We spent yesterday afternoon tasting the 2017s at the Domaine des Varoilles. Winemaker Gilbert Hammel is a softspoken man making red Burgundies that are anything but. Gevrey-Chambertin is typically a bold, masculine wine, and the Varoilles cuvées are even moreso.
We spent yesterday tasting in the Northern Rhône Valley. From 9am through 5:30pm, we tasted dozens of meaty, intense, sinewy Syrahs, from appellations like Cornas, St-Joseph, Côte Rôtie, and Crozes Hermitage. They were chewy, delicious, and exhausting. After a day of teeth-staining reds, our final appointment finished with a golden, shimmering white wine: Condrieu from […]
White Burgundy is among the food-friendliest wines around. It works at the high end – think a perfectly aged Meursault, open for an hour, with veal medallions in just the right amount cream, a hint of lemon, carefully sauteed mushrooms, a sprig of parsley… you get the idea.
We’re making our way up the Rhône River this week — tonight we’re in Tain l’Hermitage, the southern gateway to the Northern Rhône Valley. (Follow our video blog: FB, IG, YT.) Today we visited one of the original members of the Ansonia portfolio, the Domaine les Goubert in Gigondas.
Greetings from the continent! We landed in Paris this morning and caught the TGV south to Avignon. We’re here for the next few weeks, tasting in the Southern Rhône, Northern Rhône, and Burgundy — follow our tasting trip video blog (starting tomorrow) on Facebook, Instagram, and our blog.
For years we’ve referred to St-Aubin as the “insider’s white Burgundy.” But it’s hard to keep a secret when Rajat Parr writes writes “it produces some of the best-value Chardonnays in the world,” and Jancis Robinson says it “should now be regarded as virtually the equal” of Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet.
Of the 45 winemakers we work with, about half are from Burgundy, and all but a few are French. Our longtime exception to this rule is the Fattoria Poggerino, a source for pure Sangiovese wines from the hills of Chianti.
To the uninitiated, Riesling is a cheap, insipid wine — rarely interesting, and never noble. But to those in the know, Riesling produces some of the world’s most extraordinary bottles of wine.
Most of the world’s Merlot is undistinguished. Its default expression is a soft, rounded wine lacking tannin, acidity, and character. “Global” merlot is smooth and easy, but neither distinctive nor particularly interesting.
“Oaked” or “unoaked” sounds like a yes-no question, but it really is a range. Most of the wines we import spend some time in oak, but the strength of its influence depends on the age and size of the barrel, the chauffe (how heavily the inside is charred), and time in the barrel.
