You know the rest of that line, right? Well, it's with some small amount of sadness that I am saying that about this blog: It must come to an end. I've had a terrific time writing it, but we've decided that in the end it's a bit strange, for a magazine that's all about bringing together food and wine, to have separate blogs on those topics.

So, from here on out, any wine blogging that I (and Megan Krigbaum, Kristin Donnelly, and various other stalwart folks) do will instead appear in F&W's primary blog, Mouthing Off. No less wine coverage, just a different venue. See you there.

Ray Isle

Andy Warhol was a big fan of Dom Pérignon. So much so that he and his friends made a plan to drink it to ring in the new millennium in 2000. In his diary entry from March 8, 1981, he writes: “...the ‘2,000’ people — it’s a club of twenty guys who got together and they're going to buy 2,000 bottles of Dom Pérignon which they will put in a sealed room until the year 2000 and then open it up and drink it and so the running joke is who will be around and who won’t...” The stashed bottles have never been found, nor have the other 19 members of the group been identified. It almost makes you want to go on a scavenger hunt!

Now, in a tribute to the pop-art legend, Dom Pérignon has teamed up with Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London for a limited-edition collection of three Andy Warhol–inspired bottles, vintage 2002. The labels, in red, yellow or blue, recall Warhol’s bold use of color and graphics.

The bottles are available today at a suggested retail price of $150, in NYC at Crush Wine & Spirits and Sherry-Lehmann.

I recently attended the WTF?! Tasting at Brooklyn Wine Exchange, hosted by a company called WineChap, which is known for its quirky, entertaining events like the astrology-themed Wines for Signs. We tasted six “boundary-pushing” wines, each breaking the mold of conventional winemaking in its own way.

NV Domaine Mosse Moussamoussettes Pétillant ($23) An unfiltered sparkler with no yeast or sugar added.
2008 Red Hook Winery The Electric ($45) The soul of a late-harvest Riesling in the body of a Chardonnay.
2002 Gravner Ribolla Gialla Anfora ($90) An “orange” wine fermented in underground clay amphorae.
2008 Domaine le Briseau Patapon ($28) Made from the rare Pineau d’Aunis grape, put through even rarer semi-carbonic maceration.
NV Pechigo Rouge ($22) An uncommon red blend from biodynamic winemaker Sylvain Saux.
2000 Domaine de Montbourgeau L’Etoile Vin Jaune ($71) An oxidized wine from the Jura, with fino sherry–like flavors.

The tasting booklet’s overall rating for each wine involved choosing its WTF?! Factor— illustrated with one to five unicorns—and came with photos depicting each wine’s wacky aspect (like a centaur for the unlikely blend in The Electric). You might love them or hate them, but you’ll never say they’re ordinary. One sip and you might blurt out…WTF?! 

Earlier this week, I popped into my old stomping grounds, Crush Wine & Spirits (I worked there on the sales floor a few years ago). Summer is typically the slow season for New York City wine shops so I expected everyone to have some down time to chat, but instead I was pulled into a very serious blind tasting—of sorts. Rather than going through a batch of under $20 Pinot Noirs or some such, we tasted six coconut waters. Tom Stephenson, Crush's GM, told me, “I was sick of the huge price discrepancy between all the brands and not knowing which was best.”

My two favorites: O.N.E. was the lightest and most refreshing, while actual fresh water drained from a young coconut tasted the most like the fruit (appropriately enough). The rest, including fresh water from an older coconut, tasted either oddly tangy, sweet or just off. Considering that opening a fresh coconut requires a machete whereas O.N.E. comes in an easy-to-open TetraPak, I think I’ll stick with O.N.E. The results were not unanimous, however, so look for more details, including the full lineup of what was tasted, over at the Crush Blog.

 

 

 

 

 

It takes talent to match just the right wine with a dish. Some would also argue that it takes talent to match the perfect handbag or heels with a dress. That makes Elisabeth English, the owner of Nantucket's Current Vintage, super-talented. After selling her interest in Provisions (the island’s beloved sandwich shop) to Amanda Lydon and Gabriel Frasca, English opened this wine-and-fashion boutique. The year-old shop has a tightly edited selection of more than 150 wines with an emphasis on boutique labels and a particularly exciting selection of American Pinot Noirs and Burgundy. English also stocks vintage and designer clothing, jewelry and shoes. Here, she shares her picks for what to wear and drink at quintessential Nantucket summer outings:

’Sconset Picnic
Clothes: Vintage 1950s sundress and ankle-wrap espadrille
Wine: Domaine Bart Rosé, Marsannay, France

Madequesham Clam Bake
Clothes: Vintage 1960s Lilly Pulitzer floral maxi and a pedicure
Wine: ’07 Curran Grenache Blanc, Santa Ynez, California

Hulbert Avenue BBQ
Clothes: Vintage 1970s Jordache jeans, embroidered Mexican top and gladiator sandals
Wine: ’05 Kangarilla Road Shiraz-Viognier, McLaren Vale, Australia

On the off chance you happen to be visiting Mt. Desert Island in Maine, which is home to a good chunk of Acadia National Park, and find yourself in need of wine, I'd suggest you make a point of visiting Sawyer's Specialties in Southwest Harbor. I walked into this place the other day and was pretty much blown away by the selection–not just a lot of wine, but a lot of really terrific wine, from the kind of interesting, artisanal producers that are hard enough to track down in NYC, much less the far northeastern reaches of Maine. Owner/buyer Scott Worcester's suggestion the day I was there, the 2006 Aia de Colombi Falanghina, is right up there in the running (with the '06 Blanco Nieva Pie Franco that I recommended a few entries back) for my favorite new white this summer. Full-bodied but with enough verve to keep it light, loaded with flavor, and under $20–good juice indeed. No website, but the place is easy enough to find if you're on the island: 353 Main Street, Southwest Harbor, ME; 207-244-3317.

Eric Asimov has an engaging piece in today’s NY Times on learning about wine, which among other things underscores how useful a good wine shop is in terms of that goal. Read it here. I’ll just throw my two cents into the mix by saying that whenever people ask me about buying wine, I always tell them that patronizing a store with an actual staff, one that knows wine, is well worth the extra buck or two you may pay per bottle over what you’d pay at the local SuperMongoMart.

Of course, I’m biased by my own experiences. I had the good fortune, while in grad school, to live half a mile away from the Redwood City outpost of K&L Wine Merchants. I was interested in wine, but, like any grad student worth his weight in unpublished manuscripts, cashless in extremis. So once every couple of weeks I’d scrape together fifteen bucks—a serious extravagance at the time—and head on over to K&L. There I’d always talk to the same guy, who (a) seemed to know the wines in the store inside and out, (b) took my interest seriously even though I was spending maybe a tenth of their average sale (or even less, as this was the height of the dot-com boom), and (c) would find out whether I’d liked whatever he’d recommended the last time I was there, and then extrapolate from there. No clue what this guy’s name was, but in my mind he’s sort of like the unknown solider of wine-store service: deserving of honor and a bronze monument or two. Or at least a bronze decanter.

 

Today a reader wrote in to point out that of the 27 Pinot Noirs I recommended in my March Tasting Room column (out on newsstands everywhere right now! whoo-hoo!) only one of them is available in Pennsylvania.

Part of the problem here is simply that California's (and Oregon's) best Pinot Noirs tend to be vineyard specific, and so are produced in fairly small quantities. Another part of the problem, though, is what happens when you have a monopoly on wine sales in a given market—in this case, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Not that the PLCB's choices are necessarily bad, but part of the pleasure of being a wine lover is the ever-expanding range of interesting wines being sold in the U.S. (unless of course you're stuck in Pennsylvania). And my usual advice to readers trying to find a specific wine—ask a good wine store if they'll order it for you—is effectively useless in this case. Though I suppose you could drive up to Philly and haunt the offices of the PLCB chairperson with a sign saying "Not Leaving Till You Order Woodenhead Pinot!"

My other usual suggestion, to contact the winery directly, is only semi-useful in Pennsylvania. Direct shipping seems to be legal there, provided that the wine is not carried by the PLCB and that it's shipped by a registered shipper who's paid for the appropriate license from the PLCB (obstructionist, much?). If you're a Pennsylvania resident and you want to check out the regulations—and have an hour or so of spare time—go here.

But in the meantime here are two fine Pinot Noirs that the PLCB web store claims they currently sell, offered in the hopes that this will make up for tantalizing my fine Pennsylvania-based readers with recommendations of wines they can't get. Both are last vintage, but I think in each case the additional year will probably have helped the wine, assuming the storage conditions weren't wretched. (I have yet to taste the 2005 vintage of the Calera, but I can also add that the 2005 vintage of the Alma Rosa is also well worth buying, for anyone not in Pennsylvania who happens across it.)

2004 Calera Central Coast Pinot Noir ($25) Crisp cherry fruit and that firm structure typical of Josh Jensen's wines; this is a bottling he makes from purchased grapes rather than his estate vineyards.

2004 Alma Rosa Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir ($35) Alma Rosa is Richard Sanford's new project, now that he's left the Sanford Winery. If I recall correctly, the viticulture is entirely biodynamic. If you like your Pinots on the big, dark and spicy side, you'll enjoy this wine; good acidity keeps it from turning into a Pinot-blob, thankfully.

So here I've got this spiffy new blog; seems only appropriate to say welcome, and explain a bit about what's going to be on here. Much of it will be alerting people to great new wines that I taste in our handy-dandy wine tasting room (around the corner from the test kitchens, a key thing as far as I'm concerned). I taste what seems to me an extraordinary amount of wine each month, only a fraction of which makes it into the magazine (largely because of space considerations), and this is a venue to give people a heads-up on some of the great wine that for whatever reason won't fit into a given month's issue. But there will also be commentary on wine and food subjects across the board, info on new restaurants that have particulary good (or bad) wine programs, spirited debate (I hope) on wine issues that people are passionate about, etc., etc. There won't be anything—beyond this one sentence—about Paris Hilton. Ever. I promise. And don't follow that link. Really.

OK, I warned you.

But enough of that. In honor of the first entry to this new blog, I stopped off yesterday at a local store and went haywire to the tune of $15 on a bottle of 1999 Morey-Blanc Meursault. Based on past experience, this wasn't a wildly bright idea--six-year-old white wine that ought to cost $50 on sale for $15 is almost always a mistake. But, being a clever fellow, I thought, well, 1999 was a good year, Morey-Blanc a mighty fine producer, and, checking the back label, saw that Becky Wasserman was listed as the importer rather than current importer Wilson-Daniels. Putting all that together I figured, hey, some wholesaler is blowing out all the Morey-Blanc they've got in their warehouse, seeing as how the importer changed and they don't sell the brand anymore. I.e., good risk.

Nyet, bad risk. Unless you like oxidized, formerly good white Burgundy. Of course, this may be due to dismal storage in said warehouse, or it may be due to (otherwise brilliant) winemaker Pierre Morey's decision to go wild on lees-stirring in that vintage (see the useful entry about this here). Regardless, the only answer was to switch instead to a perfectly appealing, zippy 2005 Bortoluzzi Pinot Grigio (about $15)--a wine that will definitely be dead in six years, but is fresh and just darn tasty right now, with that minerally tingle on the tongue that really good Italian Pinot Grigio can have.

Anyway, what struck me is how, whenever I see deals in wine stores that just can't possibly be as good as they seem, I still maintain a kind of hapless belief that somehow, just this once, the result will be amazing. From talking to my unmarried colleagues, this apparently is not unlike being single in New York these days. Regardless, if it ever works out, I'll let you know.