Sahara Champagne

If Mercedes Benz made Champagne, I’d want to drink the BMW. Mercedes used to make exciting cars. Once they were established as the world’s best, they then turned to hanging onto that reputation by making cars that reassure the owner of his worth rather than exciting him. The Big Brand Champagne houses must have a similar marketing plan. Having spent fortunes on advertising and good solid wine-making over the years, their labels reassure the purchaser that he must indeed be a person with good taste and spare change. The reassurance is nice, of course. If your girlfriend picks you up in a Mercedes with a bottle of Moet et Chandon Champagne, you have a lot to look forward to. To achieve this stable luxury, the big brands buy Champagne from hundreds of farmers and blend the wines of different years over time. The wine tastes the same, you can relax. A little sweet, no surprises, nothing exaggerated.

But in recent years, some individual farmers in Champagne have begun to bypass the highly advertised conglomerate owned brands – all the brands you see advertised in the New Yorker – in favor of selling their own wines, unblended and made with a minimum of manipulation. These are wines that taste different from one batch to the next, wines designed to thrill you with racy flavors and vibrant textures, wines that do not speak with the polite hush of a gentleman’s club. But, also, wines you might not like and that will not simply invoke expensive comforts. Less than three percent of the total crop is sold in this way as artisanal Champagne, often called “farmer fizz” or, with slightly more formality, “grower Champagne.” Basic big brand Champagne sells for thirty to forty dollars and the grower wines are usually ten to twenty dollars more. This step up to farmer fizz is the biggest bang you can get in the wine market for ten or twenty bucks. All the famous brands also make very expensive bottles as well, typically selling for one or two hundred dollars. These pricey bottles can be first-rate and individualistic too, of course. For myself, though, the price is simply too much, given the thrills available from good grower Champagnes. [Except maybe Krug, the one important Champagne house that makes only the best and most expensive – if Mumm is a Mercedes, Krug is the Bentley.]

The importer Terry Theise has made it his life’s work to bring farmer fizz to the US and Sahara Mart has newly found a spot in his distribution chain. In February, Sahara Mart and Farm Restaurant held a tasting for nine different examples of these wines and the wines are, in general, available at the Mart. I had three favorites. These three were also the least expensive (never happened that way to me before):
1) Margaine, Cuvee Traditionelle, Brut Nonvintage. $48. Champagne can be made from a mixture of grapes, pinot noir and chardonnay typically predominating. This one is 90% chardonnay, with a bouquet of delicate flowers, maybe honeysuckle, and fruity flavors somewhat like peach. The result is very pleasant with food – something fresh and bright, like melon with prosciutto.
2) Hebrart, Selection, Brut Nonvintage $52. This is a little tangier than the Margaine. There are flowers in the bouquet but also a more serious note, spices perhaps. The taste definitely evokes lemons and the whole would be a lively aperitif or good company for some smoked salmon.
3) Aubry, Brut Nonvintage, $47. This is a big boy, unusual in that a full 50% is neither pinot noir nor chardonnay, but a red grape called pinot meunier. The result is richer than the first two, with flavors less of fruit and more of something like bread and butter. This actually tastes wonderful with popcorn but don’t tell the luxury police, who will bust you for not using caviar. I’m sure caviar would be swell.

Big Red Merlot

It seems impossible to talk about the red wine made from merlot grapes without quoting Miles’ line from the film Sideways. “If anyone orders merlot, I’m leaving. I’m not drinking any fucking merlot.” Since the film was released in 2004, the consumption of merlot has declined some and the price has definitely plummeted. One irony of the price drop is that we may all be drinking more merlot than ever but without knowing it. An American wine labeled simply by grape, say cabernet, can actually contain up to 25% of a different variety. The production of merlot grapes has not declined as much as the consumption of merlot wine, a pattern which, when combined with the lower price for merlot, suggests that it may have become a filler for other varietals. It would be a splendid irony if Miles’ beloved pinot noirs are now made of 25% merlot – and given the increased flow of undistinguished pinot since the movie, there could well be a lot of things lurking in these bottles. Anyway, while I was boring Big Red’s wine manager, Bobby Wallace with such thoughts, he decided to organize a tasting of merlots. So he pulled out six different bottles of fairly recent merlot from Australia, California, Washington and France. To these I added two older Europeans from my cellar, we bothered Dave Tallent for a few delicious appetizers and sat down with wine manager Bobby DerOhanian to see what we thought.

I found three wines to like. We all liked a wine from Washington, the 2003 Northstar for $28. This was a fresh, spicy wine with a bold blackberry flavor and hints of mocha. It seems to be common in recent tastings around the country for Washington merlots to outclass those from California. Merlot ripens easily and things (grapes, plots, politics) that ripen easily anywhere else can quickly become overripe in California. The Northstar kept its freshness well. I also liked the Chateau Bon Pasteur 2000, from my cellar. This large, complex Bordeaux wine from Pomerol has a thick texture and rich fruit – but it would clearly have been better if it had stayed in the cellar for another few years. My third pick, and a real bargain at $20, was the Chateau Suau 2005 – a nicely balanced lighter Bordeaux, suggesting plums and cherries.

I was put off by the one Australian example, the 2006 Mollydooker “Scooter” for $20. It smelled like candied fruit, felt a little like syrup and tasted too much like vodka for me. A true Mollydooker – strong feelings, positive or negative, pretty much guaranteed. The two Californians, Shafer 2005 for $55 and 2004 Jarvis for $75, were well-made, suave and polished wines – but I found them a bit dull. They lacked the depth of the Pomerol on the one hand while also falling to bring the uplifting freshness of the Northstar or the Suau to the table. My Italian contribution, the 1998 Montiano, was weedy and uninteresting. This wine has a considerable following but I’d never had it before. It may just have been a bad bottle. Another French wine, Chateau L’Ecuyer for $43, was a little funky in the nose and somewhat brambly in the mouth. Perhaps it will settle down in a few years and repay cellaring but with a tasty Chateau Suau for less than half the price, I won’t be the one to find out.

What do I think about Miles’ dictum now? Merlot is easy to make, and usually turns out OK. It happened to be just coming into visibility in California in 1991, the year the CBS documentary on the “French Paradox” was pushing the idea that red wine will save your heart. A lot of folks in America decided to replace their ubiquitous cheap bar glasses of chardonnay with something red – merlot was easy to grow, easy to drink, easy to pronounce, and good for you besides. Too much was planted, too much drunk, too much of it dull and sweet, as befits a cheap bar drink. It was already losing its appeal when Miles dispatched it. But good merlot remains a fine wine indeed, and I will be looking for mine in the State of Washington and from Pomerol, on the right bank of the river by Bordeaux.

2006 Beaujolais

I finally had a chance to taste some Beaujolais from the 2006 vintage. Beaujolais is often dismissed because the marketing hype surrounding Nouveau Beaujolais leaves the impression that the whole area is devoted to froth. In fact, the “crus” can be very fine and elegant drinks. Even these top examples are sometimes overlooked because they are subtle rather than overpowering. They’re meant for a roast chicken or a grilled sausage, not for a haunch of marinated boar or a banker’s ransom of Kobe porterhouse. The importer Kermit Lynch has long worked at bringing in the best examples of these charmers and Cédric Picard, wine guru at Big Red, persuaded Lynch to send in some advance samples. (I guess I should respect his ethnicity and refer to Cédric as a savant rather than guru.) Anyway, last night we got to drink some of these, 2005’s as well as 06’s and here are my notes.
First the 05’s. Thévenet, Morgon Vielles Vignes. The nose had a deep background scent, which everybody liked, and another element which people characterized with descriptors ranging from funky to barnyard to worse. I liked it and also liked the thick flavors of cherry, almond and vanilla. Not for the faint of heart, anyway. On the other hand, the Guy Breton Morgon was a beautiful violet wine, with a wonderful bouquet of flowers (finally justifying the word) and a light but pleasant taste of red berries – a good choice for those put off by the earthiness of the Thévenet. Then the 06’s. First a Dupeuple Beaujolais, a simple wine with a slight note of bubble gum. It reminded me of cherry cough drops, but good cherry cough drops. Then a more serious wine, a Thivin Cotes de Brouilly, with a silky texture, maybe red currant more than cherry, and a lingering spicy note. I was disappointed in the Diochon Moulin-à-Vent, usually a more impressive wine but tonight shallow and short. Finally a real winner, the Domaine Chignard’s Fleurie “Les Moriers.” The powerful fruits climbed right out of the glass, no need to bury the geeky nose in the glass for this one. The liquid coats the mouth and perfumes it for a good while afterwards. I thought at first that this was an impostor, that a pinot noir from Beaune had been slipped in to test us. I think the bottom line is that 06 will both require and reward careful buying.

What I've been doing instead of blogging.

Memory and the Twenty-First Amendment
Patrick Baude*

The Twenty-First Amendment (1) repeals Prohibition and (2) allows states to prohibit the transportation or importation of intoxicating liquors. Justice Stevens, dissenting from a recent Supreme Court opinion somewhat limiting state bans on importation, observed that the Court’s decision would “seem strange indeed to the millions of Americans who condemned the use of ‘demon rum.”’ This is a sensible thing to say about Prohibition but quite an odd thing to say about an amendment repealing Prohibition. His comment was especially powerful, however odd, in light of the implication that he had personal memory of this particular bit of legislative history. In fact, one can remember that history as a condemnation of strong drink or as a condemnation of the corruption created by the ban itself. Which memory one privileges is not purely a historical issue.
Two contemporary questions turn in part on the question whether the amendment’s penumbra is “wet” or “dry.” First, the language of section 2 of the amendment prohibits the importation into any state “of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof....” This section contains a serious ambiguity. It might, on one hand, be read simply to empower any state to pass a law banning importation. This reading would vindicate complex state regulatory regimes whose main effect is to award monopoly profits to politically favored businesses, especially wholesalers. But it might also be read only as allowing the state to ban the importation of alcohol that was otherwise outlawed – i.e., to go dry in whole or county by county. If Justice Stevens is right that the combined force of the 18th and 21st amendments demonizes rum, exiling it from the constitution, then the first reading seems logical enough and the varying lawsuits challenging the current regimes are doomed. The second contemporary question concerns the general regulation of alcohol in society. A typical narrow question is whether alcohol can be banned from places of sexual entertainment. A broader version of that question is to ask why we, as a society, have followed the supposedly discredited model of the 18th amendment in our marijuana laws, relying on a sweeping prohibition, even in the growing number of states which have themselves recognized medical uses of the drug.
The first version of this history is the story of the “Noble Experiment” – a story popular with viewers of "The Untouchables." Liquor had corrupted the workingman, leading him to spend his wages on drink rather than family support, to spend his time in saloons away from his family, and into a descending spiral of alcoholism and self-indulgence. The commercial alcohol interests fueled this process in the pursuit of profits, developing a system of saloons that particularly seduced immigrants away from efforts to join the American Way. In an age of reform, progressives seeking the same sort of benefit as those sought by wage and labor laws, protected the health and welfare of workers, and the economic and social needs of their families, by protecting them from the attacks by the liquor industry. Unfortunately, organized crime and corrupt politicians conspired to profiteer on the weakness of the flesh. In the end, the wickedness of these criminals could not overcome the good of sobriety and repeal was a necessary evil.
The other version of the history is a story of puritanical subversion of egalitarian democracy. The just-published work, Dry Manhattan, by Michael Lerner, is a gripping portrayal of this point of view. The Anti-Saloon League showed a mastery of single-issue pressure politics, driven substantially by nativism and hostility to Catholic and Jewish immigrants particularly. In the political system of the time, before one person one vote, over-represented rural voters imposed their religious and cultural strictures on the nation as a whole. Dissent, especially from immigrant communities, was silenced by jingoistic attacks on their patriotism. It took years for the actual will of the people to reassert itself through the convoluted amendment process. The difficulties of repeal were so extensive that Texas’s Senator Morris Sheppard observed: “There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail.”
Both of these mythic versions are partially accurate descriptions of a flawed political process employed to some extent in a search for the public interest. I believe, however, that they both miss a deeper point crucial to the meaning of the constitutional experience. As the historian David Kysig observed in 1985: “[T]he national prohibition was arguably the most radical and significant constitutional reform ever adopted.” Among other things, prohibition for the first time introduced federal agents into the direct regulation of private life, essentially suspended the system of federalism, and thereby altered both the public and private life of the nation.
My point here, however, is to point in a more limited way to radical nature of the 18th amendment, in ways reinforced by both versions of the myth. The point, related to the theme of our panel about food and the law, is that food (and drink) are the essence of identity itself. Without ( I hope) parodying Lévi-Strauss’ Le Cru et le Cuit, it remains that personal identity is connected with food in ways far more intimate than any other form of consumption. Children begin to separate from their parents as they assert autonomy at the feeding table. Many nationalities are identified in slang, at least, by distinctive dietary items – “frogs,” “krauts,” “limeys” and other derogatory epithets. The place that food and wine play in Communion is only the most dramatic illustration of the centrality of this oral consumption to autonomy – indeed, one of the fascinating skirmishes of the prohibition era was the different approach to Jewish and Catholic sacramental wine.
I suggest, in short, that a central fact of Prohibition was that it therefore regulated identity, not behavior. As such, it was an act of cultural violence to the minority rather than an ordinary law regulating behavior. A comparable contemporary act would be an English-only law which made it a crime to speak any other language – a step no nativist organization, so far as I know, has yet even proposed. The prohibition of medical marijuana, by contrast, does not regulate an incident of identity.
If I am right about the centrality of the identity-food-drink connection, the 21st amendment should then be understood as preserving to the states their right to define their own political identity rather than a general enhancement of their police powers because of the potentially harmful effects of alcohol. This would uphold partial or complete prohibition of beverage alcohol but not its economic exploitation or discriminatory regulation.

(This an extended abstract of a presentation for the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities)

*Ralph F. Fuchs Professor of Law and Public Service, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Rethinking Australians

Len Evans died a few weeks ago. He was a kick-ass champion of Australian wines and other Rabelaisian pursuits. People say he would come up to them, estimate their fitness and thus their longevity, and say something like “You have fourteen years to go, that’s only fifty-one hundred bottles of wine, you have no time to waste on bad wine.” The end of his wine-drinking days turned my thoughts to Australian wines. Years ago, when I did more traveling in food-forsaken parts on the country, I discovered that I could almost always be happier in an Outback Steakhouse than in its Texas-style competitor, not because the meat was any better and certainly not because my cardiologist endorsed the “bloomin’ onion,” but only because the cheap industrial Australian wine they sold was way better than the cheap industrial quality American wine at their competitors. In those days, even the better Australian wines, as it seemed to me, were similarly meant for grilled rich red meat in an uncomplicated hearty way. I heard from time to time from friends who had been to Australia that there was also a world of variety in Australian wines but I found little evidence where I shopped.
More recently, an importer called “The Grateful Palate” has begun to bring in some of these other wines, typically from smaller producers, often with older vines, and invariably with lower yields resulting from less irrigation. Some of them are just arriving at Big Red and I am wowed. One of them is Trevor Jones Virgin Chardonnay 2004 ($20), which also benefits from the fact that 2004 may have been the best year in South Australia for a long time. This is a chardonnay that spends zero time in oak, so it has no butterscotch or coconut. It just tastes like late summer – cantaloupe and peaches, maybe, with a squirt of citrus. It’s a perfect match for fresh corn, no easy task.
And then for thirty-two dollars, there’s a real eye-opener from Teusner, a 2005 “Joshua,” which is an also-unoaked wine, this time red, from the classic Chateauneuf du Pape blend of Grenache, Mourvedre (they call it Mataro), and Syrah (they call it Shiraz). But this tastes nothing at all like its French counterparts. A beautifully deep red, it tastes of black cherries and spicy herbs, rich but juicy, with a fresh tartness I haven’t previously met in Australian wines. The other day I had it with some beef from the grill, the usual use of an Australian red for me. The wine was good but the match was wrong. So I had some again tonight with some beef braised with juniper berries. The freshness of the wine and the depth of the beef played together well. The perfect match, I think, would be this wine with Dave Tallent’s short ribs. Since I can never cook ribs like his, I can only hope they add a new Australian like this to their list. Anyway, of the 6205 bottles I hope to have coming, there are going to be more Australians than there have been. Peace, Len Evans.

A favorite?

Someone asked me the other day what my favorite wine was. I was stumped, way too many choices. Observing my incoherence, she switched and asked me what was the cheapest really good wine in town, to which the answer, for me, was a no-brainer. La Vielle Ferme, for six dollars at Big Red, is a rich and satisfying blast of black fruit. I’ve been thinking about her question, though. I don’t know about my favorite wine but the one I’ve been obsessed with lately is Chateau d’Yquem. This was the last bottle of wine I shared with my father, sometime about 1980. I was thus tempted by the 2001, despite a price tag around $500 a bottle, as it is a serious contender for the greatest ever. I was only egged on by another, lesser but still marvelous, 2001 Sauternes, the Ch. Myrat from Big Red for about $25 the half-bottle. I shared it with a friend who thought he didn’t like sweet wine and said he would just have a taste. Ha! A man of refined manners he is, but that didn’t stop him from actually licking the glass (his second) when he thought I wasn’t looking.
One problem with the 2001 Yquem is that it may not be drinking prime until about 2050 – when I doubt that I will be. One of the surprises of the wine I had with Dad was this: a 1967, it had been badly scorched in a fire, the cork pushed out half an inch, and the wine turned from lemon-colored to caramel. So we drank it on an impulse, expecting nothing, when it was a dozen years old. The heat had aged it prematurely, bringing it close to perfection. Anyway, this memory sent me looking for some older Yquem after the 2001's were released this past September. The result was that I recently spent my birthday at a Hart Davis Hart wine auction in Chicago, where I did buy some bargains and, not in the bargain category, a few half-bottles of the 1990 Yquem, another revered vintage – and one which is perhaps ready to drink now and, indeed, probably needs to be all drunk up by 2065 or so. I am a little afraid to share a bottle with any of my own children, however, in light of the family history. On the other hand, this was the very last bottle from my father’s cellar so perhaps always having one undrunk is the key. In any case, if the final act opens with Yquem, it’ll sure beat Two-Buck Chuck.

Ten bucks

Big Red opens a few wines for tasting on most Saturday afternoons. Last Saturday offered a couple of inexpensive ($10+ ) winners so I bought one of each and confirmed my opinion at dinner over the week. The first is a Spanish wine made from grenache grapes – "garnacha" in Spanish. The vineyard, Bodegas Valascro, is located on the northern edge of the Rioja district and most of their wines are entitled to the Rioja name and priced accordingly. But this one, "Razon," is grown just outside the Rioja district, thus having no official designation, and is less expensive. It’s a suave and easy-drinking red, a fine companion to a fairly zesty dish – in my case, for a chicken with green olives and garlic. It’s not likely to remain in the store for long. During the tasting, two different customers tried it and picked up a case on the spot. The other bargain was an Argentinian cabernet sauvignon, the 2004 Andeluna. While I was tasting it in the store, a friend came in, tried some, and asked why it didn’t taste like his familiar cabernets. In wise-ass mode, I was tempted to say, "What’s different about it is that it’s not over-oaked, over-extracted, over-priced and over-hyped." Reflecting on the fact that my supply of friends is for some reason not expanding and I have no need to shed the ones I have, I said "h’mm" instead. When I took my bottle home, however, I soon saw that my first reaction, that this was delicious because it was natural and simple, was all wrong. The wine is full of fruit, cherry and other red fruits, and has lots of sweet tannins. To a more attentive taster than I was, these are the classic earmarks of the international style. It pretty clearly has been manipulated and oaked, but with a deft hand. The winemaker is Michel Rolland, the Bordeaux avatar of micro-oxygenation if Jonathan Nossiter’s caricature in Mondovino is to be believed. In any case, this is a fine, modern example of pure, beautiful cabernet sauvignon at a simple price.