Gevrey-Chambertin is the largest appellation in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Because of its clay rich soils, its wines are similarly grand. Known for power and longevity, Gevrey-Chambertin shows dark, intense fruit and a sturdy tannic structure.
The Loire Valley is known as the Garden of France. Its lush rolling hillsides produce nearly every type of wine, from dry to sweet, light to dark, and white to red to sparkling to rosé. One of region’s most distinct styles is an unoaked, juicy Cabernet Franc from the central Loire Valley.
Most wine buyers think Pinot Noir produces only red wine, whether light and elegant or rich and fruity. But in fact the juice of Pinot Noir grapes is clear. The color of red Pinot Noir comes from soaking the grape skins in the juice — press the juice off the skins and ferment it on its own, and you get a wine that’s much closer to a white.
Morey-St-Denis exemplifies the small scale of Burgundian winemaking. Wedged between two more famous neighbors, this village of 680 people has a vineyard surface of under 4 tenths of a square mile. It’s dark, delicious, classic red Burgundy — there just isn’t much of it to go around.
Patience is uncommon in our fast-paced world. Today’s wine consumers tend to drink wines too early, or to avoid age-worthy bottles all together. So whenever we can, we look for opportunities to import wines that are near their optimal drinking window.
August. There’s a lot of rosé around these days. We’ve been fans for years, and we’re thrilled to see it enjoying some time in the spotlight. Rosé is proof that simpler wines have their time and place — sometimes the best wine for the moment isn’t the best wine in your cellar. To us, Rosé […]
The wine world loves the word “minerality,” but no one can quite define it. Wine writer Lettie Teague calls it “a helpful word to describe wines that aren’t fruity, spicy, or herbal.” We think of it as refreshing element in a wine that doesn’t come from acidity, but we too struggle to offer an exact meaning.
The hillside of Montrachet produces the world’s finest dry white wine. In production for nearly two thousand years, the vineyard straddles the border between the towns of Puligny and Chassagne. Each produces wine of a different character, and though their terroirs meet in the famous plot, there are genuine differences in the extraordinary wines from both villages.
Jacqueline André is unusually passionate about her vines. She refers to one plot of grenache planted in 1877 as her grandes dames; they were a gift from her grandfather, and today she treats them with extreme care and affection. The ancient rows are hardly straight, but the fruit they produce is of the highest quality.
Sauvignon Blanc has seen a recent surge in popularity. 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.
The monks of the Burgundy countryside play a crucial role in the story of French winemaking. For about a thousand years between the 5th and 15th centuries, French monks tended vines and made wine on the now famous slopes. Through tasting the products of the rich Burgundian soils (and often the soils themselves), they first developed the idea of terroir.
Over thousands of years the monks and farmers of France experimented with different grapes to find the varietals that best fit their land. The grape-place pairings were settled centuries ago, and now the happy marriages — Syrah in the Northern Rhône, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Burgundy, Sauvignon Blanc in Sancerre — produce many of the world’s finest expressions of each varietal.
In midst of the summer heat, we like to open wines that don’t require much thought. Not wines that are boring or one dimensional, just uncomplicated and highly drinkable. Which is why we’re so excited about our brand new Sancerre.
The 2015 red Burgundies have been great successes. Warm weather, small berries, and low yields made a vintage that many critics have called one of the best in decades. Most of the fancier 2015s are dense and tannic today, signaling excellent aging potential, but needing time to reach maturity.
We spent years in search of a nice Aligoté. Forever in the shadow of the finest Chardonnays in the world, Burgundy’s “other white grape” is neither profound nor expensive. Most of our searches yielded disappointment: wines with too much acid, too little body, or both.