Foreign Exchange

As I seem too often to be starting these Lab missives with an apology for delay, I have instead decided to officially memo-rialize that Lab Reports will come a little less frequently than previously. At some point, I'm sure we will return to our pre-Asia pace of experimentation. But right now... frankly, we're just too busy making history to have much time for chronicling it.

In addition to drinking from it, we make an ongoing and continuing effort to hedge the value of the bottles in the Lab's cellars. Foreign currency has long been our favorite hedging vehicle. Lately, roiled markets have meant we've been crazy-busy. Mostly busy selling as many US dollars as we can. As the Fed seems to be long green ink, we've really had to step beyond our usual efforts.

Until today. Today, we have a new strategy.

Instead of trading currencies, we are starting our own.

Now, just like the United States Federal Reserve, we can use quantitative easing as a way of reducing the real value of our significant tabs at bars, restaurants and wineries around the world.

We hatched this audacious plan after tasting our way through a fair few of the gray market Delatite Wines we recently acquired.

And they're as crazy-good as our new Lab Rupees.

The 2008 sparkling Pinot Noir, Demelza, presented great depth and breadth. A faint salmon hue with beautiful aromas of strawberries, pink grapefruit, baking bread and Turkish delight. The palate is a swirling mix and linear stretch of all those same flavors, especially the Ruby pink grapefruit, with some beguiling chalky limestone minerality.

The 2008 sparking Gewurztraminer, Polly, showed lemon and grapefruit zest, spice and toast. This one might be a little imprecise on the attack but spreads out with a rich mid-palate burst of apple fruit with tangerine and grapefruit acidity before a finish of pencil leads. I'm thinking this might benefit from a little cellar time. Although it drinks beautifully now. And did I mention it's Gewurztraminer? Crazy-crazy.

David Ritchie's white and sparkling wines all seem to have a French soul (I have no experience with the reds). The Sauvignon Blanc is more Sancerre than Australia. Same for the Alsatian styled Gewurztraminer (non-sparkling) and the un-wooded Chardonnay (that must in fact see a little oak?). And they are all windows into Ritchie's uniquely located vineyards. I am a fan of the entire range.

But it was the 2009 Riesling, whose own soul lies a little East of France somewhere along the Mosel, that I found most intriguing. Its flavors of lime and grapefruit and whatever lies beneath the Buller soil that drinks like limestony slate, with traces of clover and honey, are simply delicious. And while it's style is decidedly German, this is not a wine that aspires to be from someplace it is not. It is profoundly tethered to its high country Victorian trellises.

Even if it's easy enough to pour a glass, close your eyes, and imagine a vineyard along the banks of some Rhine tributary that you've never heard of and cannot get to.

Down Under on the Other Side of the World

Little did I know that when I began my first "dig for China" as a small child on a sandy, California beach, that I would make it here, almost 40 years later.

Cute, huh?

But I hate that sort of sentimental crap. For much the same reason, I hate corks. Nostalgia for corks is like all other forms of nostalgia... borderline proto-facism. Think I'm wrong? Read Mussolini's early writings (with Gentile). But you don't have to be Antonio Gramsci or suffer through a Tea Party rally to understand that warm feelings for idealized history are the first step on a road to labor camps.

I don't want to get into the cork debate. Because there is no debate. The baseline science is there. This is like global warming. You either get it. Or you're wrong.

But I will posit my disdain for cork as a reason why I've had so many astonishingly good Australian Chardonnays since I arrived in Hong Kong. Australia has all but given up on corks and so I'm favorably disposed towards the wines when I see them here.

Of course, it might also have something to do with the multi-million dollar marketing campaign the Australian wine industry has recently launched in China.

Anyway, here's a short list of great Aussie Chardonnays I've had recently in Hong Kong:

Leeuwin, Art Series, Margaret River, 2006

Yabby Lakes, Mornington Peninsula, 2007

Mas Serrat, Yarra Valley, 2006

Ocean Eight, Verve, Mornington Peninsula, 2008

Punch, Lance's Vineyard, Yarra Valley, 2008

Two of these, the Mas Serrat and the Yabby Lakes, were made by the same guy, and made quite elegantly. The Leeuwin was so good I was convinced it was Burgundy (thanks Roger; both times). I'd actually been avoiding these wines for the past few years, thinking they were too expensive. The 2006 (and 2007) are well worth the money. I can't say enough about the whole range from Ocean Eight; but it's the Pinot that's the killer. And the Punch Chardonnay is consistently unique and site-specific. It's a vineyard I'm sure I will recognize on sight.

You would be doing your cellar a favor to buy any of the five.

None had a cork (well... correction forthcoming...).

A Little Help with Tasting

Sorry for the long delay between reports. I'm adjusting to the local culture, and nobody really does jack in Hong Kong during the summer. In fact, most of the expat crowd bails the island. But Fall is here. I know this, not because the temperature has changed. It hasn't. It's still basically a rice cooker beyond the air-conditioned confines of the Lab. But I know the season has turned because there's a line at my favorite coffee shop in the morning and all the tables are filled with women who don't play tennis but wear diamond tennis bracelets anyway.

Another aspects of Hong Kong culture I've been adjusting to is the abundance of skilled domestic labor from the Philippines. The market is heavily regulated by the regional authorities. But if you can maneuver through the forms and bureaucracy, you can get what' s known in the local parlance as a "helper."

I decided to get two.

Because I think the helper is a fantastic concept. Now that my responsibilities are reduced at home, I have a lot more time to drink. The Philippines should probably be making a better effort to export this thing globally.

At the Lab, we've been cataloguing and organizing the wines shipped to our new Guangzhou cellars. We've run a few tests on overseas shipping as well which we'll report on soon. But I grabbed an orphan bottle and brought it home last night, to see whether we can further reduce labor costs at the Lab.

I'm growing weary of writing tasting notes. So I poured a glass of a recent vintage Burgundy from bio-dynamic stalwart Hubert Lamy for one of the helpers and asked her what she thinks.

"This is very good, sir," was her reply.

I think she had it about right.

The Kindness of Taxi Drivers

I was on my way to a wine dinner recently. As I left my office, I grabbed an engraved laguiole opener that I was presented at some milestone or another the Lab had reached.

It's impressive hardware, and, yes, I admit, I was planning to show off a bit with it. It's not like I was going someplace where there wouldn't be corkscrews.

At the event, I reached for my opener, only to find it gone.

I knew immediately that my trophy opener had fallen from my pocket in the cab I had taken to dinner. I was momentarily devastated. I quickly strategized a few ways to drop not so subtle hints to the staff about my Christmas present for this year and tried to soldier on.

You can well imagine my surprise and delight when the next morning, arriving back at my office, my assistant presented me with the opener. Having found it after I exited the cab, the driver of the taxi had returned it to where he'd picked me up and left it with security at the building.

Hoping I might offer this generous and thoughtful man a reward for his kind act, I went downstairs to ask security myself if he had perhaps left a card or contact details.

He had not.

I was unable to offer my thanks directly.

But I am very grateful.

Look What the (Siamese) Cat Dragged In

Is it more racially insensitive that I find it fun to make puns with colonial-era Asian place names? Or that I use them interchangeably, as if Thailand and China were just one big "Asialand"?

While you form your views on that, I'm happy to report that even before we've officially opened the doors of the Lab's new Ghaungzhou facility, we have welcomed our first visitor.

In town for Altaya Wines "Passion for Pinot 2010" event, Pyramid Valley Winery's Mike Weersing dropped by the Lab's HK executive suites carrying a bottle of the current release of his Earthsmoke Vineyard Pinot Noir, 2008.

The wine is unfiltered, unfined and only modestly sulphured, and so is a light, cherry red and a little, dare I say... murky. The nose is a delicate mix of chalky soil, orange -- blossoms and oil -- a late rush of red fruits and a green note that I would have previously associated with stems.

Mike mentioned that he gets that comment often about this wine, but the truth is they do not press whole cluster, but fastidiously de-stem all the fruit by hand and so press whole fruit. He thinks the aroma may have something to do with the fermentation that starts inside the berry before being crushed.

The wine tastes much like it smells, with sour cherry and currant layered in. It is distinctly linear, taut, and pulsing with a tensile energy.

When I tasted the first vintage from this vineyard, 2006, it reminded me much of the Burgundy made by Michel Lafarge in Volnay. But the more experience I gain with this wine, the more it tastes like itself. I still think the flavor profile and structure is reminiscent of the French counterpart. But the profoundly earthy note that forged the link on my original impression seems, in this bottle, to be less like Lafarge's newly turned soil and more chalky and dry. Perhaps more like Canterbury dirt?

A final note for the big geeks out there (you know who you are): This wine is very high pH. Something like 4.2 (with 3.6-3.8 being "normal"). As part of his evolving non-interventionist philosophy, Mike eschews acidifying his wines now. Preferring to take them as they come, as it were. In spite of the high pH, this wine was fresh, youthful and lively. It offered more than sense of acidity than actual acidity.

Curious to see what this drinks like in five years time.

A Lab Seminar in How NOT to Organize a Tasting

We make little secret of the fact that we are better drinkers than tasters at the Lab. This means that certain experiments require an extra level of thinking to find an appropriate work around.

However, extra thinking was not in view at a recent Lab event; a dinner designed to A) help reduce bottle inventory before the move; B) conclude a long-term Lab experiment; and C) bid farewell to some good friends of the Lab.

One of the Lab's original experiments was designed to test a simple hypothesis: the fancy wines that you are not drinking because they are brutally expensive are not as good as the people who are drinking them want you to believe.

To test this theory, some years ago we worked our way onto the allocation mailing-list for haut-fancy Napa Valley producer, Peter Michael Winery. Through careful, regular purchasing, supplemented with some auction work and cellar scavenging, we were able to assemble to a flight from their La Carriere vineyard -- the steepest and perhaps most site-expressive -- that included a bottle from every vintage from 1999-2007.

We carefully planned a tasting menu to complement the Chardonnays and invited a number of Lab benefactors to a dinner (thanks again G&M!).

In hindsight, it's pretty easy to armchair quarterback what went wrong. We should have commenced the evening with a tasting featuring the entire flight. Guests could have tasted their way through the flight of wines and then returned to their favorites over dinner.

It seems so f---ing obvious now.

Instead, we paired 3 wines with each course.

I did have an odd tingle when the caterer generously poured the first three wines, the oldest ones of the flight. Given that we'd already had a couple rounds of cocktails and Champagne before we sat down to dinner, I ignored the tingle and set right into the wines.

At some point not long after my memory of the evening grows fairly hazy. I was able to reconstruct some of the evening's largesse from my progressively illegible notes. And from there we can perhaps draw a few practical conclusions.

The oldest wine in the flight was just that... old, and had made a recent turn towards vinegar. The next eldest, the 2000, was off, having suffered some refermentation in bottle. The 2001 showed a high degree of oxidation, but was delicious.

The next flight -- and I have no memory of what we ate alongside these wines, but I do remember that the food was sensational -- were the stars of the evening. 2002, 2003 and 2004 were each outstanding. I couldn't really make out much about the specifics in my notes, but I did make several emphatic stars next to the 2002 and noted that the 2003 was noticeably bigger and richer, with more obvious complexity than the other two.

The final flight, the youngest wines, weren't bad, but were all dominated by their barrels, especially the 2006. I seemed to have especially liked the 2005. But it's not always easy to interpret a smiley face.

Setting aside the obvious conclusions with regard to restructuring our tasting procedures, I would say this. These were beautiful Chardonnays. The limestone, honeysuckle-tinged minerality that seems to be the hallmark of this vineyard's terroir was present in each wine, all the way back to 2001. In ethos and character, they are more like Burgundy than Napa. And for that reason, I think it's not entirely unfair to say that, while delicious, I can hardly argue for their quality-to-price ratios. Given these wines fetch $60-75, it's not impossible to find White Burgundies that drink as well for 30-40% less.

Still, if you are going to drink them, it seems that the ideal drinking window goes back a little further than I would have guessed. In 2010, I would have thought the 05 would have stolen the show and the 02 would feel on the downhill slide. But it's clear these wines can -- and perhaps should -- go a little longer in the cellar.

Finally, given the performance of the two oldest wines, both purchased at auction (online), I am now formally skeptical about buying wines in this fashion. I remain a big fan of Winebid.com. But I am more inclined to purchase recent vintages of hard to find European wines that are likely being sold by distributors in a clearinghouse capacity.

Though far from conclusive, the experimental result that suggests a prestige wine is not so great that you should pine over not having any in your cellar is something that will hold me in good stead in Hong Kong.

I would say this, however. This really is an experiment you need to run for yourself. The macro result is fairly obvious. Where the results are most compelling are deep in the realm of the subjective.

Yard Sale?

Okay, I need to admit something right here, right off the bat. The next few posts are just showing off.

In my defense, I will only say that I have been living in a serviced apartment in Hong Kong (courtesy of Li Ping) while the Lab and its contents cross the Pacific in a container on a cargo ship. It's not glamorous. I love my kids, but at close quarters this affection is regularly tested.

I hope you'll indulge me in a little escapism.

As we were packing the Lab's cellars, we faced an awkward quandary. We wanted to take as much of the contents as possible to Guangzhou, especially those bottles with experimental value. But we didn't trust our new benefactors to manage the shipping in climate controlled fashion. Crossing oceans can be perilous. Hate to lose the cellar to the deep blue. So we decided that some bottles in the Lab's collection would not, in fact, make the crossing.

The Lab's Director of Marketing proposed a yard sale.

He's no longer with us. I think the press release said he's taking some time to focus on his family.

My (much better) idea was to drink them.

So the Lab organized several dinners to do just that.

A report on the first -- a big vertical flight of fancy Chardonnay -- up next.

What Would Tsar Nicolas II Drink?

It's been a while since we've ventured into the past.

But as we organized the Lab's cellars for transfer to Guangzhou, I found an odd bottle gathering dust on a tasting table.

A non-vintage, red dessert wine, called Kagor (Russian for Cahors), this is a wine with a storied past.

It's from the Massandra Winery, a Crimean winery also with a storied past.

Situated near Yalta on the Black Sea, Massandra was originally established to provide wines for the Tzar's summer dacha. Luxuriously managed by Prince Vorontsov -- who turned 4000 of his troops into 300 whilst "successfully" battling Napoleon -- the property includes a massive chateau in the style of Louis XIII and seven 150 meter-long tunnels used as cellars. Thanks to the dedicated oenophiles who hid the assembled bottles from the Nazis in 1941, the Massandra cellars reportedly hold one of the most extensive collections of antique European wines in the world.

Wines from the collection, as well as wines from the winery are rare, occasionally some come up for auction and often fetch prices in the thousands of dollars. So I was quite astonished to find this, a recent non-vintage bottling, for sale for about $50.

I bought it and promptly forgot about it.

So like a guy with head trauma, I was thrilled a second time when I found it in storage at the soon to be relocated Lab.

The wine itself is a blend of Superavi, a traditional grape of Georgia and Cabernet Sauvignon. And it was surprisingly good. I don't drink much Port, mostly because I don't like most Ports. But I really liked this. I was wary at first as it smelled just like Port, but then seemed to magically morph into a Cherry Coke and then changed again into a rich cafe au lait. The wine was seamless on the palate. Some residual sugar (again like Port) but not cloying and in balance with the gentle acidity. It was a mix of cherry, prune, allspice, white pepper and espresso. It wasn't as complex as the list of descriptors suggests, but it certainly had some dimension and an amazing, teeth-staining finish that lingered for what seemed a Russian winter.

I mentioned the wine had a storied past. But it's hard to get a straight answer (from Google) about the stuff. But Kagor seems to be made by heating the crushed grapes, before fermentation, which, I suppose, concentrates the sugar. There seems to a mix of opinion about whether the wine is fortified. I'd say no, but Cellar-Tracker says yes. Most awkwardly, Cahors is made from mostly Malbec which doesn't appear in this wine at all. I found a suggestion that Kagor was originally made with Malbec (Auxerrois, as Malbec is known in Cahors) but at some point the recipe was changed. Peter the Great was a fan of Cahors, and perhaps for that reason, the Russian Orthodox Church adopted Kagor as its sacramental wine. Unable to get adequate supply, maybe they tried to pass off a blend of local grapes as the original. You know how sneaky Church people can be.

So that's a lot of information about a wine you'll probably never see. Unless you're in Latvia. They still drink buckets of the stuff in Latvia.

Up next: The Lab has a Yard Sale, then takes a field trip to the beach...

Knee Jerk

Okay, okay, I haven't really been in Hong Kong long enough to make general pronouncements, but I've noticed something. It's something similar to everything you hear about the Chinese and wine. It's something obvious.

So maybe I'm just joining the chorus, saying nothing original.

It would hardly be the first time that's happened.

But as far as I can tell, in Hong Kong, "fine wine" means Bordeaux. And that may be understating the fact. It may be closer to true to say that just "wine" means Bordeaux. The grocery store shelves are full of it. I've seen huge Bordeaux displays at department stores. And the wine shops sell little else (unless they specialize in something besides Bordeaux, but even the Italian wine shop I visited had a Bordeaux section).

As far as I can tell it's pretty much all anybody drinks, except for some industrial, grand marque Champagne. I was at dinner last night, a very cool dive bar meets Thai restaurant, right on the beach at Deep Water Bay. A big group at another table had brought their own wines. Do I really need to tell you what it was?

As it happens, I don't drink much Bordeaux. The best examples are prohibitively expensive. There's not many natural producers in the region. There's no overlooked areas of great terroir. It's just not my thing.

So I'm screwed, right?

Not so fast.

At my local grocery store, alongside the overflowing rows of low to really low-tier Bordeaux (pictured above) and right next to the Veuve Clicquot (what else would Bordeaux lovers reach for when a festive mood strikes?), I found 3 bottles of Fleury's Brut Rose. A 100% Pinot Noir, rosé de saignée, made by Champagne's first (maybe) converts to biodynamics.

Best part? It's on sale for the Hong Kong dollar equivalent of forty bucks. Apparently, biodynamic, grower Champagne isn't a big seller with the local crowd.

Like shooting fish in a barrel of Bordeaux. N'est-ce

pas?

The Starstreet Winewalk

I have quite a bit of house-keeping to attend to. I need to write up the Lab's farewell to Los Angeles "It's All About the Dirt" dinner. I need to tell you about the bounty from the Lab's Yard Sale. There's even an installment of our historical drinking series, What Would Czar Nicholas Drink?, to draft.

But before I get to any of that, a report from the other side.

Almost as soon as I arrived in Hong Kong, Li Ping arranged for tickets to the sold out Winewalk on Starstreet. Sponsored by the magazine Time Out, the event was a benefit for the Hong Kong Women's Foundation and featured a number of restaurants and wine shops in the Starstreet Precinct of Wan Chai.

It was a great way to become quickly acquainted with a quirky, near-downtown (what HKers call Central) neighborhood. A host of participating restaurants opened their doors to serve appetizers and, unfortunately, mostly forgettable table wines.

There's no point in

reviewing the specifics, is there? (but do let me know if you need Starstreet restaurant reviews.)

The one thing I found most interesting is that I didn't recognize a single wine. The closest thing to something even vaguely familiar was a white I've never seen in the US from gigantico Spanish producer, Torres (perhaps best known for their red wine that comes with a little plastic bull attached to the neck). The Vina Esmerelda was a not unpleasant, overtly perfumed mix of Catalonian Moscatel and Gewürtztraminer. I slugged it down like an old friend.

Given global distribution realities, it's not entirely surprising to encounter a different set of brands in Asia. But even at a wine shop that specialized in Margaret River Wines -- a region I know well; I spent my honeymoon there -- I didn't recognize a single producer on the shelves.

Too soon to tell if this is a trend or a Starstreet anomaly.

For what it's worth, the wine of the event for me was a fancy/artisanal Southern Rhone poured at the roofbar of the fancy/not at all artisanal French bistro, Le Cepage. The 2008 Les Sorcieres from Clos des Fees, a moderniste blend of Grenache (corr.), Carignan and Syrah. Fruit-forward, and perhaps slightly over-oaked, the wine was a velvety blend of red fruits and sandalwood. Another example of the emergence of Roussillon as an appellation to watch for.

In Praise of Faraway Friends

I have been long away from the Lab. For that, gentle readers, I offer my sincere apologies. I have been in faraway lands. Called away in the middle of the night by a desperate call. Chinskirin Boktani, one-time intrepid guide and devoted Man Friday, had been injured in a climbing accident.

I made hasty arrangements and left immediately to travel the many miles to be at his side.

As it turns out, he wasn't hurt all that bad. A twisted ankle and a scrape on his knee. But as is usually the case with Boktani, several adventures ensued, and none with any internet access.

I hope to recount some of our escapades in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I returned home to find in my in-box some well deserved praise for a dear friend of the Lab -- which I will reprint here. The source is Jon Rimmerman, who runs the single most interesting wine mailing-list in the known universe.

Dear Friends,

Let’s get this out of the way:

Pyramid Valley is currently New Zealand’s finest winery.

There are others that produce a single entrant of equal stature (such as Rippon) but no one produces a line-up from A-to-Z like Mike and Claudia Weersing. In fact, few wineries in the world do so. With multiple climates, soil structures, elevations, islands, ferry crossings and general mayhem to deal with on a daily basis, this winery takes us on a high-level tour of New Zealand equaled by no one else.

From Spatlese to Pinot Blanc, to Cabernet Franc to Pinot Noir (not not mention a new Sauternes-like wine that is going to re-define what can be done with Semillon), Pyramid Valley is a serious candidate for the most diverse winery in the world – all while playing at the top register. They expose us to one of the richest landscapes of terroir anyone could hope to imagine and, if “understanding” is your goal with wine, the often limpid and reflective examples delicately placed into bottle by Mike and Claudia will go a long way toward anyone’s study of life, relationships and all things vinous. Circa 2010, the top of the pyramid is in sight and they’ve only just begun.

I’ve waxed poetic on this winery in the past and taken many punches from numerous pundits that accuse me of over-hyping wine that is no better than, say, Felton Road. To you I say phooey. That is missing the point. This is about the people, the places, their dedication to an interconnected system of the world – one that includes an eco-sensitive realization that we are all, indeed, in this together. This is about Mike driving 12 hours in an old old Airstream so he could sleep by the side of Hwy 1 near Blenheim while he sat, watched and waited for each of your grapes to ripen perfectly - precisely as nature intended. This is about an abstinence of chemicals, additions, yeast, intervention or the unwanted hand of man altering the course of vinous events. In the end, this is about your few moments with the Weersings and their children of each vintage. If you ask them, this is about you.

If you met Mike and Claudia everything above would be obvious and endearing at the same time. They care about every detail and let’s just leave it at that. Call them friends, partners in crime, lovers, wanderers – whatever you wish – these are people of life and its reflective direction. These are people many of us wish we could be...

As the young folks at the Lab like to say:

Word.

EVOLUTION 3.5: Better Late Than Never

The combination of my summer illness and the protracted negotiations regarding our TARP repayment has delayed the next installment in the Lab's EVOLUTION series. We're overdue to taste the next red.

Some of you may remember that the last time we drank one of the reds from our long duration experiment, 2001 Confuron-Cotetidot Vosne-Romanée, we drank it alongside an older vintage, a bottle from 1988. This time we thought we'd go the other way -- mostly because I happened to find a 2005 at a wineshop in town.

I'll admit, I'm a little nervous about this bottle. The last one seemed to be giving up the ghost (or at least the fruit).

Stay tuned.

Hello Again

EVOLUTION 3.0.

It's time to check in with our Evolution programme wherein we follow a single wine for the long haul. Today we taste the white category entrant, the 2006 Pyramid Valley Vineyards Lebecca Riesling (and by "we," I mean me, hiding in my office, hoping none of the staff wander in and force me to share.).

The nose first shows subdued petrol notes, followed by lemon oil, citrus pith and something herbal/green (verbena?). In a profound way, the wine tastes just like it smells. The attack is citric acidity with enough energy that you briefly think frizzante? The mid-palate has terpene notes intertwined with apple, nectarine, clover and honey. A limestone finish almost completely eclipses the sweet. With some time in the air, you would swear you can smell the lees in your glass.

This wine seems to have gained some flesh since we last tasted it, as if the orchard fruit were ripening in the bottle. There's still some glycerin but it seems less obvious at this stage. But the structure of the wine seems more forward now, an architecture finding a foundation.

I've always thought this wine had an unexpectedly Mosel quality, like a brilliant counterfeit. But with time the forgery fades and you have to acknowledge the unique artistry that's there in the (new) original.

I do know Jack!

I might be having a mid-life crisis.

Lately, science hasn't had the same appeal. I don't get giddy with excitement about a new experiment the way I once did.

Yesterday, I was thinking about selling the Lab and sailing the Pacific when I opened a bottle of Sam Tannahill's strange "white" elixir Jack (2005).

Jack is a mix of Pinot Blanc and Gris and Chardonnay. It is, allegedly, a Josko Gravner inspired wine. Six months of extended maceration (where the juice remains in contact with the skins). And then a long spell in oak barrels (not clay amphora).

It is striking to see in the glass, a sort of dusty orange wine, but with a radiant pink core that seems to shimmer magically when it catches the light. On the nose it is apricot marmalade, clover honey and something grapey (as a side note: anyone but me find it strange how rarely "grape" is used as a wine descriptor?). I first tasted this a year and a half ago and it has fleshed out considerably since then; the then subtle orchard fruits have swelled into bright white peaches and apricots. There's still a strong mineral backbone and a tannic tingle on the long lingering finish.

But this wine is more than its parts. It defies precise analysis. It resists the experimental impulse. Jack just is. And it is a wonderful is-ness.

What did William Hurt's character say in The Big Chill? Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you...

Maybe that's the way out of my crisis? I need a break from analysis. I need to let a little more art just flow over me.

Or I could buy a Ferrari?

Message in a Bottle

Or three bottles. To be more precise.

Regular Lab provider, K&L Wines, has an interesting palate training exercise on their shelves.

The biodynamic producer Champagne Fleury has released three versions of the same wine from the 1995 vintage and K&L has them in stock. These are identical wines, except that each has a different level of dosage: Extra Brut, Brut and Doux.

Dosage (n, doh-SAHJ; from wikipedia), immediately after disgorging but before corking, the liquid level is topped up with liqueur d’expédition. At this time, it is common to add a little sugar, a practice which is known as dosage.

Fleury's wines are outstanding. Dense, earthy, often with alluring red fruit flavors. So we jumped at the opportunity to taste these wines, with their different dosage levels, side by side.

These wines were exceptional. Rich and complex, but also open and approachable.

The Extra Brut was my favorite. A bright, energetic mandarin acidity dominated the palate. There is a strange and wonderfully unique minerality on the finish. Not chalk. Not limestone. Not sure what, but it's really good.

The Brut had similar orange-y acid, with jasmine and silver tarnish on the finish. The sweet is more pronounced but the overall balance of this wine is better than the Extra.

The Doux was also good, but showed a bit like a watered down version of the Brut. It had similar flavors but with less intensity. However, the fact that this has at least 42.5 grams/liter more residual sugar than the Extra Brut is remarkable. The wine is sweet, but the sugar is remarkably well integrated.

The most surprising observation of the evening (and thanks again Alicia!) was the nose on each wine was practically identical. If I were a fake journalist instead of a psuedo scientist, I would have tried to discover if Fleury used cane sugar or concentrated grape must (MCR), because the liqueur d’expédition seemed to have no effect on the olfactory character of the three wines.

Perhaps more controversially, I would also observe that the Extra Brut was the most expressive of site and vintage. The sugar in the Doux, while integrated, seems to obliterate any signs of the vineyard.

Shell Game

This could be a tale of two vineyards.

In our ceaseless search for dirt, we end up seeking out a great deal of single-vineyard wine at the Lab. Recently, we drank two outstanding North American Rieslings each from it's own vineyard.

The first is born of Randall Grahm's re-scaled, relocated venture. A 2007 Pacific Rim, Solstice Vineyard Riesling.

The nose is diesel, verbena and citrus pith. The terpenes dominate in a way that would make me nervous about laying this down. But at the moment, they're relatively tame and the palate is simply beautiful. Honeyed tangerine swells over pear and lemon and grapefruit. There's an unusual lingering, loamy minerality. Classic Riesling flavors with unique "specific-ness."

Next we drank the 2007 Smith-Madrone, Riesling.

There's a vinous nose of orchard fruit and litchee. In the mouth, a beautiful mix of crisp, acidic MacIntosh apple and sweet Bosc pear. There is a light glycerin touch evident on the attack that almost seems to coat the tongue, paving the way for the fruit. There is a sensation of sweet even though the wine is dry. Mid-palate you begin to notice evidence of a solid, mineral architecture which builds through a long finish. This is traditionally-styled Riesling with a clear and unique vineyard signature.

But here's the trick. While these are both beautiful, terroir-specific, expressions of Riesling. One, I bought at a shop. The other was a sample.

Does it really matter which is which?

All You Need To Know

I have milked my interview with Lou Amdur for content all week. Who would have known that I would get such terrific mileage out of three cliché questions?

When published on another wine blog, the interview with Lou elicited a number of enthusiastic responses. Some went so far as to claim that Lou was the "best natural wine bar in the world!" The discussion included the owner of Terroir in San Francisco, another amazing place for wine. At some point the suggestion was made for a throw-down of sorts to determine the true champion, a Vegas-style mud-wrestling for bragging rights (I'm assuming this event would necessarily involve paid surrogates in the actual arena of combat).

Lou offered this to conclude the debate:

We’re (Lou) not a better natural wine bar than Terroir because we have more interesting wine — we have the same wines, mostly (though because I pour everything by the glass you won’t see Bea’s wines or good grower Champagne at Lou, but you will find these wines at Terroir). We’re better because our sans souffre, all-analog hi-fi system is powered by 300b single-ended triode monoblocks fed strictly by low-hour moving coil cartridges and an old Audio Research tube head amp. Lowthers or rebuilt Quad electrostats, bien sûr.

Enough said.

Things I Know That Are Not True

1. This is not a blog.

2. Los Angeles is not much of a wine town.

3. I do not have much of a local readership.

I'm not all that sure about #3. I quit looking at my traffic logs a while ago. Something zen-ish, having to do with not why I maintain the Lab. But if #2 is accurate, then it stands to reason that #3 would be true as well.

If I did have a significant local readership, I know this would be true: I definitely would not write restaurant reviews. In part because this is a serious pseudo-scientific research institute and we don't have time for that sort of thing. But mostly because I don't want to wait behind any of you for a table.

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to follow up on my interview with Lou Amdur of Lou that we collaborated on for saignee's 31 days of natural wine. According to the long established etiquette of gift exchange, I feel kind words are due, especially since Lou did most of the work.

Lou is on Vine, just north of Melrose in mid-town Los Angeles, just up the street from Paramount Studios. The restaurant has the corner spot in a multi-function, L-shaped strip mall.

Lou has the most interesting and eclectic wine list in Los Angeles. Every time I stop in, I learn something I didn't know before. He is passionate about wine and goes to great lengths to find interesting, characterful (his word) things to pour. If you're looking for a great educational resource, take a photo of the menu with a spy camera, develop the microfilm and then google every wine on the list. It's a journey through biodynamics, old and ungrafted vines (yes!), dry-farming and wild yeast ferments.

Oh, the food at Lou is fantastic too.

Los Angeles has altogether too few, great neighborhood bistros. We drive around too much chasing trends here. But Lou is a special exception.

So please, don't tell anyone about it.

Lou on Lou

In support of saignée's 31 Days of Natural Wine, I ventured out from the safety of the Lab's crenelated, ivory tower and sat down over a bottle of Chablis with Lou Amdur of Lou.

Sometimes you serve a wine and it needs context and description. Sometimes you serve a wine that is so good, you just pour it and let it speak for itself.

The interview, or more accurately, Lou's answers to my questions, are like that. I don't think this needs any introduction.

And if reading this doesn't make you want to go to Lou immediately (it's at the corner of Vine and Melrose in Los Angeles), then there's really no helping you. Is there?

LAB: Can you describe your "conversion" to natural wines?

LOU: My conversion experience to natural wine is on on-going and didn’t emerge from a single epiphanic moment of eureka. And I should say it’s an on-going conversion, as the natural wine movement itself is a moving target—with a vigneron like Thierry Puzelat, for example, it’s clear that he’s having an on-going conversation from vintage to vintage with his vines and his winegrowing process. Certainly a big thing for me was attending the huge Nicolas Joly natural wine road show a few years ago at the Skirball Center; that gave me an opportunity for the first time to taste a great many natural wines (I realized, after three hours, that (a) I was only half way through the tasting, (b) I was drunk, even though I was dutifully spitting, (c) I had been so enraptured by the wine that I’d been ignoring the klaxon horns of my poor bladder, and was on the verge of peeing in my pants, and (d) I had to somehow get back to my wine bar in Hollywood by 6 PM).

My palette is following an arc that I think is familiar to some who grow up with wine, but perhaps not very interesting wine. You fall in love with big, chunky wines, but end up preferring wines that are made with a lighter touch. As a kid this meant the big, chunky, sticky sweet Concord grape kosher wines of Shabbos and Pesach. But when I was four or five my Uncle Eli gave me a small glass of the very good wine he had been making in Minnesota starting in the late 50s—he was a serious-minded hobbyist and pioneering quality wine grape grower in Minnesota, plus he had a doctorate in chemical engineering so the wine making process was not something foreign to him. I remember that first taste of Eli’s wine; compared to the Manischewitz Concord grape wine I was accustomed to it tasted bitter to me but I liked it! And that’s the beginning of the arc.

In my late teens I drank mostly beer and cheap hard liquor (1 dollar shots of vodka at Verkhovyna in the East Village!). At that time the drinking age in NY was 18, and most delis had a decent selection of imported beer, and I found that I enjoyed more complex beers like Reinhardt Wild Ale. I did enjoy drinking what I referred to then as “big” wines, big oaky Napa zinfandels like Hannah’s. These big wines have sweetness, less from any residual sugar and more from the alcohol. And I understand completely why many people gravitate to such wines and never seem to move beyond: they’re wines that don’t make you think. And by “think,” I mean thinking with your tongue, not your brain. Émile Peynaud has a long description of how the tongue “thinks” in one of his books, and it’s actually quite disturbing to pay attention to the physiology of taste when you’re drinking wine. There’s a Stereolab tune with the line, “We need so damn many things to keep our dazed lives going,” i.e., we have a lot of shit to attend to in our lives and for most folks, wine is a field of non-controversial pleasure, they don’t want to think about wine, just enjoy it. You see the same attitude toward food among chefs like Bad Boy Bourdain, who’s attacked Alice Waters in the most embarrassing way—how dare you make me think about what I put in my mouth!

When you drink a massive, high extract, high alcohol wine, its overwhelms your palette; it’s a very atavistic pleasure that I liken, as a vulgar Kleinian, to the overwhelming feelings of deep satisfaction that blot out everything else that an infant feels when it suckles. And it makes it difficult for some people to enjoy a new wine, especially a lighter-bodied wine for which they lack reference points. It pains me when 20 somethings profess that they’re “pinot grigio” drinkers, as if pinot grigio is a brand, like Coke. They’re young geezers, many of whom will never drink outside their comfort zone. Jeremy Narby, when asked about the safety of taking ayahuasca, responded in an interview that we’re too safety obsessed in our culture—ayahuasca isn’t safe, it might just teach you something about yourself that changes you forever. I don’t want to live as a crabbed old coot like the character that Edgar Buchanan played in Petticoat Junction. I try to become more receptive to new things and experiences. Wine is my ayahuasca.

In the early 80s I worked at a restaurant, long gone, that was connected to the New York Wine Center in Manhattan. We were allowed a shift drink and we mostly drank Mondavi cabernet, but one day a wine rep sent back to the kitchen a half-full bottle of Lafarge Clos du Château des Ducs, ’78, and that was my transcendental wine experience. I didn’t know what I was in for—it’s like the first time you get high, you’re always chasing that first time. I kept looking for that bottle for years (only later did I learn that ’78 was a great Burgundy vintage, and that only way I was going to find a bottle of that Volnay was if someone opened a bottle for me—still hasn’t happened).

LAB: How do you go about discovering the wines for your list?

LOU: How do I learn about new wine? To be sure, you’re not going to find satisfying coverage in Wine and Spirits, Decanter, and of course, Wine Spectator. I learned a lot from reading two of Patrick Matthews’s books, The Wild Bunch and Real Wine. There are a few blogs I enjoy reading, and the discussion groups that I lurk around on, like Wine Disorder, are populated be folks who have had their conversion experience a long time ago. I depend a lot on the superb distributors and importers I work with to do the hard work of locating new growers: there’s Farm Wine (distributes Dressner and José Pastor in California), Peter Weygandt, Michael Sullivan, Hiram Simon, and Betty Dunbar, to name a few. Note that these are importers who mostly import French wine (though Weygandt, for example, brings in some great Austrian wine, too). Sometimes, I find an importer that brings in a single biodynamic wine that I love (I’m thinking of one grower from Roussillon), but the rest of their book is not interesting. I’ve been trying to get a distributor for Jenny & Francois here in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and so far, no go, so when I order their wine, it’s a large order (for me, at least—30-50 cases). Another source are my friends and customers who bring me wine to try. I have a regular, now friend, Martin Marquette, who is good friends with Azzoni, and I first tasted three of Azzoni’s wines that Martin brought back from France for me. Finally, whenever I travel abroad (rare for me since I signed the lease for my wine bar in 2005), I visit wine bars, shops, and if I’m in wine country, vignerons, though I find organized tasting rooms a la Napa dull—I like talking to vignerons, not tasting room staff. We were in Paris last December and enjoyed visiting La Cremerie, it was just down the street from our hotel, and also Racines.

LAB: You're stranded on a desert island, what three natural wines are in your cooler?

LOU: Three desert island wines: I’d pack a sparkling wine, a red wine, and a white wine. If there was room, I’d also pick a dessert desert wine. For a sparkler I’d go for a good grower Champagne, like Leroy’s zero dosage cuvée, or Drappier. For white I’d select something refreshing but also complex that might work well with my desert island fare of raw fish and coconut, perhaps one of Tissot’s non-sur voile wines (I love Tissot and Puffeny’s sur voile wines, but I don’t want to drink them every day), or maybe something really straight forward, like J.P. Brun’s Beaujolais blanc. For red, again, it’s a desert island, hot and dry, so I’d select Foillard’s Morgon Côtes du Py which I’d shove in the ocean for a few minutes before opening so that it’s nice and cool, or possibly one of Gauby’s wines, his vielles vignes. Both are wines that I have had over several vintages, and I never tire of drinking them, and always find new facets to enjoy. Finally, for dessert, Suronde’s Quarts du Chaume, or the Jurancon that Dageneau made (I have a six pack sitting my cellar—well, I’m down one bottle that I gave as a gift).

Notes on the natural wine and a reprise of the interview will be available tomorrow at saignée.

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.