Yes, Virginia, there is a St. Nicolas

O

Oswaldo Costa

Oswaldo Costa
2005 Domaine St. Nicolas Cuve Jacques Fiefs Vendeens 12.5%
'Twas the day after the night before Christmas and we unwrapped, as every wine geek worth his Dune salt should do, a St. Nicolas, imagine what that would do for the appelation. Dangaloo, that's some fine nicholastic aromatics there, imagine a wikipedia entry for quintessential cab franc cherry leather & underwood. Beauteous. As bracingly acidic as the first blast of Himalayan winter hitting the stiff upper lip of a grenadier waking after a night of revelry amid the heathen. The juicy fruit goes long on loveliness, borrowing on margin, the dusky tannins fall this side of a barrelful of amazons mounting sideways the muscular haunches of sweaty tropical stallions. Sorrow overcomes the id(iot) for not visiting Thierry Michon in the netherly western Loire; if this offering is anything to go by, the man is francly a cabalistic geenus.
 
Hey, francly, I do give a damn. Nice post Osawaldo, as breathingly eyetaking as a steaming cup of coffee on a crisp morning after a well-sated midwinter's eve slumber. Happily Holidays!
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
if this offering is anything to go by, the man is francly a cabalistic geenus.
Click to expand...

And he'll tell you so, too.

The guy is genially nuts, and his wines are good. Though they're not in/on the Loire. They're on the Atlantic Coast, farther down, in that type of region (home of Gilles de Rais, which (I am sorry) must lead to this footnote*).

I once had the funny moment of telling him I'd had a good Fiefs Vendens and he was like, "No, you didn't." It wasn't until I convinced him that it was in fact his and I had bought it in the one "nature" wine store in La Rochelle that he finally started to nod, and agreed that those were damn good wines.

Do you think they, Oswaldo, are worth the added money, though? I mean, does his Chenin beat Anjou or Vouvray (I mean, if we grant that we even like Chenin), etc.?

*If WD were a book club, I would suggest our January fare (dunno if they're monthly, let's assume they are; also, we drink the requisite amount of wine, so we're halfway there) be J.-K. Huysmans' The Damned. It is a novel about a 19th century bookworm writing a biography of the 14th century child murderer Gilles de Rais! How awesome is that? Also, Oswaldo, there is like a 3-page ekphrasis of Grnewald's Crucifixion that kicks all kinds of literary butt.
 
I don't know about the pricing on the Chenin, but his "Les Clous" and Pinot Noir bottlings are priced fairly attractively here in the States.
 
The Fiefs were in my Loire book, so I just assumed there was a St Nicolas to St Nicolas axis of virtue (I am flying over Utah right now, so have to watch what I write). This Jacques was my first Michon, so I don't know his michenins. Will now have to research them, and read Huysman, and visit Isenheim, major among my lacunae.
 
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