and not much else. I wrote at the time, "crisp, juicy and a bit idiotic." 

2004 Sea Smoke Southing Pinot Noir Crunchy ripe raspberry and other berry notes wrapped with sweet spicy tannins. Very ripe Central Coast wine, but with a nice spice element to it. Sea Smoke's gotten a lot of culty praise; I thought this wine was very tasty, but not complex enough to justify raves.

2007 Emilio Bulfon Piculit Neri ($26) I completely rained on Jeremy Parzen's plan to mystify the whatsis out of me by having actually had this wine before—it's obscure as all get-out, but Henry Bishop (who used to run the wine program at Spiaggia in Chicago) once gave me a bottle, oddly enough. I liked it then, and I like it now. The aroma is floral and twiggy and reminiscent of a really good Dolcetto; the flavor is darker and sweeter than most Dolcettos, though, with lovely wild berry and plum notes, ripe but graceful. It's on wine-searcher.com, but strangely only available in Illinois. Go figure.

[More]

Now that our annual F&W Classic in Aspen is over, I finally have the time (and focus) to recap some of the highlights of the thing. First up, our sister mag Travel & Leisure's contributing wine editor Bruce Schoenfeld's annual pre-Aspen dinner. As always, a gang of sixteen or so wine folks—makers, writers, drinkers, etc—convened on the-restaurant-that-shall-not-be-named in Boulder on Tuesday night, preparatory to making the trek up to Aspen. And as always, everyone brought along fabulous—or at least would-be fabulous—wines. Here's the lineup of whites (reds tomorrow), with prices for those that are current releases. (And many thanks to my pal and fellow wine blogger Jeremy Parzen for the loan of his terrific photographs!)

2004 Domaine Joseph Cattin Hatschbourg Pinot Gris  Not a wine I'd had before, this was potent, off-dry Alsace Pinot Gris, with an oily, luscious texture, dusty spice and dried peach flavors, and an odd, slightly varnish-tinged aroma that made me wonder if it had a bit of VA floating around. "Intriguing" might sum it up best.

2006 Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe Châteauneuf de Pape Blanc Les Crau ($55) A blend of Clairette (40%), Grenache Blanc (30%), Bourbolenc (15%) and Roussanne (15%) from roughly thirty-five year old vines. The nose here was subdued, though some steely apple (yep, steely apple—only way I've figured out how to describe it) and floral notes crept out. The wine itself was full-bodied, lush, with pear and sweet spice notes. Very pretty stuff, and will be better with time, I'd guess.

2006 Zarate Albariño ($22) Crisp, as Albariño should be, with an appealing briny note, and surprisingly full-bodied. I liked this just fine, but it didn't strike me as quite as complex as Pazo de Señorans, say, or Fillaboa.

1983 Kirchmayr Gumpoldskirchner Cuvée Solist Konig Altwein My first reaction here was roughly, "What the hell is this stuff?" and my second was roughly, "Well, whatever it is, it's fantastic." Partly that's because at my corner of the table it was too dark for me to read the back label clearly. But because I am a skilled reporter, I stood up and walked over to a light. It was a blend of—wait for it—Zierfandler, Rotgipfler, and Neuberger; it was dark gold in color; and it was blow-you-away good, with deep resinous and stony aromas, a rich but focused presence, lingering stone fruit characteristics, and notes of minerals, honey, and nuts. 

2000 Lucien Albrecht Clos Himmelreich Riesling  Clos Himmelreich is a two-hectare monopole of Albrecht. I didn't love this as much as some people did, but I enjoyed its orange-rind scent and its power; it had an odd raspiness to the texture, almost tannic, that didn't thrill me.

1989 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Blanco Reserva ($45) Oh, those old Lopez de Heredia whites. I love them, even if they occasionally suffer from a certain amount of bottle variation (which, of course, all older wines tend to suffer from—more on this when I get to the 1988 Bordeaux tasting in Aspen). This blend of 90% Viura and 10% Malvasia hit all those notes that make old white Rioja so appealing: wax, resin, almonds, citrus zest (sort of lemon oil, here, actually), and still retained some green apple as well. Plus the winery has a fellow with a really excellent beard on its home page. 

On my recent trip west, I tasted quite a few good Napa Valley wines, some of them discoveries (or discoveries for me, at least). I'd point people towards Jamie Kutch's silky, flavorful 2006 Kutch Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, for instance, if it weren't darn near impossible to find—still, get on the mailing list and who knows what will happen. Jamie makes his wines at the Deerfield Ranch Winery, and while I was there I also got to taste a pretty terrific Chardonnay from another fellow making wine there, Matt Wilson. The 2006 Sky Saddle Chardonnay ($30) comes from a small biodynamic vineyard in the Oak Knoll District; fourteen months of extended lees contact gives it a silky texture and depth that recalls Mark Aubert's Chardonnays, for instance, albeit at a lot less $$. Not very much of this around, but no one seems to know about it yet, either. Give the man a call.

You wouldn't cause yourself grave damage drinking the 2006 Rockledge Saralee's Vineyard Roussanne ($40), either, unless you liked it so much you inhaled the entire bottle and went zooming off in search of more—a risk, in fact. Pear and wildflower aromas, creamy texture bolstered by a firm mineral backbone, rich but not sweet. Fine example of California Roussanne. 96 whole cases made, so, again, act now. Or yesterday (again, best place to find this is by contacting the winery directly).

And I was happily surprised by the 2005 Wolf Family Estate Cabernet Franc 97% Cabernet Sauvignon 3% ($60), a cumbersome name for a graceful red that actually smells and tastes like Cabernet Franc, something a lot of California Cab Francs seem disinclined to do. From vines planted in the late 1970s—a whopping three-quarters of an acre of them—it's got pretty floral/violet aromas mingling with mocha and black cherry, and similar flavors ending on dusty, firm tannins. Where to get it? Yep, once again: call the winery. (Though if you're in CA, some retailers turn up on wine-searcher.com: check it here.)

So in the context of spending some time last week with the always erudite and engaging Michael Terrien, winemaker at Hanzell Vineyards, he felt it necessary to open up a few older vintages of Hanzell Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (undoubtedly because I shamelessly asked). If you're hanging on to older Hanzells, consider yourself in luck. Especially consider yourself so if you've got a stash of the 1998 Pinot, which pretty much blew me away. Here's why. We opened it in the evening—nice accompaniment to steak, btw—and it was both focused and luscious. I wasn't taking notes, because I decided I was tired of taking notes. Fine. Since we also opened a 1991 Hanzell Chardonnay (savory and spicy and still very much alive) and a 1984 Hanzell Pinot Noir (aromatics heading towards earth, dried cherries and twigs in a lovely way), along with a few other wines, we didn't finish the 1998. I cleverly deprived Mr. Terrien of the bottle. 

Then, because I'm of the "see if it takes a licking and keeps on ticking" school of wine testing, I stuck the remainder of the wine in the trunk of my car, and the next day drove it up Mt. Veeder Road and down the Oakville Grade (nice and windy—lots of aeration), headed back into Napa to have lunch at Ubuntu (fabulous all-veg food, and this is coming from a serious carnivore; I parked in the shade), then zoomed back to Yountville, where I parked the bottle on a countertop where I was staying until 7:00 PM, when I opened it to drink with a roast beef sandwich and potato chips.

Now, most older wines, you do that to them and they weep in pain and die. This Hanzell Pinot got better. My first reaction, after pouring a glass and sipping it, is unprintable in a family magazine (or on its website). Safe to say it was a violently profane expression of surprise. My second reaction was to think, well, maybe I better make notes after all. So: aroma of black cherry compote, brown sugar, black tea leaf, and orange skin; lasting flavors of fresh and dried wild raspberries and cherries, smoke, and more tea; and a velvety, fully resolved texture that still wasn't showing any signs of tiring or falling apart. A great wine.

Should I have drunk it with something more regal than a sandwich and some chips? I don't know, and don't really care. I suspect I could have drunk it with an old shoe and it would have been just as delicious.  

As I wade through the scrawled notes from the last couple of weeks, I see I've missed a few wines worth mentioning. From the Frederick Wildman tasting a week or so ago, some appealing and impressive stuff (in addition to the two new wines from Jolivet that I already blogged about):

2006 Castello Monaci Salice Salentino ($10) Negro Amaro with 20% Malvasia Nera. Tasty, inviting Salice Salentino for a very good price—lots of strawberry, plum and pepper. The grilling months are approaching...

2006 Olivier Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc "Les Setilles" ($23) Almost always a good choice in basic Bourgogne Blanc, this cuvée comes from declassified Meursault and Puligny fruit. Light oak toast on the nose, and crisp, almost prickly apple & peach fruit. Simple, but charming. Getting a bit pricey, though. Regarding 2006, Patrick Leflaive says, "A very nice year for whites. The reds..." He ended with one of those Gallic shrugs.

2006 Re Manfredi Bianco della Basilicata Muller Thurgau/Traminer ($20) I don't know what these folks are doing growing Muller Thurgau and Traminer down in Basilicata, but as strange as that idea may be, based on this wine it's not a bad one. A sort of round, luscious, spicy variation on these northern Italian grapes. Pretty darn tasty, to get all technical about it.

2006 Nino Negri Ca'Brione ($34) An even stranger white: a blend of Incrocio Manzone, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and, to top it off, free-run Nebbiolo juice. Go figure. But it's a dense, viscous, fascinating wine, with citrus zest, red apple, melon, and a touch of wild berry, framed by some light oak spice. Some of the grapes are also dried for a few weeks before fermentation, apparently. Those crazy Lombardians! I love them.

2006 Château Fuissé Vieilles Vignes ($56) Says Antoine Vincent of Ch. Fuissé, "2006 was very round, and we had to pay attention to balance, not to have wines that were too fat. Which is why we used no battonage." Evidently a wise choice, because this certainly wasn't too fat; rather, it was focused and clean, with pretty green apple fruit and a touch of caramel, and a resinous note on the end sort of recalling the taste and texture of fresh-peeled apple skin. From 65 to 77 year old vines.

Another day, another tasting. The fun never stops around these parts. In any case, here are a couple of new wines from Pascal Jolivet, the Loire producer, that I found particularly impressive (i.e. I loved them both). Both are made with natural yeasts, no sulfur dioxide before fermentation, organic fruit, no filtration, and a year of aging on the lees.

The first, the 2006 Pascal Jolivet Sancerre Blanc Sauvage ($45), from chalky soils, had a crisp minerality and flavors of grapefruit and grapefruit rind, with an earthy density lying underneath everything that gave it a kind of increasing presence in the mouth as I tasted it.

The second, the 2006 Pascal Jolivet Pouilly Fumé Indigene ($45), grown on silex soil (flinty rocky soil) even more compelling, I thought—the aroma a kind of smoky lemon-lime scent, the palate creamy and succulent even while it had fingersnap-crisp citrus and green apple flavors, ending on a savory note. According to Jolivet, the Indigene took a full four months to get through fermentation, a pretty bizarre situation but one that certainly paid off in the end.

I sat down yesterday with the rest of the wine department to taste through an assortment of 2004 Napa Cabernets, a kind of follow-up to a previous '04 tasting I wrote about in October. On the whole it wasn't the most uplifting tasting I've done recently—there was a depressing sameness to many of the wines, a kind of die-cut presentation of black fruit and oak that made one seem to merge with the next. But the good ones were, as they should be, distinctive and appealing. Out of the 20 tasted, here are my four favorites (in price order) plus an impressive 2005 that snuck into the lineup somehow.

2004 Silverado Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($45) Part of the appeal of this wine is that it doesn't wow you with gobs of fruit or flashy oak. Instead it's a deftly balanced, classic Napa Cabernet, with direct dark cherry flavors (a lot of Stag's Leap fruit in the blend), a light herbal minty note, and firm, slightly drying tannins on the end. 

2004 Ladera Lone Canyon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($65) Though Ladera itself is up on Howell Mountain, this vineyard is across the valley at the base of Mt. Veeder. The aroma here was a mix of cassis, cherry and earthy notes, along with a moderate dose of French oak; the blackberry and black cherry fruit was bolstered by grippy tannins. I'm not quite as big a fan of this wine as I am of Ladera's Howell Mtn bottling, but it's still impressive.

2004 Rocca Family Vineyard Yountville Cabernet Sauvignon ($65) I don't know much about the Rocca family, but I do know that their winemaker, Celia Masyczek, has been the talent behind some top-flight Cabernets in recent years—Scarecrow, DR Stephens, Cornerstone. She's in the same realm with this lush, supple, seductive Cabernet. Lots of sweet blackcurrant fruit, nice spice notes, very much a make-your-tongue-happy Cab.

2004 Sbragia Cimarossa Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($75) Ed Sbragia just stepped down as winemaster at Beringer to concentrate on his family label, which he launched in 2004 (he'll retain the title "winemaker emeritus" at Beringer). This has a fragrant cherry liqueur aroma that leads into lots of velvety black cherry fruit and substantial but gentle tannins.   

And that inadvertent 2005:

2005 Groth Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon ($57.50) Mocha and cherry scents, and then a dense, powerful but also very inviting Oakville cabernet, with lots of ripe cherry and currant notes and tannins that roll in at the end. I particularly liked its seamlessness—nothing out of joint, graceful from start to finish. In many ways, this was my favorite of the tasting.