Wine News (20)

Three-month-old Goat cheese (on the right)There are some 5 different artisanal-cheese stands on the saturday market of Saint-Aignan in the Loire and I regularly buy cheese from several of them. One of them is managed by a woman who sells also vegetables, eggs and wild mushrooms along with her cheese production. She often has also old goat-cheese, meaning having gone through several months of patient elevage in a cool place. Her prices being in the average for the market and the three-month-old cheese costing just the same than a fresh goat cheese or a mere 1,6 Euro, I never miss the opportunity to buy a couple of them. This sort of cheese is indeed very different from a fresh or relatively fresh goat cheese, it is quite hard in texture and breaks apart when you cut a piece, and the taste is very strong, with strinking ammonia notes that can be a shock for a first-timer, but it's still simply delicious when you got initiated to it. The downside is that pairing this long-elevage cheese is arduous and to be frank I usually don't even try, the cheese is already a treat by itself and can make it without its wine.
I still wanted to try to match this sort of cheese with a wine and went to ask to Alain Segelle, a sommelier with a keen knowledge of wines and foods. He pointed to an old Sancerre first, more than 10 years old, for example a Cotat Sancerre. Considering a 10-years-more Sancerre will cost 60 Euro or more at Lavinia where I'm speaking to Alain Segelle, I'll pass this option. He says that there's another option for this old goat-cheese : a Rancio sec (dry), like for example this one from La Tour Vieille, Rancio sec Cap de Creus in the Banyuls Appellation. It is made by Vincent Cantié & Christine Campadieu and costs 22 Euro at Lavinia. It is an oxydative wine about 30 years old which has some common particularities with an Amontillado Xeres, maybe a bit drier that an Amontillado. Alain Segelle says that the particular texture of the cheese goes well with this type of Solera or veil wine. He says that it may be because the veil wine has gone through a similar aging process which has concentrated the aromas of the wine.
I ended up choosing a wine that was given to me by Christophe Foucher earlier in 2008, Christophe is the owner of Domaine de la Lunotte : a Sauvignon 2005 which went through a 3-year elevage in casks. This lightly oxydative wine with floral aromas was the last wine that I had tasted during my visit at the estate and this atypical Sauvignon waited in my fridge for the right opportunity. Its light residual-sugar feel disappears when you've just eaten a piece of this old cheese, and while the strong cheese keeps the upper hand in the balance, I think that it still can do a good job here.
Note : this goat cheese wass more than 4-month old as I kept it another month in the fridge.

A beautiful additives-free Beaujolais Nouveau... This is the middle of winter, when days are at their shortest, and you need a simple, vivid wine to warm up. We should always have some special bottles to fight the winter gloom, like Melvin (Jack Nicholson) in As good as it gets who had these handwritten-labelled CDs of his own, with names like "to use for an icebreaker" (plus, we really have ice out there !), "to pep things up" or "for emergency use only"... The same way Carol (Helen Hunt) was won back by the right piece of music, we need a bottle that would be tagged "to open when days are the shortest", to successfully bring back warmth in the midst of winter. But if you can listen repeatedly to a given piece of music, you drink a given bottle only once, so the special wine has to be affordable if you're intended to do so once in a while with friends. This Beaujolais-Nouveau wine (labelled Beaujolais Primeur) was the perfect fit for an instant mood-enhancing experience. I tasted it at Le Vin en Tête on the last Beaujolais-Nouveau day and it hit the spot right away. Here was, for about 8 Euro, a joyful, fruity, unfiltred wine with a lightly perly mouth, an immediate pleasure along the throat. The people at Le Vin en Tête had put 4 Beaujolais Nouveau wines on display for free pours to passerbys and visitors, all of them good stuff but this particular one won all the votes and you could hear people asking for one or more bottles of it to go. This Beaujolais Primeur "Les Lapins Monopole 2008 was made by Nicolas Testard of Chateau du Montceau, with the help of Fred Cossard. Price : about 8 Euro.
Note : if the wine isn't enough to warm up the thickest of winter, here are a couple of "for emergency use only" music tracks : First, Lazy Afternoon from Pete la Roca's Basra. Steve Kuhn is doing a beautiful, sensitive solo at the piano in a recording made in 1965. Another great piano track is Bill Evans' interpretation of the theme of M.A.S.H. in his well-named-album You must beleive in spring. Cellar for just one bottle of wine (Must have been already posted in countless blogs)
If there's a place where I didn't expect to fall upon a wine-related subject, it was the Japanese Design Exhibition  at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Louvre. Made possible by a French-Japanese cultural cooperation, this Kansei exhibition wanted to shed light on the deep roots of the delicate Japanese designs and many Japanese designed object were displayed, sometimes as ordinary-looking as a Pocari Sweat plastic bottle. I think btw that the bottle was more chosen for the iconic status of this soda drink in Japan than for the design of the bottle, and Iseki's One-Cup would have been a better choice.
The exhibition was divided in several design groups along particular aspects that are very important to the Japanese way of feeling the things, like kime where you feel the grain and the touch of an object, mottai where the substance of an object must spring visually to the eyes without any distracting and unnecessary artifact, karoyaka which makes objects feel light and aerial, or habuku for objects where simplicity is pushed at its maximum and a design thought to make the handling obvious.
The wine-related object was a one-cellar bottle designed to be placed on a table. Hard to think of a more minimalist cellar and it makes the 6-bottle table-cellars that are common in Japan look ostentatious. It is not clear if this cellar is intended to age a unique bottle like a Romanée Conti for years under the prying eyes of the guests, or give a temporary respite to a bottle between the cellar and the decorker stage. Designer : Mr Michio Akita, created in 2003. It was displayed in the tatazumai section, for the allure of this object, its right proportions and its ability to find its space in the room... Pallets of cheap table-wine in a supermarket (details) Here are Table wines for the worst of the recession, at respectively 1,82 Euro and 3,20 Euro, these two bottlings are just priced above the low-end, carton- or plastic-packaged wines in France that cost one Euro or less. I found them in a Super-U supermarket in Burgundy.
The cuvée Super-U Venarey-les-Laumes, priced 1,82 Euro, seems to be a special cuvée made for this particular supermarket, it bears the name of a Négociante of the region, Anne Laroche, but the wine is said to come from the Loire, from all the white varieties of that region, with the taste hinting for a majority of Sauvignon. Flower aromas on the nose. Flat, short mouth, no complexity. Not very pleasant feel in the mouth.
The second wine is a Chardonnay 2007 from the Yonne, a part of Burgundy that is home to both prestigious wines and cheap wines like this one. Estate name : Domaine Eugénie Carrion, an estate also known for making Chablis. The wine could come from younger vines or grapes deemed unfit for the Chablis. The label says "bottled in 21190, which is a ZIP code from the Côte d'Or (not the Yonne) where it was probably transported by tanker truck and bottled. Nose typical with a Chardonnay. Relatively correct mouth, without ampleness though. Some minerality, maybe a bit too dry (lacks richness). Mostly correct for this price range (Priced 3,20 Euro). Maybe one day these vineyards will turn out to be another success story of a mass-produced-table-wine turned sought-after-quality-wine, but there's probably still some changes ahead in the vineyard and in the vatroom before that.Strong, Wild and Velvety... We spent Christmas in Burgundy this year. Our friend Junko from Osaka had Christmas with us, she had a traditional Christmas evening with many good things, she went to experience a Christmas mass (B. and I didn't) and we even saw together the freeeezing beauty of Burgundy, like this horse we make friends with along a small road. But the heart of the story is that if we all exchanged gifts, she made me another very-cherished-gift (even though it was an order that I paid her back for) : she bought for me two bottles of Japanese whisky in a duty-free shop at Narita airport, a Yamazaki Single Malt 12 years and a Nikka Yoishi Single Malt 12 years. Narita duty-free is a gold mine for whisky amateurs if they have the chance to fly direct to their European or whatever other end-destination. There, you can find a bottle of Suntory Yamazaki Single Malt 12 years for 4500 Yen (or 35 Euro) instead of more than 7500 Yen anywhere in Japan (including at the distillery), and the Nikka Yoichi Single Malt 12 years cost only 3900 Yen or 30 Euro. I think I remember that there are several alcohol duty-free shops in Narita, including this one featured of the excellent Nonjatta blog (everything you need to know about Japanese whiskies, written by Chris Bunting, a British expat living in Kanagawa). Junko bought the bottles at Fasola, a chain which has also a branch in Akihabara.
This beautiful horse who befriended us along a road in Burgundy had several thing in common with these whiskies, like strength and tenderness at the same time.A little-known bar for a glass on the Champs ElyséesThe Champs-Elysées in Paris is not precisely the place I think to when looking for a cool place to drop for a glass : overpriced, crowded and not very civilized. This brand new bar which was inaugurated by Ladurée last september offers not only the traditionnal Ladurée treats with tea and coffee, but also a wide range of other drinks including wines and Champagnes. The interior design is signed by a woman named Roxane Rodriguez, and it has a Jules-Verne, SCI-FI feel, with this fish-skin designs on the walls. Located in the back from the Ladurée shop on the street level, it has a very different style from the cosy usual Ladurée salons de thé (Tea Rooms) upstairs. And while you sit there and enjoy your whatever drink, it's hard to believe that only a few meters away, the unsuspecting crowds walk down the avenue. Nice, well-chosen music background too, nothing to add on the service, it's Ladurée....
The drinks menu shows that luxury can come without being overpriced, the coffee starting at 3,5 Euro. The wines : The entry glass (What I ordered) is a Corbières Rosé by Chateau Hortala in the Languedoc (15cl glass priced 6 Euro, in spite of the menu saying 8 Euro). The glass is served with delicious olives and other pickles. A nice, solid bled-rosé wine which is probably made with Grenache. B. chose a Café Amaretto, a nicely aromatized coffee. There are a few Champagnes on the list beginning with a Champagne Ladurée at 13 Euro a glass. The Champagne Ladurée is made by Maison Pierre Mignon. Among the few wines by the glass, there is a Lalande de Pomerol at 8 Euro (Chateau Treytins), a Sancerre white (Domaine Reverdy) at 10 Euro and a Saint-Joseph (Domaine François Villard) at 9 Euro Heavy-duty loading at the Paris wine fairI went just once to the 2008 edition of the Salon des Vignerons Indépendants (Paris wine fair) at Porte de Versailles last november and if I didn't buy as much wine as these people above, I still bought a few bottles, beginning with Saladin Loï 2006, a Grenache (70%), Carignan, Syrah, Bourboulenc blend from the Côtes du Rhône. The saladin sisters make unfiltered wines near Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche and tasting their wines is always a pleasure. Marie-Laurence Saladin who was there when I visited bears a striking resemblance with the French actress Sandrine Bonnaire. We chatted a few minutes, she said that if I visit I should also visit their American neighboors and friends of La Gramière, to which I replied for sure as I also regularly follow their blog (but never went through one of their wines). Actually I didn't know they were that close geographically from each other.
I also bought a few bottles of Jo Landron Muscadet. After tasting several of Jo Landon's Domaine-de-la-Louvetrie wines, I rediscovered how the unique Melon-de-Bourgogne grape-variety could make beautiful white wines. Every single Muscadet there was a hit but my top notes went to his Muscadet Fief du Breil 2006, a very mineral wine with a very classy and long mouth. When I visited Joe Dressner in the Maconnais last summer we spoke about the ability of well-vinified Muscadet wines to age, and if this Fief du Breil is already a great wine now, it certainly can age 10 or more years like this page might suggest, which I might try to wait with the bottles that I bought that day.A perfect match with Foie GrasWe found a good match with our foie gras this year : a Banyuls table wine by Casot des Mailloles, named Blanc du Casot 2003, an incredible, complex and concentrated white wine with waves of aromas jumping at you continuously all along our foie-gras treat. The wine is blend of Grenache gris and Grenache Blanc and has a beautiful gold/organge color. The nose smelled orange peel, with notes of crystallized fruits, quince, honey, very ripe grapes. The mouth was ample and the 14,5° alcohol stood well the balance. A bottle of 2004 costs 26 Euro at Lavinia, I think that the 2003 is sold out.
The other wine which was a surprise that weekend was a magnum of Sauvignon of Junko Araï's Domaine des Bois Lucas (Loire) which was given to us by Noëlla Morantin after a visit there (page on the Sauvignon harvest). The unlabelled magnum [pictured on the right with our friend Junko from Osaka, with whom we wanted to taste Junko-Araï's wine] stayed months or years in our fridge, and the last 6 months in a not-so-cool cellar. This unfiltered Sauvignon had deposits inside the bottle. Very beautiful atypical Sauvignon, with aromas of rose grapefruit, ananas, mango and other exotic fruits. Neat attack in the mouth with richness and length. A pleasure that we enjoyed for two days. After these years of poor storage I was expecting mixed feelings from this bottle but the wine was beyond our expectations, an exceptionnal wine indeed. One more proof that little- or no-sulphured natural wines have an energy within to withstand adverse conditions.The wine also paired perfectly with the roasted free-run chicken that we had for lunch. Cellar with view on the restaurant (or vice versa...)There are more and more restaurants with a dining-room offering a view on the wine-cellar, the bottles being guessed behind dark-colored glass-windows. The trend is also noticeable for the well-off individuals who increasibly have luxury custom cellars built on the side of their dining room with full view and easy access. Like at home, it's fashionable to let guests contemplate the host's liquid troves, it's like these temple corners or altars found in the living rooms in Asia, we wine amateurs feel reverence when looking at it, almost bowing in respect for the bottles displayed in the dim light... These cellars are usually only a fraction of the whole wine reserve of the restaurant and they make the sleeping beauties inside more real and desirable. Here at Il Vino, a restaurant where I shot a few pictures for work but where I didn't eat, the wine occupies an even more central role. It is said to be a restaurant where you first choose the wine and where the meal is then built around it. The owner is Enrico Bernardo, won won the title of Best Sommelier of the World in 2004 (he began by being best sommelier of Lombardy in 1996 and best sommelier of Italy 1996-1997). His purpose in Il Vino is to make wine the center of gravity of his menu. Open the menu at Il Vino and you will see only wines, selected from his 1500 wines. Italian-born chef Enrico Bernardo is at ease in the kitchen and in the cellar and his purpose is to have people discover the perfect dish pairing whatever wine they have chosen in the first place. The staff is specially trained to help the clients choose a wine that will go with a dish they like. If his favorite wine region is Piedmont, his list encompasses wines from France and from the other wine regions of the world, including the new world.
The restaurant is located at 13 Bd de la Tour-Maubourg 75007 Paris. It is open 7 days a week. phone : 01 44 11 72 00

Comments

[Iris]

How I envy you for the choice of goat cheeses on the photo! I still remember your article about Marguerite and her goats and cheese - you didn't give away her address:-)...

And I do totally agree, that this kind of cheese goes along with veil wines - I made one some years ago, which we called "Bel Hazard", because it was not made intentionally and it proves excellent with ripe coated goat cheese - also with old Cantal or Cheddar...

and La Gramière is also on my "places to go" list for the future, so we will see, who get's there first:-)

Bonne année

Iris

[hikalu]

Bonne année Bertrand.
It looks delicious goat cheeses! I hope 2009 will be a nice year for you.