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Selecting, Drinking,
Collecting & Obsessing
A WSJ Guide to Wine
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Is there a right way to drink wine? For some, the answer is simple:
If youre enjoying it, youre doing it correctly.
Others see the matter as more complex. They believe the utmost
enjoyment comes from making a lifelong study of the art and science
of winefrom what to drink, when to drink it and how to serve it,
to the specialized tasks of growing grapes, bottling wine and storing
the finished product.
Whether youre sure where you sit on the question, could be convinced to update your position, or just want to burnish your credentials, this book is for you.
Selecting, Drinking, Collecting & Obsessing: A Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine gathers columns from our pages into sections
that follow the progression from choosing a bottle to getting the
most out of it and then to the next levels of collecting wine and
turning it into a lifelong passion.
Each section is introduced by a member of our two-person winewriting team. Will Lyons, our European correspondent, has been
On Selecting Wine
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
BY WILL LYONS
(Jean-Manuel Duvivier)
CHARDONNAY
is part of the Champagne blend; and ripe with a nose of exotic fruits
in warmer regions. Sublime in Burgundy, Chardonnay is also successful in Australia, California, New Zealand and Italy.
GRENACHE
BY WILL LYONS
can reward a lifetime of study, but for those coming to it for the first
time, it must feel like a puzzle.
The good news is that armed with just a few simple rules, you can
decipher the most complicated of wine labels, helping you avoid the
pitfalls of confusing a sweet with a dry wine or a full-bodied red with
a light, fruity Beaujolais.
Of course, there are myriad exceptions. But when it comes to
European wine, the first puzzle to solve is that wine producers use
location as the descriptor of the taste, style and character of a wine,
and not grape variety. If it says Burgundy on the label, it will be a
Chardonnay if it is white, or a Pinot Noir if red.
As a rule of thumb, the more specific the location, the higher the
quality of wine. For example, Meursault in Burgundy is the name of a
village with a particularly strong reputation for producing Chardonnay. Saint-milion is a village outside of Bordeaux, whose neighboring vineyards are known for producing blends of Merlot-dominated
red wine. So a wine with Saint-milion on the label will be more
interesting than one that is labeled as a generic Bordeaux. Every
region uses a specific blend of grape varieties, which, with a little
application, one can learn.
The year the wine is made is referred to as the vintage. Most wine
is made to be drunk straight away, certainly within five years of its
bottling. Fine wine benefits from bottle age, as it develops tertiary
characteristics and more mature, complex flavors. These wines can be
cellared for 10 to 20 years.
The numbers on the bottom right-hand corner of the label are the
alcohol percentage. Labeling rules can vary by country, granting the
and, more importantly, take you a step toward solving the perennial
puzzlehow good is this wine?
This article originally ran on July 22, 2011.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
If price is what most wine buyers notice first, the second must be the
wine-tasting note. In fact, Id bet a few good lines of prose tacked on
a store shelf sells more bottles than a low price or a high score. Tasting notes help would-be buyers by telling them what the wine tastes
like, smells like and pairs with (chicken, meat or fish), not to mention
when to drink it (now or in 10 years). And yet, wine-tasting notes
are often mocked and lampooned as pretentious and silly, or both.
One former sommelier turned blogger recently raised this brand of
mockery to a high art when he awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Wine
Reviews. Ron Washam, who calls himself the HoseMaster, noted
in a guest post on Tim Atkins wine website that Wine Spectator
critic James Molesworth had mastered the form. Mr. Washam posted,
tongue firmly planted in his cheek:
said too much. I want to be able to taste the wine in my imagination, he wrote.
Of course, some wine drinkers have better imaginations than others, and after many decades as a wine critic, its likely that Mr. Coates
can fill in the blanks of just about any utilitarian tasting note. But for
those of us whose range of reference is smaller, a more elaborate note
might be useful.
As a reader, I look for a few basic facts in a tasting note (thats pretty
much all I tend to write as well; Im more Coates than Molesworth,
alas). But I was gratified to find the same is true of Eric LeVine, the
founder of CellarTracker, a website with a repository of over 3.5 million tasting notes written by passionate amateurs. Mr. LeVine said
that the most useful things he found in a note were mentions of
whether or not a wine was ready to drink, as well as its structure
and personality. He looked for notes about fruit, acid and tannin. Mr.
LeVine also wanted to know about pleasuredid the note-taker
enjoy what he or she drank?
My friend Richard said he reads notes by amateurs and professionals but never retailers (theyre just trying to sell me something).
There is one thing that he cares about most: aroma. He likes to read
about the aromas that others had found and see if he could locate similar ones. Whats really unique about tasting notes is what people
smell; there are things in there that are delightful, Richard said.
I thought Richard would appreciate hearing the James Molesworth
tasting noteit was, after all, full of aromas. Richard paused, then
chuckled a bit. Wow, Im impressed. Theres someone who wants to
be F. Scott Fitzgerald, he said.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
of The Decider when shes working. She simply approaches the table
and asks, Whos in charge? Half the time, said Ms. Chang, The
man will point to the woman. (Though for some couples, this sentiment may apply only to the question of wine.)
Ms. Chang said she can pretty much predict who is going to end
up with the wine list. The aperitif is usually the giveaway. If a guy
orders a glass of lager, I probably wont be handing the list to him,
said Ms. Chang, who gives a manor womanwho orders a glass of
Grner Veltliner much better odds.
Meanwhile, the wine list has lost a bit of its ceremony, not to mention heft. Another rule gone by the wayside is that a serious wine list
should lookand feellike a library book. Today, a wine list may be
no more than a few sheets of paper or even the back of a menu. It
could even be a tablet computer. (Except at a steakhouse. Where beef
is king, the wine list comes leather-bound.)
Scott Monette, co-owner and wine director of the Flagstaff House
in Boulder, Colo., switched from a traditional wine list to an iPad a
few months agoa move apparently so shocking it made the local
news. With a wine list that features nearly 3,000 selections and is
updated daily, Mr. Monette said he needed to reduce his paper and
printing costs. So far it hasnt been cheaperthe restaurant spent
about $10,000 on 13 iPads. But in the long run Mr. Monette said he
expects to save money.
A smart wine list might be the reason to dismantle rule No. 3:
Sommeliers are the best source of advice. With wine lists that allow
diners to access the Internet, sommeliers may not be diners first
source of information. Electronically emancipated diners can now
look up descriptions, get the latest wine scoresand even find out
how much that Cabernet really costs at retail.
I asked Mr. Monette if he was afraid the iPads would stop his customers from talking to his sommeliers. And did his sommeliers resent
the change? I experienced a bit of iPad antipathy recently myself
during lunch with a wine collector who spent about half an hour
researching a bottle on his own iPadignoring both me and the hovering sommelier.
Mr. Monette wasnt worried. Though his wine stewards had been
nervous at the beginning, Mr. Monette said the tablets had actually
inspired his customers to ask better questions. According to Mr.
Monette, there was a deeper discussion between stewards and diners. (I wondered if that included such penetrating questions as Why
is this Cabernet marked up four times retail?)
This brings us to the fourth rule ripe for discarding: When in
doubt, order the second-cheapest wine on the list. The idea behind
this rule was always that the second-cheapest wine would be a pretty
good deal and the person ordering it wouldnt look like a cheapskateor at least not as much as if he or she had ordered the wine at
the absolute bottom.
Mark Ellenbogen, founding wine director of the famed Slanted
Door in San Francisco and now the wine director of San Franciscos
Bar Agricole, was dismissive of the second-cheapest-wine rule. The
second-cheapest wine is a formulaic maximum that obviously doesnt
work, he said firmly.
Obviously? Well, it certainly wasnt easy to find the second-cheapest wine on Bar Agricoles list. Thats because Mr. Ellenbogen has
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
(Marc Rosenthal)
made with grapes grown on his own estate, the 2010 Massoferrato
Sangiovese. Youll love it, he saidand at $39, the price was certainly
right for a wine that might not be the last of the night. We quickly
agreed, and Mr. Marzovilla returned with the wine.
He poured us a taste and we all concurred it was deliciousmarked
by bright red fruit and a lively acidity. My friend the ros-hater loved
it so much that he declared it was a Sangiovese by way of MoreySt. Denis, a reference to a famous wine village in Burgundy. As Mr.
Marzovilla began filling our glasses, I noticed he wasnt pouring from
a regular wine bottle but a litera third larger than a standard-size
bottle. Our problem was solved. Sometimes a perfect second bottle
isnt a matter of evolution, complexity, color or pricesometimes its
simply a matter of size.
This article originally ran on March 15, 2013, under the headline Second
Thoughts: How to Follow Your First Bottle.
BY WILL LYONS
We all dream of flying first class. Admit it, when the plane pushes
back from the gate and begins its taxi to the runway, those of us not
quite as close to the cockpit as we had hoped begin to entertain envious thoughts about those up front, sipping vintage Champagne and
nibbling their smoked salmon and Osetra caviar.
Im one of those who still experience a little pang of excitement as
the catering trolley makes its way down the aisle. But such has been
the downgrading of air travel in recent years that food is no longer a
given, let alone wine. To compound matters, modern aviation regulations mean the oenophile hasnt a hope of bringing his favorite bottle on board.
Im always reminded of the final scene of Hannibal (2001) when
Anthony Hopkins, flying in economy, takes delivery of a Dean &
Deluca hamper complete with a half-bottle of 1996 Chteau Phlan
( Jean-Manuel Duvivier)
Saint-Estphe is known for producing wines with plenty of tannins and acidity in their youthDr. Lecter would be advised to
plump for something a little riper and softer to pair with his brain;
maybe an Australian Shiraz.
Which brings me to Australia and its flagship carrier, Qantas,
which has, for the second year running, picked up a string of prizes
in the annual Cellars in the Sky awards. The airline was judged to
have the best overall wine cellar, above Emirates, which won silver,
and El-Al and Cathay Pacific, which shared bronze.
Qantas says its success lies in its wine panel, created in 2003 and
comprising three Australian winemakers: Vanya Cullen, Stephen
Pannell and Tom Carson. They meet several times a year and assess
hundreds of wines, asking questions such as, does it represent a premium wine? Is it a benchmark of its style? Is it drinking well and will
it show well under flying conditions?
A spokesman for the panel says altitude dulls a wines aroma,
potentially ruining a good bottle of wine. Soft fruit and citrus flavors
are reduced, whereas wines with riper, red-berried fruit tend not
to be so badly affected. Meanwhile, a young wine can seem hard
whereas older wines tend to taste better.
With its mainly Australian wine list, Qantas has got it right. My
advice to fliers has always been to opt for those wines that are bigger,
riper and more expressive, with low acidity. Something like a Merlot,
Pinotage or Shiraz for reds or Chardonnay, Semillon and Viognier
for whites.
It does seem a shame, though, that some of the finest wines in the
world are consumed under such poor conditions. Having said that, if
I were traveling first class and were handed a cool glass of effervescent vintage Krug after takeoff, Id take it.
This article originally ran on Feb. 20, 2014, under the headline Getting
On Top of Wines Altitude Problem.
On Drinking Wine
BY WILL LYONS
BY WILL LYONS
more than 1,000 different aroma molecules in wine and yet, outside
the rarefied world of professional wine tasting, I suspect most drinkers
can only detect a handful.
Our sense of smell is one of our most powerful senses. But unlike
our eyes, which automatically recognize color, and our ears, which
are attuned to detect sounds, our nose needs to be trained. What I had
demonstrated in the cellars of Chteau Fonroque wasnt some sort
of magic trick but an analysis based on concentration and olfactory
memory. It isnt hard, anyone can do it. But it does take a little application and time. And as anyone who has sufficiently developed their
sense of smell and learned the basics of a wine-tasting vocabulary will
tell you, once mastered, wine will never taste the same again.
Our sense of smell comes into play not just when we sniff a glass
but when the wine is in our mouth as well. This is because our sense
of smell is based above and behind our nose. Indeed, our nose is
merely a passageway to our olfactory bulb, which is part of the limbic
system, whose other functions include emotion and long-term memory. Hence when we walk into a room and smell a particular aroma,
we are transported back to our childhood. In my case, this is always
wood polish, as my school had wooden floors.
Trained wine tasters will have spent a fair amount of time in
florists shops, bakeries, vegetable stalls and spice counters, learning
and honing their smell memory banks. I have even known one Master of Wine student who used to eat Parma Violet sweets so that he
could detect the faint trace of violet in Malbec. A more conventional
route is simply to taste as much wine as you can. But unless you are
in the wine trade or live in a city like London, which hosts a large
(Jean-Manuel Duvivier)
a collection of numbered aroma vials and a key to tell you what they
are.
Mr. Lenoir suggests settling down in a quiet room and blindly
smelling a random bottle. With time, your nose should be able to
identify a number of aromatics.
He divides wine aromas into three categories: primary (those that
originate from the grape variety); secondary (those that come from
fermentation); and tertiary (the aromas that emerge from maturation). Within these broad categories, there are five essential notes:
fruity (anything from lemon to blackberry); floral (acacia to violet);
vegetal and spicy notes (green pepper to thyme); animal notes
(leather and butter); and roasted notes (toast and coffee).
There are flaws to the system: Some scents are hard to identify, and
it is a different skill smelling the aromas in isolation, compared with
the crowded combinations found in a glass of wine. But for anyone
unfamiliar with certain fruit descriptors, it is extremely useful. Personally, I like to use it to keep sharp and to keep on top of the berry
scents, which are often confused. There is now a range of kits, from
wine faults and oak to coffee. Recently, Mr. Lenoir launched Le Nez
du Whisky (300).
Created in conjunction with whisky writer Charles MacLean, the
kit contains an eclectic group of smells, including tar, broiled meat
and tobacco leaf. Mr. MacLean says it is useful for identifying certain
aroma profiles. For example, if a whisky has a fruit character, one can
then ask if it is fresh, dried or tinned.
My advice would be to try to master the scent of a few unusual but
prevalent smells. Then, the next time a sommelier hands you a glass
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
obsessions begin?) Created by a group of physics professors and students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne,
the video, titled Modelling the swirling of a glass of wine, depicted
research team member and Ph.D. candidate Martino Reclari (unaccountably attired in a Guinness T-shirt) swirling a glass of wine and
explaining that his team had studied the shape of the wave of a
swirled glass of wine in the belief that it could be applied to their
study of cellular cultures.
While the Swiss researchers found wine swirling worthy of scientific analysis, the wine professionals I talked with seemed a bit
more blas. Swirling? Alexander LaPratt repeated when I told him
the reason for my call. I thought Mr. LaPratt, the sommelier of
New Yorks DB Bistro Moderne and the reigning Best Sommelier
in America (as the winner of the biannual competition hosted by the
American Sommelier Association) might have some deeper insight
into the subject of swirlingperhaps hed even taken a few swirling
tests in his title quest?
He had not, but he did, in fact, swirl all the time. I do it automatically. Its a reflex, he said. What did Mr. LaPratt consider the greatest
benefit of swirling? That was easy. Oxygenation, he said. Swirling
is like a kind of miniature decanting.
What about Champagne? There are conflicting theories about this:
Some wine drinkers believe Champagne should be swirled like any
wine, others believe the act is deleterious to the bubbles in the glass.
Then of course, there is the practical challengeits hard to swirl a
Champagne flute or detect much aroma from the narrow bowl of the
glass. Its funny how controversial things get when you add bub-
bles, laughed Mr. LaPratt, who does swirl his Champagne, which he
drinks out of a regular glass. But Im fine with drinking flat Champagne, he said.
The glass is of great importance when it comes to swirling. So is
the volume of wine: The glass should be no more than one-third
full. This allows the aromas enough room to circulateand gives the
swirler sufficient space to fit his or her nose into the glass. The glass
itself should be generously proportioned; the glasses that Mr. LaPratt
employs at his restaurant are large enough to fit the contents of an
entire bottle of wine.
Is there an optimum swirling glass? I put the question to Maximilian Riedel, scion of Riedel glass.
The glass must be lead crystal, Mr. Riedel said. When you swirl
a wine in lead crystal, the aromas are easier to identifythe wine
rubs the inside wall of the glass. Lead crystal is rougher than regular
glassit agitates the surface of the wine, thereby increasing the oxygen flow.
Though Riedel makes hundreds of types of wine glasses, seemingly
one for each grapeand Mr. Riedel strongly recommends having
multiple sets of glasses for different varietalsI decided Id use one
type of glass for my swirling exercises. After all, most people cant
afford that many sets of glassware. And in his book The Taste of
Wine, famed Bordeaux oenologist and researcher mile Peynaud
recommended using a single glass for tastings: Otherwise a wines
odor cannot be analyzed exactly the same way.
I decided on a Riedel Vinum Burgundy glassthe bulbous shape
and large bowl of the Burgundy stem is designed to allow the accu-
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
eventin fact, Id date it to 2006. Thats when two of the most successful books on the subject were published: What to Drink With
What You Eat, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, and Perfect Pairings, by Evan Goldstein, a master sommelier and wine educator.
Mr. Goldsteinwho has educated tens of thousands of sommeliers
over the years, by his own estimationbelieves that sommeliers are to
blame for the overemphasis on overly exact wine-and-food pairing:
The modern-day sommelier feels very strongly about you having
the right wine with the right foodthey become quite draconian, he
said during a phone call last week. And its not always done with the
customers pleasure in mind. (Presumably, those sommeliers werent
educated by him.)
The book by Ms. Page and Mr. Dornenburg is quite comprehensiveevery wine in the world seems to have been examined for its
suitability to foodwhile Mr. Goldstein looks at just 12 grapes and
pairs them with appropriate recipes (created by his mother, Joyce
Goldstein, the San Francisco restaurateur and chef). Mr. Goldsteins
advice is sound and the recipes are appealing, but what if someone
didnt want to think about pairing? Could he recommend wines that
would work with most types of food?
He could. And they all shared the same attributes, said Mr. Goldstein, who offered a list: moderate alcohol, moderate to high acidity,
soft tannins and little or no oak. There were lots of wines with these
qualitiesmade from all kinds of grapes from all over the worldbut
a few examples that came to his mind first were red grapes like Bar-
bera, Gamay and Pinot Noir, which Mr. Goldstein called the silver
bullet.
Was there a sommelier who could simplify things as well? Alpana
Singh, a Chicago-based sommelier, author and almost-restaurateur
(her Boarding House restaurant is opening soon), had a useful rule
of thumb: Look for red wines that you can see through, she said.
These included the same three grapes that Mr. Goldstein mentioned
but a few others as well, namely Cabernet Franc, from the Loire, and
Frappato, a red grape native to Sicily. Im drinking a lot of Frappato
lately, said Ms. Singh.
What about white grapes? Were there any that she considered just
as versatile? Pinot Gris, Ms. Singh replied decisively. Its my Velcro of wines. It has acidity but also roundness and a little residual
sugarthats the magic fairy dust of wine pairing. There are only
a few Pinot Gris on her list right now, although there are several
Chenin Blancsmy personal all-around favorite white grape with
food.
I liked the idea of wines that were so flexible it wasnt necessary
to think about how to match them with food. But was it simply too
good to be true? I decided to stage a little food-and-wine-matching
experiment. I assembled a few of the basic foods cited on those back
labels of bottles (meat, chicken, pork, fish and pasta) and made them
simultaneously to taste with the wine (no small feat on a four-burner
stove). I made a pan-fried steak, a piece of sauted salmon, a link
of grilled pork sausage, a braised chicken breast and a pot of cheese
tortellini and paired them with some of the food-friendly grapes suggested by the experts: Pinot Noir, Gamay, Barbera, Pinot Gris and
How did how that work? Did he ask diners to fill out a questionnaire,
submit to a brief interview? It was far more practical than that, said
Mr. Pastuszak. He simply gave them a taste of the wines he poured by
the glass and waited to see which wines they liked best. More often
than not, they cared less about choosing the right match with their
food than choosing a wine that came with a good story attached.
Winemakers clearly know this to be true. After all, their back
labels feature stories about the winery, the winemaker and the winery
dogand only a few words about food: Pair with pork, chicken and
fish.
This article was originally published on Nov. 25, 2012, under the headline
Wine and Food: Pairing Without Overthinking.
BY WILL LYONS
Readers of this column will know that in the past year we have
explored the subjects of what to drink with seafood and whether
white wine pairs well with cheese, but what about often spicy Asian
dishes? Traditionally, European based experts, of whom I am one,
would recommend steering clear of pairing delicate wine with hot
food. A glass of beer used to be the preferred option or, if one did
have to opt for a wine, possibly a Riesling. These wines get their
structure from acidity, which, together with their mineral-infused
fruitiness, can prove an appealing partnership with delicately flavored
Asian cuisine. Moreover, in Germanys Mosel valley you can find
examples at 8% alcohol, which works well with the heat of some
Asian food.
But as more wine, mainly red wine from France, is being consumed by traditionally non-wine-drinking countries such as China,
Japan, Singapore and India, we are gaining more knowledge and
experience of what pairs well with non-European food.
Recently, I spoke with Nicolas Glumineau, technical director at
Bordeauxs Chteau Montrose, who now visits Southeast Asia several
times a year. Marvelling at the variety of recipes found in countries
such as Thailand, he also explained that from his experience Asian
consumers werent as afraid of tannins as Europeans. Moreover he
said that the tannins found in red Bordeaux match well with certain
Asian dishes based around duck and veal. I was surprised, as I always
found that spicy flavors matched with the bitter tannins of red wine
can prove an unpalatable partnership. But I was falling into the trap
of imagining the unknown from what I knew; most of my experience of Asian cuisine has come via Europe.
As Fiona Beckett, author and publisher of matchingfoodandwine.com, says, food and wine matching isnt just about matching
different flavors, it is cultural too.
In the Far East, people want to and expect to drink serious red
wines with their food. In places such as Szechuan in China they like
chilli and heat. The fact that a tannic red wine accentuates that character is a bonus rather than detraction.
Sriram Vishwanathan Aylur, chef and proprietor at Londons
Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Quilon, says the picture is complicated, given the variety of recipes and dishes found in Asia.
If you look at Indian food, you can eat in the north of India and
the south of India, and you can almost feel that you are eating food
from two different countries. It is not just about the dish being spicy,
it is about how spicy it is and how it is cooked that also make it complicated.
He points to red wines that are low in tannins, such as a New
World Merlot with plenty of fruit, as a possible accompaniment to
dishes flavored with strong spices as they absorb the heat of the dish.
From my own experience, I still enjoy matching white wines
from Frances Alsace region with Asian food, in particular Pinot Gris
(which pairs well with a variety of dishes) and dry Rieslings. But I
also feel soft, fruit-driven red wines pair well with grilled or barbecue meats in the Indian tandoori style. It seems that, given the international flavor of todays wine-drinking landscape, were learning all
the time. If you would like to drink red wine with your Asian food,
by all means give it a go. Just remember to ignore the quizzical look
from your sommelier.
This article originally ran on April 19, 2014, under the headline Breaking
the Food-and-Wine-Matching Rules.
BY WILL LYONS
For wine lovers, there are many established norms that always seem
to provoke heated discussion. Should you serve only white wine with
fish? Does wine need to be chilled? And, the classic restaurant tussle,
is your wine corked?
But perhaps the most universal flash point is that of decanting. As
with all matters vinous, the answer is never straightforward. On one
side are the pro-decanters, among whom I count myself, who argue
that all wine improves with decanting, while the aesthetic appeal of
a shimmering decanter adds to the theater of an evening. Others dispute this, saying decanting can actually deaden the wines flavors, losing some of its character.
The two principal aims of decanting a wine are to remove any sediment and aerate the wine. The latter will help draw out its nuanced
flavors, soften the harsher, spicier, bitter notes and invigorate the
(Anna Parini)
wine. Whether you are decanting a mature or young wine will affect
how you pour it into the decanter.
All wine that will throw sediment should be decanted; this includes
red Bordeaux, Rhne, Rioja, vintage Port and heavy grape varieties
such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Alsoand this is open to discussionyoung wines.
In my experience, exposure to air unfurls the complex layers of flavor in young fine wine. A wine that was tight, closed and rather difficult to taste can, with time in the decanter, transform its personality.
The smell changes, becoming replete with ripe fruit; the bitter tannins subside; and the wine opens up, revealing its true character.
Generally, I have found this to be the case with Old World wines
from the classic regions of Europe, as opposed to New World wines,
which change less in the decanter. White wines can also be decanted.
Old Rieslings, white Rioja and young Chardonnay all improve with
aeration.
If you prefer your white wine chilled, there are various decanters
that will fit in a fridge, or you can buy an ice-pocket decanter, which
has a small built-in capsule for ice that will help keep your wine cool.
I prefer my whites lightly chilled and find that a bottle that has been
in the fridge for an hour or two benefits from decanting, to take the
chill off.
How long you should decant a wine for before serving depends on
the age and type of the wine. When reviewing wines, I always prefer
to decant. A recent example was with an Italian red wine made by
Cantine Paradiso. On the first night, the wine was impenetrable, tasting hard, closed and bitter. On the second night, it still wasnt quite
there, but by the third evening, I could taste a host of intriguing flavors.
There are those who believe certain vintages should be decanted at
breakfast, hours before they will be drunk at dinner. Sadly, there are
no hard and fast rules on this and it is really down to personal preference. Certainly, very old wine should be decanted just before serving,
as exposure to oxygen can cause it to lose its flavor quite quickly.
Young wine can withstand up to three or four hours or, in some
cases, days. I am in favor of decanting shortly before I serve the
winethat way I can taste it immediately and track its evolution in
the glass. If it turns out to be particularly impenetrable, I can always
leave it for the following evening.
This is purely about aesthetics. The shape, size and look of a decanter
will not affect the wine inside. The traditional decanter, a glass vessel
that holds one bottle of wine, has changed very little in design since
the 18th century. There are a range of decanters on the market, from
traditional shapes, such as ships decanters and Claret jugs, to modern,
sometimes overly elaborate designs. But any vessel will doeven, if
pushed, a jug.
CARING FOR YOUR DECANTER
Decanters should be washed and rinsed with hot water after use. Drying a decanter can be particularly tricky; although the outside can be
wiped clean with a dry cloth, the inside needs a little more attention. You can drain a decanter by placing it upside down on a draining stand. Another way is to buy drying crystals; these come in a
long, thin packet and, when hung inside the decanter, absorb all its
moisture. To remove troublesome stains, there are various decanter
brushes available. For encrusted wine from the night before, fill the
decanter with a handful of uncooked brown rice, pour in hot water
and swirl around. Finally, microfiber polishing cloths will help add a
shine to your glass.
This article originally ran on Jan 31, 2013, under the headline To Decant
or Not to Decant.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
One of my early wine mentors, the late, great wine writer Alexis
Bespaloff, gave me a briefbut nevertheless valuablepiece of
advice: If the wine is too warm, put an ice cube in the glass, swirl
it around for four seconds then take it out. His suggestion became
what my friends and I called The Alexis Bespaloff Four-Second
Rule.
Over the years, Ive passed the A.B.F.S.R. along to every wine
drinker I knowor, for that matter, anyone Ive ever encountered
who complained that his glass of wine was too warm. Its a technique
best suited to an overly warm red, as cooling a white takes a few seconds longer, but it will make any wine brighter, more refreshing,
more vivid. Whereas warmth can blur a wines character, the right
degree of coolness brings the wine more fully into focus.
Unlike proper wine glasses or the act of pairing wine with food,
a fridge can also make the wine flat, as such a dry environment will
eventually dry out the cork.)
Texture and acidity are important parts of the temperature equation. Non-sparkling white wines are best stored around 50 to 55
degrees (about 10 or 15 degrees warmer than the average fridge) and
served a bit warmer if they are particularly full-bodied and rich. For
example, a big Chardonnay can be served several degrees warmer
than a Sauvignon Blancwhich in turn can be served a bit warmer
than, say, a very light Pinot Grigio.
Red wines can be stored around 55 degrees or colder and served
about 10 degrees warmer (60 to 65 degrees) though light red wines
like Beaujolais or Dolcetto can be served lightly chilled (55 degrees,
bearing in mind this is all an inexact science). The rule here is similar
to that of white wine: The higher in acidity and lighter in body the
wine, the lower the serving temperature. If you only have one place
to store wine and are limited to a single temperature setting, the classic cellar is 55 degrees.
Too-cool has a price: When a wine is very cold, the flavors are
muted, while other aspects like alcohol and tannins are likely to come
to the fore. The aromas will be pretty much obliterated as well. Try
drinking an ice-cold glass of red wine and see if you can tell much
about it. If this is a good wine then youre missing a lotof course, if
its a cheap wine its probably just as well.
As for an oxidized wine (one that is flawed or flat due to excessive
exposure to air), its better served really cold, as a high-profile New
York sommelier who preferred to remain anonymous, knows. He
was confronted with a large number of oxidative Burgundies that had
been flown over from France for a private dinner. The winemaker
didnt have replacements for the flawed wines. So we piled on the
ice, the sommelier recalled. It was the only thing we could do.
Wine temperature is also a matter of individual taste. Some people
like their beverages very cold; some dont like anything on ice. Often
this has to do with geography. Chris Baggetta, wine director of
Quince and Cotogna restaurants in San Francisco and formerly a
sommelier at Eleven Madison Park in New York, found that New
Yorkers like their whites colder and their reds warmer than their
Bay Area counterparts. Why was that? I asked. Ms. Baggetta speculated that San Franciscos more consistent climate allowed Bay Area
diners to be more sanguine about temperature while New Yorkers
were more accustomed to extremes in temperatures (not to mention
in daily life).
San Francisco diners are more open to discussions about proper
wine temperature, said Ms. Baggetta. Theyre really curious and
inquisitive about temperature variations, she said. Theyre also flexible; they will allow Ms. Baggetta to decide whether or not to leave
the bottle on the table or to put it in a bucket with ice. New Yorkers,
on the other hand, like what they like.
I told Ms. Baggetta that I hate it when a sommelier puts my bottle
of wine in an ice bucket. The wine gets too cold and its usually
somewhere far away, often out of sight. I worry that someone else is
drinking my wine (yes, this has happened). Surprisingly enough, Ms.
Baggetta agreed with my point; she said she doesnt like to have her
bottle far from the table either.
Of course I would always choose too-cold over too warm. Around
a decade ago there was a trend among New York sommeliers to serve
white wines at room temperature. A sommelier would bring a bodytemperature bottle to the table and ask in a disapproving tone, You
dont want this chilled, do you? Clearly anyone who replied in the
affirmative would be cast as a fool. Id hedge my answer: Just a bit.
A friend who remembers that period said he would always respond,
Yes! Yes! I want it cold. As cold as you can get itan over-the-top
response that he said made sommeliers think he was nuts and leave
him alone.
Geoffrey Troy, proprietor of New York Wine Warehouse, a retail
store and wine storage facility that is home to some great collections
of Burgundy and Bordeaux, believes that cold is always best. He cited
his fathers personal cellar, which was set to a constant 48 degrees
(seven degrees colder than the conventional cellar temperature).
The lower temperature kept his fathers wines so well that they
taste years younger than the same wines, said Mr. Troy, who keeps
his professional warehouse at 55 degrees in part because a lower temperature would cost much more. But if he could afford it, he would
set his storage thermostat to 48 degrees too, he said. Consider it the
Geoffrey Troy 48-Degree Ideal Cellar Rule.
This article originally ran on Aug. 30, 2013, under the headline Strike the
Just-Right Degree of Wine Cool.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
fussy. Perhaps its a very late form of childhood rebellion, but I dont
focus overmuch on glassware.
After a few memorable encounters with some particularly impressive stemware, though, I began to think I might be missing out. And
as Aldo Sohm, chef sommelier of Le Bernardin restaurant in New
York, said to me recently, one glass simply isnt enough. Or as he
put it: Life is simple. But not that simple. In fact, Mr. Sohm went
even further, saying, You cant love wine and not care about wine
glasses.
Mr. Sohm was one of two New York sommeliers whom I met with
in recent weeks to talk about glassware. The second was Thomas
Carter, wine director of Estela, a trendy newish restaurant downtown. Both men are quite knowledgeable about glassware, and could
even be described as glassware-obsessed.
Mr. Carter is an impassioned audiophile, and he finds many parallels between the two worlds. Speakers are to music as glasses are to
wine, was one of the first things that he said to me when we met
at Estela. Although Mr. Carters restaurant is small and the wine list
is short, his collection of wine glasses is large and somewhat untraditional. For example, he likes to pour Champagne into white wine
glasses. Champagne flutes make no sense, he said. Champagne is a
wine that just happens to have bubbles.
Mr. Carter believes that a wine glass can alter the taste of a
winefor better or worseand he pulled together a sampling of
his stemware to prove his point. We had six glasses for tasting two
winesa red and a white. There was a bulbous Burgundy glass, a
straight-sided Bordeaux glass and a smaller white wine glass, all made
offered. That was a very good reason not to serve the wine out of this
glass, I thought to myself.
The differences were striking, and they turned out to be even
greater in the case of the white, a Chardonnay from Jura, in eastern
France. The Bormioli bombed once again. The wine tasted like
something youd be served in coach class on a plane. (Mr. Carter,
equally displeased with the glass, has since switched it out for one
from Spiegelau.) Clearly the glass from which we were tasting wasnt
doing the wines any great favors. The Chardonnay was pleasant if
simple in the smaller, tulip-shape white wine glass. In the rounded
Burgundy glass, it seemed a bit flat. But in the squarish Bordeaux
glass, the Chardonnay was round and generous, even complex.
It was an interesting, if somewhat inconclusive exercise. There
wasnt one glass that consistently showed best. Mr. Carter said it
would have been different if hed had his Zaltos, Austrian glasses with
a slight trapezoidal shape and a cultish following. Everything shows
in a Zalto, he said. Alas, his Zalto glasses were at home, not at the
restaurant. Theyre just too expensive, Mr. Carter explained.
Id heard about Zalto glasses many times. Theyre delicate, handblown, lead-free crystal glasses whose angles, the company says, are
designed to mimic the tilt of the Earth (which somehow improves the
taste of the wine, according to Zalto). The one time I drank from a
Zalto, I was worried it would break. When I mentioned this to Mr.
Sohm, he told me that the glasses werent fragile at allin fact, hed
carried two in a bag on the subway from Manhattan to Queens and
back without breakage. The intra-borough odyssey was one of sev-
eral tests that Mr. Sohm performed before signing on as the American face of Zalto glass.
Mr. Sohm said that the glasses were the most powerful hed
ever encountered. He still uses Riedel and Spiegelau stemware at the
restaurant; in fact, when I stopped by Le Bernardin one afternoon he
brought out a couple of Spiegelau glasses to compare with the Zaltos
in an impromptu tasting of Meursault and Champagne.
Once more, there were stark differencesthe bulbous Spiegelau
Burgundy glass made the Meursault seem fatter and flatter while in
the Zalto Universal glass, it was more minerally, showing a higher
level of acidity. In short, it just seemed more precise. I tried them both
over and over. The Spiegelau shows the fruit and the Zalto shows the
minerality, said Mr. Sohm.
Mr. Sohm was certainly an impressive advocate, but since he earns
a royalty from the company, I needed to try the glass again for
myselfand against the one Id been using at home. So I bought a
Zalto Universal (said to work with all winesnever mind Mr. Sohm)
for $59 from Crush Wine & Spirits in New York. I poured a simple
Dolcetto into both glasses. The wine was pleasant, if a bit muted, in
my standard glass. It was brighter in the Zalto, but it seemed a bit
simple and one-dimensional. Thats another thing people say about
Zaltoeverything is sharper, for better or worse. I thought of Mr.
Carters audio analogy. It was like hearing mediocre music blaring
out of very good speakers.
I repeated the experiment a couple of days later with a much
better winethe 2010 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Chassagne-Montrachet Les Baudines. The wine was still young and showing a fair
On Collecting Wine
BY WILL LYONS
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
Ive studied the French language for decades in the hope of attaining
some form of fluency. And yet all the conversation, the reading
and the travel hasnt produced a plus franaise me. My conversational powers are largely limited to discussions about wine and, oddly
enough, furniture. I know some aspiring oenophiles who say much
the same about wine; theyve taken classes, bought reference books
and tasted lots, but they cant seem to get beyond the six basic grapes.
Wine can be just as hard to learn as a language, even though the
main requirementregular drinkingseems like less of a grind than
the conjugation of verbs. Becoming a wine expert is actually just as
formidable as learning a language, requiring a similar degree of dedication and practice, as well as some form of full-on immersion. While
a student of language might be advised to live abroad, a would-be
wine expert is often counseled to work in a restaurant or wine shop.
(David Schwen)
That was how my own wine education began. While I was still a
student in college, I decided I wanted to spend my life in wineeven
though I didnt know exactly how or where. A wine importer Id met
told me that I needed to learn the business from the ground up, and
recommended me to the owner of a prominent wine store in New
York.
My year and a half in the retail business taught me far more about
wine than I could have learned on my own. I was constantly tasting
wine, and surrounded by people who knew much more than I did
(many of whom were actually my customers).
But whats the best way to gain a deep knowledge of wine if some-
Tuscany. And yet he had tasted some of the greatest Burgundies ever
mademany, many times.
Marnie Old, a Philadelphia-based sommelier, wine educator and
author of the recently published Wine: A Tasting Course, is less
than keen on structured learning that includes memorizing grapes
and regions. She thinks information learned by rote isnt easily
retained. She questioned the teaching of tasting terms and grapes
instead of focusing on larger issues. For example, Why dont people
address important questions like the difference between white wine
and red? she asked.
Ms. Olds book is full of eye-catching visuals and a lot of fun exercises (e.g., comparing sweetness levels in wine or varying shades of
red wines) but it also contains plenty of that more structured information, such as facts on countries and grapes. I guess the basics like
grapes and regions are as impossible to forgo as the tenses of verbs in
French language books.
But its one thing to know that Chardonnay is a grape, another
to describe what Chardonnay tastes like when its grown in Chablis,
France, versus Californias central coast. Thats something that can
only be fully understood by experienceand tasting.
Keith Wollenberg, Burgundy buyer at the multistore K&L Wine
Merchants of California (who said he received his wine education
on the job in a wine shop), believes that the best route to gaining
expertise is developing a relationship with someone who is passionate
about wine. Someone with a palate and preferably a cellar that outmatches your own. And if you dont have such a friend? Then
BY WILL LYONS
If you enjoy wine, are starting to take more than a passing interest
and have perhaps bought the odd reference book about vino varieties,
it might be time to think about beginning your very own wine cellar.
The worst habit you can get into is to stop off at your local wine
shop once a week and pick up the odd few bottles. A much better
approach is to buy by the dozen or a six pack, as most wine merchants
will offer a discount on a mixed case. Better still is to select two or
three wine merchants, order their catalogs or look online and, when
youre in the mood, spend some time selecting your favorite wines
and comparing prices. I like to do this on the weekend, with a cup of
tea and all the catalogs spread out over the kitchen table.
But a cellar isnt just a few cases of your favorite wine. It may
sound like a clich but a good cellar requires a bit of forethought and
planning to provide pleasurable drinking over the long term. I like
(Jean-Manuel Duvivier)
Your wines delivered, so time figure out how to store it. Leave
investments to the professionals, but the rest can be stored at home
using the tips below.
WHERE TO STORE YOUR WINE
A north-facing room is best, so long as it retains a constant temperature, is free from vibration, isnt exposed to direct sunlight and is
fairly humid. Below the stairs or in the garage is also suitable, as long
as the rooms are well-insulated and arent too dry. Wines for immediate drinking can be stored in a more accessible place than those that
need to be aged. As a rule of thumb opt for the coolest room in the
house.
TEMPERATURE
A very dry room can, with time, cause the corks to dry out, which
can affect the seal. Too humid, and the labels will start to peel and rot.
Buy a cellar hygrometer to check levels. A caution: Apartment blocks
tend to be very dry.
WINE RACKS
Bottles should be laid down on their side to prevent the corks from
drying out. Racks should be positioned away from sunlight and
vibration, and should be spaced out enough for easy access. Cellar
tags are a good idea as they can hang on the neck of the bottle, avoiding the need to keep pulling bottles from the rack for identification.
WINE FRIDGES AND BESPOKE CELLARS
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
Aged like a fine wine: Has this phrase become more of a marketing
tool than a relevant wine-drinking fact? Has aging wine become an
outmoded custom?
After all, nearly every wine in the world today is made to be consumed soon after its bottled. (Ive seen figures as high as 99%.) Wine
drinkers seem willing to do their part. According to Bear Dalton,
wine buyer for Specs, a Houston-based wine store chain, nearly 98%
of his customers drink the bottles they buy in under a week.
At Calvert Woodley in Washington, D.C., proprietor Ed Sands
posits that 90% of his customers drink their wines quickly, so most
of his inventory is comprised of wines meant to be consumed within
two years or so. Even at Sherry-Lehmann in New York, a bastion
of blue-chip (aka age-worthy) Bordeaux, nearly half the stores customers are buying wines under $15 a bottle, according to the com-
panys president, Chris Adams. Mr. Adams lamented that not many
wine drinkers were likely to experience the enormous pleasure that a
well-aged wine could bestow.
Mr. Adams had a point, though I couldnt help wondering how
many people would share this regret. It isnt just that a well-aged
wine can cost so much money or require a long wait (Americans
dont like their pleasures deferred)theres also the question of flavor.
An aged wine tastes very different from a wine that is young. In the
place of dazzling, bright fruit, theres subtle restraint. While the tannins may soften, the fruit may be dim a bit, too, replaced by flavors
more earthy or mineralflavors that are not necessarily familiar or
easy to like. Of course, this happens only with age-worthy wines:
Non-ageable wines that are left unopened for years usually just taste
tired, dried outand old.
All age-worthy wines have certain attributes in common, the most
important of which is acidity. Wines that are low in acidity can be
easy to enjoy while young, but they dont mature very wellthink of
the perpetual adolescents who fail to ever become adults.
White wines that are high in aciditylike German and Austrian
Riesling, not to mention Chablis, Champagne and Chenin
Blanccan improve for decades, though much depends on producer
and vintage. A wine from a too-warm vintage may lack sufficient
acidity, while a wine from a too-cold vintage may not have completely ripe fruit. If a wine isnt in balance, it wont age well.
In ageable reds, tannins are an important componentthey serve
as both preservative and frame. Tannins are derived from both barrels
and grapes and while all grapes have tannins, some, such as Cabernet,
tles that they wont be selling for decades. One of the exceptions is
Crabtrees Kittle House in Chappaqua, N.Y., where there are dozens
of affordable wines on the list, in part because its cellar is so large.
Glenn Vogt, the general manager and wine director, has bottles he
admits he has lost track ofand happily, he seems to have lost track of
the pricing as well. I had an excellent 10-year-old Chablis there last
year that cost $25 a bottle.
But even ownership of a cellar doesnt mean some people wont
drink their wines young. Mr. Dalton told me that he has some clients
who fly to Napa every year in private planes, buy up dozens of bottles of cult Cabernetsand drink them soon after they return home
to Texas.
This may be one reason so many Napa Cabernets are styled differently these days, made with riper fruit and more upfront appeal.
Bordeaux-trained Philippe Melka, who makes some of the most
sought-after Cabernets in the Valley (Vineyard 29, Dana Estates),
says he is making wines that are more approachable than they were a
decade ago.
Age-worthy wine may not (yet) be obsolete, but its biggest challengebeyond money, time and proper storagemay be the belief of
a buyer in a bottle, the conviction that something truly transformative can take place. Aging wine is, above all else, an act of faith.
This article originally ran on Feb. 11, 2012, under the headline Does Good
Wine Come to Those Who Wait?
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
Although most wine drinkers think of fall in terms of harvest and vintage, the big newsor at least the big moneyisnt in grapes, but in
bottles.
And right now, the entire wine-auction world seems to be full
of good newsat least for the sellers and the auction houses. Ben
Nelson, president of the Chicago-based auction house Hart Davis
Hart Wine Co., says that sales at his house this year are over $25
millionmore than 33% higher than last yearwith two more big
auctions to take place in the next couple of months. He estimates
that total fine-wine auction sales in 2012 exceeded $300 million. No
wonder news releases from major houses announcing sale results all
seem to contain phrases like exceeded all expectations or exceeded
estimates. The figures cited are inevitably largeoften five and six
figures.
Perhaps thats why every auction director I spoke with sounded
quite pleasedeven those who have yet to hold a single sale. Michael
Jessen, president and CEO of the newly-launched Wallys Auctions,
characterized the market as incredibly vibrant. Wallys, which is
based in Los Angeles, will hold its first auction next month in New
York. One lot that Mr. Jessen is particularly excited about is six bottles of 1993 Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux, Vosne Romane. The lot is
estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000.
So who are the buyers and who are the sellers in this gilded scenario? Where do they come from? The answer was inevitably all
over the globe. In my conversations with the auction house heads,
the word global came up almost as often as the phrase exceeded all
expectations.
The market may be global, but the biggest auctions take place in
three major citiesNew York, London and Hong Kong (and to a
lesser extent, Chicago, thanks to Hart Davis Hart). With the majority
of the purchasers scattered about the globe, most of the bidding takes
place online. This makes the market much more efficient, as Mr.
Nelson said, though it might make it a little less exciting for spectators, too.
Still, wine auctions can be pretty good theater, at least for wine
lovers who like to see big numbers flashed on screens and listen to
the auctioneers loving (if very brief) descriptions of the lots. Many
major auction houses hold their live auctions in first-rate restaurants,
offering lunch or dinner and sometimes tastes of a few auction wines.
Thats as close as youll get to the actual bottles, which otherwise only
appear in the auction catalogs.
And what a pleasure those catalogs are to behold. The thick, glossy
paper is flush with notes about wines and vintages accompanied by
beguilingly lit bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Its all seemingly
calculated to tempt bidders to abandon fiscal good sense.
Even though many sales are taking place online, the catalog still
matters. Many customers still want to see the catalog before placing
their bids, Mr. Nelson wrote in an email. In fact, he added, many
buyers would actually wait for the catalog to arrive before placing a
bid.
Auction catalogs may be the most significant constant in the everchanging auction world, which has seen two very big shifts in the
past 20 years. The first took place in 1994, when wine auctions were
legalized in New York. As Jamie Ritchie, CEO and president of wine
Americas & Asia at Sothebys noted, this changed wine from something that was the province of a small community of collectors to a
commodity that could be bought and sold the same way as a work of
art.
The second big shift took place in 2008, when the 80% wine
import tax in Hong Kong was stripped away. This change in law
brought a flood of wine brokers and auction houses to Hong Kong,
where buyers seemed to have an inexhaustible amount of money and
an equally inexhaustible appetite for Bordeaux.
One Bordeaux was of particular interest to Asian buyers: Chteau
Lafite Rothschild. At a 2010 Hong Kong auction, three bottles of
1869 Lafite Rothschild were expected to sell for $8,000 apiece; the
wine went for $232,692 a bottle instead. Two years later, 12 bottles
of a much younger (1982) Lafite sold at another Hong Kong auction
for an impressive $42,350.
Todays Hong Kong auction market is smaller and much less flashy
than it used to be. Take, for example, the recent history of Sothebys.
The house sold $53 million worth of wine in Hong Kong in 2010,
$45 million in 2011 and about half that amount ($27 million) in 2012.
This year is shaping up to be a bit stronger than last, with total sales
of $25 million so far.
There is also much less emphasis on Lafite and Bordeaux in the
Hong Kong market. Zachys president Jeff Zacharia, who travels
to Hong Kong quite often, described the market as more wellrounded than it was in those heady daysthe same words that John
Kapon, CEO of Acker Merrall & Condit auction house, used to
describe the auction world overall.
And yet even in this well rounded market, one wine reigns
supreme: Burgundy. Buyers and sellers alike are all looking for wine
from this hallowed region. As Jamie Pollack, North American managing director of Zachys put it: Burgundy is hot, hot, hot.
Some wines warrant such praiseespecially any Burgundy produced by Domaine de la Romane-Conti (aka DRC). At a recent
Sothebys auction, a single case of 1999 Domaine de la RomaneConti sold for $159,250. Needless to say, this exceeded all estimates.
Other Burgundy domaines have racked up impressive, if somewhat
less meteoric numberslike the case of 1990 Clos de la Roche
Domaine Dujac that sold last month at a Hart Davis Hart auction for
$23,900.
Of course, numbers like these have a way of attracting the attention of wine thieves. The auction world has been rife with fraud.
Burgundy, of course, is a big target Just last week, an Italian father
and son were arrested in France on suspicion of making $2.7 million
worth of what they tried to pass off as DRC. While those
wineswhich were said to be lousymay or may not have made it to
auction, it doesnt mean that there arent many more fraudsters whose
work has yet to be found. The most famous example of a fraudulent
wine at auction was a lot supposedly of Burgundy producer Domaine
Ponsot, which was nearly sold at Acker Merrall & Condit in 2008.
The auction was stopped when Mr. Ponsot himself showed up and
denounced the bottles as frauds.
Beyond Burgundy, other auction-house best sellers include mature
Bordeaux and cult Cabs from Napa Valley producers like Screaming
Eagle, Harlan and Dana Estates (two bottles of 2007 Dana sold for
$1,792 at a recent HDH auction), but they seem like bargains compared with Burgundy.
Are there any real bargains in the auction world today? Mr. Kapon
named Classic California wines like Dunn and Montelena as overlooked and underpriced, while Ms. Pollack cited older Riojas. You
can get Riojas from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and the value is
exceptional, she said. (Three bottles of 1920 R. Lpez de Heredia
Via Tondonia sold for $980 at a recent Zachys auction; the sales
other Riojas sold in the low four figures.)
So what does this all mean to a collector thinking of selling or a
buyer who might want to enter the market now? Sellers should know
that certain auction houses set minimum prices on the wines they
BY WILL LYONS
Its a still, warm, late-summer day as the taxi driver weaves his way
through a maze of narrow country lanes deep in Englands rural landscape. Flanked either side by lush green hedgerows, the road veers to
the right up a short drive beyond which acres of gently rolling, arable
farmland stretch as far as the eye can see.
I know the way, nods the driver in his soft West Country accent.
My brother works here, he adds. They have plenty of bottles all
right; some of them he tells me are worth up to 3,000. Hes not
wrong. Lying 30 meters below us is the wine worlds answer to Fort
Knox, an enormous subterranean cavern holding more than 1 billion worth of fine wine. If you are storing your wine through a
reputed U.K. merchant, then the chances are it is probably stacked
here alongside the other 680,000 cases, in one of the largest underground storage facilities in Europe. No wonder security is tight.
They wont let me in, says the driver as we pull up at an anonymous looking steel gate, alongside a security hut. So I get out, and as
he speeds away I take a look around at the picturesque English countryside. One hundred miles west of London and I am in the middle of
nowhere. Which is just how cellar master Laurie Greer likes itwith
precious bottles of wine dating back to 1869, discretion is paramount.
Welcome to Eastlays mine deep in Wiltshire. First quarried in
the 19th century, it is now known as Corsham Cellars, owned by
Cert Octavian, one of the U.K.s largest private wine-storage facilities. When the first tunnels were excavated, much of the honey-colored sandstone was used to build the Georgian town houses in the
nearby towns of Bath and Corsham. In the late 1930s, when war
looked imminent, the Ministry of Defence requisitioned it and transformed the place into a giant ammunition store, replete with lighting, whitewashed walls and concrete floors. Since 1989, following its
purchase by businessman Nigel Jagger, its labyrinthine corridors have
been stacked not with TNT but wine, belonging to collectors such as
composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, financier Guy Hands and restaurateur Michel Roux Sr.
Its rather like an underground vault, says Mr. Greer, who has
overseen the mine since it was converted into a wine cellar. He says
it now contains wine belonging to more than 130 wine merchants,
various wine investment funds, restaurants, as well as around 2,500
private clients from as far afield as continental Europe, the U.S. and
the Far East.
The biggest change we have seen is that clients who own fine
wine have become much more knowledgeable, says Mr. Greer.
They want to know where their wine has been stored, what condition it is in, even how it is looking. For some, the cases down below
are their pride and joy.
It isnt unusual for private clients to pay a visit to Corsham Cellars,
where from above ground they can watch their cases of wine loaded
onto the industrial goods train as it makes its way down one of the
main shafts, nine meters below ground, into an area the size of 20
football pitches.
In fact, such is the attention to detail that the company has installed
three photographic studios to meet the demand of clients wanting to
see emailed photographs of their stored bottles of wine.
If this all sounds a little unnecessary, then one has to understand the
context. Fine wines remarkable bull runwhich has seen Bordeaux
chteaux wines, such as Lafite Rothschild 2000, increase in price by
more than sevenfold in the past seven yearshas focused collectors
attention on storage. Cases of wine that were once squirreled away in
an old garden shed or below the stairs, now have to be kept in optimum storage conditions if they are to retain their market value.
Most collectors know that wine stored in direct sunlight or in a
room that is too hot can damage the liquid, as can dramatic temperature swings. An average temperature of between 10 and 15 degrees
Celsius is preferable. But with the value of wine soaring, there is also
the very real threat of security.
One of the great advantages of having an underground storage
facility as opposed to an above-ground warehouse, says Mr. Greer,
is that a thief cant just take a large vehicle and smash their way in.
Breaking into Corsham Cellars would require the sort of elaborate
heist fictionalized in The Thomas Crown Affair.
Descending the 157 steps, I can see security is watertight. For
the record, anyone looking to break in would have to negotiate the
above ground CCTV cameras, before dodging the movement detectors placed at the top of the mine. Once past these two obstacles,
there is the small matter of starting up the goods train that transports
the wine into the cellareither that or its a steep climb down. Once
underground, the thief would have to locate a fork lift and then find
the rarest and most precious wine amid more than 10,000 bottles. By
which time, a separate alarm would have alerted the police.
Eastlays mine is one of a number of underground bunkers, converted from former stone quarries, that were used as massive ammunition depots in Wiltshire in World War II. Mr. Greer says the mine
was also used as a set for the filming of the early episodes of Doctor
Who. Nearby is Burlington, a 14-hectare site that was converted to
a subterranean Cold War City, which could house up to 4,000 government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike on the U.K. With
the ending of the Cold War, the site has since been decommissioned.
Back at Eastlays mine, there is a reminder of World War II with
some graffiti depicting the war leaders etched on the wall and various
humorous rhymes and vignettes.
Wandering through the passages of this cavernous cellar one wonders what the many men who spent hours underground stacking
ammunition while Europe was at war would have thought of the fact
that 50 years later it has become a giant depository of fine wine. Judg-
ing by some of the graffiti scrawled on the walls, they would have
smiled.
This article originally ran on Sept. 16, 2011, under the headline The Wine
Connoisseurs Underground Vault.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
air. Thats one reason that magnums of great wines are particularly
prized.
Magnums are also much more festive than regular bottles; their
proportions alone suggest a party in progress, a bounteous, bottomless good time.
They can also serve as a restaurants floor show. According Michael
Madrigale, wine director at New Yorks Bar Boulud, when he pours
his wines by the glass from a magnum, it captures the collective
attention of the place. Its theatrical, he said. People stare. He
compared the sight of a magnum to that of a well-endowed woman.
(Though in the case of a magnum, the contents are always real.)
Even magnums of lowly Muscadet provoke similar shows of
appreciation, according to Joe Campanele, the owner of New Yorks
Anfora wine bar, who pours magnums of Clos de la Ppire Le
Gras Mouton Muscadet by the glass ($12). People get really excited
when they see a magnum, Mr. Campanele said.
But many wine directors shy away from buying magnums.
Andrew Green, wine director of Spruce in San Francisco, says its
hard to find a good supply. Often, they arent included in importers
and distributors catalogs, and need to be requested personally. Plus,
he said, a lot of sommeliers are afraid of magnums. You have to have
a real bravado to sell a magnum.
Perhaps thats why magnums are scarce in restaurants, but why are
they also often missing from stores? People may think of magnums
as ostentatious, said Jeff Zacharia, president of Zachys in Scarsdale,
N.Y., where I found about a dozen magnums priced for less than
$100 each.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
(Keith Negley)
Mr. Ramey, like many Davis graduate students, came to winemaking after pursuing other interests. In Mr. Rameys case, he was an
American studies major at UC Santa Cruz. Of course some career-
Some leaves afflicted with leaf roll virus, for example, were covered
with spots. The leaves on the shady side of the row were also harder
to identify, said Mr. Walker, but he wanted to avoid the sunand
perhaps sunstroke. There had been a couple of faintings in the vineyard in the past, he said.
The class seemed unfazed by the twin facts of heat and old vines,
and eagerly followed the professor as he strode down the rows,
pulling out one leaf after another and pointing out their differing
traitsthe hairy leaves of the Pinot Meunier, the waxy leaves of
Grenache and the ruffled, wavy leaves of the Sauvignon Blanc.
I couldnt imagine identifying so many varieties by their leaves
alone but the students seemed quite enthused. I asked a student
named Russell his opinion of the class. Its awesome, he said. I get
to hang outside and eat grapes.
Mr. Walker recommended that the students return to the vineyard
for between four and 20 hours a week to study the vines. The vineyard is always open, he said. It was only with repeated visits that they
would understand what the professor called the gestalt of the vine.
My next class, Wine Production, was a much smaller gathering.
Professor Linda Bissons class was assembled around a sorting table
filled with just-picked Grenache grapes from the schools new vineyard. Some students were picking out damaged fruit, sticks and rocks
before the grapes went into the crusher, while others manned the
nearby hose and tank. The schools winemaker, Chik Brenneman,
hovered nearby, cautioning students to watch for out black widow
spiders, and not to stand too close to the must if they were allergic
to sulfur. A student had almost fainted from this, he said. (Fainting
is, apparently, a hazard at wine school.) Meanwhile, Ms. Bisson reminisced about the time her students missed a rock during the sorting,
and it blew the hose apart.
This type of hands-on instruction is one of the big changes from
the old to the new Davis, according to the professors, and the new
facilities have brought a big improvement, in the way the classes are
taught. Id heard a saying about Davis over the yearsDavis grads
dont know how to run a pumpmeaning that its graduates were
better with theoretical than practical stuff. When I mentioned this to
Ms. Bissons teaching assistant, Scott Frost, he dismissed it, saying that
Davis offered something much better: It teaches you how to think
about wine and the science of wine.
The strength of the schools science program was something else I
heard about again and again. A scientific understanding gave students
confidence in their decisionsand an ability to fix things straight
away if they didnt go right. As Mr. Ramey put it: If you have an
oenology background, you know what you can changeand how to
experiment. It enables you to make better wine.
An ability to make good wine is what its all about, after all. But
what about great wine? Of all the Davis students Id met, who would
turn out to be the next David Ramey, Aaron Pott, Helen Keplinger
or John Kongsgaard (all of whom attended Davis)? And what were
the traits of a future great winemaker?
Self-sufficiency was key, said Roger Boulton, who has taught for
several decades at the university and is one of the most esteemed professors at Davis. A great winemaker was someone you could pick up
and put in the desert, he added. (An odd place to propose putting a
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
The dream of owning a winery is one that many may harbor but
few are actually able to fulfill. The expense is considerable and the
odds of success are incredibly long. Yet the list of actors and athletes,
financiers and film directors who aspire to see their name on a label
simply goes on and on.
After a recession-related pause, the number of would-be vintners
has been growing of late, according to real-estate brokers who specialize in the market. And some recent high-profile sales, such as the
purchase of cult-Cabernet producer Araujo Estate in Napa Valley,
Calif., have given prospective buyers greater confidence, according
to Napa broker Katie Somple.
But what inspires the dream itself? Its often driven by a desire to
return to the land (preferably inside a $10 million house), or to create a legacy for the next generation. Sometimes its simply a matter
and staff in place. It wasnt about building a dream but buying a business, and, as Mr. Pires pointed out, he already had a business in Connecticut. There was a remote hillside property near Angwin that Mr.
Pires found interesting, but his wife, Cristina, rejected it on account
of all the Spanish moss hanging from the trees. It looked like Halloween, said Ms. Pires. And so Mr. Pires and Ms. Shackford continued looking month after month. They ventured to Sonoma a couple
of times, but Mr. Piress heart was set on Napa.
It was a pretty bleak time, Mr. Pires recalled. He was in the process
of getting his hip replaced. He couldnt walk and his dream seemed
like it would go unfulfilled. It had been almost a year, after all.
Just before Christmas, in 2005, Ms. Shackford asked her husband,
John, a real estate appraiser, to make some calls. Mr. Shackford had
many contacts in the industry, including local lawyers, one of whom
told him about a property that wasnt listed. It was a prime offering
on Pritchard Hill. Ms. Shackford called Mr. Pires and told him about
it. Though Mr. Pireswho was living in Connecticutwas just a few
weeks out of surgery, he got on a plane again.
He purchased the 116-acre parcel from the Longs, an established
grape-growing family, for $9.2 million, in April 2006. Gandona
Estate is over a mile straight up a hill, and it was three years before
anyone even knew that hed bought it, said Mr. Pires. It only became
public knowledge when he filed for a larger winery use permit. (The
property had come with a 5,000-gallon use permit, which Mr. Pires
increased to 20,000 gallons.)
A winery with a use permit is a great advantage, according to Ms.
Somple. This permit can be hard to obtain, and quite expensiveas
ease that is affecting a good many Napa vineyards right now, including a few vines in Mr. Piress property.
Mr. Pires hired Mr. Barbour, one of Napas most sought-after vineyard managers, right after buying the property. He also hired superstar winemaker Philippe Melka, even though he was years away from
making a wine. A Melka-made wine commands attentionand a
good price. The first vintage (2009) of Gandona made its debut at
$190 a bottle, and the 2011 was one of the top five wines in this years
Premiere Napa Valley auction.
Its cost Mr. Pires about $15 million so far to realize his dreamthat
includes building a winery, digging underground tunnels for wine
storage and building a new house, which is almost finished. Hes not
sure his three children have any desire to follow in his footsteps. But
that wasnt the point, said Mr. Pires. Its no longer a property, and its
not just a place to live. Its my soul. That may not be how most vintners in Napa talk, but its what a man with a fulfilled dream believes.
DOS AND DONTS
Few fantasies are readily realized, and becoming a producer of great wine
is especially hard. The following are a few tips compiled from conversations
with Napa Valley real-estate agents Katie Somple and Holly Shackford.
Do decide how much you can spend. If all you have is the purchase price, then you shouldnt get into the wine business.
Dont think the wine business is about making money. Its
(almost) never about making money. Its about not losing money.
Do understand that it will take time to find the right property. Many properties are privately listed with an individual agent.
Very few appear on multiple listings. Wineries often do not want
their names mentioned at all; a winery that is for sale risks losing its
winemaker or distributor.
Do work with local consultantsengineers, planners and lawyers,
once youve found the property that you want. It will save money
and time. But make sure the local is a popular local.
Dont believe an agent who tells you that a piece of land is
plantable without an ECP (Erosion Control Plan). Plantable
land means a vineyard already has an ECP. Planting potential means
it does not have an ECP. Buyers should verify the difference.
Do start with the best vineyard that you can buy. A good winemaker or a good vineyard manager wont work with a bad vineyard.
Do figure out what kind of wine lifestyle you want. Is your heart
set on an actual working winery? Or maybe you just want a vineyard
view?
This article originally ran on Dec. 6, 2013, under the headline So You
Want to Buy a Vineyard.
BY WILL LYONS
A few months ago, in early spring, a group of enthusiastic winelovers gathered in the harvest room of one of Bordeauxs betterknown Grand Cru chteaux to celebrate the previous vintage. As a
15-liter Nebuchadnezzar of the estates 1985 was poured, glasses were
raised to a banquet prepared by a two-star Michelin chef. Though
2013 was one of the regions most challenging seasons on record, the
atmosphere was one of jubilation, as each of the guests had enjoyed a
firsthand experience in making the vintage.
In the list of dream jobs, being a winemaker scores pretty high. My
notebook is full of stories of men and women who have either made
a fortune and reinvested the proceeds in a vineyard or given up their
day jobs and sold the house to follow their desire to make the best
wine possible. The 80 or so people seated in the harvesters hall of
Chteau Lynch-Bages chose a third option. Without buying a vine-
yard or giving up their jobs, all have made their very own barrel of
Bordeaux wine.
This has been a blast, says Pete Johnson, a 43-year-old wine
enthusiast who has flown in from Los Angeles to take part in the
making of the past five vintages. Honestly, I wish I could spend
more time here but, at the moment, with work, it is just impossible.
One day, he says, he will retire to Bordeaux and be part of the
whole process. In the meantime, he gets his annual vintner fix by
making his own wine with Viniv, a company located in the heart of
Pauillac, one of Bordeauxs grandest appellations.
Co-owned by Jean-Michel Cazes of Lynch-Bages and former tech
entrepreneur Stephen Bolger, Viniv gives clients the opportunity to
produce, under the guidance of Chteau Lynch-Bagess winemaking team, 288 bottles (one barrel) of wine for 7,350or about 25 a
bottle.
Winemaking with Viniv involves everything from choosing the
vineyard plots and taking part in the grape harvest to managing the
wines fermentation, overseeing the barrel aging (known as levage)
and, most important, deciding on the final blend.
When I first started in Bordeaux, most people thought it would
never work, says Mr. Bolger, a Franco-American who launched
Viniv in 2007 after leaving his career in industrial minerals. One
grower said to me: How can you say that someone who has never
made wine before is a real winemaker? Another asked me to stop
demystifying the winemaking process.
My response was simple, he continues. If people are so interested
in Bordeaux, it is because they want to understand. They want to get
(Jean-Manuel Duvivier)
the region is far removed from the gray, flat panoramas of the northern Medoc. Behind us flow the Dordogne and Isle rivers. This is
Merlot country, where the south-facing slopes and rich clay-limestone soil produce dark ruby wines with aromatics of red fruit.
Im here to try my own hand at winemaking. Its been 12 years
since I first visited the region professionally. In that time I have tasted
thousands of wines and visited numerous chteaux and cellars. It has
been my job to evaluate, criticize and describe the wines. But in all
those years, I have never had the experience of making my own.
When I met Mr. Bolger at an event in London, I jumped at the
chance to empathize with the vigneron. So I have taken a few days
out of my tasting schedule to see what its like on the other side of the
fence.
I say winemaking butas its early Aprilthe picking, sorting and
fermenting have been done and the barrel aging is under way. Im
here to test my taste buds and try putting together a final blend. As
Mr. Johnson says: I like to say that I am a fashion designer for wine.
Im picking out the materials and getting somebody else to sew them
up. Ive opted to work on the 2012still challenging, but not as
tough as 2013.
First, though, I want to see the vines that my grapes have come
from. After Canon-Fronsac, we head into St.-milion to visit more
Merlot grapes before making our way to the other side of the
Gironde, where Cabernet Sauvignon thrives on the spectacular
gravel plains of St.-Estphe and Pauillac. Each vineyard produces
grapes that impart a different character. For example, Pauillac possesses more power than the tightknit, tough tannins of St.-Estphe.
BY WILL LYONS
importance of the soil and its gravel, which in parts of the vineyard
stretches down more than four meters.
He explains that his winemaking team, oenologist and winemaker
Christophe Cong and vineyard manager Regis Porfilet, goes
through exactly the same procedures at the Rothchilds neighboring
estate, Chteau Duhart-Milon. The two properties are less than one
kilometer apart, and since 1962 have been managed by a single team.
But the definition and style of the wines are different, Mr. Chevallier
says. So too is the retail price, with a bottle of 2010 Duhart-Milon
priced at around 134, compared with 1,047 for Lafite.
The crucial factor in making great wine is to pick at exactly the
right time, Mr. Chevallier says. We do this by spending a lot of
time in the field. I taste, then I make a decision. We try to find the
right balance between the acidity and the sugar ripeness. From then
on, the process of making the wine is quite easy.
At the end of the maceration, we have to control by tasting also,
he adds. Those are the two main decisions in the life of the wine.
In many ways, though, Lafite has become more than a wine. As
with a number of other premium French wines such as Domaine de
la Romane-Conti, its following among wealthy collectors in Asia
has driven its price to astronomical levels. Only last week at a Bonhams auction in London, a case of 1982 Lafite sold for 21,850, or
1,820 a bottle.
I always think of Bordeaux as Formula One, says Jonathan
Malthus, owner of Chteau Teyssier in St. milion. Wherever I go
in the world, all winemakers want to show their wines against the
wines of Bordeaux. It is still the benchmark and, within our lives, will
remain so.
The linchpin to that benchmark is the 1855 classification, a list
drawn up under the instruction of Napoleon III for the Exposition
Universelle de Paris. Compiled by brokers, it ranked the chteaux of
the Mdoc in five groups of quality. Lafite was ranked at the very top.
It is this ranking, some argue, that provides a clue to the chteaus
popularity in the Far East. Demand in Asia may also be explained by
its classical label, which has never changed, its lineage and, in recent
years, by the fact that Domains Barons de Rothschild has a presence
in eastern China with year-old vineyard plantings.
Bordeaux is still the largest single area of great vineyards that
exists, says British importer Mark Walford. And it is undoubtedly
the first winemaking area to open up any country that is likely to
have an interest in wine.
But Chteau Lafite Rothschilds history hasnt always been peppered with success. Yes, the estate supplied wine to Britains first
prime minister, Robert Walpole, in the 18th century, but throughout
much of the 20th century, it struggled. Some critics argued it underperformed against its peers in the 1960s and 70s. Indeed, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last September, Nat Rothschild,
scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty that has owned the chteau
since the late-19th century, quipped that it was a millstone round the
Rothschild familys neck for 100-plus years.
This changed when the release price for the wine started to rise in
the late 90s, climbing steadily from around 50 a bottle in the mid
90s to 600 a bottle for the 2011.
BY WILL LYONS
Chteau dYquem in Sauternesbut few can compete with the mystery and allure of Romane-Conti.
The name itself is that of a 1.8 hectare vineyard that lies just a short
walk behind the village of Vosne-Romane on a southeastern-facing hillside of the Cte dOr, a thin, 48-kilometer ribbon of land that
starts just south of Dijon and ends in the villages south of Santenay.
Split into two sections, the Cte dOr or Golden Slope divides into
the Cte de Beaune in the south, known for its white Burgundies and
delicate red wines, and the much shorter Cte de Nuits in the north,
home to Vosne-Romane. It is in the latter, on a multilayered soil of
limestone, red clay, gravel and pebbles, where the Pinot Noir grape
finds its most sophisticated and fascinating expression.
Take a stroll up to the vineyard of Romane-Conti at any time
and you are more than likely to be met by a crowd of wine enthusiasts stopping to get their photograph taken beside the stone cross
that stands on the southern perimeter of the vines. But it is neither
the cross, nor the vineyard that has given the name Romane-Conti
such resonance. It is the wines.
Not that there are many people who have had the opportunity to
taste a glass of Domaine de la Romane-Conti. Firstly, there is the
hurdle of the price. According to U.K. importers Corney & Barrow, a bottle of 2007 Domaine de la Romane-Conti will set you
back a mere 4,500, which adds up to around 56,000 for a case of
12. If, and it is a very large if, you can source a case. Production
of Romane-Conti is tinya better description would be minuteat
around 450 cases, or 6,000 bottles a year. Faced with this, it is hardly
surprising that some importers only ever sell in mixed cases, in other
are made today requires patience and a long-term vision, Mr. de Villaine says.
And with that, it is time to go. As I emerge from the cellar, the sun
is beginning its late-afternoon descent. Leaving the courtyard, I walk
to the car, parked casually across the kerb; the silence, punctured by
the echo of a distant bell, filling the medieval village with its rhythmic toll.
This article originally ran on Oct. 1, 2010, under the headline Searching
for Perfection.
BY LETTIE TEAGUE
America has never been overly fond of its intellectuals. Ralph Waldo
Emerson took note of this fact in a speech made at Harvard almost
200 years ago: The mind of a country, taught to aim at low objects,
eats upon itself. Even today, anyone with a higher degree or a wellarticulated belief risks being called an elitist. The same seems to
hold true in the American wine world, where an impassioned and
knowledgeable oenophile isoften as notsimply labeled a snob.
The wine-snob backlash has lately been led by a group of wine
populists fond of proclaiming that its not only unnecessary but
downright undesirable to know too much about wine. Drink what
you like and dont worry about the particulars, they like to say,
employing tasting terms like yummy and fun while comparing
wines to cigars and black dresses and even gym socks.
A wine snob can talk about wine in terms that encompass history,
geography and meteorology. Wine snobs know where and why certain grapes are grown and who does the very best work in a particular
vineyard.
A wine snob also takes notes. Wine snobs are very good at writing
things down. A wine snob is also quite good at drinkingalbeit in a
serious, note-taking sort of way.
It almost goes without saying that wine snobs are some of the very
best customers in restaurants and stores. Who better to appreciate
everything from the fanciest grand cru to the most obscure bottling
from the furthest parts of the world? A wine snob can appreciate a
winemakers noble intentions and subtle artistry and is willing to pay
the price for them, too. A wine snob keeps the wheels of wine commerce going around.
And yet, the fruits of a snobs study arent always appreciated.
Sometimes even a modest display of wine knowledge can provoke
accusations of pretentiousness or worse.
Ive been accused of this myself. It happened a few years ago when
my friends and I were dining at a bistro in Paris. (Isnt that where
all wine-snob stories start?) Wed ordered a ros that turned out to
be terrible. I (briefly, I promise) cited a few of its flaws and suggested that we might want to try something else. My friends husband
balked. Why couldnt we just drink the wine? he askeda question
that was actually closer to a demand. And furthermore, he added,
why was it that I had to talk about the wine at all?
The fact that I was simply trying to save him from drinking something lousy was seemingly forgottenalong with the fact that there
had been many earlier instances when these friends had expressly
(Marc Rosenthal)
This article originally ran on July 6, 2012, under the headline Think
While You Drink: In Defense of Wine.