Hello from Bittersweet in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.  That’s an apt name given the subject of this post.  After nearly four years in DC and Virginia, I have decided to move to New York to try and pursue professional and creative opportunities.  Some of those opportunities are in the legal industry; others are in the wine industry.

I’ve been in New York for about nine days now.  I’m already writing a wine column for a local Brooklyn neighborhood blog, and I’ve surveyed the local cafes, bars, and restaurants.  There is so much hustle and bustle here.  I never thought I’d say this, but I miss Virginia with its clean streets, quiet neighborhoods, and familiar haunts.  But there is an energy here that I love, something in the atmosphere that not only inspires people, but makes people receptive to new ideas no matter how crazy.

I had a wonderful wine dinner with friends at Founding Farmers the Friday before I left DC.  We had a number of good bottles, including the 2009 Stangeland Pinot Gris, 2008 Stangeland “Miller’s Vineyard” Pinot Noir, 2008 Margerum “ÜBER” Syrah, and the 2008 Domaine de la Fontainerie “Coteau la Fontainerie” Vouvray Doux.  The Stangeland Pinot Gris was fruity and tasted sweet, prompting one of the guests to say that this was not a “Joon wine” (I like sweet/fruity wines!).  The Pinot Noir was my favorite of the evening, with nice red fruits and a savory aspect.  I had tasted this wine previously, and it showed even better during the dinner.  The Syrah was good but did not show as well as it had previously, and the Vouvray was super sweet but had great elegance, structure, and weight.

For my last bottle of wine, however, I wanted something special.  Mary Kate and I were having Thai delivery for dinner, and I would never recommend this pairing to anyone, but I had one more nice bottle squirreled away that needed to be drunk: the 2006 Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe “La Crau” Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

This is a storied wine from the storied region of Châteauneuf-du-Pape (“New House of the Pope”, in memory of when the Papacy moved to nearby Avignon), a Southerly region of France that is known for its gnarled old vines and distinctive cover of smooth round pebbles called galets.  The galets serve as insulation, reflecting sunlight and heat so the vines do not get too hot, but also trapping heat so the vines do not get too cold.  The combination of old vines and minerals from the galets produce wines that can only be said to possess soul: they have great depth, are tremendously expressive, and have layer upon layer of flavor and aroma.

Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe is one of the top producers in the region.  Owned by the famed Brunier family, the specific “La Crau” vineyard has been under cultivation since 1898 and is planted with Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, Cinsault, and Clairette.  It is reputed to be the best vineyard in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and the bottle we opened supported that statement.

My God.  This had to be one of my top five wines, ever.  The nose was utterly entrancing, with lavender, herbs, and dark fruits.  It basically tasted exactly how I want every one of my wines to taste, ever, just plum and other dark red fruits, spice, leather, earth, minerals… The best thing about this wine, however, was just how integrated everything was.  All of the flavors blended into each other seamlessly.  Mary Kate equated this to shifting in a sports car versus, say, a beat-up Toyota CR-V.  The finish lasted minutes.  Even with Thai food, this wine more than held its own and, in fact, did not overpower the Thai, either.  Of all the bottles that could have been my last in DC, this was perfect.

I would highly recommend this wine.  If you don’t feel like shelling out $60 or $70 for a bottle, however, the Brunier family makes the very excellent Domaine la Roquète, also a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and the Le Pigeoulet en Provence, an outstanding Vin de Pays made from much of the same type of grapes.

I have not had too much wine as of late because of the heat–I focused on Anchor Steam beer, as these were sophisticated, delicious, and refreshing. I couldn’t bring myself to open a bottle of wine–even nice, thirst-quenching varieties like vinho verde and sauvignon blanc. Reds, of course, were out of the question.

Thus I was pleased when the thermostat was turned down a few degrees, especially for my longer than usual Memorial Day weekend (I took this Friday off and get Monday off as well!). On Friday I headed to Mission Wines for a spell to pick up a good cold weather red.

I was surprised: there were a lot more people there on Friday at 4:30 pm than I would have thought. Debbie, Dave, and Chris were there tending bar. There was a chef in whites there, sampling a few wines, along with some neighborhood regulars like Kirk, who kindly gave me a pour of a fantastic Paso Robles syrah from Jada Vineyard. It was named “Jersey Girl”.

From their website:

The 2005 “Jersey Girl”, named for Robyn’s proud roots, is Syrah harvested from the tops of the hills. The tops came in about 10 days earlier than the bottoms with great fruit and acid balance. The fruit was de-stemmed and whole berries were gravity feed to 1.5 ton open top fermenters. Following a five day cold soak the wines underwent a slow 14 day fermentation. Cap management consisted primarily of punch downs with an occasional delistage. The wines were basket pressed to 80% French and 20% Hungarian Oak barrels of which 50% were new. After 16 months in barrel the wines were bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Loads and loads of flavor. A lot of fruit: blueberry and boysenberry. Very full, round, rich, with less chocolate and earth than Australian shiraz. An excellent wine that I can find myself drinking forever. Unfortunately, it was also priced accordingly: about $40+.

I was on a budget ($15.00 or less) so I looked through the Mission Wines bargain section. I was thinking Cotes du Rhone for something more rustic, comfortable, and earthy. My eyes spied the 2005 La Grange de Piaugier from Domaine de Piaugier.

I picked up the bottle and asked Debbie whether it would meet my criteria of “winter red”. She replied that it would be good for cooler, but not cold, weather–exactly what I had in mind. She said it would have nice body and depth, not as powerful as, say, a monastrell, but nicely balanced. At $9.99, it was definitely at the right price point, too.

My brother and I opened up the bottle as soon as I came home. It was a light-to-medium-bodied wine, some good tannin and acid. It had a pronounced herbaceous quality: thyme? rosemary? Some earthiness. There was some fruit and, oddly enough, some red vine on the finish. Very satisfying, but still, something was missing.

Then it came upon me: it was missing a nice piece of meat.

We drove to the Whole Foods, got some nice New York strip steaks. We decided upon green beans and potatoes fried with garlic, thyme, and parsley. The steaks we seasoned only with cracked peppercorn, and cooked on our new cast-iron skillet.

The wine paired beautifully with all the food: smooth, subtle, the herbaceous quality of the wine complementing the thyme in the potatoes and the pepper of the steak.

La Grange de Piaugier is comprised primarily of grenache, with smaller portions of syrah, mourvèdre, cinsault and carignan. The producer also makes a wine called “Sablet” which I would love to try next!

I went down to Chronicle Wine Cellar on the corner of California and Lake.  (I have a Yelp review of this place here.)  I love Chronicle Wine Cellar because it’s so small and unpretentious–it’s on the bottom floor of a rundown apartment building, for God’s sake!  They also offer a very good selection of wines at dirt-cheap prices.

I spent all of $22.47 on three wines: the one I am drinking now is the “Sedna” malbec from Flavio Senetiner.

It’s a malbec from the Mendoza region of Argentina, named after the furthest planet in our solar system.

I had selected a sparkling wine (for the ladies) and a rosé (because of the heat) and wanted to get a smooth-drinking, easy red to round out my trio.  It was either between a shiraz from Australia or this malbec.  Both were at the crazy price of $5.95.

I selected the malbec for the maybe fallacious reason that Argentina wines are generally cheaper as a whole than Australian wines–thus, I had more of a chance of finding a decent, cheap Argentinean wine than a decent, cheap Australian wine.

The verdict?

Great nose: smells spicy and red.  Doesn’t really taste like any other malbec I’ve ever had.  In fact, it reminds me more of a Languedoc wine–something like l’Esprit du Silene with its blend of syrah, grenache, and cinsault–because it seems rustic and earthy.  I can taste the garrigue in this wine, with leather and spice and a slight taste of persimmon.

Granted, there ARE malbec characteristics of cherry and berries–it seemed a bit rounder and softer than anything from the Languedoc, too.

From the Chronicle Wine Cellar website: “Here is our choice for your fruit driven lighter red. Smooth and easy drinking  with some lovely Malbec qualities. David likes it with a bit of a chill , easy to enjoy no matter how you want to serve it. From  Mendoza, Argentina.”

Overall, a great choice and a steal for $5.95.  I will update this post after pairing the wine with tonight’s dinner: marinated kalbi, or Korean barbeque.

Thus, it stands to reason that I must drink a lot of wine to produce the material for the blog. (Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, and every other writer known to man would probably attest to alcohol’s magical creative properties.) I’m not an economist, but I believe this is what’s known as the “trickle-down effect.” Right?

Over the past week I had three reds I’d like to write a bit about:

1 | 2005 Piqueras Monastrell | Almansa, Spain | $9.99
Intense, deep. A bit closed at first, though it opened up tremendously in the glass (the second day was great!). The tannins were very pronounced. Tasted blackberries, spice, leather. The Korean in me tasted jujubes, which are dried red dates: these are sweet and bitter at the same time, and have a distinct mouthfeel I detected in the Piqueras.

Monastrell is also known as mourvèdre in France and is often used in Rhone-style blends. It is often blended with grenache, which gives the mourvèdre a softer edge.

I had the Piqueras a few weeks ago at a Mission Wines tasting with Erica and her bf Jack, Kat, and Jack’s friend, Liz, from New York. We liked it so much then that Liz bought three bottles. I went back three days ago and bought a bottle for myself. A great buy: affordable, with a helluva lotta personality.

2 | 2005 Chateau Festiano | Minervois, France | $8.99
The new Whole Foods on Arroyo sells a good deal of wine and beer. I spied this bottle in the “French” section and was instantly intrigued. It reminded me a bit of l’Esprit du Silene because it’s also from the Languedoc region of France–the Esprit is from the Coteaux du Languedoc appellation, whereas the Festiano is from Minervois. The Esprit is made from syrah, grenache, and cinsault, whereas the Festiano is 40% syrah, 40% grenache, and 20% mourvèdre.

I was expecting a lot. The Languedoc is one of France’s most exciting winemaking areas–long written off but now coming into its own as a source of wonderful, quirky, and affordable wines. A notable characteristic of many of the red wines of this area is “garrigue”, which is technically a type of scrubland common around the Mediterranean. According to the infallible Wikipedia, “The term has also found its way into haute cuisine, suggestive of the resinous flavours of a garrigue shrubland.”

The Esprit was wholly evocative of the garrigue. The Chateau Festiano, unfortunately, was not. In all fairness, I may have to try another bottle as I’m afraid that the particular bottle I picked up was baked. =/

3 | 2005 Chateau Coucy | Montagne St. Émilion, France | $10.99
Trader Joe’s tonight. Was looking for a new bottle to try and settled on this one when I saw “St. Émilion.” I should have looked harder at the word preceding those two: “Montagne.” Whatever. Montagne St. Émilion is considered a satellite of the better-known St. Émilion region of Bordeaux, and its wines may sometimes even be considered the same or better quality than that of St. Émilion.

I love wine from St. Émilion. Bistro de la Gare in South Pasadena has a few by the glass, and they’re great accompaniments to the steak frites or coq au vin. I love St. Émilion because its wines are predominantly merlot and thus, soft, luscious, easy to drink, and easy to drink NOW (as opposed to many cabernet-based Bordeaux wines having to be aged for years and years to open up and lose their tannic chastity belts).

The Chateau Coucy… thin, overly acidic. It might be better with food–maybe like a chianti or something–to take off the acidic edge. Not especially tannic per se but the acidity made it taste super-bitter. Definitely not a keeper, despite its apparent quaffability.

My track record for this week: 1 for 3. Pretty terrible, given the string of success I had the past two weeks in picking out good wines.

This is like Chinese food. You go into a restaurant–like Sam Wo‘s in San Francisco–and are confronted by a menu of what seems like hundreds of choices. You pick a “safe” choice like the orange chicken or Mongolian beef or shrimp fried rice. You really can’t go wrong and hey, for the most part those are satisfying. But man, you want to venture out into unknown waters (the water tank filled with fish and lobsters and shellfish on the right, say, instead of the one on the left) and decide to go with XYZ. Sometimes it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted. Other times it’s like throwing up, except instead of throwing up you’re throwing down, if that makes sense.

This week, I think I’ll take a break from being “adventurous” and sit back with a bottle of the Ampelos Rosé of Syrah or “The Third Bottle” from GustavoThrace. My liver and wallet can’t take disappointment two weeks in a row!

Dinner was at the dependable Monsieur Marcel, which has a wonderful ambiance in the evening. A beautiful, dark brunette smiled to me from the wine bar (at least, I thought it was me!), so things were already taking a turn for the better as we were seated.

I had a glass of rosé from Chateau de L’Escarelle–in Provence–made from cinsault and grenache. It was wonderful–absolutely breathtakingly fresh, full of ripe strawberry, not in the least bit cloying. It was light but had substantial heft for a rosé. And at $6.49 a glass (one of the less expensive wines on the menu) it was nice to my wallet. This wine reminded me of another wonderful rosé, the Rosé of Syrah from Ampelos Cellars of the Santa Rita Hills in California:

Will had a glass of the 2004 tempranillo from Bodegas Ercavio. It was fruitier than other tempranillos I’ve had–less vanilla from oak. (Maybe this is because Bodegas Ercavio is not in Rioja, which has a reputation for oakiness.) It was a light, pleasing red, and well-priced at $6.99.

I had the Croque Marcel, basically a French panini consisting of grilled smoked turkey and goat cheese, with a side of frites. The top was covered with what the menu described as “mornay sauce” but what I will describe as heaven. Will had the coq au vin, a stew of chicken slow-cooked with mushroom, carrots, onion, and celery, served with a side of potatoes au gratin. The food, combined with a few Dunhill Lights and the aforementioned wine, made me forget LA for just a moment and feel like I was in Paris. (The table next to us was full of loud Frenchmen, adding to the atmosphere.)

After this dinner we wandered around the Farmer’s Market and the Grove, and I decided to check out the Cost Plus World Market. My previous post on champagne had elicited A LOT of positive reviews of Cost Plus on Yelp! and there was one a mere two-minute walk from Monsieur Marcel.

I have to say I was pretty impressed. Many different wines, many for a few dollars less than at your more frou-frou wine stores. In terms of Spainish wine, for instance, you can find a Conde de Valdemar Riserva for $14.99, and Marqués de Riscal for $12.99.

Will and I were looking around and a young woman says something indistinct to me. I turn around, and she says, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you worked here!” (a comment I get quite often at different sorts of stores–the Gap, Banana Republic, Jiffy Lube).

A few more words exchanged showed that she was looking for a malbec. I LOVE MALBEC! This woman and I searched the wine section and found the Argentine wine shelf–they had a few malbecs.

Then my eyes settled on the malbec reserva from Bodega Norton, priced at around $12-14. Then, below that the “regular” malbec from Bodega Norton for the bargain price of $7.99!

I had come across Bodega Norton frequently in magazines and online reviews. This estate was established in 1895 by an English engineer, making it the first winery in the now-famous Mendoza region of Argentina. I related this to the woman, who picked up a bottle. She either was won over by this information or was just tired of my going on and on about wine!

Whatever the case may be, I decided to pick up a bottle for myself–tasting notes will follow soon!

Alex and I split the cost of the bottle, which in retrospect seems ridiculous as it retails for $10.99.  No matter: at that time we were of the impression that $5 was too much for a bottle, much less $11!

This wine is from Domaine du Silène des Peyrals in the Languedoc region of France, specifically the Coteaux du Languedoc appellation.  The Languedoc might be new to people (especially relative to its more famous cousins, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne) but it accounts for more than a third of France’s total wine production. 

The terroir consists of Mediterranean scrubland (garrigue).  The soil is gravelly and full of sandstone.  There’s full, bright sun and fresh breezes from nearby Thau Lake.

This is a beautiful, seductive wine.  There are loads of flavor, predominantly those of earth.  There’s leather, pepper, tobacco.  There’s plum on the nose–the nose will blow you away.

The most unique thing about this wine is the mouthfeel, the texture.  It helps if you have ever had a persimmon and had that slight cottony, rough feeling in your mouth: drinking this wine leaves you with that same sensation.  It’s full, with mid- to high levels of tannin.

Alex came up with the description that this wine is like a “thornbush”: rough, wild, with deep persistent roots and brambles spreading everywhere.  It’s an amazing, amazing wine.

So much so, in fact, that the last few times I went to Vino! they were all out.  Not just at the store, mind you: every single bottle of this wine from the 2001 vintage was sold out.

Wait for the next vintage to pop up, and buy a few bottles.  At the price, you can’t afford not to.

COMPOSITION: Syrah, grenache, cinsault.

FOOD SUGGESTIONS: I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a food with this.  It’s good for an autumn night, with good conversation.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: This is kind of a funky wine.  It’s not very fruit forward, which made me a bit hesitant to serve it to my friends.  However, they, too, loved it.  It’s sort of like the wine equivalent of, say… Elliot Smith: dark, beautiful, but also accessible.  It’s not a Coldplay wine, nor is it a Björk wine!