Tom's Wine Line

Connoisseur? Alcoholic? Epicure? Drunkard?

July 1, 2024 by Tom Maresca

What’s in a name? A great deal, it appears. The four I’ve headlined here point to the broad ethically/morally – maybe even esthetically – opposed ways in which wine drinkers are viewed. To make the issue knottier, just add to those the confusing medical perspectives: We all know MDs who relish wine, as well as MDs who think it’s a poison.

I’m not playing semantic games here. It matters a great deal how we think of ourselves and how others refer to us. Our self-definition determines a lot of the choices we make, and how others see us determines the alternatives they offer us, the opportunities they present or withhold.

EPICURE?

© Roland Searle from Winespeak (1983)

In this country right now there is profound uneasiness about the role of wine in our lives: witness, just as one example, The New York Times’s long-standing, prominent – in the Wednesday Food section – presentation of Eric Asimov’s wine articles and Wine School, alongside the same newspaper’s frequently printing “news” items headlined something like “Any Amount of Alcohol Is Bad for You,” plus its prominent seasonal ballyhooing of “Dry January.” (I should note that Asimov recently published an intelligent and to my mind long overdue response to the flurry of “dry” sentiment. )

One more small semantic note: the medically negative views of wine never say “wine”: It’s always the chemical, “alcohol.” As a nation, the United States experimented with Prohibition once already, and the core of true believers didn’t disappear with Repeal. Some of us – me, for instance – think they may have metamorphosed into the AMA.

That’s why it matters how we think of ourselves and what we name ourselves and what we should insist that others call us. Frankly, I don’t like any of the four names I started this post with. My reasons for disliking the negative pair are obvious. Of the other two, Epicure seems too precious and recondite, and Connoisseur I’ve never liked because of its snobbish and pretentious overtones. Forget their literal meanings: in these days when “micro-aggressions” have become litigatable offenses, it’s hard not to offend somebody with even the slightest suggestion of intellectual or cultural privilege.

DRUNKARD?

© Roland Searle from Winespeak (1983)

I find this particularly annoying because we wine drinkers are in fact the put-upon minority, not the other way around. We’re the ones who get embarrassed when we pronounce the name of a French wine correctly and the waiter doesn’t understand it. In the same way, we’re the ones who get discommoded when we take a chance on an unknown bottle in an unpretentious restaurant, to find (after the waiter has figured out how to open it) the wine dead and undrinkable, and neither the wait staff nor the manager knows what to do about that, because no one has ever sent a bottle back before. Both these things have happened to me, so I speak from experience here.

I enjoy playing with language, and in moods of self-irony, I like to call myself a wino. Many of my old wine journalism colleagues, I recall, also so spoke of themselves. (Real winos never lasted very long in wine journalism.) In the same ironic way, I also like the King-Jamesian phrase wine bibber: It’s got a nice ring, as long as you can deal with irony. Too many people, I find, can’t, so I think plain old wine lover will have to do. Even the yet-plainer wine drinker is OK: It’s honest and straightforward, like bowler or golfer. No suggestion of expertise or specialized knowledge. No hint of superiority, to even the most thin-skinned. All those phrases say is “Wine is something I like” – as I am entitled to, so kindly take your sense of grievance or self-righteousness somewhere else.

ALCOHOLIC?

© Roland Searle from Winespeak (1983)

I’m waiting for the day some ardent anti-drinker makes at least a small apology in advance for the patronizing homily that we are supposed to endure because “it’s for our own good.” MDs seem to be among the worst offenders these days. My own primary physician, a sensible woman and a good doctor, is convinced that I am undermining my health and shortening my life by drinking wine every night with my dinner – this, mind you, as I have been doing for some 60 years now. There’d be more truth to it if she told me that, if I hadn’t been doing that, my bank account would be much healthier. Though, I suspect, I myself would be much unhappier.

CONNOISSEUR?

© Roland Searle from Winespeak (1983)

Wine lovers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but misnomers – and maybe misdiagnoses!

Posted in Wine writing | 4 Comments »

Faiveley and Festivities

June 17, 2024 by Tom Maresca

The first week of June was a celebratory one for us. Not just the 80th anniversary of D-Day, important as that continues to be, but also, either side of it, our 55th wedding anniversary and Diane’s 21st birthday. Needless to say, those all called for some serious feasting and carousing.

Diane took charge of the feasting and I looked after the carousing, a division of labor that almost always works well for us. Since she opted for some French-ish sorts of meals – e.g., foie gras, a ragout of pheasant – I followed suit with some nice Burgundies. I had a small cache of 20-year-old Faiveley crus that seemed as if they would be appropriately festive. They were.
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Faiveley is an important Burgundy house, one of the best négociant-éleveurs of the whole zone. It is still family-owned, after almost 200 years. In that time Faiveley has accumulated a very impressive list of vineyards in both the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune, particularly strong in Grand Cru and Premier Cru parcels. Some examples: Chambertin Clos-de Bèze, Échézaux, Musigny, Corton Clos des Cortons.

For Diane’s birthday we drank a 2001 Clos de Bèze; for our anniversary a 2001 Clos des Cortons.

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I’m very glad I bought these wines many years ago: not only because they’re drinking beautifully now, but also because were I to try to buy them now – presuming I could find any for sale – I couldn’t begin to afford them. Burgundy continues to set the pace for wine prices.

Burgundy also continues to set the bar for Pinot noir, and especially for age-worthy Pinot noir. From great sites like Clos de Bèze and Clos des Cortons, properly aged Pinot noir delivers a complexity of flavors that, in individual tasters, usually produces either inarticulate murmurs of pleasure or pages of tasting notes. I’m more partial to the murmurs, myself, so I’ll simply quote here from the late Clive Coates, who loved Faiveley’s wines:

Faiveley’s wines are, above all, supremely clean and elegant: definitive examples of Pinot noir. They are full, rich and concentrated, but not too aggressively so, and sumptuous in the potential opulence of their fruit. But above all they have richness and breed, the thumbprint of a master winemaker.

No damning with faint praise there! I think that, with appropriate deference, I have to disagree with Coates’s assessment on one point: In both the bottles that we drank that week, the fruit was for my palate a touch too aggressive – so much so that it gave the wine a tiny hint of rusticity, not displeasing but definitely present. But that is quibbling: The wines were wonderful, and they greatly enhanced our pleasure on our two occasions. Would that all my wine purchases culminated so happily!
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Posted in Burgundy, Chambertin, Corton, France | 8 Comments »

Chianti Classico: Worth Celebrating

May 31, 2024 by Tom Maresca

This May 14th was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chianti Classico Consortium, by royal order of the then King of Italy. As long-time marketing and communications manager of the Consorzio Silvia Fiorentini reminded me, that was a ground-breaking event: the first wine consortium in all Europe. A whole century later, the Consortium is still here, still working with the vineyards and vintners at the spiritual heart of Tuscany to protect and improve one of the world’s great red wines. That in itself is a cause for celebration, and the quality level that Chianti Classico now routinely achieves is another.
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I should be upfront about Chianti Classico. It’s a staple wine in our house. We probably drink it more often than we do any other wine – more than my beloved Taurasi and Barolo, more by far than any Burgundy or Bordeaux. That’s because it’s just so amazingly versatile: It drinks well with almost anything, even with – should you be so inclined – fish. I remember many years ago that a busload of wine journalists headed for Vinitaly unanimously agreed (just about the only thing they agreed on all week) that if they were ever restricted to one wine for the rest of their life, it would be Chianti Classico.

I make a point of saying Chianti Classico because there are wines from districts outside the Classico zone, like Arezzo or Pisa or Siena, that are legally entitled to call themselves Chianti. I don’t mean to denigrate them. Some good wine is made in all of them, but they don’t reach the consistent level of quality of the Classico vineyards. For my palate, the best of those satellite zones, and the most distinctive, is Chianti Rufina – but it has a climate and terroir all its own, different from all the other Chianti zones and different from the Classico.
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The Chianti Classico zone comprises the stretch of central Tuscan hills that runs south from Florence to Siena. Anciently, this was the home of the Chianti League. Now, it is the heartland of Sangiovese, one of Italy’s three noblest red varieties (along with Aglianico and Nebbiolo). And Sangiovese is the heart and soul of Chianti Classico, which — traditionally a blended wine — now can be vinified from up to 100% of Sangiovese alone. That’s the result of the Consortium’s 100 years of intelligent, steady work with clones, field techniques, and vinification methods.

Sangiovese grapes

There are now so many good clones of Sangiovese available for Tuscan growers to work with that it’s not inaccurate to say that even 100% Sangiovese Chianti Classicos are still blended wines: They’re a blend of Sangioveses, and all the better for it. The characteristic bittersweet tang of the grape, its racy acidity and yielding tannins, its natural elegance and balance, show wonderfully, vintage after vintage, making it a thoroughly enjoyable wine from its exuberant youth to its graceful old age. Those are the qualities that make it such a welcoming food wine with everything from a brightly spiced tomato-based pasta sauce to a big, rare steak to all sorts of cheeses. Those are the reasons it so often appears on the dinner table a casa mia.

There are a great number of Chianti Classico producers and, as a result of the Consortium’s efforts, most of them are more than respectable. These days, it’s pretty hard to buy a bad Chianti Classico, and pretty easy to find an excellent one. Some of my perennial favorites are Badia a Coltibuono, Brolio, Castellare, Castello di Verazzano, Felsina, Fonterutoli, Fontodi, Poggiopiano, and – alphabetically last but very far from least – Volpaia. That there are so many names in that list is both an indication of the high quality of Chianti Classico and its abundance on the America market. Cause for celebration indeed!

Posted in Chianti, Italy, Sangiovese | 8 Comments »

The Rhône, A River of Wine

May 17, 2024 by Tom Maresca

It’s not news to anyone even mildly interested in wine that France’s Rhône valley is the source of a large number of fine wines – mostly red, but with more than a handful of fine whites as well. But it takes a leisurely cruise down the Rhône – say from Lyon south to Arles, with little stops along the way at interesting places like Avignon – to make you realize just how many wine appellations the valley is home to and how varied their terroirs can be. What may really be news to many wine fans is just how good all those wines are. Even the most basic categories can offer some genuinely enjoyable drinking.

About a month ago, Diane and I took just such a cruise.

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After a prolonged and dreary New York winter, we were hoping for sunshine and southern French warmth. We got sunshine, but warmth was nowhere to be found. The Mistral was blowing incessantly and strongly out of the north, and the weather was beyond chilly. So strong was the wind that our riverboat’s sundeck had to be closed because it was just too dangerous, and we chickened out of several planned shore excursions because they would have been just too uncomfortable.

Disappointments to be sure, but there was still plenty of food and drink, and we were in a fine part of the world for those – so eat and drink we did, doing our very best to encourage Rhône vintners to yet higher quality and greater production.

Sailing south from Lyon, the first Rhône appellation you pass – just south of Vienne, for those who know their French geography – is Côte Rotie, which has become very well known and correspondingly expensive. A bit further south are the steep vineyards of Hermitage, once the most prestigious of the great Rhône sites. The eminent George Saintsbury thought it “the manliest of French wines.”
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Hermitage Vineyards

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All this is Syrah territory, and for my palate the variety here achieves elegances and subtleties that elude it elsewhere in the world. Even the less prestigious appellations – Crozes-Hermitage and Saint Joseph – make wonderful wines, charming in their youth and impressive in their age. Diane and I drank a lot of these: By the standard of New York retail and restaurant prices, they were quite inexpensive.

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Unfortunately, our boat’s wine list didn’t run to Hermitage or Côte Rotie.

Once you near Avignon, and from there south, you are in the heart of Châteauneuf du Pape and Côtes du Rhône territory. There are now multiple Côtes du Rhône appellations, as individual villages have improved their output and won the right to name themselves on their labels. Gigondas, Vacqueras, Rasteau, Cairanne are among the best of many fine ones. The wines are even more varied than their numerous appellations would suggest, because they can be vinified from several grape varieties. Much depends not just on the individual producer’s style, but more fundamentally on which varieties his fields support.

That, of course, is even truer of Châteauneuf du Pape, which can be vinified from 13 different grape varieties, in proportions of the vintner’s choice. Syrah is not much used this far south on the river, but Grenache is very important, as are Carignane and Mourvèdre. Particularly from great traditional producers such as Vieux Télégraphe, Chateau Fortia, Clos du Mont Olivet, and Mont Redon, Châteauneuf du Pape is completely enjoyable as a young wine, but it can be majestic at 15 to 20 years old. In truth, there are many fine Châteauneuf producers worth tasting to find your preferred style.

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And I would be totally remiss if I failed to mention that white Châteauneuf is a great wine at any age, much bigger and deeper and more complex than many Burgundies. Almost all producers of red Châteauneuf make at least a little white, though it can be very hard to find on the American market.

One final note: All along the Rhône, aged distillates of the local grapes can be magnificent. Diane and I have drunk Marc from Hermitage that was so long barrel-aged that it was chestnut brown and smooth and deep as the priciest Cognac. On this trip we enjoyed both a lightly aged Marc du Rhône from Chapoutier and a 2001 Marc de Châteauneuf from Vieux Télégraphe. The latter was among the finest brandies of any kind we have ever had – and by this time of our lives, that covers a lot of brandies. We may not have had the warmth of the sun on this trip, but we certainly enjoyed the warmth of the grape.

Posted in Burgundy, Chateauneuf, Chateauneuf, Crozes-Hermitage, France, Hermitage, Rhone | Leave a Comment »

A Venerable Grignolino – Age 51

April 30, 2024 by Tom Maresca

I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to try it. This 1973 Cavalotto Grignolino, #4 of the special horde dubbed Tom’s Treasures, has been calling to me ever since I bought it.

Grignolino has become, in my mind, an archetypal, maybe the archetypal, Piedmontese wine. It’s a very ancient grape. Back in the 13th century, it was probably the most important grape in the whole Piedmont. Now it’s endangered and has almost disappeared, replaced largely by Barbera. But still, in the right place and the right hands, Grignolino is capable of yielding a lovely wine.

I have come to relish the variety, but I knew this was probably the riskiest of the bottles I chose. Grignolino is never a big wine, and it’s relatively low in alcohol, but it does have ample tannin and acidity, so there is a reasonable chance it could take some bottle age. As far as I knew, all the bottles I bought had been well cellared, and Cavalotto is a seriously good, traditionally minded winemaker. Who else would take the trouble these days to vinify Grignolino? So I had a fifty-fifty chance this 1973 would still be drinkable. Speriamo.

Well, I’m delighted to say that the wine was a complete winner from the moment I pulled the cork. A generous aroma floated out to greet me. A bit prune-y, to be sure, but definitely alive and welcoming, as its subsequent performance with our dinner amply showed.

The meal we were having that evening wasn’t designed to show off a Grignolino. The gaminess of the braised lamb shanks we were making wouldn’t really highlight its virtues. Grignolino is pale in color, light in body, and delicate and intriguing in flavor: not forceful, not a powerhouse. This one had only 12 degrees of alcohol and over 50 years of age, so no matter how alive it was, the lamb might overpower it. At least that’s what my last-minute jitters feared.

My worries were all unfounded. That ancient Grignolino more than held its own with the lamb shanks. It continued evolving and opening in the glass, as its initial pruneyness receded and surprisingly youthful fruit flavors came forward – cherry and currant and, very unexpectedly, strawberry.

We were bowled over by how much vitality this Grignolino showed, particularly when we tasted it with a cheese course. We had a young Manchego and a youngish Greyson, and the Grignolino showed its richest fruit with them. It never gave the slightest sign of fading or fatigue. From start to finish, it was a joy to drink.

I haven’t had much experience with mature Grignolino – very little, to be truthful – but this bottle taught me a lot. Biggest lesson: If I were several decades younger, I’d start cellaring Grignolino now.

Posted in Grignolino, Italy, Piedmont | 4 Comments »

Red Burgundy: A Heart-warming Wine with a Blood-chilling Price

April 15, 2024 by Tom Maresca

Diane and I have been drinking a lot of French red lately – mostly Burgundy and Rhône wines, very little Bordeaux. This is more than a little odd, for two reasons: one, that Burgundy is so appallingly expensive and two, that I used to love Bordeaux.

Bordeaux was what I learned wine on. In the US, way back then, wine was French, and the pinnacle of French wine for us tyros was Bordeaux. Bordeaux was affordable: Macy’s had a wine cellar then that sold 1966 Château Gloria and Château Brane Cantenac for $3 a bottle, with a 10% discount on a case. The great first growths were only a few more dollars a bottle. Sigh. We shall not see such days again.

Even more important, Bordeaux was comprehensible: Its classifications were easy to understand. And Bordeaux wines had the additional advantage of being abundant, and readily available on the American market. Bordeaux produced a lot of wine, especially compared to Burgundy, which besides being scarcer was also complicated – and already, in those days, expensive. So I learned Bordeaux, and I learned to love it. Cabernet Sauvignon was the grape for me.
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Cabernet Sauvignon

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But, as somebody or other in Shakespeare says, the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. Over many years, I found I was losing my taste for Cabernet. Was the grape changing? Was the way it was cultivated and/or vinified changing? Was my palate changing? The latter was probable, though I couldn’t rule out any of the former either.

Certainly, as my knowledge and appreciation of Nebbiolo deepened, it affected the way I experienced other varieties, most notably Pinot Noir, whose intricacies and nuances in many ways mirror those of Nebbiolo. So by way of Nebbiolo, I came to relish Pinot Noir, and to Nebbiolo I owe the few fine older Burgundies I am now enjoying. I wish I had more, but they were always expensive, and my budget always limited. I’m just grateful for the ones I have, and I choose carefully my opportunities to serve them.
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Pinot Noir

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Long-time friends are always a good excuse, so when two prime examples of such recently had a lull in their hectic schedules, Diane put together a French-ish dinner and I pulled out appropriate wines. To accompany the Simca-inspired eggplant quiche we started with, a 2011 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle. And to match with an elegant chateaubriand and our very rich version of pommes duchesse, a 2001 Bonneau de Martray Corton Grand Cru.
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Those steep Hermitage vineyards bordering the northern Rhône tame the wildness of Syrah and turn it into a wine of lovely depth and impressive restraint. More than a decade of age had made that bottle’s suave character even better: unquestionably Syrah, but Syrah that had been to a top-flight finishing school. The quiche was smooth and sharp, lush and acidic. The Hermitage matched it note for note, as harmoniously as an operatic duet.

The Corton, from one of Burgundy’s most storied sites, and ten years older, showed every bit as elegant but slightly heftier, as if it were putting on weight with age. Nothing flabby, mind you: this was all muscle, smooth and sleek and just loving to play alongside that tender red beef. The two seemed made for each other, which – of course – is exactly what I had hoped for, and exactly the kind of thing that great Burgundy does best. This was a duet too, but baritones rather than tenors.

Much as I love pouring wines like this for friends, I can’t help feeling a twinge each time: I wish I had more. If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have bought and cellared my wines a lot more systematically. Wouldn’t I have? Sure I would: Diane can tell you what an organized, systematic person I am.

Posted in Burgundy, Corton, France, Hermitage | 6 Comments »

Three Cheers for the Right Wine – Be It Ever So Humble

March 29, 2024 by Tom Maresca

No, I am not boosting my by-now antique book – just the concept behind it: The right wine – the wine that really fits the occasion and meshes with the food – can elevate any meal to a memorable experience. Grilled chopped sirloin and an eight-year-old Ridge Zinfandel aren’t just fuel, and they’re miles beyond a burger and a beer: They’re Dinner.

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You don’t even have to go as lofty as Ridge. For our traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage, I opened a two-year-old, very inexpensive bottle of Gruner Veltliner, from a producer I knew nothing of. It was what I had on hand. That bottle of what might have been just plonk made a fascinating and utterly pleasing companion to the spicing of the corned beef and the sweetness of a Savoy cabbage. We couldn’t have had a more enjoyable meal with a much more prestigious meat or wine than that great match gave us.

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And that’s the point: The mesh of the food and the wine doesn’t depend on the rarity or reputation or prestige of either. It depends only on those simple miracles that can happen in your mouth every day.

Yes, you need to know something to make that miracle happen. You need to know your own likes and dislikes. You need to have at least a rudimentary idea of what the food you’re about to eat tastes like: You can’t match a wine with a dish you don’t know. And you need to know at least the general character of the kind of wine you’re considering, if not the specifics of any producer’s bottlings.

That’s why sommeliers are useful: They know their restaurant’s food, and they know its cellar, far better than you could. For your home cooking, you’re the sommelier. You know your cooking, and you know your bottle: All you have to do is pay attention, think about the meal for a minute or two, letting your own experience of the food and/or your wine guide you. There is no mystery. The only equipment you need is taste buds.

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Some examples: With a plainly grilled or broiled red meat, any number of inexpensive young red wines will match quite nicely. If you want a soft wine, a negociant’s basic Burgundy or a Dolcetto will work well. If you want something with some acidity, Côtes du Rhône or Barbera, Beaujolais Villages or Lacryma Christi will provide it.

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This is not to say that the matter can’t be made complex: Dining at Taillevent on its ris de veau en croûte and trying to choose a wine from its intimidating wine list (Where was the comma in that price?) is complex indeed and, if your bank account can stand it, thrilling, but that isn’t simple food or everyday wine.

For a different sort of example of what I mean: A fresh filet of flounder, salted, peppered, lightly floured, and quickly sauteed in butter is going to be lovely with a young, unoaked Chardonnay – or Fiano, or Riesling, or dry Chenin Blanc, or even Muscadet. Any young, dry, unoaked, not-too-assertive white wine will make a nice match with that fish. In the right circumstances – say, on the sunny terrace of an ocean- or bay-side restaurant, with a light, fresh breeze gently cooling you – it can even become memorable in its simplicity.

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Raise the ante a little – make it crabmeat or lobster steeped in butter – and you want a bigger wine, with more character, one with a little minerality to play off against the sweetness of that shellfish. Then you’re going to need a Chablis, or a fine Lugana or Soave Classico, or even a good white from the Rhône – a wine that won’t be obliterated by the flavor of the lobster or crab. The key is only that the kids should play together peacefully, with no bully dominating the playground. Any moderately careful parent should be able to deal with that.

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As I said, it’s not complex, and it certainly need not be expensive. We are lucky enough to be living at a moment when, whatever else may be wrong with the world, we have more good wine in greater variety available to us than at any previous time. Probably the only real problem confronting us is the sheer number of choices available – but as one who can remember the days when the finest, and one of the few, white wine choices on many restaurant lists was “Soavebolla” (for all practical purposes, one word), I can assure you that’s a great problem to have.

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Should you want go a bit deeper into matching wine and food, or should you be perverse enough to enjoy complexity (I confess I do), here are two handy wine-and-food wheels I devised way back when for my book. I still like them, and I think you may find them handy.

Posted in Barbera, Burgundy, California, Chablis, Food & Wine Matching, Italy, Rhone, Soave | 2 Comments »

A Magnum of 25-year-old Conterno Barolo

March 12, 2024 by Tom Maresca

This wine – 1999 Conterno Barolo from the Bussia cru – tasted like the love child of Nebbiolo and velvet.

One dinner guest, on first sip, rightly called it youthful – which it was; it was also vital, and complex, and deep, and it evolved kaleidoscopically in our glasses as we progressed from a rich main course to a pair of fine cheeses. But I am getting way ahead of myself.

I don’t keep many magnums, because we rarely have occasion for them. I’m a wine drinker, not a wine collector. But a recent convocation of our octogenarian Gang of Six seemed an appropriate moment for a fine magnum – especially since the dinner we were making for it was La Finanziera, a Piedmontese tour de force of mostly innards. (Diane has written about the dish on her blog.) On its home grounds of Italy’s Piedmont, the characteristic feature of La Finanziera is its inclusion of cockscombs, which the USDA will not allow us to buy. (Boos and hisses are appropriate here.)

We had originally conceived of this feast back in the depths of winter, but such is the mobility of our coevals that it took until early March to get all six of us together in New York at the same time. (I guess that’s a good sign, no?) For several days in advance, that big bottle of Barolo stood patiently – upright, to settle its sediment – on a very cool, shady windowsill, awaiting its moment.

Barolo fans will know that Poderi Aldo Conterno is one of the most prestigious of the whole panoply of Barolo vignerons. The three brothers now running the farm work 25 wonderful hectares in the heart of Monforte d’Alba. The hillside of Bussia ranks among the best vineyard sites in the entire Barolo zone – so my magnum came with an impressive provenance.

Barolo fans will also know that 1999 was one of the string of top-flight vintages with which Piedmont rang down the curtain on the 20th century. I had been saving it for an occasion that would show it at its best. Now it had its moment, alongside an opulent dish it had grown up with, and for palates that would appreciate both it and the food. I was really looking forward to this.

Conterno’s Bussia did not disappoint in the slightest. From those first sips, arresting in their freshness, to the vigor with which it matched a fine Stilton and a luscious soft-ripening Brebirousse, it offered peak experiences. Each sip was slightly different from the last, as the wine evolved in the carafe and glass and as the accompanying food called out different components in it. It was a palatal – the only word I can think of to describe it – kaleidoscope.

Large formats like magnums are marvelous for allowing wines to preserve their youthful vitality and at the same time giving them room to grow. I’ve known that for a long time – but it’s also been a long time since I experienced it. All I can finally say, in the most esoteric winespeak, is: What a treat! Good wine, good food, good friends. What a treat!

Posted in Barolo, Italy, Piedmont | 4 Comments »

More Cheer for a Year No Longer New: It’s Produttori del Barbaresco Again

February 26, 2024 by Tom Maresca

Among the small selection of older wines I acquired late last summer – promptly dubbed “Tom’s Treasures” by Diane – and squirreled away for special occasions, I thought I detected a slight leakage from the capsule of a bottle of 1976 Barbaresco from Produttori del Barbaresco. 1976 was almost 50 years ago, so if the cork was beginning to fail, it could spell doom for the wine. That possible leakage was enough to make me resolve to use that bottle at the first appropriate opportunity.

Well, Diane and I are pretty resourceful at manufacturing occasions for a good wine, so when I recently underwent two successful cataract surgeries, we decided the moment had arrived. We got a fine New York strip steak (thank you, Ottomanelli) and some good mushrooms to accompany it, pulled out of the freezer one of Diane’s excellent three-cheese tarts for a first course, and addressed the worrisome bottle.

Because the wine, if alive at all, might be very fragile, I didn’t pull the cork until we were ready to sit to dinner. It came out with no trouble and seemed sound enough, if quite evidently old. There was very little ullage, so I poured, and we proceeded. The wine was pale, but no paler than many younger Nebbiolos I’ve drunk. It had very little aroma. The first taste showed almost nothing: it didn’t seem dead, by any means, but it just wasn’t giving anything.

The very good news is that that changed quickly. That Barbaresco began opening in the glass, and did so steadily all through the meal. Its aroma, and the flavors on the palate, kept getting bigger and richer. By the time we had drunk that bottle as far down as we dared – there was a substantial layer of sediment – we were relishing a first-rate Piedmontese gem, Nebbiolo at its richest and best.

This was all the more remarkable not just because of this bottle’s age, but also because, according to my memory and all the charts I’ve been able to consult, 1976 wasn’t a very good year at all.

I’ve always admired the Produttori del Barbaresco, as some of the posts I’ve done already this year will attest, but my admiration for their work continues to grow. Bottles like this are monuments to old-school Piedmontese winemaking (in 1976, stainless steel tanks and temperature-controlled fermentation were still new wave in Piedmont) and to the amazing character of the Nebbiolo variety.

A small teaser for those who follow such things: This bottle was #3 of my small trove of treasures. I have a few more yet to taste, including two Gattinaras (one from the legendary 1961 vintage), a classic Mastroberardino Taurasi, and a real curiosity – a 50 year-old Grignolino. So far, these wines all seem to have been stored very well, so my hopes are high. Stay tuned.

Posted in Barbaresco, Italy, Piedmont | 9 Comments »

Sipping Wine While the World Burns

February 9, 2024 by Tom Maresca

With everything that’s going on in this country and the world, it can seem trivial to be concerning oneself with wine. Certainly, from some points of view, it is trivial. To which the trivial part of my brain responds “so what?” From one point of view, anything and everything is trivial – and that’s true too, in a far more profound way than most of us are willing to admit. The trivial part of my brain knows something too.

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From another point of view, thinking about wine now is like clinging to the raft of the Medusa. You remember Géricault’s famous painting: exhausted survivors cling to a battered, makeshift raft, trying desperately to signal a far distant ship as a storm approaches and a close-by towering wave is about to crash down on them. Not a pretty picture. Not a pretty thought. Yet true too – from one point of view.

From yet another point of view, talking about wine now is skipping down the yellow brick road with Dorothy and company – a pleasing hallucination, but a hallucination nevertheless. And all the more pleasing because right now the real world – or what we are willing to accept as such – just isn’t comforting or reassuring. And that’s just as true – and as untrue – as the other points of view.
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What lends all these points of view their degree of truth is the underlying fusion of the cosmic-catastrophe scenario and the personal-doom scenario. Which we all fear, but neither of which most of us truly believe in our heart of hearts. If we did, we’d be behaving very differently, and not merely fretting.

Besides all that, I believe firmly in the value of normality and in its continuation. All my life, I have taken great pleasure in wine, in drinking it and in talking about it: That is normal for me, and I see no reason to stop now. My stopping would benefit no one, and would certainly distress me – and I fail to see how that would better the world in any way, except to please the self-righteous, which I always prefer not to do.

On the positive side, wine gives me – and many other people – great pleasure. At my age, as my physical debilities increase, it’s one of the most rewarding simple physical satisfactions I’m still capable of. And important as that is to me, it’s the least of the matter: my nightly wine with dinner is my daily oasis. It relaxes me, it enables me to appreciate my life, it enables me to think clearly – at least as clearly as I ever could – about the things I have to do, the things I want to do, and the things – far fewer – I actually can do. It lets me reflect with tranquility, unfrightened and unpanicked, on the cockamami-ness of the world I have to live in. And I’m pretty sure it confers those benefits on the many other people who love it too – not to mention the benefits it confers on the people all over the world for whom wine provides employment and a decent living. None of that is at all trivial.

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I don’t think that if I were to give up drinking and writing about wine, the worldwide wine industry would collapse – though my doctor seems to think I’m its mainstay. I’d like to believe that, but neither my capacity nor my finances could stand it. No, I’m just an ordinary wine drinker who prefers in these harsh and abrasive times to take daily refuge and comfort where I can easily find them, in a fine wine.

So maybe I am being trivial – but, as Diane will testify, I’ve always had a broad trivial streak, which over my lifetime I’ve grown quite fond of, occasionally to her annoyance. Diane is a much more serious person than I am. So I’ll take refuge in the words of another serious person, Jonathan Swift, one of my favorite authors. He lived in violent and parlous times some 400 years ago, and his thoughtful response to its trials was the pithy, pertinent, eloquent, and eternally trivial Vive la bagatelle!

Shall we open another bottle?