Ask a group of sommeliers to name their favorite wine region and most will say Burgundy. But ask them to pick a single favorite grape varietal, and we’d put some money on Riesling. Aside from its excellent food friendliness, Riesling communicates terroir with as much honesty and precision as any other grape.
Most wines taste better with food, and some require it. But other wines are complete glasses on their own. One of our favorites in the “aperitif” category is the Auxerrois (OH-sehr-WAH) from our friends at the Domaine Mersiol in Alsace. Whether you’re welcoming guests to a dinner party, or looking for something refreshing on a summer afternoon, this is the perfect standalone glass of white.
Winemaking has seen significant improvement over the last century. New treatments and measurements have given winemakers far more control over their craft. “Poor vintages” are now less common, but in the cheap many wines give up true expression for homogeneity.
Michel Gros is as much a part of Vosne-Romanée as its pointed steeple, its ancient vineyards, and its narrow crooked streets. He is a lifelong resident of the town, as were his father and grandfather before him — his mother was even mayor. The Gros family name has been synonymous with Vosne-Romanee for centuries.
Rosé should be easy — a simple wine for an uncomplicated moment. Some rosés go well with food, and our options this year from Malmont and Goubert are both refreshing and delicious. But today’s rosé is best on its own, as a pleasant aperitif on a patio or roof deck.
And now for something a bit different. Today we introduce a new winemaker, a new country, and a new grape varietal. Isaiah Wyner, our Newton Depot manager, spent some of last summer researching and visiting wineries in Austria, and found some promising leads. Today we’re releasing the first.
Most wines taste the way they appear. Light-colored wines tend to have light body, and dark, opaque wines are big and mouth filling. Our favorite exception to the rule is Northern Rhône Syrah: inky black wine with intense flavor but astonishing finesse.
Chablis is a singular place. Its combination of deep stony soils and cool climate exists nowhere else on earth. These factors produce a similarly unique wine — mineral and crisp, pure and clean. Our goal as importers is to find wines that reflect the place from which they come, and there is no better place to find such wines than Chablis.
We tend to drink simply in the summer. Some summer moments call for grand bottles — weddings, graduations, etc. But when we think of “summer wine,” it’s something refreshing, uncomplicated, and inexpensive.
We’d bet that many readers have garages bigger than the Domaine Malmont’s winemaking space. We work with some small-production winemakers, but even by our standards Malmont’s winery is tiny. The space attached to winemaker Nicolas Haeni’s house in Séguret looks more like a large tool shed than a winemaking operation.
Perched where the Loire river meets the windswept Atlantic coast, Muscadet has long been a source for a classic, dry white wine. Served by the carafe in the oyster bars of Paris and London for decades, it’s refreshing, abundant, and inexpensive — a perfect glass to wash down a plate of crustaceans.
“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.
Rosé’s popularity shows no signs of ebbing. We generally steer clear of winemaking fads, but even for us traditionalists it’s hard to deny the tastiness of cool rosé under a warm sun. Our criteria for rosé are threefold: dry, inexpensive, and refreshing.
In much of the world, Syrah is a powerful grape that produces soft wines with jammy fruit and low tannin. But in Northern Rhône Valley, the grape takes on an entirely different style. Grown at its northern ripening limit, Syrah finds a more elegant and balanced expression on the steep banks of the Rhône River south of Lyon.
The 2015 red Burgundies are nothing short of a sensation. After months of hype and a frenzy of enthusiasm upon release, they’ve lived up to nearly all of their acclaim. With sturdy tannins suggesting long and happy lives, the wines also offer near-term hedonistic delight — the best are juicy, lively, and, as the French say, gouleyant (gulpable).