Hot weather makes wine pairing tricky. Our main criteria for summer wines are threefold: low alcohol, good acidity, and chillable. White wine is the obvious choice, but we enjoy serving a few of our reds cool from time to time. The best of these are what the French call vins de soif — wines for thirst.
July is here and tomatoes are finally back in season. Whether cooked and tossed with pasta and parmesan, or sliced raw and served with mozzarella, olive oil, and crunchy salt, they’re a staple of summer chez nous. (Or, rather, a casa.)
In France, Pommard has a reputation as a vin de garde (wine to cellar). Grown in clay- and limestone-rich soils, the wines are full of muscle, richness, and spice. A favorite of Thomas Jefferson, Pommard has made classic, well-respected red wines since at least the middle ages.
On most maps, Santenay is the last town in Burgundy’s famous Côte d’Or. Forever second fiddle to its famous neighbor Chassagne-Montrachet to the north, Santenay nonetheless produces excellent wines. With neither the staying power nor the tannic structure of wines from Chassagne, they are often far easier to enjoy young.
Here’s a 2 minute video overview of the July 2016 Futures issue. Ansonia Futures offers near-wholesale pricing through advance orders.
Chardonnay inhabits nearly every corner of the wine world, but nowhere does it reach the same expression as in Burgundy. The gently sloping hillsides of Burgundy are uniquely suited to growing perfectly balanced Chardonnay — sunny enough to ripen grapes fully, but northern enough to retain enough acidity to provide lively freshness.
Gevrey-Chambertin is the largest appellation of Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. And because of its clay rich soils, its wines are of a similarly grand scale. Known for power and longevity, Gevrey-Chambertin often shows dark, intense fruit and a sturdy tannic structure.
“Puligny-Montrachet is the greatest white wine commune on earth.” Thus begins the chapter on the town in Clive Coates’s seminal tome on Burgundy. The tiny appellation covers less than a single square mile, and though neighbored on either side by the legendary towns of Meursault and Chassagne, many consider Puligny the source for the world’s finest white wine.
Cabernet Sauvignon is the world’s most widely planted grape. It’s grown everywhere — from Bordeaux to Brazil to British Columbia — and comes in a wide variety of textures and expressions. Cabernet Sauvignon is a cross, likely spontaneous, between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc — a gift from the winemaking gods.
Francis Muré’s Alsatian Riesling has long been one of our most popular wines. We’ve used this wine to cure dozens of tasters of their “Riesling fear” — it’s bone-dry, crisp, and as refreshing as a Sancerre or Chablis. There’s plenty of sweet, heavy, uninteresting Riesling around, but after one taste of this and you’ll want to reexamine the grape.
Burgundy and Bordeaux are the two giants French wine. In nearly every aspect — style, tradition, grape varietal, scale — they are opposites. As a small père et fils enterprise, Ansonia’s model fits far better with Burgundy, and we work with more than four Burgundy sources for every one in Bordeaux.
Time can have an extraordinary effect on a bottle of wine. Not all wines are meant to age, and indeed the world’s style continues to shift towards early maturity. But for wines that are designed to be cellared, the transformation by bottle aging is nothing short of magic.
The July Fourth weekend is just nine days away. A local beer might seem the patriotic choice, but we’ll throw our hat into the ring in case you’re moved to support your enterprising local importers. It was the struggle against import tariffs, after all, that helped kick off this whole experiment.
Recap from Paris | 6.20.16
For winemakers in Burgundy, finding enough sun is a perennial concern, and an unusually rainy year like 2016 can make life difficult. In the Languedoc, France’s southernmost region, the concern is just the opposite: how to harvest grapes with enough acidity to preserve freshness.