The Wine's the Thing
Mitch Kornfeld
5/17

Big Euro Tasting, Part III: Remembrance of Bouquets Past

This will be the final installment on the European Wine Council's Third Annual Grand Tasting. I'll fill out the story with reports on wines from the French regions of Alsace, Champagne, Côtes du Rhone, and Germany.

I'll start with Alsace where I had a good time trying wines from Hugel. Hugel & Fils and Timbach are the two largest Alsatian producers and are the easiest to find. I tend to overlook outfits like them, take them for granted really, as my vinous adventures oft-times leads to small production "boutique" operations but, at least in the case of Hugel, I have been remiss in overlooking them. I was very impressed with the overall quality of their wines. They generally produce three different levels of quality. The first level comes from grapes grown throughout the region. The second level called "Hugel Tradition," comes from local vineyards, and the third level is called 'Jubilee," and these wines come from their own select vineyards. I started with their 1999 Pinot Blanc called Cuvée les Amours. It's the entry level with a list price of $12.49. My notes said, "round, yummy, and very good." I like Pinot Blanc, and it was a good example at a good price.

Their next wine was a 1998 Reserve Personnelle Tokay Pint Gris. The name Tokay Pinot Gris can be a little confusing. It is not the same as Tokay from Hungary, which is actually a place name, and it is in fact Pinot Gris. Even the name Pinot Gris is a little confusing. It means "Gray Pinot," and of course it is not gray. If you think of it as in between Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc you're getting the picture. The grape is on the pink side and the wine it makes is a white. Pinot Gris in Italian is Pinot Grigio and they are the same grape, but the Alsatian wines are usually superior to the Italians. The Hugel was a real beauty with perfume in the bouquet, and it had fresh fruit, richness, and harmony on the palate. It's $37.

After the Pinot Blanc and the Pinot Gris I wanted to try the Gewurztraminer that was listed in the tasting program, but there wasn't any at the table. The women doing the pouring, who were very nice, said that the Gewurz was around and that if I tried back later they would probably have a bottle. I said okay, and immediately started on the Rhone reds they were pouring for the same importer as Hugel. I really didn't think much of it. Very often I've said to servers, "Thanks for pouring your whites for me and I'll be back to try your reds later," and more times than I care to admit I don't make it back. These tastings can be like Coen Brothers movies; you never know where they are going to lead you, and how they are going to end up. So I started on reds and it was much to my pleasant surprise that when I was passing by the Hugel table a good hour later I heard, "Oh Mitch, we've got that Gewurztraminer!" It turned out to be a good thing that the EWC gave out those stinking badges, and I was very lucky to have such nice people working for Hugel that day. The Gewurz was a 1997 Jubilee and it was excellent. My notes said, "A beauty -- holds in there after the Chambertin [see Part II]. Spicy Gewurz nose, deep, rich, round, a winner." It's $34 and worth it. Hugel certainly came through that day.

Now on to those Rhone reds. Hugel's importer (Frederick Wildman & Sons) had three wines from the firm of Paul Jaboulet Ainé (P.J. the elder). First I tried their 1997 Côte Rôtie (The Roasted Coast). The notes: "Has a nice nose, a little veggie/spicy in the taste, a touch tannic at the aftertaste, not bad." Next up was a 1997 Crozes-Hermitage Domaine Thalabert. Crozes-Hermitage is an Appellation that surrounds the famous Hermitage Appellation. It's on lower more gentle slopes than Hermitage and it is not as good as Hermitage, but it can be a very good wine at a fraction of the price. Like Côte Rôtie and Hermitage it is made from Syrah. I remember the Thalabert as being a good wine in years past. I also remember it selling in the teens, but it lists for $29 now. The notes: "Has Syrah fruit, some richness, acidity OK, some length, better than the Côte Rôtie, very nice. They did a nice job with the Crozes as Côte Rôtie is considered to be the superior Appellation.

The last of these reds was a 1998 Gigondas Pierre Aiguille. My notes: "Lighter than the first two, has some fruit flavor, surprisingly harmonious and round, very nice now." It has a $28 list price. Gigondas is in the southern Rhone and 1998 was a great year there. The high quality of the vintage would account for the wine being so good, but I was a little surprised that it was drinking so well at such a young age. It would be a good wine to take home and open with dinner.

In between some red Burgundies I tried the offerings of two Champagne houses, Pol Roger (Pol is a variant of Paul) and Jacquart. The Pol Roger rep was pouring their 1993's. though they were not as good as their excellent 1990's (I am looking forward to '95 and '96) they were very nice wines. The '93 Brut exhibited good body and the '93 Brut Rose was dry and elegant with a nice creaminess in the nose and in the taste.

The gentleman from Jacquart told me that though relatively new to the U.S., Jacquart was very popular with the French and it was likely to be poured at weddings and Christenings all over France. (I somehow neglected to ask him about Bar Mitzvahs and I managed not to succumb to the temptation of asking him how many ships the French were launching these days.) If you like yeastiness in your Champagne you will certainly like the Jacquart wines. They are unmistakably authentic Champagnes. They have a good Non-Vintage Brut called Mosaïque. It has a nice creamy-yeastiness to it. Their '92 Blanc de Blancs showed some acidity, which should make it food-friendly, and it had a nice mouth-feel to compliment the yeastiness. Ii didn't care for their 1988 Cuvée Nominée, the yeastiness turned into leesy-cheesiness. At $50 to $60 a bottle I'd definitely skip it and go for their much better 1990 version of the same wine. They served it out of magnums (double bottles) and I had forgotten how much I liked methode champenois wines from magnums. Sparklers from magnums are more lush and rounder, and this was no exception, coming in rich, very creamy, and round. It was another first-rate 1990. Look for it and look for sparkling wine in magnums.

Sometime before finishing the tasting with Italians reds and a 1994 Late Bottled Vintage Port I had some interesting German wines from a firm I never heard of before, Dr. Zenzen. I started with a wine called, Culinaria Grauburgunder Spätlese trocken 1999. The name looks like quite a mouthful, but when you break it down it's not difficult at all, in fact it's quite informative. The only word in there I don't know, if it's a word at all, is "Culinaria." It looks suspiciously like "culinary" to me, and I'm going to assume that the good doctor is trying to tell us the wine is good with food. Grauburgunder is the name of the grape but let's skip that for the moment and come back to it in a little while. Spätlese means "late harvest," so they are telling you that the grapes stayed on the vine and had more time to ripen and pick up flavors than in a normal year. That's a good thing. Spätlese grade wines traditionally and usually have a noticeable sweetness, which in and of itself is neither good nor bad, but it terms of marketing it's a minus as there's just not that much demand for desert and sweet sipping wines, which leads us to the next word trocken. Trocken means "dry," so even though the wine is a Spätlese, which technically refers to the amount of sugar in the crushed grapes (the must), the sugar has been fermented to dryness. This wine has a residual sugar content of 0.77%, which isn't bone dry but it's not noticeably sweet either. It's just enough to give the wine a little roundness.

A person's threshold for detecting sweetness is at about one half of one percent. Leaving in one half or three quarters of a percent residual sugar is a common winemaking technique. These days it has been widely noted as having shown up in California Chardonnays of not the highest caliber. The Grauburgunder is 12.7% alcohol, which means if it had been fermented to total dryness it would have been close to 14% alcohol. That's very ripe for a wine from the northerly German vineyards. Now for the variety; if a New Yorker is a person or thing from New York, then a Burgunder is a person or thing from Burgundy. Grau is German for gray, so we have "The Gray Burgundy," which turns out to be a German Pinot Gris, and it's good too. It's made in stainless steel to preserve the fruit, it has a lovely nose, and it's only $8.99. It's something like an Alsatian (maybe a little lighter), which shouldn't be that surprising as Alsace isn't that far away. If you ever have a Pinot Gris tasting throw it in with the Alsatians, the Oregonians, and the Italians. It might not be the best wine in the tasting but it will certainly be one of the best values.

The next Dr.Zenzen wine I tried was called Alde Gott Spätburgunder Spätlese 1999. I'm not sure what "Alde Gott" means. I think "Gott" means God. It seems a little odd to have the deity on the label, so maybe it's someone's name. Anyway we know what Spätlese means, and we know what Burgunder means. That leaves us with "The Late Harvested Burgundy." That turns out to be Pinot Noir. Yes, the rarely exported German Pinot Noir. (Pinot Noir is usually considered to be an early variety but there is a minor red variety whose name is "Early Burgundy," so they were probably trying to avoid confusion.) Now every time, and I do mean every, I have seen a reference to a German Pinot Noir the writer has said they are not good wines and are best avoided. I can't give the wine a ringing endorsement, but it definitely was not that bad. It had a streak of veggie-funkiness, but I had that in California Pinots for decades. The phrase "CA PN funkiness," showed up in my notes for years. I still run into it in California now and again, albeit nowhere near as often as I used to. The wine wasn't funky enough to be objectionable. It was on the light side but it had a little depth. It's only $15 and an interesting change of pace from California and Burgundy. Maybe I just like interesting wines from out-of-the-way places, but I enjoyed trying it.

The last wine they had was a Valwiger Schwarzenberg Riesling Beerenauslese 1971. Yes, a fully 29-year-old wine and it was in no danger of going over the hill because of old age, but I'll come back to 1971. These German names are nothing if not logical and when you break them down they're not hard at all. A Valwiger is a wine from the town of Valwig. Schwarzenberg is the name of the vineyard. Berg means mountain, hill, or big rock outcropping, and Schwarz (or Schwartz) means black. The wine is from the Black Rock, or Black Mountain Vineyard of Valwig. Riesling is the name of the grape. It's a noble variety, one of the best white varieties in the world bar none, and is the best variety of Germany and probably of Alsace too. En in German is the plural, just as we use "s" or "es" in English. Beer doesn't refer to that other famous German beverage (that has an "i" in it) but to berries, to the grapes, and auslese means roughly "select late harvest." If this wine were from California they might have called it "Individually Bunch Selected Late Harvest Riesling." It's a desert wine and a magnificent one at that; 1971 was a legitimate contender for "Vintage of the Century." I don't know if it was or not, but I do know that there has been no better vintage since then, so that makes it a contender right there. I was lucky enough to go through a few 1971's in my time.

The second line of my notes reads, "honey and herbs, not that sweet on the palate, ahh." The first line says, "Smells like 1971!" Am I telling you that I always remembered what 1971 German Rieslings smelled like? Well, no. I'm not that presumptuous. I did know exactly what the wine was before my sensory apparatus sampled it, so maybe I was psychologically forewarned, but I don't think so. I recognized a '71 by its bouquet but I don't say that to brag. It seemed like my sensory apparatus and long term memory did all by themselves. I didn't have to do any work. I didn't feel like I was doing anything. It just happened. It's funny what you remember. Do you remember the scene in Citizen Kane when Mr. Thompson went to visit the old Mr. Bernstein to ask him if he remembered anything about Rosebud?

"Do I have time? I'm Chairman of the Board. I have nothing but time."

"Do you ever remember Mr. Kane saying something about 'Rosebud?'"

"You know it's funny what you remember. I remember one time when I was taking a ferry. I was standing at the railing looking across at the other ferry in the opposite slip and there was a girl standing there. She was wearing a white dress and she was the most beautiful girl I ever saw. I never saw here again but you know hardly a month goes by when I don't think of that girl."

"Rosebud Mr. Bernstein?

No, I don't ever..."

Well, Mr. Bernstein (or Welles or Mankewicz) was right. It is funny what you remember. I remember the last time I had a 1971. It was in the summer of 1979, right around the time that Thurman Munson died. (He was a great Yankee catcher.) The wine was a Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese from J.J. Prum. It was a real beauty with impeccable balance. (It was about $5. The cost of the current vintage has probably quintupled by now.) I had split a case with my brother, the 60 bucks required for a case being rather steep for either one of us at the time. Remarkably, my old college sweetheart had moved into my neighborhood, and I brought my last bottle with me when I went to see her. I knew that Nancy had been lost to me forever, after all I was going to meet her husband, but I didn't know that she was six or seven months pregnant. Not that it needed to be, but there's nothing like a third trimester belly to drive the point home.

I moved out at the end of the year and I never did see her again, but I remember it well. Obviously I remembered the wine, and I remember something about wine that her husband Doug said. (She called him "Douglas," but I knew he was a "Doug." It's a guy thing.) He had heard from someone that you could get excellent wines -- though not the best -- for reasonable prices, and that the best wines were much more expensive though they were only incrementally better than the merely excellent ones. He asked me if this was true. I had never heard that before, but it sounded reasonable enough so, being something of a know-it-all from way back, I authoritatively agreed. It's funny but there was a lot of truth to it then and there's a lot of truth to it now. You can get one heck of a Cabernet Sauvignon for $50. You can get one rated in the low- to mid-nineties for 50 bucks, but $100 is only going to get you a few more points. He was talking about diminishing returns. If you're not a millionaire don't sweat it, there's plenty of good stuff out there.

It is funny what you remember, but I don't think I'd remember that day as much if we were drinking Budweiser, or even something really good such as an Anchor Steam Christmas Ale. Beer is good and I like it but it just doesn't have the breadth and depth that good wine has, and it doesn't do as much with food. Distilled spirits, especially brandy (think Cognac) can certainly be complex but they need water on the side and they really don't do it with food. I'm sure you remember what I always say: "The wine's the thing."

I wonder if my brother would be interested in six bottles of the '99?

© Mitch Kornfeld 2001 All rights reserved

Send your comments or questions to...
mitchk@unionsquarejournal.com


Previously by Mitch Kornfeld...

Big Euro Tasting, Part II -- Greater Burgundy (05/09/01)

Grand European Tasting (05/01/01)

King Cab, Part V -- Spain, Chile, Argentina, Australia (04/18/01)

King Cab, Part IV -- Italy (04/04/01)

King Cab, Part III -- California (03/21/01)

King Cab, Part II -- Bordeaux (03/07/01)

King Cab, Part I -- Some Basics (02/27/01)

For a Big Red, Think Petite (02/18/02)

Tannic Monsters from the ID (02/08/01)

New York Wine and Restaurant Deals (01/30/01)

Dad's Cardinal Zins and Other Clichés (01/20/01)

Some Basics for a Winter's Eve (01/12/01)

And if They're Spanish That's Fine (01/05/01)

Hello Carbon Dioxide (12/29/00)

Wines for Christmas (12/22/00)

Nouveau Beaujolais, Etc. (11/24/00)

Going to a Tasting 101 (12/01/00)