As Douglas Coupland recently tweeted, 2009 feels like a party you can’t wait to leave so that you can go off and do something else you’d actually rather be doing.Over the last year, I’ve watched nearly one in four of my friends lose their jobs – and those of us that are still working are watching our incomes erode in the face of increasing costs for virtually everything. (Those of you in Washington state who now have to deal with newly raised prices at state-run alcohol stores? My heart truly goes out to you.)So where’s the silver lining in all of this? Well, quite frankly, I haven’t seen it yet. Although I’m reading about grape harvest gluts in Napa and Marlborough, I haven’t been lucky enough to score any deals on wine. Heck, I’ve bought virtually nothing at all this year: the Scholium Project raised their prices to $100 a bottle, Quilceda Creek is asking $98, and so on. Even if these were the best of economic times, these prices are out of the reach of virtually everyone (save for, I suppose, those of us who work in finance or the health insurance industry). But surely there are huge stocks of unsold wines being marked down to bargain basement clearance prices, right?Alas, no… except for this wine, apparently. This is one of only a few wines I’ve seen so far this year that are being marketed largely on the basis of cost. I paid $27, but the label says “Retail $50!” And did anyone ever pay $50 for this wine? Well, I have no idea… but if I had, I wouldn’t be disappointed.A wonderfully smoky burnt match nose tinged with sea salt, burnt cream, and buttery stewed quince sets things in perspective right away. Yes, the wine is over-bright, somewhat pale, and not much to look at, but oh, what a smell. There’s also a faint hint of night blooming jasmine and other pale flowers; there’s also just a hint of sulphur, but it’s restrained.Cacophonous at first, the wine pulls in half a dozen different directions. At first, there seems to be a strong suggestion of sucrosité, but blink and it’s gone, replaced by a finely textural sensation of slippery elm, buttressed by fine, subtle oaky notes and carried along by the kind of jovial acidity often lacking in California chardonnay. There’s a sort of toasted nut effect here too, no buttery flavor to speak of in particular (although I suspect there’s definitely malo in full effect here, texturally speaking). It all trails off into a lovely, hazy finish that reminds me of dried apples.This is absolutely delicious and good value at $50 – and fantastic at $27. If you can find it, buy it; I’d even hazard a guess that some cellaring would be in order here.Domaine Jomain
Price: $27
Closure: Cork