Update on the Credit Crisis

I opened one of Clos de la Coulee de Serrant that I wrote about the other day.

It was a beauty, a bottle that emphatically demonstrates the elevated reputation of the site. No sign of heat damage or any other flaw. Of course, this doesn't change the fact there are no guarantees where Joly's unsulfured wines are concerned, but it does improve the odds with this particular parcel.

It was even good warm, the morning of its fourth day open, when I found it on a lab bench where it had been left overnight.

Good Deal

We're not typically in the business of promotion. And we endeavor to maintain a strict neutrality when it comes to provisioning the Labs cellars (though we are very partial to Garagiste)...

But we've written fairly often about wines of the Loire in general, and the wines of Nicolas Joly in particular, so I'm going to make an exception today. Joly's best wine is a Savennieres (Chenin Blanc) from the Clos de la Coulee de Serrant vineyard. The site is arguably one of the three or four greatest monopole vineyards in France. When the wine is good, it can be stupefying in its complexity, density and expression of that famous site. Alas, there is some bottle variation with Joly's wines as he now refuses to use any sulfur dioxide.

I've never seen it for less than $75 and it usually sells for more.

But the Wine House in Los Angeles the 2003 vintage on sale for $40.

Let us know if you get one of the good ones, as we plan to count this as a public service announcement.

Dreading Zeus

Good name for a band.

But in this instance, I've merely given a peculiar title to a phenomenon I know all serious wine wankers have experienced.

You put a bottle in the fridge, not because you want to drink it, but because you don't want to cellar it. And now it's there. Taking up space.

Maybe you tasted the wine and it was just okay. But you bought two. Maybe you know it's a challenging wine. No matter the reason, you aren't excited about drinking it. So it just sits there. Taunting you from the back of the fridge.

There has been such a bottle in the fridge in the Lab break-room for some time now.

It's a very strange wine. Colere de Zeus from Julian Courtois, 2001, a mix of Menu Pineau and Sauvignon Blanc. I don't know exactly when it became my personal albatross. But it's been in there a while. I decided last night, it would taunt me no longer.

So after everyone left for the day, I pulled it from the fridge and opened it.

I watched a pale yellow wine turn deep amber. I mean, I am literally watching as this oxygen-inspired transformation takes place in the glass. It takes about 2 minutes for the wine to travel from the color of pale straw to a coppery hue. It smells of tuberose, honey and gum tree. It tastes like you smashed apricots into juice with big, granite rocks.

I don't know why I waited so long to drink this.

The Last Days of Joly (for Me)

I think the Day 1 tasting note for the Joly wine sums it all up nicely (see yesterday's post if you're already behind):

Gun metal and rubbing alcohol with faint floral perfume.

Now I've had enough of Joly's wines to know that all is not necessarily lost at this point. The palate was sharply acidic, but still had some interesting complexity. This wine could stage a comeback. I've seen it happen.

Day 2 for the Joly: Smells like nail polish.

And Day 3: Something killed this.

There would be no come back for the Clos Sacres this time. The Villaine white Burgundy, meanwhile, was singing.

Day 1-3: Nose is an interesting mix of honey, clover, coddled cream and lemon oil. There's also a strong oak undertone of vanilla. In the mouth, more lemon with some grapefruit/lime acidity, and ripe apple and freshly cut grass.

This held up pretty well and drank consistently, and with little evolution, over the first three days. On Day 4, however, the barrel effects took over in an unappealing way. A smell like the banana flavored novocaine my dentist used in the 70s dominated and the fruit faded behind a tart acidity.

So this could have been a classic battle. The Joly tortoise versus a Burgundian hare, with the reptile closing the distance and claiming victory on the final day. It could have been exciting. Except that the tortoise was DOA from the start.

To add insult to injury, I opened a second bottle of Les Clos Sacres on day 1. It was frizzante and cloudy; some refermentation had occured in the bottle.

I get that sulfur, or more accurately, the absence of sulfur, has become a fashion in wine. And Joly has long been on the edge of that trend. But maybe using some sulfur should remain in vogue for wine that you know you're going to ship from France to America. Joly labels this wine for the North American market (it's called Les Vieux Clos in France), so perhaps he should sulfur for export as well.

When Joly's wines are good, they can be sublime. But in the past year or so, I've had more misses than hits. I really don't know if this can be chalked up to just (a reluctance to use) sulfur. But I do know buying these wines seems more and more like a roll of the dice.

What a Difference a Day Makes!

After tasting the two Domaine aux Moines, Savennières Roches-aux-Moines we put the corks back in and left them in the Lab fridge. Someone (me) had opened a bottle of Champagne, so we moved on.

But the next day, after breakfast, I went into the Lab to finish some year-end expenses. I noticed the two bottles and thought I'd check in, see how they were doing.

WOW!

Today, the 1994 is a completely different wine. It's even a different color. Last night, it was a pale, straw yellow. Today it has oxidized into a rich, golden hue. It now presents a sweetly honeyed nose of apple peel and pear fruit, with some citrus pith, oyster shell and even a hint of botrytis. In the mouth, the youthful, racy acidity (lime) of yesterday, is joined by ripe anjou pear. Where did that fruit come from? Yesterday I thought this was interesting. Today I find it exceptional.

Given the changes evident in the '94, it's perhaps worth noting that these wines come from a 33 hectare sub-section (lieudit) of the Savennières AOC, called Roche aux Moines. In this region, biodynamic apostle-in-chief, Nicolas Joly, also grows grapes. We've written about Joly before and his claims that his wines are better on the fifth day.

So maybe this will continue to improve into next week? I wonder if the tenure of these wines has something to do with the dirt of the Savennières? Might explain why both Napoleon and Robert Parker have championed this Loire Valley appellation.

The 2004, meanwhile, hasn't evolved at all.

Go figure.

A Decade 'Tween

A "ten-split" vertical tasting of Domaine aux Moines Savennières Roches-aux-Moines. One from the 1994 vintage; one from 2004.

As I mentioned before, my prior experience with this wine left me a little skeptical.

I'm happy to now report that the previous, "warm quartz" bottle was flawed, probably cooked. These wines do tend toward mineral-laden austerity, but tasting them both made clear that my prior tasting was a damaged wine.

I poured these blind to several from the Lab staff. None were able to identify the older wine. I would have failed the test as well as the 1994 is lean and energetic, with racy acid (lime) dominating the finish. The 2004, meanwhile, is rich with mature pear fruit and quince, with some oxidized notes and a waxy, structured mouthfeel. It was easy to mistake youth for age, and vice-versa.

The aromas of the two wines were practically identical. A muted nose of pear with beeswax and clover. This last, grassy element was slightly more pronounced in the older wine. And both need a full hour in the glass to reveal much of anything at all. The two wines shared a nearly overwhelming minerality. If you could bake away the fruit, you would, I think, be left with the warm quartz taste of the Domaine aux Moines terroir.

Drinking these two wines, side by side, was a much more interesting introduction than a single bottle -- even one without flaws -- could have provided. Each offered a context for the other. And the two together yielded a few clues about the vineyard where they both originated.

We originally conceived of these vertical tastings as a reward for our hard-working staff, or at least as something to do for those scientists with no social lives who are hanging around at the Lab on Friday nights. But our inaugural tasting suggests there is real experimental value in doing this. This is another approach to dirt searching, and certainly an interesting way to investigate the effects of time.

One for Alvin Lee

When I was in high school, some older kid I worshiped for no reason other than he was older gave me a cassette tape with Alvin Lee's Woodstock performance on it. It was a rendition of "I'm Going Home" that seemed to go on for hours. It was one of those not uncommon moments in 1960's music where a performer loses their mind on stage. Whatever I was supposed to appreciate about the track passed me by. I didn't get it.

And that's apropos of our inaugural Old/New mini-Vertical Tasting. Because we're tasting two wines from the Loire Valley's Domaine aux Moines, and I'm not sure I get these wines either. They can be austere to the point of hard to drink. I've seen them described as "ungiving and a little challenging." Alder Yarrow, wondered whether they might be "too racy" and suggested their austerity "never reaches the point of unpleasant." Winning praise indeed.

At some point after high school, someone whose wine knowledge I worship told me I should try them. So I did. And I found them like licking warm quartz (I grew up in the Arizona desert and you make some odd choices as a kid).

So why then return to the quartzy wines of the Domaine aux Moines, you might be wondering? Well, Monique and Tessa Laroche, the mother and daughter team who run the winery and make the wines, have an odd habit of holding back wines and releasing them for sale when they've reached maturity. How they can afford to do this when their total annual production is but 2500 cases is anyone's guess. But it allowed the Lab to procure a 1994 and a 2004 of the Savennières Roches-aux-Moines. So our first mini-vertical has a full decade between bottles, a "ten-split."

By the way, for those of you under 50, Alvin Lee's band was called Ten Years After. So the reference is also a clever chronological pun.

Long Term Planning

I wanted to take a moment to update you on one of the longue durée research efforts here at the Lab. In addition to the EVOLUTION program we have underway, we've also recently set out to study medium-term cellaring.

We thought we'd see how a single wine fared through a year's worth of variegated storage.

One bottle will be stored in a wine storage device set at 55 degrees.

A second will be rested in a manner designed to reproduce a fairly common storage method: The bottom of a closet. To recreate this setting as realistically as possible in laboratory conditions, we've put a bottle down in the bottom of a closet at the Lab.

A third bottle will be stored indifferently on the counter in the Lab's break room (I've noticed the cleaners like to move it around, so it may actually be on top of the fridge some of the time).

For our experimental purpose, we found a 2005 red Anjou on sale at the Woodland Hills Wine Company. It's from one of the Lab's favorite producers, Philippe Delesvaux. Delesvaux started out as a kind of Loire Valley garagiste producing his first vintage (1983) in a shed. He now has 35 hectares of biodynamically managed vineyards and makes his wines in a natural, non-interventionist mode. He is most famous for his usually overpriced Sélection de Grains Nobles Coteaux du Layon, a botrytised Chenin Blanc. He should be famous (but isn't) for his lavishly underpriced 100% Cabernet Sauvignon Anjou La Montee de L’Epine.

The Anjou we're using is 100% Cab Franc. We tasted a fourth bottle to establish a baseline against which we'll test the others in a year's time.

Herbaceous and earthy nose with notes of balsam and wintergreen. Expansive mouthfeel (lots of malo?). Fruit forward on the attack, mostly blueberry, followed by a griping mid-palate minerality and a tannic, slightly bitter, finish. The wine performed better on the second day. The tannins turned chewy and the wine in general had left behind some of it's bitter greenness and was displaying broader, brighter fruit.

Feels like this wine might benefit from some bottle age (might even improve with some driving around?). Guess we'll see.

In about year.

Footnote: A 6th Day in Joly

In a prior Lab note, I speculated that a Nicolas Joly, Clos Sacrés we tasted over the full, Joly-prescribed five days might have been flawed. Not enough to render undrinkable, but certainly the bottle fell short of expectations. Last night, a few folks were working late at the Lab, so I decided to open another Joly wine. A Clos de la Bergerie, 2003.

This bottle made a strong argument for the previous wine's flaws.

This is beautiful Chenin Blanc. A light, yellow hue of gold. Honey, beeswax and quince with hints of citrus on the nose. A palate of yellow peach, clover and river stones. Good acidity and an almost waxy mouthfeel. A tinny, mineral finish that I now expect from Joly's wines (terroir?). Worth noting that after 3 hours open, a faint, oxidative element arrived on the nose and built into a discernible fino sherry character.

Last week, I was in Greenville, South Carolina sourcing equipment for the Lab. At dinner with a sales rep from Industrial Biology, Inc, I found another Savennières on the wine list. Domaine Damien Laureau, Les Genêts, 2002. Laureau is an up-and-coming winemaker in the Loire. I've heard great things about him and his wines, but I've not had a chance to taste them. We were told that ours was the last bottle in the "cellar." What good luck!

Fortuna, however, is a cruel mistress.

The wine was off. And the reason I mention it? It was "off" in a manner reminiscent of the Joly we drank in the Lab's first experiment. In fact, I would be very comfortable saying that both suffered from the same flaw. I'd be less bold about what that flaw actually was.

Our colleague from Brooklyn wrote yesterday about corked wines. Neither of these Savennières had that wet newspaper or dirty socks smell of cork taint. But they did have the muted fruit associated with corked wines. I suppose it's possible that each varietal expresses the TCA mold differently. Must corked Chardonnay necessarily smell like corked Chenin Blanc? They don't smell the same without the mold. Why shouldn't the same be true with it present in the bottle?

Why the Loire?

Anyone reading these meandering musings might wonder: Why so many wines from the Loire Valley?

I like the principal grapes of the Loire Valley's 63 different appellations: Sauvignon Blanc, Melon de Bourgogne, Cabernet Franc, Gamay. In particular, I like Chenin Blanc. It ages gracefully, often has a beautiful, chalky mineralness, and makes beautiful stickies (dessert wines).

The Loire has some of the best terroir in France, named vineyards like the Clos Baudoin and the Clos de la Coulée de Serrant, which have been famous for centuries. And brilliant vignerons and winemakers: Jo Pithon, Nicolas Joly, Marc Angeli, Guy Bossard, Francois Chidaine, Didier Dagueneau, Pierre and Catherine Breton, Edmond Vatan and Gérard Boulay to name a scant few, many of whom converted to biodynamic viticulture a long time ago. And there's also great houses with storied histories, like Huët, Foreau and Baumard.

But the main reason? Wines from the Loire are cheap. If these wines were produced in Bordeaux or Burgundy, I couldn't afford them. These are world-class wines of incredible value. The Loire Valley probably needs to fire it's PR and marketing people. But until they do, it remains one of my favorite places to drink.