Pascal Bardoux is our grower Champagne producer just west of Reims. His Pinot-Meunier dominant cuvées are carefully crafted and perfectly elegant. Amid Champagne’s haze of le marketing and glossy promotion, Bardoux’s wines are quietly brilliant.
Winemaker Frederic Michot is as brisk and energetic as his wines. He talks (and drives) fast, and sports the same no-nonsense attitude found in a glass of his Pouilly-Fumé: pure Sauvignon blanc, no oak, clean and crisp.
The Domaine les Goubert is among the most consistent winemakers in our portfolio. No matter the vintage – warm or cool, sunny or wet, easy or difficult — the Goubert wines are reliably outstanding.
Today we’re sharing an exciting discovery from earlier this year: a new grower Champagne producer. The Domaine Jacques Robin is a tiny source in the Côtes des Bar, a southern satellite subregion of Champagne. We’re among their first US importers, and found their wines charming and extremely well priced.
There’s no better match for wintery weather than Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The best Châteauneufs all contain a splash of southern sunlight, combining the region’s rugged, sunbaked earthiness with rich, mouthfilling fruit.
The 2018 vintage was a warm one in Burgundy. The grapes were ripe and full, and the harvest began in September in 86 degree heat. We visited France around harvest time in 2018, and wondered aloud whether the wines would be warm and missing balance. At least in the Maconnais, we needn’t have worried. The […]
Experienced collectors often say that Burgundy’s best values come from a great winemaker’s simpler wines. Today’s winemaker, Michel Gros, is world famous for his exquisite, high-end red Burgundies – several older vintages of his finer cuvées are listed here.
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 landmark World Atlas of Wine, Hugh Johnson calls Pomerol “richest, most velvety and instantly appealing form of red Bordeaux.”
Amid Champagne’s glitz and glamour, winemaker Pascal Bardoux stands out. His cuvées are quietly exceptional — his tasting room is his small untidy office, where we taste slowly and thoughtfully from an old beat-up leather sofa. “Le marketing” is nowhere to be seen.
This April, during a tasting at Domaine des Varoilles with owner Gilbert Hammel, he left the room suddenly, saying “I think I have something you might be interested in.” He returned with a bottle of 2014 Gevrey-Chambertin, but a cuvée we didn’t recognize from his price list or vineyard map.
Pouilly-Fuissé was once the darling of American wine drinkers. Fun to pronounce, rich and voluptuous in texture, it was among the first high-end French wines to gain wide appeal in the US.
The famous wine writer Hugh Johnson once wrote, “If one had to single out one commune of Bordeaux to head the list, there would be no argument. It would be Pauillac.” Best known for its three superstar chateaux – Latour, Lafite-Rothschild, and Mouton-Rothschild — Pauillac also offers excellent, less famous wines from its storied terroir.
For many years at the start of every tasting, Rhône winemaker Denis Basset would give us small taste of his only white. “Just to set the palate,” he’d explain, before continuing on to his rich, syrah-based reds. The white was always lovely — floral and fresh, beautifully expressive, and a perfect way to start a tasting.
The Domaine Ravaut is the ultimate local wine source. For 120 years the family has cultivated a loyal clientele of friends, neighbors, and workers at the stone quarry in their tiny hamlet of Ladoix. Today winemaker Vincent Ravaut still sells over half their wine to folks who walk in the front door.
These days cellaring wine has become a rarity. Not all wines are meant to age, and indeed the wine world’s style continues to shift toward early maturity. But for wine that rewards patience, the transformation of bottle aging is nothing short of magic.