Author: Thomas Wilcox

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Classy New Red Bordeaux: 91-point 2016 Cru Bourgeois. $25

Bordeaux is home to many of the most famous and expensive wines in the world. But it’s a huge region, and also produces wines that dramatically overperform their pricetag. One of our favorite places to find value in Bordeaux is at the Cru Bourgeois level.

This Médoc classification, revived in 2010, is earned each year, and awarded based on the quality of the wine rather than the name of the chateau. Of the few hundred cuvées awarded the status each year, the best include, to quote Vinous’s Neal Martin, “a clutch of fabulous wines that I bet could be sneaked into a blind tasting of Grand Cru Classé and nobody would notice.”

Today’s wine is a case in point: a no-brainer everyday Bordeaux for $5/glass.

Last year many readers picked up the 2010 Ramafort, a delightful wine with a few years under its belt. This year we’re suggesting a more recent vintage — the 2016 has just arrived and it’s terrific. The 50/50 Cab/Merlot blend is a younger, fresher take on the terroir, but one with silky tannins and a perfectly balanced texture.

Martin awarded 91 points, finding “a very attractive bouquet with blackberry, briary and cedar aromas.” He went on to find “fine grain tannin” and a “silky finish,” before concluding finally “Yes, yes, yes!” Martin suggests a 2020-2035 drinking window — based on how well last night’s bottle went down with a plate of ribs, we don’t think the case in our cellar will til the end of 2020.

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Ramafort Cru Bourgeois 2016
bottle price: $25

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“An Exercise in Harmony:” Silky Smooth 2017 Premier Cru Red Burgundy

Earlier this week we tasted through Pierre Amiot’s lineup of 2018s. The new vintage is excellent — full, ripe, and lush, but with bold foundation and plenty of material. The Amiots sent along bottles of 2017 to taste side by side, and the comparison was fascinating.

Both 2017 and 2018 are ripe vintages with plentiful fruit, but their underlying textures are worlds apart. Where 2018 tastes young and a touch rustic today, 2017 is already silky smooth. With appealing tannins and relatively low acids, the 17 Red Burgundies have been delightful from the start. Burghound calls it a “user-friendly vintage,” and we agree.

Today we’re suggesting Amiot’s 2017 MSD 1er cru “Aux Charmes.” Their delicious 2018s will be in this Sunday’s Futures release, and due to arrive in July — but this 2017 is in stock today.

The 2017 red Burgundies are gloriously easy to drink. They’re not flat or dull — there’s enough balance and tension to earn their Burgundian heritage — but they’re simply delicious. Amiot’s “aux Charmes” comes from a premier cru plot adjoining the great Grand Cru Charmes-Chambertin, and its name is apt. The wine always shows a silky, charming texture, but in 2017 it’s pleasant a few years ahead of schedule.

Tasting on Sunday, we found the Charmes 17 outstanding. The nose shows candied red fruits and faint toast; the mouth is silky smooth with intense red cherry and cinnamon spice. The tannins are papery, muted, and fine, showing the texture of a far more mature wine. Burghound found notes of “plum, violet and dark currant,” calling it “an exercise in harmony.”

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Amiot Morey-St-Denis 1er “Charmes” 2018
bottle price: $75

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Crisp Alsatian Aperitif: Dry, Refreshing Pinot Blanc, $18

Winemaker:   Christophe Mersiol’s wines embody the Alsace’s signature blend of fruit, flowers, and freshness. He attributes the exceptional purity in his wines to organic agriculture. They’re humble, well priced, and just delicious.

Varietal:   Pinot Auxerrois is a relative of Pinot Blanc, known for its viscosity and round, soft mouthfeel. In the wrong hands it can be flat and muted, but Mersiol’s is lively and fresh, full of energy and flowers.

Wine:   The 2018 Auxerrois has just arrived, and it’s delicious: straightforward, utterly drinkable wine. The nose shows green apples, honey, stones and wildflowers. The mouth is dry, smooth, and fresh, with tropical notes of mango and pineapple. At 12% alcohol it’s lively and crisp.

Pairing:   This is perfect background music — a glass to enjoy while you’re doing something else. Pair with a good book or cheese on crackers.

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Mersiol Auxerrois 2018
bottle price: $18

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[Advance Order] Punchy New 2018 Bourgogne Rouge

We’ve gathered the Ansonia team in Maine this week to taste through nearly 100 wines for the next two Futures issues. (We know, we know — someone’s gotta do it.) By this point in the year we usually have a good feel for the vintage, having spent a week tasting in Burgundy — but our cancelled trip means we’ve had to wait for samples to arrive from France.

In the meantime we’ve been reading up on the 2018s. It was an unusual vintage in Burgundy — even amid a trend of warmer and earlier vintages, this one stands out: record breaking temperatures, an early budbreak, enormous yields and high sugar levels. Many winemakers drew comparisons to 2003, but credited a very wet winter with 2018’s much better balance — same heat, less drought.

As usual, our first reds from the vintage come from Pierre Amiot, a family domaine in the heart of Burgundy. Amiot’s entire lineup of 2018 reds will be in next Sunday’s May Futures release, but we’re beginning today with their simplest: 2018 Bourgogne rouge.

The wine writers’ notes on 2018 reds are full of qualified enthusiasm. The best are said to be ripe, rich, mouthfilling, bold, and delicious — Vinous’s Neal Martin found “a sense of nascent joie-de-vivre” across the vintage. But wines picked too late can be overripe — blowsy, unbalanced wines that lack definition and character. “Very ripe wines of highly variable quality,” concluded Allen Meadows (Burghound).

With these reviews in mind, we wondered if Amiot’s 2018 Bourgogne might be a New Worldy fruit-bomb — pleasant, but neither balanced nor Burgundian. We needn’t have worried: the wine bursts with ripe, juicy fruit, but stands sturdily on the classical pillars of structure and freshness.

We found a pleasant, darkly floral wine, with notes of honey, plum/cherry jam, and black licorice in the nose. The mouth is punchy and juicy but with great definition — gulpable fruit with a precise, delineated finish. At the price, it’s a perfect picnic Pinot, due to arrive in time for July on the back patio.

As usual with this wine, quantities are limited; first come, first served. If there’s any left we’ll include it in next Sunday’s May Futures release.

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Amiot Bourgogne 2018
Futures price: $285/case

To order this wine, email Tom

 

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Back in Stock: Perfectly Refreshing $25 Sancerre

Our Burgundy focus means we write a lot about subtlety: the nuances of terroir, the intricacies of weather patterns, etc. But sometimes we like to drink wine that’s a bit simpler — not boring or one-dimensional, just uncomplicated enjoyment.

The WSJ’s Lettie Teauge once described Sancerre as a wine about “pleasure not profundity.” And often, particularly in warm summer weather, this is all we’re looking for. Our newest Sancerre has just arrived in the warehouse (along with 16 other exciting new wines).

Last year readers quickly made the Garenne Sancerres a staple of their summer tables, and we’re confident this year’s will be just as popular.

Located along the banks of the Loire River in central France, Sancerre produces wines from pure Sauvignon Blanc. The wine typically combines ripe, juicy grapefruit notes with a lively minerality, often notes of flint, and pleasant herbal finish.

Garenne’s 2019 Sancerre fits this ideal perfectly — it’s bone dry with pure sauvignon grapefruit in the nose. In the mouth it’s lively but with no astringency or grassiness — a warm vintage gave added weight but no less freshness. Its terroir is a mix of Sancerre’s three soil types (limestone, clay/limestone, and flint), and the wine shows an appealing ripeness alongside the stones.

Serve this with goat cheese on crackers, or chicken on the grill, or a warm summer afternoon (whenever those get around to happening).

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Garenne Sancerre 2019
bottle price: $25

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Intense, Refreshing 91 point Gigondas: “Supple and Seamless.” $28

Winemaker:   For many years our pick from Gigondas (as well as Robert Parker’s and Jancis Robinson’s) has been the Domaine les Goubert. The always-excellent wines are even more refined since the family’s daughter Florence took over the winemaking a few years ago.

Appellation:   Gigondas as always been our favorite well-priced alternative to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It provides intense, mouthfilling wines full of character and vibrancy. As Vinous reviewer Josh Raynolds put it recently, “in the context of the world’s best wines, almost every Gigondas delivers solid and even remarkable value.”

Wine:   We’ve restocked on a few cases of back vintage Goubert from our offsite warehouse. This 2014 is beautiful and subtle today. The nose is dark and spiced, with elegant notes of raspberry, strawberry jam, lavender, and garrigue. The fruits in the mouth have softened and dried a bit, leaving gorgeous earthy notes alongside minerals and spices.

Raynolds awarded 91 points, finding “intense raspberry, cherry, and floral pastille flavors that caress the palate. At 13.5% alcohol, this delivers the intensity and complexity of southern Rhône wines, without an ounce of weightiness. This is a drink-now beauty for your cellar’s shoulder season.

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Goubert Gigondas 2014
bottle price: $28

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Exquisite Dry Alsatian Riesling: Wildflowers and Granite

There’s something about drinking wine outside that makes it come alive. And between a tardy spring and current restraints on outdoor activity, we find ourselves savoring the hours en plein air even more. A glass of something tasty at just the right temperature is the perfect ideal to a spring afternoon.

And wherever it is you’re finding that splash of sun on your face these days, we’ve got a wine to suggest: dry Alsatian Riesling. There’s no more underappreciated grape, nor one quite as perfectly suited to the springtime.

Mersiol’s 2016 Riesling Grand Cru Frankstein somehow continues to get better. Grown organically and crafted by a centuries-old Alsatian family, this wine perfectly conveys the picturesque landscape of its origin. Crisp notes of lime zest and melon with a vibrant, precise minerality bolster an expressive nose of elderflower and peach.

This wine is a symphony of spring that calls to mind a landscape of wildflowers and vines sprouting from the granite slope. Whether it’s a patio, a porch, a roofdeck or just an open window, pour yourself a glass, close your eyes, and take a long breath from the glass. (If you get hungry: sushi.)

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Mersiol Riesling Grand Cru “Frankstein” 2016
bottle price: $29

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“Plum and Earth:” Delicious 2015 Premier Cru Red Burgundy. $36

Winemaker:   Roger Belland and his daughter Julie are 5th and 6th generation winemakers in Santenay, at the southern end of the Côte d’Or. The domaine’s wines are so approachable young that they’re often not given the chance to age – today’s is an argument for patience.

Vintage:   The 2015 vintage in Red Burgundy has been called one of the best in decades. Ideal growing conditions produced perfectly ripe fruit, resulting in wines that are full bodied, deeply colored, and simply delicious.

Appellation:  Located at the southern end of the Côte de Beaune, Santenay is a transition between the rugged, earthy Côte Chalonnaise, and the refined, subtle terroirs of Chassagne-Montrachet and north. Its whites and reds can be excellent values, particularly in the hands of a careful vigneron like Bellland — Clive Coates calls Belland “among the best sources in Santenay.”

Wine:   This wine has developed beautifully over the past few years; the fruit has smoothed and softened, melting beautifully into the gentle tannins. Burghound awarded 90 points citing “exceptionally rich flavors,” “liqueur-like aromas of plum and earth,” and a “delicious, sappy, and palate-coating finish.”

Pairing:   Veal and Mushrooms in Cream

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Belland Santenay 1er “Beauregard” 2015
bottle price: $36

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Power in Pomerol: Velvet, Blackberry, Cedar

Pomerol is Bordeaux on a Burgundy scale. The small right bank appellation covers less than three square miles, and is home to only 150 winemakers. But the wines of Pomerol are anything but small. In his iconic World Atlas of Wine, Hugh Johnson calls Pomerol “richest, most velvety and instantly appealing form of red Bordeaux.”

Planted in most other locales, Merlot produces soft, flat, undistinguished wines. But in Pomerol, the grape soars, producing some of the world’s most intense and expensive wines. Like Chardonnay in Chablis, Syrah in Côte Rôtie, it’s a persuasive argument for the power of terroir.

Clemence 2016 is classic Pomerol — bold, rich, and smooth. The average vines in the tiny 7 acre vineyard are over 50 years old, and winemaker Christian Dauriac keeps yields low, often near 20 hectolitres per hectare. The result is a mouthfilling wine that ages beautifully.

Decanter’s reviewer Jane Anson found the 2016 “delivering a punch that almost knocks you off your feet with tight black coffee on a hugely concentrated palate with big tannins.” She counseled beginning to drink it in seven years — we’ll be trying one out in five. If you’ve got cellar space and a bit of patience, this is a terrific investment.

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Clemence Pomerol 2016
bottle price: $99

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Inky, Smooth Saint-Estèphe: Overperforming 6-Year-Old Bordeaux. $34

We don’t import much Bordeaux. Burgundy’s scale and culture have always fit us better: smaller estates, a less formal atmosphere, etc. But it’s no secret that Bordeaux makes some extraordinary wines, and we’re glad to have some in our portfolio.

One of the most exciting discoveries in recent years has been the Fleuron de Liot — a Saint-Estèphe from a tiny Burgundy-scale 1.5 acre plot on Bordeaux’s Left Bank. It’s equal parts Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, and just keeps getting better.

This wine has overperformed its price tag since it arrived a few years ago. But now six years on from harvest, the 2014 is just terrific. It’s inky and intense — the unusually high percentage of Merlot gives it a velvety texture, which melts beautifully into the masculine Cabernet tannins.

We opened a bottle recently with steak frites, and the match was perfect harmony. The nose shows dried licorice, berries, iodine, maillard, and dried black currants. The mouthfeel is dense and sophisticated, with a long, clean, supple finish.

Cos d’Estournel 2014, Saint-Estèphe’s most famous estate, retails for around $250/bottle these days. We’re not claiming equivalence between the two wines, but at less than one seventh the price, Fleuron de Liot an overperforming, drink-now steal. Carafe it for a half hour.

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Fleuron de Liot St-Estèphe 2014
bottle price: $34

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Cool, Earthy, Smooth: Old-Vine Loire Cab Franc. $22

Winemaker:   Fabien Demois is a young winemaker crafting subtle, pure, organic cuvées. He took over his family’s hundred-year-old domaine ten years ago, and has converted his vineyards to organic. His wines are humble, pure, well-made, and great values.

Appellation:   Chinon is at the heart of the central Loire Valley. Its reds from pure Cabernet Franc are often a mouthful of punchy tannins in their youth — NYT writer Eric Asimov calls Chinon “a red with attitude.” But after a few years they soften and gain earthy, secondary notes.

Wine:   We enjoy young Chinon, but today’s wine is an argument for patience. This 2015 old-vine Chinon has matured magnificently; the tannins gently underly a sweet patina or violets, berries, licorice, graphite, and earth. The palate plays high red berry notes alongside low inviting earthy ones in perfect harmony.

Pairing:   A springtime salad or a simple French braised chicken thighs.

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Demois Chinon VV 2015
bottle price: $22

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Brilliant, Unoaked Premier Cru 2018 White Burgundy

Winemaker:   Thirty-something winemaker Cyril Gautheron has elevated his family domaine in Chablis to new heights. His fanatical attention to detail and purity results in an astonishing clarity and precision in his wines. He relies on terroir and skill – rather than oak – to craft his wines.

Appellation:   Chablis is Chardonnay at its most elemental. With little or no oak in most cuvées, the region’s singular stony, fossil-filled terroir shows through in the wine. Vaucoupin is a premier cru on Chablis’s right bank, but one without the same seriousness of Montée de Tonnerre or Mont de Milieu. It’s more floral, saline, smooth and welcoming.

Wine:   Gautheron’s 2018 Vaucoupin is just delicious. It’s very long, ripe, and full of tension. There’s no oak to obscure the gorgeous ripe fruit, and the nose bursts with spring flowers and dry lemon fruit. The mouth shows the unmistakable power of premier cru terroir, and the finish is noticeably longer and more elegant than the Petit Chablis or Vieilles Vignes.

Pairing:   Spring Vegetable Goat Cheese Tart

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Gautheron Chablis 1er “Vaucoupin” 2018
bottle price: $35

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Back in Stock: Masterful 2015 Red Burgundy under $40

Great Burgundy vintages tend to have two lives: a pleasant, fruit-filled youth, and a mature, sophisticated adulthood. And between these two windows, there’s often an awkward phase (call it the teenage years) where even the best wines in top vintages are quiet and underwhelming.

The fancier the wine, the longer this “dumb” period lasts. But for simpler wines there’s often no awkward phase at all, and such is the case with today’s suggestion: an entry-level wine from a master winemaker in one of the best vintages in a generation, showing magnificently now five years on from harvest.

Michel Gros’s 2015 village and premier cru wines are a bit quiet these days. (If you’ve got some in your cellar don’t worry, you’ll be happy you do.) But his 2015 Hautes-Côtes is in a perfect place today.

Everyone made good wine in 2015 — and the greatest winemakers’ results were extraordinary. Michel Gros is on Clive Coates’s MW list of the 17 top domaines in Burgundy, alongside Ramonet, DRC, Leroy, and de Vogüé. In any year Gros’s regional-level wines are always an excellent value, but in a vintage like 2015, they’re simply stunning.

The 2015 HCDN rouge from Gros has the refinement and complexity you’d expect from a $60 bottle. The nose is deep and woodsy, showing dry cherries, roses, smoke, and a hint of Vosne spice. The mouth is smooth and refined, with finely knit tannins and elegant finish of cocoa, raspberry, and cloves.

For a Burgundy lover, this is about as good a wine as $35 will ever buy.

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Gros Hautes-Côtes de Nuits 2015
bottle price: $35

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Bistro Wine: 2012 Red Bordeaux. $25

Bordeaux is best known for its serious wines — famous cuvées that fetch thousands of dollars and require decades to reach their potential. But it’s a large region, with lots of affordable, well-made wines from excellent terroir.

Today’s wine is a perfect example: an equal blend of Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot from the Left Bank appellation of Graves. It’s rich, bold, and full of character; it’s also matured perfectly since we imported it several years ago.

This doesn’t make Haut-Brion promises, but it well overperforms $5/glass.

Winemaker: Eric Fonta; the Fonta family has owned Chateau Léhoul since 1798

Appellation: Graves; just south of the city of Bordeaux, known for its gravel-filled soils

Wine: It rarely makes economic sense for us to age a $25 wine for 8 years — (a happy accident led us to forget about this for a while) — but this makes us want to do it more often. This is gorgeous today: dark plum, woods, pan drippings in the nose. The mouth is clean, inky and serious, with dried blackberry fruits and notes of bay leaf and menthol.

Paring: Steak, as brown as you can make it.

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Léhoul Graves 2012
bottle price: $25

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Springtime in a Glass: New Dry Organic Pinot Blanc. $22

Winemaker:  Vincent Gross is a fourth generation winemaker just outside Colmar in Alsace. He crafts exquisite, biodynamic cuvées from a handful of grapes, each a precise expression of terroir and technique. Ranging from dry to sweet, and from red to white or orange, Gross’s wines are exciting and bursting with life.

Varietal:  Pinot Blanc is a humble grape, known for its soft texture and round mouthfeel. It’s pleasant rather than profound, showing exotic notes of pineapple, orchard fruit, and a soft minerality. It ranges from off-dry to dry — today’s is dry.

Wine:  Gross’s 2018 Pinot Blanc is utterly pleasant. The nose bursts with honey, lime, minerals, and lemon peel. The mouth is softer than Gross’s Riesling, with notes of apple, pear and lychee. Though it bursts onto the palate with ripe, mouth filling fruit, it finishes quite dry and clean; and at 12% alcohol you could even serve it before lunch.

Pairing:  We love using wines like this as an aperitif — they’re perfect springtime background music, with a window open and a gentle breeze, or (conditions permitting) perched on your front stoop. But we’d also pair them with sushi, or cheese on crackers.

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Gross Pinot Blanc 2018
bottle price: $22

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