CWD: Lowered expectations

M

MLipton

Mark Lipton
I am sure that many of you have had this same experience of wandering into a wine shop and spying a bottle from a beloved producer, snapping it up, taking it home and then realizing... Oh, fuck me! I didn't realize that this was the second bottling/year of the blight/year after the winemaker left/etc. Well, in my case, this was the bottle of 2001 Michel Lafarge Volnay from the year of the hail storms that I'd purchased years ago at Sam's in Chicago. I was so psyched to actually find a Lafarge wine on the shelves that I totally neglected the meteorological conditions in Volnay in '01. John Gilman later redeemed my snap decision, however, with praise for this wine in VFTC, so it was with guarded optimism that I popped the cork tonight to accompany our dinner of roast duckling, mashed sweet potatoes and sautéed young Brussels Sprouts. Oh, my! as FLJim would say: what a lovely bottle of wine this is, earthy and meaty but with a bright, bouncy core of fruit and a very Volnay sense of minerality to it. Ruby red with orange bricking at the edges, this is a wine that's good to go now. Sometimes those impulse purchases don't turn out so bad...

Mark Lipton
 
Very cool.

I am sitting on some '01 D'Angerville Taillepieds. I hope they turn out as well as your Lafarge. The one bottle I tried tasted a little simple. I am hoping they have evolved some since then.
 
had a somewhat subdued 2001 Lafarge Clos des Chênes a couple weeks back. this didn't have much earth or meat to it, but was bright, plush and low in acid..most people guessed (twas served blind) it was a Sonoma Coast pinot noir. glad that yours showed better mark.
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Very cool.

I am sitting on some '01 D'Angerville Taillepieds. I hope they turn out as well as your Lafarge. The one bottle I tried tasted a little simple. I am hoping they have evolved some since then.
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Same here. I have one of those and haven't had much hope for it given early experiences.
 
I haven't had a 2001 Lafarge in many years.

The wines have gotten good reception in the last six months or so on the UK wine board, but a few weeks ago, both Michel and Frédéric Lafarge were less than enthusiastic about how their wines turned out in the 2001 vintage -- notwithstanding the fact that they worked incredibly hard to save the vintage after the hail.
 
Had a 2001 Lafarge Caillerets about a year ago and it seemed affected by Hail.

I think I have one bottle of Clos des Chenes that I am wondering about.

-mark
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Perhaps the moral here is to stop intellectualizing this wine thang?
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Mark,
I suspect that the day I stop intellectualizing anything is the day I pass this mortal coil. I'm not trying to be dismissive or snarky here, but a big reason that I drink wine rather than soda or beer is the intellectual appeal of it.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by MarkS:
Perhaps the moral here is to stop intellectualizing this wine thang?
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Mark,
I suspect that the day I stop intellectualizing anything is the day I pass this mortal coil. I'm not trying to be dismissive or snarky here, but a big reason that I drink wine rather than soda or beer is the intellectual appeal of it.

Mark Lipton
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It also happens to be delicious, sometimes.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Perhaps the moral here is to stop intellectualizing this wine thang?
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Yes and no. "Shut up and drink" isn't always a bad concept outside of a Johnny Paycheck song title. People such as Mark can be as much of a pointy-headed intellectual as they and their loved-ones are comfortable with there's no harm done if someone else prefers to just take a swig of something and proclaim whether they like it or not.

A little too much knowledge can be a problem. Last night someone brought over a 375ml bottle of 1982 Mouton (Rothschild, not Cadet). People at the table fell all over themselves in order to come up with discriptors of "forest floor", "lead pencil", "twice-braised beetroot" and the like. Me, I just said "the sumbitch is corked" and you shoulda seen the egos deflating as if they were hot air balloons drifting into a flock of hypodermic-nosed pelicans over Santa Fe, NM during a high wind. My fellow revelers began snuffling their glasses and backtracking WRT their praise of the good inherent in the wine's earthy quality, particularly about 20 minutes later when the perfume of sopping wet cardboard three days after the rain began to permeate the room.

Good thing there was a backup half-bottle of 82 Latour standing by. It was glorious, more than glorious enough to make me wish I'd bought some at the release price of about $20 as our generous benefactor had. This gentleman had at one time traded 18 bottles of Heitz Martha's Vineyard for 36 bottles of 1978 La T“che, so despite the fact that he's definitely one of them intellectual wine drinkers (and an avowed neurotic too), even he knew the score when it came time to differentiate between "price" and "value" (and probably even the concept of "which wine you'd prefer to drink", but I don't want to be presumptuous).

Personally, I'm more alarmed with Professor Lipton's selection of this wine to accompany any dish with sweet potatoes as part of the menu. Duckling and brussel sprouts certainly go with Burgundy, but the additional of sweet potato would (to me, at least) necessitate a wine with a little less subtlety than Volnay. Something with a little age on it from Oregon might have been a more geeky match, maybe Belle Pente, DDO, or Eyrie would bring everything into harmony and bring peace to the world. Or maybe not. Whatever you do, omit the cranberry sauce, okay, 'cause that shit doesn't work with anything!

-Eden (whose recent encounters with Volnay are few and Lafarge between)
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by John McIlwain:
It also happens to be delicious, sometimes.
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Indeed. Most of the time, I'm happy to report, at least in our household.

Mark Lipton
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As someone in the business, I can be at least as cynical and jaded as anyone about anything. In retail, there are a million things to make you hate the commerce end of it. Same, I'm sure in wholesale, restaurants, writing about it, and killing your self making the damn stuff to have it reduced to points and a grocery list of descriptors by someone who enjoyed it from 90-120 seconds.

Yet, somehow the wines which speak to us--whisper, converse, orate, or roar--manage to survive all the bullshit that is projected upon them and communicate something beyond varietal (variety) and refreshment. The moral shouldn't necessarily be to stop intellectualizing, but to remember to truly enjoy the damn stuff. I realize too infrequently how fortunate I am for those moments where beauty and emotional resonance and terroir is communicated thru the glass by conscientious vignerons and the enlightened schnooks who bring us those moments.

It's quite a feat for some grapes, yeast, time, craft, and distance to accomplish.
So, strangely I guess this has become an early Thanksgiving post. I'm truly grateful for all the work done by folks like Joe Dressner, Kermit Lynch, David Lillie, Jamie Wolff, your assorted Pacalets, Lapierres, Luneaus, Occhinpintis, Puzelats, Gonons, Boxlers, Fourriers, Edmunds and Sts. John, Oliviers, et al.

I hope everyone will enjoy something lovely very soon.
 
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