Jonathan L., my erstwhile LegalZoom co-worker, poet, historian, and future Columbia grad student, was in the neighborhood. We’re both fond of wine, so we decided to have a bit to drink together before we again went our separate ways.

Where else than Lou?

Now keep in mind that we’re both going to be grad students in the near future; not only that, we’re both going to be living in rather expensive metropolitan areas. Personally, I had enough money that day for wine tasting or dinner but not both. Oh well. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

We met up at Lou at around 7 pm. The place was dead. There were, including us, seven patrons at that time. No matter. We had a job to do.

He had the 1989 Domaine Brunet chenin blanc I wrote about in a previous post. Then he moved on to the 2006 Coturri “Albarello”, which was a field blend of a number of different old vines. I had a nice, light verdejo from the Rueda region of Spain: the 2006 Garcia-Arevalo “Tres Olmo”. Then, I sampled the 2005 Giusti Lacrima di Morro and finished off with the 2004 Puiatti cabernet franc.

As for food, we got Lou’s “fish plate”, which consisted of smoked baccala, albacore confit, smoked trout, and house-cured wild salmon gravlax. It was tasty and a pretty good foil for the wines (the fish wasn’t too fishy… it was savory, salty, and good).

Jon’s Albarello was good (ha, simple enough, right?). He insisted that the taste of the wine changed in his mouth to reflect potentially the 11 different grapes in the blend. Some post-quaffing online research on the Coturri Winery website yielded the definition of both “Albarello” and “field blend”:

Albarello is Italian for low or head pruned vines. This wine is made from a “field blend” vineyard in the southeast corner of Sonoma Valley. A field blend is a vineyard that has a number of different varietals planted at random. The idea being the wine was blended in the vineyard rather than in the winery.

What an interesting concept! The Albarello field blend consisted of nine grapes, six reds and three whites. I didn’t get too good a taste of the wine, but from what I did taste it did seem like a pleasant, well-integrated wine.

My verdejo was crisp, dry, and refreshing. It wasn’t terrible complex, but then again, verdejos aren’t supposed to be terribly complex. Nonetheless, the Tres Olmo was delicious, well-built, with bracing acidity and clean minerality. Notes of citrus. Good.

The cabernet franc was served chilled, just like beaujolais. It was very light-bodied, with a low tannin-to-high acidity ration. The nose yielded cherry, and the taste yielded berries. This cabernet franc may just give beaujolais a run for its money in my book!

I wanted to focus a bit on the Lacrima di Morro. I mean, how cool is that name? Tears of Morro (Morro being the commune of Morro d’Alba in the Italian province of Ancona, which is on the Adriatic coast).

Lacrima di Morro is a wine whose grape (Lacrima di Morro d’Alba) is of an ancient and confusing origin–so ancient and so confusing, in fact, that its precise genealogy may never be determined.

This wine blew me away because it was like no other wine I’ve ever tasted. Sure, there are other wines whose nose may approximate flowers, but the Lacrima di Morro actually SMELLS like violets. It’s unmistakable. It’s incredible. And when you take a sip, those violets morph on your tongue into petals of rose. The aftertaste is evocative of rosewater–Turkish Delights, anyone? Light body, low-to-medium tannins, and medium acidity make for a playful, idiosyncratic wine.

I was about to write it’s a nice wine for a date, but on second thought it’s not. Despite all the flowers and mention of Turkish Delight the Lacrima di Morro does not strike me as a sweet wine, though it is not dry. There is a bit of funk below the waving blossoms, as if the winemakers had deliberately left some dirt and leaves on the petals when stuffing them into the bottle. =)

Now, what did Jon and I do about dinner? After tax/tip, we paid about $27-$30 each (keep in mind the glasses were not full glasses but two-three ounce tastes). I had like ten bucks in my pocket at that point.

We went to Flaming Patty’s, a hole-in-the-wall burger joint right next door, where he got a banana shake and a grilled cheese sandwich and I got a Coke and chili cheese fries. My bill? $7.00, after tax/tip. Not exactly as high-quality as 20-year-old chenin blanc and house-cured wild salmon gravlax, but hey, grad students are grad students, right? Thank God I wasn’t on a date.

Luckily, no one coming out of Lou spotted us sitting in our booth at Flaming Patty’s!

But who could have imagined that every sip was imparting more than just terroir?

Given everything else that is wrong with the world, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn about the presence of pesticides and other chemicals in wine. Recently, Pesticide Action Network Europe (PAN Europe) reported a study in which 35 out of 40 bottles of European wine were found to have pesticides–four different pesticides on average but as much as ten in one particularly unfortunate bottle. One of the six organic wines tested also contained trace pesticide residues.

Then again, lest we get too alarmed, it should be noted that a sample set of 40 wines is NOT very large at all. This study from 1999 suggests that no to very little pesticide residue could be found in wine after the vinification, fining, and filtering processes.

(The PAN Europe website does provide citations, so one can do more detailed research if one is so inclined.)

Regardless of whether pesticides are present in many wines–and if present are in concentrations that are harmful to humans–there have always been winemakers that have adhered to natural, “organic” methods of growing grapes. Then again, there are those growers who subscribe to biodynamic farming, where “the farm is viewed as a self-sustaining, self-regulating eco-system.”

Eric Asimov of the New York Times wrote a thought-provoking article on organic and biodynamic wines and the stigma they face. From the article:

“That’s the stigma left over from 15 or 20 years ago, when wines were marketed as organic and weren’t very good,” said Gregory Dal Piaz, the director of customer development for Astor Wines & Spirits in NoHo. “I don’t think it’s the best way to market wine. You market wine because it’s good.”

Recently, there has been a slow, small, but noticeable shift in consumer tendencies towards wines that marketed as organic:

“When I first opened three years back, people did not ask about the wines the same way they asked about the food,” she [Francine Stephens, proprietor of Fanny's Pizzeria in Brooklyn] said. “It’s definitely changed in the last year. People seem to have made the leap that it’s an agricultural product, which is a big leap, I guess.”

I for one was never really a big fan of organic wines. Early experiences left me with thinking that organic wine was the alcoholic equivalent of Tofurky: a tasteless, New Age, inferior substitute for the real thing. Then I tried wines like the Clairette de Die from Jean-Claude Raspail and the offerings of François Chidaine.

The Clairette de Die is an intoxicating sparkling wine from the Clairette de Die AOC of France made from the muscat blanc à petits grains and clairette grapes. It is sweet, fizzy, and refreshing. It doesn’t taste cheap or saccharine, however–it has a clean sweetness that lends itself well to Thai or, say, to the upcoming hot spring and summer days.

I’ve written many times in the past of François Chidaine. He works in plots of land along the Loire River, primarily in the Montlouis (pronounced “Moh-louie”) but also in the Vouvray (“voo-vray”) appellations.

I love this. He writes: “Wine is born from the vine, not from artificial skills of re-creation in the winery. It is sufficient to start modestly by working the soil.”

To that extent, he doesn’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Rather, he uses goats to eat weeds and keep pests at bay. (They make excellent Easter dinner, so I’ve read.)

I’ve written about his chenin blancs, so I want to end this post with a few notes on his outstanding Touraine sauvignon blanc (retail: $11.99). It is straightforward: extremely bright, pleasantly mouth-puckering, high acidity. Less of a herbal character and more of a citrus character–grapefruit, something tart. A little bit of mineral. Not too tangy, very gentle. Reminded me of another great white, the Pie Franco Rueda verdejo from Blanco Nieva.

As long as I can continue finding delicious, satisfying organic and biodynamic wines, I should be able to drink without having to worry too much about my liver, immune system, or easily-worried Korean parents!

WHERE TO FIND IN SoCAL | You can find the sauvignon blanc at Mission Wines in South Pasadena or Monsieur Marcel at the Los Angeles Farmer’s Market.

Actually, let me qualify that statement a bit: I have a love-hate relationship with Berkeley. But, as they say, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” So, being at home now for nearly a year and five months, working at LegalZoom.com, I love Berkeley now more than I hate it.

One of the great things about Berkeley is the abundance of absolutely wonderful food and drink. There is a culture of organic produce, slow cooking, artisanal craftsmanship, and good living.

There are a lot of wine shops in Berkeley or in the surrounding areas. Kermit Lynch is the one everybody knows about–he imports all those small French producers and sells them retail at his store on San Pablo. Then there are Vino! locations everywhere–one on College in Oakland, another on Solano, one off of Fourth Street in Berkeley, another in San Francisco. The Andronico’s market on North Shattuck (accessible on the 7 or 9 buses, for you college kids!) is also surprisingly good.

I want to focus on “A Wine Store for the People”–Vintage Berkeley, which is appropriately on Vine Street near the original Peet’s Coffee:

(My apologies for blatantly ripping off this picture from the Vintage Berkeley webpage!)

The store itself is housed in a former water pumping station, which makes entering the place a whimsical experience (if only there were special pipes that carried wine instead of water… try taking a bath in that, eh?).

Vintage Berkeley has wines that I’ve never seen anywhere else. It has selections from super-small growers from California and all around the world. It’s one place where you will be able to find the elusive txakolina, a Spanish (specifically Basque) white wine that is not always but usually a bit effervescent. Originally reserved for Basque royalty, txakolina is now ubiquitous in the tapas bars of the region. Txakolina is usually off-dry, with a pronounced mineral quality. It’s very refreshing, especially on a summer day.

The appeal of Vintage Berkeley is that most of the wines are below $20. The txakolina, for instance, is around $14. You can also sometimes find gems like the Shotfire Ridge Shiraz, a delicious powerful wine from the Barossa Valley of Australia, on the “clearance rack” for a few bucks off.

They have wine tastings in the afternoon, though I never was able to make it to any for various reasons. The salespeople are very friendly, young, and very enthusiastic.

Not all is rosé, however. Vintage Berkeley is hit or miss with its wines–some are very, very good (like the Pie Franco Rueda verdejo from Blanco Nieva or the txakolina) while others–despite salesperson recommendations–are simply terrible. The prices are right, however, so on the balance you’re still coming up ahead.

Also, the salespeople are very young and are probably just starting out in wine like me. One observation is that they seem to use “stone fruit” to describe every single white wine! But hey, at least you won’t be confronted with pretension! They’re so friendly you’ll forget you’re in a wine store.