n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine bertrand machard de gramont, curtil-vergy

My friend J's stated plan, this past October, had been to staff a replacement at his cave in Paris and cruise down to Burgundy for three days of marathon solo tasting. All business, no sightseeing, no fancy meals, just serious professional tasting.

Then at the very last minute he must have been worried about getting bored, because he invited me along.

As luck would have it, I was able to take off work. It became a Bro-gundy road trip: we ate Pringles and listened to the recent Real Estate album on repeat in the car and had a nice bro picnic of sandwiches on a cliff in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits before our first appointment. Then we went to meet a friend of J's, Axelle Machard de Gramont,* winemaker at Domaine Bertrand Machard de Gramont, a Nuits-Saint-Georges estate that was, for me, a wonderfully atypical introduction to tasting in Burgundy.

all the right ingredients: jeu de quilles, 75014

Imagine you must throw a party. You invite your most amusing friends into a room with a balcony after sundown and open numerous bottles of sparkling wine. There is a band. Performance art. DJs. Clowns, sword-swallowers, and a man who walks around on his hands. But to your consternation, no one speaks to each other for the duration of the event.

Great party, they say, on their way out the door. Keep me in the loop for the next one.

I feel this way about certain natural wine restaurants. Like the friends in the above scenario, I sincerely appreciate the effort that has gone into getting all the right ingredients in place. Desnoyer meats, natural wines, manifestly fresh fish, etc. At Jeu de Quilles, a suberbly charming market-menu place in the 14ème, these elements are supported by that other, nigh-on unattainable Paris luxury, great hospitality. All that I felt was lacking, after a recent by-no-means-unenjoyable meal there, was a unifying vision: a reason all these good things have been gathered together.

les vendanges 2011: jura: ludwig bindernagel, poligny

In defense of what may appear to be my extreme lateness in posting on my experience harvesting in the Jura this past September, I'll just say I don't give a hoot. My impression is that up-to-the-minute harvest reports are only really useful to high-end retailers who must make large purchase commitments daringly early in order to avoid losing out to, say, the burgeoning uncritical bootleg-happy Chinese market. Almost none of these large early buys are being made in the Jura, I expect.

In any case, I wasn't there for long, and certainly can't give a coherent cross-section of the vintage. What I got was just a snapshot of how one small-scale vigneron, in this case my friend Ludwig Bindernagel, manages harvest. He manages harvest with serious magnanimous grace, it turns out, making time for picnics and numerous educational asides for first-timers like myself, even while understaffed.  

n.d.p. en suisse: swiss curiosities

A schwingen festival. Not the kind of schwinging you may be used to.

n.d.p. in piemonte: cantina dei produttori di nebbiolo di carema

A.K.A. The other Carema, the one not made by Luigi Ferrando.

My friends and I were passing one more night in Switzerland on our way back to Paris. So on the road north from Monforte through Carema country we thought it might make for an interesting pit stop to visit the Cantina dei Produttori di Nebbiolo di Carema, whose wines none of us had tried. They have a U.S. importer - Doug Polaner - but neither my friend J nor I could recall having ever seen the wines for sale there.

Luigi Ferrando's sterling reputation as a producer of quality high-altitude Nebbiolo is partially defined in opposition to his neighbors involved in this cooperativo, so our expectations weren't exactly sky-high. Also, there was a huge lumpy novelty bottle outside of the tasting room, making the place look like some kind of Alpine saloon.

n.d.p. in piemonte: alessandro e gian natale fantino, monforte d'alba

On our last night in Monforte, my friends and I revisited Case della Saracca, with the aim of drinking something we hadn't had much of during our stay: mature Barolo.* A late-nineties vertical by Alessandro e Gian Natale Fantino stood out on the bar's list as unmissable bargains, and we recognised the name because every day for the past week we'd been walking by their cellars, which are located right next to the Da Felicin apartments in the old city of Monforte.

If we hadn't yet visited them, it was because the name Fantino is like the Smith of Monforte, making it difficult for first time visitors like ourselves to keep straight which Fantini produce quality wine, and which produce light fluff for cafe consumption. Alessandro e Gian Natale, we learned, fall into the former category.  Alessando Fantino worked ten years for the legendary Bartolo Mascarello, before founding his own organic estate with brother Gian Natale in the early 90's.

The 1999 Barolo "Vigne dei Dardi" we drank at Case della Saracca was in the end so vivid and racy that J and I were inspired to try for an inexcusably last-minute visit before we checked out the next morning. ("Are you free in ten minutes? Yes, ten!") To our delight, winemaker Alessandro Fantino was available to give us a tour. We assured J's wife C and the Native Companion it would be a quick tour, no tasting, since that is what Fantino offered us in Italian over the phone. We probably should have known better, as it happened. C and the NC fell asleep in their hammocks by the packed convertible, and J and I tasted the Fantino range straight through to the Barolo Chinato.

n.d.p. in piemonte: osteria dell'unione, treiso, then bruno giacosa, neive

After tasting the extremely ethereal Barbarescos of Cascina delle Rose with estate owner Giovanna Rizzioli, we followed her recommendation for lunch in nearby Treiso to Osteria dell'Unione, where we had a meal as perfectly enjoyable as any other we'd had in the region.

Let's be honest, though. I can only describe vitello tonnato so many times on this blog, as in here, and here, and, come to think of it, I had one here also, though I declined to mention it. The most distinctive things about the meal at Osteria dell'Unione were my friend J's nicely piquante rabbit, and the fact that the plate of cured meats he'd ordered as a starter came with what appeared to be, and actually was, a tiny omelet. (Genius!)

If I post about the experience now, it's primarily as a segue to air some thoughts on one of the meal's less interesting elements, the 2006 Spumante Brut by Bruno Giacosa. Shortly after the meal we were to visit that winemaker's winery in Neive, where my trusty iPhone camera was to totally fail me,* meaning I lost out on some useful pics of the premises and of the very intelligent, very young new winemaker Francesco, who would've been in 1st grade when I was in 3rd grade, that is how young he is. Giacosa's reds are self-evidently magnificent, from the elegant Dolcetto on up to the cru Barbaresci; I won't burden them with more praise here. I'm more curious about why the Giacosa estate goes to such efforts year after year to produce and promote what is, after all, a merely okay sparkling wine.

welsh wine: ancre hill estates

Another year, more struggling. I didn't mean for the blog to come to a crashing halt in December. There were the usual holiday excuses; then in my alternate life working for a fashion company we opened a new shop in Paris. But I find it helpful to be reminded now and then that time spent drinking and writing about it is dear, moreso even than the wines under discussion...

Over the holidays I spent a few days in London and a few days in Wales. This means that once I get through a backlog of observations on Piemonte (still!), Burgundy, and Barcelona, readers can expect my customary spiteful quasi-Marxist critique of all UK wine culture. Actually I will have some nice things to say about one or two London discoveries, chief among them Raef Hodgson and 40 Maltby St. / Gergovie Imports.  

Quite predictably, there were rather less drinking options on the Welsh leg of my trip. My friends and their families and I were holed away in an adorable cabin in Snowdonia, unable to leave or see the sun due to constant freezing rain from all directions and the associated risk of pneumonia. We kept the fires lit; charades prompts grew increasingly obscene. Wines of discernible aesthetic interest ran out after the first night. I did, however, salvage a few impressions of one noteworthy wine, though I'll admit my interest was more cultural than aesthetic: a 2008 Welsh Sparkling Wine from Ancre Hill Estates, a family run domaine of 9 acres or so in Monmouth.

straight classic: le severo, 75014

If we define popular staples as foodstuffs that could conceivably be employed as a "health boost" icon in video games - things like steaks, burgers, and fries - then we've pretty much isolated a segment of cuisine that everyone and their mother have strong opinions on, no matter how indifferent or clueless these diners may be about anything more sophisticated than sesame buns. Classic, simplistic comfort food is just very inviting to armchair critics. This manifests itself nowadays in the rainforest of blogs devoted such cuisine.

Conceptually pure restaurants like 14ème steak standby Le Severo are partial beneficiaries of this dynamic: the restaurant is rightfully famous city-wide for its marvelous cuts of meat. Nevertheless I can't help feeling that something gets glossed over, lost in the branding, when I read about the place: namely, the impressive sophistication of the panoramic blackboard wine list, which is basically a big billboard for all that is good about Le Severo's supplier, the occasionally controversial* Caves Augé.

n.d.p. in piemonte: cascina delle rose, barbaresco

In principal, one goal of anyone making wine naturally - organic, biodynamic, or anywhere in between - is heightened expression of terroir. I'm of the opinion that the success of the venture is most perceptible when one evaluates it across the boundaries of individual domaines and regions; in general, one might say, natural wines tend to reflect more dramatically the vicissitudes of the vintage and the composition and exposition of the soil. This is because, when compared to the panoply of invasive techniques available to the contemporary winemaker, natural winemaking is a fundamentally subtractive process. It is, at least in part, a resistance to overcorrection of naturally occurring traits.

Nevertheless, when we use terms like "non-interventionist," we risk obscuring the fact that winemaking itself is one big intervention. What we taste in a glass remains a product of the individual habits and customs of a given estate. Evaluating wines is always a more or less informed stab in the dark about which traits come from the whims of nature and which come from the whims of man.

This brings me, finally, to my conflicted feelings about Cascina delle Rose, a 3ha organic Barbaresco estate we visited in Piemonte this past August. The estate had come highly recommended from two different sets of friends - a surprise, since despite having tasted the region's wines pretty exhausively, I'd never heard of them. Estate owner Giovanna Rizzioli was a marvelous hostess, intelligent and expressive, and the best of the wines we tasted reflected the same qualities. There was, nevertheless, across the range of wines, a rigidity of style that felt determined by something other than the terroir of the estate's 3ha of vineyards. (Cue darkness, stabs.)

assimilate this: guilo guilo, 75018

I would have some real thinking to do, if in the future I am ever given the choice between dining at a Japanese restaurant in Paris and committing seppuku. Which, I shall have ask myself, will be more painful? Or is the latter sort of inevitable, as a method of saving face after the shame of the former?

My experiences with Japanese food in the City of Light have run the gamut from grotesque - the gnarly bentos for sale on rue Saint Anne, with their unidentified fried objects atop shoe-sized rice wads - to dispiriting, as in the rapacious and tasteless stylings of the Issé group, who specialise in marking up much the same Far East paraphernalia as everyone else, only much further.

Until recently I held out quite a bit of hope, thinking that perhaps all the Japanese restaurants I'd tried in Paris had, despite their most ambitious efforts, simply not been expensive enough. But this past women's fashion week brought with it the occasion to visit Guilo Guilo, a somewhat pricey spot in the 18ème renowned for its tough reservations and the seasonal innovations of its chef, Eiichi Edakuni, who somehow simultaneously maintains a successful restaurant in Kyoto. I say "somehow" because I left Guilo Guilo with the impression that Edakuni's chief innovation there is not his food, which is unmysterious and delicious, but rather his aggressive rudeness and bald unprofessionalism, traits which I can't help thinking would only be tolerated by a French audience who, wowed by Japophilia, have been too quick handing out the Genius Card That Excuses Everything. (Polanski has one, too.)

world's geekiest wine

If there were awards for this sort of thing, one might well be given to my friend F's insane biodynamic micro-cuvée of oxidative Loire Gewürztraminer, which I tasted this past summer.

'Gewürztraminer?' I hear you cry. 'Isn't it totally illegal to even have Gewürztraminer planted in the Loire?'

This is true, and this is why I'm declining to give the winemaker's name, and also why I waited for several months to pass in between this post and the last post in which I mentioned his (legal) wines. Of course, the most discreet thing to do would be just to savor the memory of this strange kangaroo of a wine and never mention it on the blog accompanied by photos and background information and tasting notes.

heavenly: ô divin, 75019

On this blog I can sometimes give the impression that an unbridgeable gulf exists between restaurant industry people and people who merely like food and wine a lot. It is true that people who've spent time working in restaurants at a certain level tend to drink more, tip more, sleep around more, and generally manifest in their daily lives the influence of the pirate ship ethos that more or less reigns in these restaurants. All this is relative, say, to people who sit in offices. Restaurant industry people also often have a higher regard for manual proficiency and efficient hospitality, because these virtues are crucial to getting through each night.

There is, however, something to be said for the value of outside perspective on the restaurant industry. Particularly in Paris, where some truly backwards and small-minded memes are insensibly entrenched, such as rudeness, sloth, inconsistent sham formality, over-reliance on set formules, and, what can be worst, a blasé attitude towards fine product, which behavior in some bygone era may have reflected the uniform excellence of French cuisine, but which in today's globalized GMO'd additive-heavy world just appears clueless.

Ô Divin, a small cave à manger-slash-bar à vin tucked away beside a recording studio near the Parc de Buttes Chaumont, is perceptibly not run by anyone with serious restaurant industry chops. Co-owner Naoufel Zaïm previously worked in clothing retail, and came to love food and wine somewhat by chance. It demonstrates that experience isn't everything, because, as the Native Companion and I discovered the other night with our friends M and J2, Zaïm has succeeded in creating one of Paris' greatest wine bars.

n.d.p. in piemonte: saint peter's country chapel

Between towns of Barolo and La Morra on the via San Pietro, there's a few picnic tables and a water fountain at a rest station named for the boarded-up and presumably empty chapel that overlooks it, Saint Peter's Country Chapel. Although it looks like there might be a magnificent view of vineyards just over that hill, I can attest there is not: the immediate area seems to have insensibly been landscaped in such a way as to specifically prevent any kind of vista.

Nevertheless it made a fine site for a picnic after a trudge around Alba where everything was shut at midday on a Sunday. We'd packed various cured meats and gorgeous irregular tomatoes and ate them with a shared knife. Mid-meal we were all extremely bemused to learn that, according to the signage, Saint Peter's Country Chapel had been built by "the sole survivor of a tragic orgy" that had taken place in the old castle across the road. 

illegal sauvignon, and other surprises: ma cave, 75019

In need of dinner ingredients a few Sundays ago, I decided to check out the Marché de la Place des Fêtes, high up above Belleville in the 19ème arrondissement. The market itself was a bit of a disappointment that morning - endless lines, not especially cheap prices, fully one half the big market taken up by shoddy produce and knick-knack stands. Notably absent was the fellow from well-regarded neighborhood cave à manger Ô Divin, who I'd read sometimes has a stand there selling natural wines.*

What redeemed the excursion turned out to be the Velib ride up rue de Belleville past Pyrénées and Jourdain Metro stations, where I was delighted to find a bustling little quartier, with many shops actually open until one or two in the afternoon. Just a few minutes north of the pork buns, lacquered ducks, and leering street creeps of Belleville one encounters decent-looking boulangeries, an Italian épicerie, and butchers that don't look like health hazards.

Since I hadn't found any wine at the market, I skidded to a halt during my descent down rue de Belleville in front of Ma Cave, a pokey wine shop without much to recommend itself, at first glance, beyond the fact that it was open. All I sought was a bottle of potable cooking wine - something I could sip uncritically and employ in a sausage ragù. The bottle I took home in the end, from what turned out to be a very decent wine shop, both met and exceeded my low expectations: a dirt-cheap but totally fascinating bottle of Sauvignon, illegally grown in Marsannay and falsely labeled Aligoté.

n.d.p. in piemonte: stefano bellotti & cascina degli ulivi, novi liguri

Throughout the recent trip to Piedmont, the Native Companion and my friend J's wife C would ask us before each scheduled visit to a vigneron whether we thought it would be worth their coming along. What they meant is: would visiting vigneron X be better than a dip in the pool? Would it be better than thirty pages of a novel? Would it beat viewing certain rural churches?

Unfortunately, since it was our first time in the region, J and I could offer them only the Gump-like but invariably true answer that you just never know what you are going to get, visiting vignerons. Sometimes you never see the vigneron and a cellar hand just explains what fermentation is. Sometimes it's an all-business experience and you leave after fifteen minutes clutching a price list. As wine geeks we continue to nose around wine estates because oftentimes it's better than that. As much as can be learned from books and the internet and copious tasting, there's just no substitute for the ambient knowledge that gets transmitted when you visit winemakers in their element, and hear how they themselves feel about their wines and their methods of production.

I had an inkling it would be worthwhile visiting pioneering Gavi producer Stefano Bellotti at his Cascina degli Ulivi estate in Novi Liguri. It wasn't a convenient trip from Monforte - almost two hours by car - but J and I were both fans of Bellotti's wines, and furthermore we were curious to meet one Italy's premier biodynamicists. In retrospect I can say that, while Gavi is kind of remote, and the rest of the region's wines have yet to interest me in the slightest, a visit to Cascina degli Ulivi is indeed a rewarding and inspiring experience, an entry into a freewheeling ecological community that, among other achievements, makes some utterly enchanting wines.