It was last year that we first stopped at the unassuming doorstep of Frederic Michot. We had little more to go on than a brief note in a French wine guide promising small scale, excellent Pouilly-Fumé. The rutted tracks in the ridges above the hamlet led to a modest house with a small tasting room.
White Châteauneuf-du-Pape is rare. Nearly 95% of the appellation’s wines are red, and because of the warm climate and abundant sunshine, it’s difficult to make wines with good balance. But in the hands of a careful winemaker, the unusual white grapes can produce beautiful and astonishing wines.
The Northern Rhône is best known for its all-syrah reds from Côte Rôtie and Hermitage. These spiced, inky wines are precise expressions of a unique marriage of grape and land — nowhere else does syrah taste quite like this. Most bottles from Hermitage and Côte Rôtie, however, require diligent cellaring, and start north of $50 a bottle.
For about a thousand years between the 5th and 15th centuries, French monasteries were the center of the winemaking world. It was the monks, tasting the products of the rich Burgundian soils (and often the soils themselves), who first developed the idea of terroir.
We spend more time in Burgundy than Bordeaux. Our small import business is usually a better fit with the family-run domaines of Burgundy than the large chateaux of Bordeaux. But we’ve been lucky enough to find a few Burgundy-scale producers in Bordeaux: small families making excellent wine away from the spotlight and marketing of the rest of the region.
The best known domaines in our portfolio are two sources of classic Red Burgundy: the Domaine Michel Gros and the Domaine Pierre Amiot. Their wineries are just three miles apart, and they both farm plots along the world’s most famous stretch of vines. Winemakers Michel Gros and Jean-Louis Amiot were even grade school friends.
During our trips to France, we like to eat at restaurants with good local wine lists. It’s a great way to broaden our regional palates, and sometimes we even discover a new wine for our portfolio. At dinner on a Séguret terrace this June we had the nicest surprise discovery in red Rhône wine that we’ve had in years.
The year is 1895. The United States number 44, and Grover Cleveland is president. Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey are born, and inventor George Selden receives a patent for the automobile. And cross the ocean in France (then a six-day crossing by boat), a vineyard of grenache is planted just outside Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Like Chablis, the Chianti name has had a rough time of it over the years. A straw-covered “fiasco” bottle with candle wax dripping down its sides still jumps to the minds of most consumers, and for a long time Chianti’s former reputation as cheap wine of low quality was well deserved.
Burgundy can be a difficult region for budding wine enthusiasts. Confusing classifications, high entry fees, and finicky grapes can make it a tough region to crack. But to those looking for a good place to start, we can think of no better one than the Domaine Roger Belland.
The organic wine movement is alive and well in France. Every year we see more producers transitioning to organic winemaking, or at least making steps toward in that direction. Some have been at it longer than others, but no one boasts a longer history than our newest source in Châteauneuf-du-Pape: the domaine Pierre André — organic for 35 years, and biodynamic for 24.
Sauvignon Blanc has seen a surge in popularity in recent decades. It’s hard to find a wine list these days without examples from New Zealand, California and Washington. But the original source for Sauvignon Blanc is France’s Loire Valley, where the grape (known there simply as “Sauvignon”) has been grown since the 1700s.
Autumn has begun to make its entrance. The days may still be warm and long, and for some there may be baseball left to play. But as the harvest begins once again in France, and the most precocious leaves catch fire, the season’s change is undeniable.
Much of the white Burgundy we import comes from the three usual suspects — Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet. These classic wines usually start at around $60 a bottle, and while they’re delicious (see current Futures), we try to find a wide range of character and price. Some of our favorites come from the towns just over the border from these three.
Burgundy and Bordeaux are the two giants of French wine. In nearly every aspect — style, tradition, grape varietal, scale — they are opposites. Ansonia’s scale fits far better into Burgundy than Bordeaux; but the wines of Bordeaux continue to intrigue us, and we’re always on the hunt for something new there.