Wine of The Week - Domain Dublere Savigny-les-Beaune Les Peuillets 2009

Domain Dublere Savigny-les-Beaune Les Peuillets 2009

Knowing the weekend wasn’t going to be the most productive ever, with little more to do than clear the garden and wait for the wind and rain to arrive, I started out on Saturday by putting an omelette together and opening a bottle of Domaine Dublere’s white Savigny-les-Beaune Les Peuillets 2009.

Light straw in color, the nose took me away from the dismal rain outside to the sunshine of citrus, flowers and a hint of lees. Direct and uncomplicated on the palate, it exhibits lively grapefruit and lime flavors that are levelled off with minimal oak and calm round malolactic acids through the mid palate. Served practically at room temperature it went beautifully with the rich soft egg, tart goat cheese and buttered English muffin, but its versatile nature would make it a great partner with a variety of fish and seafood dishes.

Savigny-lès-Beaune is a large appellation that mostly produces red wine (85%) and a little white. The 22 Premier Crus, which come in two styles, are divided by the river Rhoin. The south-facing clay soils to the north, where Pethel gets some of his Pinot from the small Les Talmettes vineyard, express more delicate characteristics, whereas the sand and gravel soils to the south, on which Les Peuillets lies, are generally more forward and round.

Blair Pethel of Domain Dublere, is a North Carolina expat, who for a time was a financial journalist here in D.C.. He has demonstrated an incredible aptitude for both Jeopardy (he won the game show twice) and winemaking. Pethel has been making his own wine in Burgundy since 2004, after apprenticing with a few of the regions top winemakers, Patrice Rion and Jean-Marc Pillot and qualifying in viticulture and oenology with a year's course at the famous Lycée Viticole of Beaune. He and his family have settled into Burgundy very well, making extraordinarily good wines that represent both typicity of the grapes and the terroir of the region. We are very glad to be friends of Blair’s, accepting his warm hospitality on our annual trips to Burgundy, and thrilled to have the opportunity to directly import and represent his wines on the east coast.

Wine of The Week - Kilikanoon Blocks Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

Blocks Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 ($29.99)

I have long been a fan of Coonarwarra Cabs but it wasn’t until recently I considered trying a Cabernet from much further north in Clare Valley, a region neighboring Barossa and Eden Valleys which is, as far as red wine is concerned, the homeland of Shiraz. Today’s wine of the week, Blocks Road is from Kilikanoon, based in the heart of Clare Valley, a region also known more for producing Australia’s finest Riesling, but which, as I now know, also produces, terrific Cabernets too.

Kilikanoon is one of a growing number of producers in South Australia making wines that directly compete with their old world counterparts. The style of founder and head winemaker, Kevin Mitchel, is informed by a relationship with a couple of producers in the Loire and Rhone valleys in France, where he has managed to take time off and assist with their vintage. Kevin and his team (including his family) have done a cracking job with their Cabernet, where this influence is readily apparent. Careful pruning and harvesting of the vines has enabled the most interesting qualities to be extracted from the grapes. Achieving a balance between ripe fruit and herbaceousness in the Cabernet grapes helps a wine hold on to its sense of terroir.

Fresh blackcurrants and plums are neatly woven together with an array of garden herbs and garrigue. Precise and integrated on the palate, the 14.5% alcohol is very well hidden, as it is by no means overpowering. 24 months in a mix of small, new and old, French-oak casks has given this wine good depth and a velvety mouth feel. There is lots of life on the finish, marked by a bright acidity, something which combined with all its other attributes gives it great cellaring potential over the next 5 to 10 years.

Blocks Road is the best of both worlds, new and old. There are still bales of Ozzy charm oozing from the glass and yet somehow it has a lightness and restrained quality you would more readily attribute to something from the Gironde. However no matter what comparisons you can draw, this is simply a stunning wine that anyone interested in seeking out a relative bargain should try.

I opened this wine on Sunday afternoon with a group of friends to go with a leg of lamb I grilled on the barbeque, see recipe here,accompanied with the tomato and potato gratin listed below it. The two were sublime, I highly recommend trying this dish out with a few glasses of Blocks road while you still have the barbecue out in the remaining few weeks of Summer.

Felix Milner

Refreshing Spanish Whites For The Summer

Pampano Inspiracion, Verdejo , Rueda, 2009

&

Pago Del Vicario, Blanco de Tempranillo, Castilla La Mancha, 2010

These two wines have kept us, here at Schneider’s, very well refreshed over the hot summer and I wanted to take the opportunity to make sure no one else was missing out. The Pampano, which featured with great success in the Spanish mixed case Groupon, comes from Rueda, a sub region of Castilla Y Leon, just 110 miles north west of Madrid. Until the in 1970s the region was known for producing little more than a fortified wine similar to Sherry. This all changed when a few producers unearthed Verdejo, a native grape, and recognized the potential for dry white wine.

First of all Verdejo of Reuda is often confused with the Verdelho of Madeira and the Azores owing to the fact that the two look quite similar, however dna profiling has shown that they are distinct. The Pampano is a blend of Verdejo and Viura (Macabeo), a grape which also goes into the production of Cava. It is a gorgeous aromatic wine with herbaceous, mineral and tart fruit notes (expect crisp green apple and passion fruit). Light on the palate with a crisp, zippy finish.

Pago Del Vicario’s blanco de Tempranillo is an interesting wine in that it shares a similar characteristic to Champagne, it is a white wine made from red grapes or “Blanc de Noir”. The Tempranillo is grown on carefully selected plots at an elevation of 2000ft around the town of Ciudad Real in the heart of La Mancha. In order to make a white wine only the free run juice from the grapes are used before pressing.

The winery was established in 2000 by two brothers, Antonio and Ignacio Barco. Using the most modern equipment and vinification techniques, as well as sourcing grapes from their 300 acres of vineyards, they have carved out a niche for themselves as one of the regions pioneering winemakers.

Ripe melon, pear and passion fruit aromas lead onto the palate with a herbaceous and floral twist. It has a fruity core with good length with a mouthwatering acidity on the finish.

Both these wines make terrific summer aperitifs and at 12.5% alcohol are also ideal party quaffers that won’t put you or your guests under the table after a few glasses in the hot summer sun. They are also great alongside tapas and a variety of seafood dishes. Enjoy.

Ultra Premium California Wines

It is often hard to explain and justify to friends and customers why wines from regions such as Burgundy, Bordeaux and more recently Napa, reach such high prices when compared to the many other wine producing regions that also produce serious quality at a much more competitive price. To answer the question, explaining why prices are so astronomical, it is easiest to break it down to the Supply side; the cost of production, both in terms of viticulture and vinification, and the Demand side; in particular the luxury good status associated with such wines.

One of the most significant components of the cost of producing wine in these esteemed regions is the limited availability and hence price of land. When a region's demand for wine increases while the amount of land (area under vines) stays roughly constant the price of the grapes and consequently the bottle price increase. As the graph (below) illustrates, when grape prices increase the value of vineyards also increases, this feeds back into the cost of producing and also severely limits the ability for startup wineries to enter the market. In countries such as Argentina and Chile where ideal grape growing land is available for far less of a premium, it is possible to produce very high quality wine a much lower cost, even when the amount of labor and capitol involved (the man hours spent pruning and harvesting the vines, the high tech cellar equipment and French and American barrels) are the same.

On the demand side, when these wines attain such high prices, they adopt a luxury good status and exhibit Veblen good (named after economist Thorsteun Veblen) characteristics, where the conventional law of demand goes out the window. The greater the price, the greater perception of exclusivity and quality and hence the greater the preference the consumer has for buying them. Many wineries in Burgundy and Napa in particular are boutique operations producing exceptionally low quantities, by maintaining this they hold on to their status. In vintages where the harvest is larger than estimated, instead of lowering the price and flooding the market, potentially harming the wineries exclusivity, they are best off practically letting go of the excess wine.

This is where we got involved. By taking advantage of this anomaly, we buy the excess from a couple of renown wineries for pennies on the dollar. We bottle it under our own label Barrique Cellars and offer it on our shelves for such a steal you can enjoy it for as much as four or five times less than the wineries bottled version.

Our two latest 2009 Barrique Cellars bottlings are of exceptional quality. The grapes, a Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel are synonymous with their regions they come from; Napa Valley and Amador County respectively. The Cabernet is showing sumptuous ripe fruit and forest floor characteristics with great promise for cellaring potential, while the Zinfandel delivers terrific hedonistic pleasure reaching a fine balance at sensible alcohol levels.

Vinyard Value vs. Grape Prices http://www.ricsamericas.org/files/editor/file/Member%20Articles/Valuing%20Vineyards.pdf