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.

It was strange coming back to a place I did not know, strange sleeping on a couch when I used to be able to sleep on a bed.  I didn’t know the new area very well, passing through South Pasadena only to get from Alhambra to Old Town Pasadena.  And my father had recently been diagnosed with kidney disease, meaning his health was always uncertain.  That apartment on Huntington Drive, new and without the comfort that came from years of familiarity, certainly didn’t feel like home.

Some years have passed.  I graduated from Berkeley, worked for two years at LegalZoom.com, and am in the middle of my second semester at law school in Washington, DC.  Although I started to really like South Pasadena during my two years as a working stiff, it wasn’t until I left California for the far-off Eastern Coast that I truly started to consider South Pasadena home.  We are still living in that small apartment on Huntington; it sounds a bit strange for someone coming from the historical hubbub that was the site of the Inauguration, but I can’t think of anything better than returning to South Pas for good after graduation.

That old adage–”home is where the heart is”–is true.

I often wax poetic or nostalgic about Berkeley, or am reminded of places in New Haven and Hamden or Seoul, but I am most content here.  And, being thus content, my family and I decided to open one of the bottles I purchased the other day from Mission Wines.

Well, let me clarify.  I decided to open one of the bottles, the 2007 Domaine les Grands Bois “Cuvee Maximilien,” a Cotes du Rhone villages from Cairanne, France.  This bottle came highly recommended at Mission Wines and is considered the Domaine’s best bottling.

And rightly so.  It is very intense, a dark inky red wine that coats your mouth and leaves you with no doubt that (1) this is an excellent wine and (2) evocative of the very concept of Cotes du Rhone.

From Robert Parker:

93 points Robert Parker: “A blend of 50% Grenache, 35% Mourvedre, 10% Syrah, and 5% Carignan aged in concrete except for the Mourvedre (which was aged in barrel), the 2007 Cotes du Rhone-Villages Cairanne Cuvee Maximilien is another stunning effort. More blueberry, truffle, tree bark, and sauteed porcini mushrooms intermixed with notes of spring flowers and damp earth soar from the glass of this dark ruby/purple-tinged wine. Fabulous intensity and texture as well as a full-bodied mouthfeel, but no hard edges (despite the fact that approximately one-third of the wine is made from Mourvedre), it exhibits terrific fruit as well as noble sweetness and sucrosite (the wine is totally dry). This big wine should drink well for 7-8 years or longer. This superb estate has fashioned outstanding 2007s, all remarkable wine bargains. They are typical of the fabulous 2007 vintage in the southern Rhone.”

It was great the next day, with softer tannins and more pronounced fruit.  To be honest, this might very well be one of the best Cotes du Rhone wines I’ve ever had.  At $19.99 it seems a bit pricy but is well worth the extra few bucks.

As long as I’m writing about wine, I might as well talk about another good French wine, the 2003 “La Baronne Rouge” from Famille Lignères.  This wine is from the Corbières appellation in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.  It’s only $10.99 but just a wonderful, lighter-bodied red.  It’s soft,with bright berries, but balanced with a hint of the garrigue.  It’s delicious served with a bit of a chill.

It took me a little bit to get over the slightly kitschy pink label, but I’m glad I did.

And it took me a little bit of time to get used to a different place and a different city, but I’m glad I did.  And someday I’ll be back for good.

]]> http://vinicultured.com/2009/03/06/ruminations-on-home/feed/ 3 Joon Song http://vinicultured.com/2009/03/04/from-the-east-coast-to-the-west-the-tres-picos-garnacha-from-borsao/ http://vinicultured.com/2009/03/04/from-the-east-coast-to-the-west-the-tres-picos-garnacha-from-borsao/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:13:00 +0000 vinicultured http://vinicultured.com/?p=228 ]]> I am at home, taking a much-needed break from law school.  First semester was a breeze compared to the marathon of mock trial, briefs, classes, and journal competition!

Having lived in DC now since August, I feel like I have a sense of the city.  True, I haven’t really explored too much, but enough to realize a few things.  First, DC is a nice city–to visit.  Second, there are nice restaurants–in the $$$ range.  Third, there are some good cafes–if you’re willing to take the Metro and walk a while.  Fourth, there ARE some good wine shops, though the District of Columbia isn’t exactly the Bay Area.  I am pretty certain that I will be returning to California after law school.

I really do like certain aspects of DC.  I do like the cold weather, for instance, and the snow (although it can be a real pain when you’re trying to walk in slush and frozen ice).  I do like that you can generally get around using public transportation (traffic today in LA brought back some bad memories).  But, after all of this, and despite LA’s problems, LA is still home to me.

The temperature in DC when I left for Dulles was around 20 degrees; when I got to LA the temperature was 59 degrees.  It rained today in LA, a lot in the morning but tapering off in the early afternoon.  It was actually so nice during this respite from the rain that my parents and I decided to stop by the Farmer’s Market on 3rd and Fairfax.  Bob’s Donuts and coffee, a beef shawerma wrap from Moishe’s for me and fish ‘n’ chips and clam chowder for the ‘rents.  Awesome–relaxing and delicious.

Afterwards, I went to Mission Wines to say hello.  And left with six bottles of wine:

• 2007 Francois Chidaine | Touraine, Loire Valley, France | sauvignon blanc | $11.99
• 2007 Pascal Bellier | Cour-Cheverny, France | romorantin | $14.99
• 2007 Borsao “Tres Picos” | Campo de Borja, Spain | garnacha | $14.99 ($16.99 – $18.99 regular)
• 2007 Domaine les Grands Bois “Cuvee Maximilien | Cairanne, Cotes du Rhone villages, France | blend | $19.99
• 2005 Domaine de Piaugier “Sablet” | Cotes du Rhone villages, France | blend | $15.99
• 2007 Atalaya | Almansa, Spain | prim. monastrell, garnacha tintorera | $14.99

Though LA and DC are pretty dissimilar, I was still able to find one of my favorite “DC” wines at Mission Wines: “Tres Picos” from Borsao ($14.99 on sale, $16.99 regular price as compared to $18.99 in many DC locations).  This is 100% garnacha, grown from the Campo de Borja D.O.  Trey from The Wine Specialist recommended it to me and I am certainly glad he did: a powerful, expressive garnacha redolent with dark berries and leather.  I wasn’t really a fan of garnacha/grenache in general because I felt it made too much of a light and inconsequential wine, but man–Tres Picos knocked my socks off and those of the friends who tasted it.

This is my third bottle of Tres Picos–absolutely terrific and well worth the price.  It went really well with roquefort, in case you wanted to have it for a wine tasting.

The Francois Chidaine is hands-down my favorite sauvignon blanc–a must-have, especially for the upcoming spring and a steal at $11.99.  The Cour-Cheverny is also a white wine: the sales associate at Mission Wines raved about it and gave me a pour.  It had a nose like a big unoaked California chardonnay–tropical fruits–but was significantly dry and minerally, with a bit of pepper like a grüner veltliner.  I felt compelled to buy it.

Another wine I feel compelled to write about is one I had in DC: the 2005 Vacqueyras from Domaine La Roubine, a blend of 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah and 10% Mourvedre.  Vacqueyras is a lesser-known appellation in the southern Rhone–sort of a third fiddle to Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas.  This means, however, that wines from Vacqueyras are available for good prices (the Domaine La Roubine was $25.99).  I had earmarked the bottle to drink with a nice hanger steak I had purchased from Eastern Market.  I meant to cook the steak on Monday right after the journal competition but couldn’t wait that long to try the wine–I opened it and had a little bit late Sunday evening.  Really good, prunes and “stewed cherries” on the nose, pronounced tannins but lighter bodied than I thought it would be, more of an earthy-minerally character to it than fruity.  It was even better the next day with the steak.

Altogether, I’m pretty happy with the wines I’ve been able to try in DC and am looking forward to trying some more in LA.  Mind you–the six bottles aren’t all for me: ostensibly, I bought them for my mom who always tells me how neither my brother nor sister will buy her any wine!

For instance, my last class got out 20 minutes early today.  After coming home from school, I lounged about for a brief and wonderful spell in bed, reading parts of Master and Commander and listening to Van Morrison.  This was at around 2 pm–which would be just past my old lunch hour at LegalZoom.  I got out of bed, studied a bit, tidied up the apartment a bit, and decided to go to Trader Joe’s to restock on some essentials.

There was a very light rain–a sprinkling, actually–and just enough light to cast shadows on the leaves of the trees lining L Street.  I got to Trader Joe’s, selected my items (more polenta-in-a-tube, by the way), and was heading to the checkstand when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, cases of this wine:

It was on sale for $13.99.  Big deal.  That’s actually kind of expensive for Trader Joe’s, I thought.  But there was a sign–oh, those darned signs!–that said this was a special selection, that there were only a few cases (420 bottles total) at this store, that the normal retail was at least $26.00, and that it was 70% grenache, 20% syrah, and 10% mourvedre.  I happen to like combinations of grenache, syrah, and mourvedre–I immediately think cold weather red, which is a good thing in my book.

But I was torn.  It was a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and man, those Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines are usually like… $50+.  How good could a Chateauneuf that’s on sale at Trader Joe’s in Washington, DC for $13.99 be?

I picked up a bottle and looked at the label more closely.  Cool label, heavy bottle, with a deep punt (indentation at the bottom).  I saw the names “Frédéric & Daniel Brunier” on the lower edge of the label.  For some reason that didn’t come to me till later, the name “Brunier” rang a bell.

I decided: why not?  I hadn’t bought a bottle for a while, and it was only $13.99.

I’m glad I did.

Reading online, this wine got rave reviews.  And then:

WINE ENTHUSIAST
The 79-acre Domaine la Roquete was acquired by the Brunier family of Vieux Telegraphe in 1986. Its modern labeling belies its dense, huge, packed fruit and tannins that suggest classic Chateauneuf-du-Pape. But there are also great perfumes in the wood and herbal characters. Will age over many years.
93 Points
WINE ENTHUSIAST CELLAR SELECTION
– Roger Voss, Wine Enthusiast, December 31, 2005

Vieux Telegraphe?!?  They’re like the kings of Chateauneuf-du-Pape!

I couldn’t wait for my roommate to come home from work (haha, that stiff).  I opened the bottle and poured out a bit in a glass.  Dusky, the color of a reddish-purple plum, yet light.  (Strange.)  I swirled it around and took a sniff.  Mmmm!  I detected prune, anise in the nose.  I took a sip.  Substantial body (this wine is unfiltered).  A little bit closed at first, but prune, licorice/anise, spice.

Then my roommate came home.  The fun thing about my roommate and I is that we wax poetic about the virtues of good wine, not only talking about flavors but holistic sensory and metaphorical sensations.  One of the reasons I started to get more serious about wine was an evening we shared–with a few of our RA friends–over a bottle of L’esprit du Silene.  He pointed out that the Silene was like “a thornbush,” which made perfect sense.

I suppose in a way that evening shaped much of how I view wine, and has informed my taste of what a “comfort wine” or “safety blanket wine” is for me.  Rustic, big, bold, nice tannins, dark fruit.  Unfortunately, the L’esprit du Silene has been sold out from every store in the Bay Area for a few years now, but I think we’ve got a worthy substitute.

The Domaine La Roquète is a substantial, substantial wine.  It doesn’t mess around.  Prune, licorice, spice in the mouth.  The mouthfeel is smooth and dense.  It fills the whole mouth, it “builds a fort,” as my roommate said.  “It’s like oak, like a wood frame,” he continued.  We pondered this observation for a while.  Yes!  It’s like a crate of plums–the crate made from really old wood, the kind that’s white and weathered with age–if the whole crate (plums, crate, and all) had been crushed and made into wine.

The finish, however, is what really distinguishes this wine.  Very VERY long–I had my last sip a few minutes ago and I can still detect the different elements playing on my tongue and the rest of my mouth.  The finish changes–first the primary flavors previously described, then secondary flavors of caramel and cola.

This is a terrific wine.  Now I must go: we’re going to Trader Joe’s and getting six bottles to get us through the winter!

[ UPDATE: We just came back from Trader Joe's--with 9 more bottles.  I also managed to persuade a lady in that section to buy three bottles of it, too.  Hurry up and go to the TJ's on 25th and L--seems like this wine will be gone in a week! ]

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!

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!