Category Archives: France

Domaine du Poujol Proteus 2007

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One long sniff and suddenly it’s 1979. I’m at a Thom McAn store, stuck waiting for a salesman to fetch out a series of increasingly dire shoes from the stockroom that I’m told will look great at church.This is a fairly complex nose; it’s not just throwback ’70s shoe leather, but also something slightly sour and candied, something pruny and animal, something very much like red berries and tar paper. On the whole, the effect is something on the order of unspeakably naff English candies that no one’s seen since the introduction of the EU: very old fashioned, somewhat unsettling, and (one hopes) ultimately very delicious once you can wrap your head around it.Somewhat shakily thin and nervous in the mouth, the impression I get here is that of an unusually ripe year that’s produced a slightly top-heavy version of what I imagine is normally a leaner, more mineral wine. There’s a huge amount of extract here, staining the sides of my glass with visibly gritty purple; there’s a slightly silty chunkiness in the mouth as well that is quite frankly awesome. Ultimately, what this wine reminds me of is a New World wine made with Robert Parker fans in mind: it’s quite good, no hidden surprises, rich and smooth and tasty.Thing is, though, if you give it a bit more time in the glass and pay more careful attention, there’s a very correct French wine hiding in here as well. There’s a wonderful slight sourness, an edge of minerality, a long finish that seems perfectly designed to be enjoyed with a sharp cheese. Tannins are in full effect, giving rise to the infamous ‘Who put socks on my teeth’ effect – and yet they’re very fine and graciously textured, something to be more feared than enjoyed.This seems to be a week for gateway wines: if you have a friend who professes to only like rich, full New World reds, try a bottle of this. Spend the evening sharing it with your friend. Serve them excellent cheese. Slowly (read: as you both become drunk) draw their attention to the acidity, the minerals, the tannins, the sourness. If I’m right, they’ll be a fan by the end of the evening, no doubt about it.Domaine de Poujol
Price: $10
Closure: Cork

Domaine Rapet Père et Fils Pernand 1er Cru En Caradeux 2000

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The aroma is fresh, smelling of baked things, almonds, goat’s cheese, coriander, minerality. It’s an intriguing mix of potentially rich notes within an architecture of lean elegance. There’s so much going on in the glass, yet it remains controlled. Very classy and, frankly, bloody nice to smell.

In the mouth, a rush of flavour that is truly satisfying. The attack is gentle and persuasive, taking a smoothly textural angle at first before fruit flavour begins to well up. Suddenly, a big wash of apple pie, delicate yellow peaches and mealy nuttiness fills the middle palate. Fabulous complexity that shifts and darts about constantly (even more so with food). Structurally, the acid is plentiful enough to contain such richness within a curvaceous yet taut figure. The after palate lifts beautifully, showing white flowers and a savoury kick. A nice, long, lingering finish.

What a fabulously drinkable wine, and likely to remain so for some years. Like a fascinating conversation with someone utterly hot.

Domaine Rapet Père et Fils
Price: $A60
Closure: Cork
Source: Retail

Sébastien Roux Santenay "Sebastien" 2006

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Somewhat sweet and yet savory on the nose, this wine throw out associations with spearmint, roses, strawberries, and dried straw. There’s also a hint of typically Burgundian sourness there, framing it all to somewhat more serious effect; I’ve enjoyed just smelling this for a few minutes without necessarily feeling compelled to drink any. If anything, it smells unusually ripe, which is a bit of a surprise given the fairly pail, almost milky color of the wine.Somewhat broad in terms of structure and tannin, there’s a somewhat disappointing lack of strong flavor here, buttressed by firm acidity on the finish and a disconcerting aftertaste of stale wheat crackers. Sadly, I’m at a loss to describe what exactly this tastes like other than “like mediocre Burgundy” – it isn’t bad, exactly, and yet it isn’t doing anything at all for me in terms of pleasure. Weirdly, the only thing that comes to mind is something called Crazy Cow, which was a 1970s breakfast cereal that turned milk into strawberry milk upon application thereof. There’s an industrial strangeness here which, paradoxically, comes from a wine which presumably isn’t industrially made. Could it simply be that unusual ripeness in this vintage is overwhelming what interest there is behind relatively full sugars? I don’t know, but I’ll take a pass on this one.Sébastien Roux
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Kuentz-Bas Pinot Blanc 2007

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Looking over at the glass, I initially mistook it for Martinelli sparkling cider, the fake Champagne every child gets at the Thanksgiving dinner table. It’s an unusual color for a white wine, brittle and clear, fairly pale and somewhat off-putting (at least to me). The nose is something like salt-water taffy, sweet with a hint of pineapple, possibly like hot buttered popcorn (oily, salty, with a hint of sugar). Pretty strange stuff, but of course pinot blanc isn’t something I drink often, so I don’t know if this is typical or not.I’m none too thrilled by this wine; it seems flat, flabby, not very refreshing. There isn’t much flavor here that I can discern; it’s mostly just generically wine-y, with the vaguest of off flavors that I can’t pin down entirely. The acidity leaves a bit of a burn in my throat, and all in all this wine leaves me cold. There’s more flavor and complexity in a bowl of Corn Pops than in this bottle; this isn’t one I’ll be finishing.Kuentz-Bas
Price: $14
Closure: Diam

Jacques Cacheux & Fils Vosne-Romanée Aux Réas 2006

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It’s probably not the best idea to taste wine while you’re baking a cake, but as Philip White wrote recently in defense of mixing fragrance and wine: as if wine was always meant to be drunk in sterilised rooms. In fact, the smells of baking are stimulating my appetite in the most gluttonous manner, and I’d like to think this provides an

Chateau de Trinquevedel Tavel 2007

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I can’t imagine anyone under the age of 60 not being embarrassed being seen with this bottle in their supermarket basket; it just screams ostentatious, what with the heavy embossed glass and old school gold capsule… and then there’s the label itself, which looks like a bargain-bin Mexican circus flyer and not even remotely like modern packaging. Still, what’s in a package?The color’s beautiful, far richer and darker than you’d expect from a nominally pink wine. For better or worse, though, the color is a near match for Hawaiian Punch, a favorite children’s sugar-water from the 1970s that Donny and Marie Osmond used to pimp when I was young. Great, not only is the bottle naff, but it’s like I’m back in short pants with a sippy cup again. Sigh.Anyhow, if such a thing as strawberry floor wax exists, then surely it smells like this. Scratch that, it smells like Soviet bloc “strawberry” ice cream dreamed up in an East German cooperative, manufactured from apples and Bulgarian grapes. It is, however, enchanting in its oddness, dredging up memories I’m absolutely sure aren’t mine of Russian tea rooms with small cakes that appear more painted than frosted.Ungodly huge in the mouth, the taste of the wine takes a hard right turn towards the medicinal: St Joseph’s orange-flavored aspirin (you know, for kids!) and prescription cough syrup, all cranberries, alcohol, and unpronounceable molecules promising relief from the ague. It’s all bone dry, creeping out ever so slowly on mineral feet, blood orange rind and candied lemon peel, gentle clover honey and all the time in the world to appreciate what just went down.Honestly, wines like this make me despair that we’ll never get it right in the New World. As much as I love a Susana Balbo rosé of malbec, Bonny Doon’s vin gris de Cigare, or any number of New World pinks, they seem, well, works in progress compared to this wine. What’s taking us so long?Chateau de Trinquevedel
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Château Thivin Côte de Brouilly 2006

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This color seems wrong: too deep, too rich, too red. Surely it can’t be Beaujolais, can it? There it is, though, that telltale bright purple rim, something out of the effects department from Twilight; it’s impossibly young and is, I suppose, a market of an “unserious” wine (as would Carignane as well).However! This isn’t your ordinary banana-scented Beaujolais that someone brought home from last November’s sales; sure, there’s just a hint of that tropical fruitiness that carbonic maceration seems to produce, but it’s also much more at Burgundy than Beaujolais, somehow. To me, it smells of black pepper, balsamic vinegar, strawberries: dessert-y, sure, but also somehow very sophisticated. There’s also a sort of leathery component which makes me wonder if this wine has seen oak at some point; it seems relatively complex.Nicely tannic at the edges, the wine uncoils from its mineral depths and into a very fine, well judged middle-weight palate that delivers strawberries and cream with a sassy acid backdrop, allowing the fruit in the foreground to truly shine. It all finishes on a very bright, grapey note that reminds me of pears poached in a port wine sauce: lovely dark fruits seamlessly mixed with fresh produce from a spring garden.To me, this wine is utterly delightful: it seems to exist at that magical interstice between unserious and very, very serious. This isn’t supposed to be a grape worth paying attention to, but treated sensitively, as this wine is? It’s a rare treat.Château Thivin
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Domaine de Durban Cru Beaumes de Venise Cuvée Prestige 2006

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There’s no sense in beating about the bush here: this is one of the best wines I’ve drunk so far this year. I had to look this one up: Beaumes-de-Venise is an AOC in the southern Rhône that is primarily known for a VDN/fortified sweet white wine; until this bottle showed up at the house last week (as part of a special offer mixed dozen from Kermit Lynch in Berkeley), I had no idea that they made red wine there as well.This is in a sense your bog standard southern Rhône: it’s mostly grenache, there’s some syrah, and just a little bit of mataro there as well. The strange thing here is this: at first, this seemed to behave like a fairly typical New World fake Rhône: the nose was wonderfully rich, promising cherries and leather and rich, easy-drinking fruit. However, it also suggested caramelized sugars, still-drying tobacco, and medium-dark molasses as well; it was frankly fascinating.Things really kick into high gear once you get a taste of this wine, though, because it quickly morphs from New World fruit fiesta into a very, very traditional French wine, with thick, assertive tannins quickly demanding attention combined with that peculiarly French minerality that shows up in kind of a nearly-harsh, high-toned, almost-sour character that dominates the finish. It’s like sucking freshly pressed raspberries through finely crushed gravel in a Kentucky tobacco drying shed. All of it put together is utterly entrancing; I wish I’d ordered more than just the one bottle of this.Domaine de Durban
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Domaine du Prieuré Savigny-les-Beaune 1er Cru Les Lavières 2006

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I’ve popped the cork off a Pinot Noir in anticipation of a good match with roast duck this evening. The bird is resting, so I’ve a few minutes to swirl and sniff my way through this reasonably priced Burgundy from Savigny-les-Beaune. A very Pinot-esque purple/red/orange hue that is pretty and not especially dense. Colour’s one of those things I tend to gloss over a bit; with Pinot, though, I enjoy the paradox of a red wine that can often lack colour density but which, when it’s good, is intensely aromatic and powerful in the mouth. One of the charms of the variety, I guess.

A really nice aroma here. It’s pretty, floral, a bit confected perhaps, but this latter aspect goes to accessibility rather than quality. Fruit character is pretty straightforward. There’s a nice spicy edge too, and the whole is very perfumed and rewarding to smell, if not especially serious or challenging.
The palate is very pleasing. I’m getting a decent amount of astringency that appears to be whole bunch related and, being a sucker for some stalk, am enjoying it very much. It’s a light bodied wine, quite acidic, with accessible berry fruit flavour and spice. Perhaps a bit thin, the wine remains a light experience along its entire line, never filling out or becoming especially fat. But that’s ok, it seems to be a stylistic thing as much as anything else, and begs for food. There’s some complexity in terms of the flavour profile, and one would probably gain some satifaction by tasting more analytically. For me, though, this is a great bistro-style Burgundy that I’d be happy to throw back with mates over a good meal.
Update: on the second evening, a mellower wine, diminished in terms of fruit richness though still fresh-tasting. Drink now.

Domaine du Prieuré
Price: $A39.80
Closure: Cork

Domaine Robert Sirugue Vosne-Romanée Vieilles Vignes 2006

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Wine, for me, has been an acquired taste, or rather a series of acquired tastes that continue to accumulate the more I drink. Funny thing is, an acquired taste can be the most stubborn, displacing attractions that, at first, feel easier and more natural. So it is with Pinot Noir in general, and Burgundy in particular. I’m far from the most erudite taster, yet my first smell of this wine had the same effect as (for me) the smell of a Hunter Semillon, or a Coonawarra Cabernet. In other words, at least at first, the recognition of something familiar has as much to do with one’s pleasure as the absolute quality of the aroma. The accumulated experience of tasting makes the smell of this wine the summation of all the Pinots I’ve smelled. It is most curious to me, and something I’d like to explore further. If only I knew where to start.

There’s a burst of flowers, bright red fruits, vegetal funk, dusty vanilla oak and some volatility on the nose, and it all strikes me as absolutely varietal. There’s another layer too, deeper and quite meaty with denser berry fruit. Altogether complex and cutting as an aroma profile. I keep sniffing this wine and getting more out of it.