Certain People is a Swedish film about a small group of friends – upper class, art world bohemians in their 30’s – who gather at Katinka’s summer house to celebrate her birthday. Katinka’s brother arrives with Linda, a game show hostess whose brusque and liberated manners are entertaining and fresh – at first. During the evening Linda stretches the group’s social rules of hospitality. Contempt starts to grow and hidden prejudices flare up.
Merlot. We’ll just put it out there. This is almost certainly not the wine you order the most. Might you have just a wee bit of prejudice against this grape?
What do people not like about Merlot, other than they have been told it is not chic, not cool, not in fashion? Kind of amazing that a movie – Sideways, released in 2004 – could have so great an affect on the US market for a grape varietal! Pinot Noir took off after this movie, and Merlot suffered greatly.
We will give you that Merlot can be ‘over-cropped’ – yields are too high, which can result in insipid wines that are not exactly full of character. In some ways, Merlot was perhaps a victim of its own success. This is a grape that can make easy drinking wines with pleasurable red fruits, ones without an overtly tannic structure, wines that are not terribly hard to understand. It was considered a good introduction to those who did not drink a lot of wine. It became popular reasonably quickly and more vintners, especially on the West Coast, started producing it. This resulted in some winemakers overdoing the quantities and hence the ‘over cropped’ insipid wines.
These were what Miles, in Sideways, turned up his nose at. Almost overnight, people stopped ordering Merlot, and it became decidedly out of fashion. This is just now beginning to turn around, 8 years after the movie, and even so, there are far less sales of Merlot than Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.
But before you completely ignore Merlot, or refuse to open a bottle a house-guest brings you, consider that it is the most grown grape in Bordeaux. Yes, you say, but that is so that it can be blended – not drunk on its own. Yes, that is true and that is perhaps where it shines. It is one of the 5 major grape varietals in Bordeaux, and is grown on the Left and Right Banks. In Right Bank wines it appears in higher percentages. Those softer tannins combine with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc very nicely indeed thank you. The red fruits, hints of cocoa powder, chocolate, plums, along with its plush texture, can produce incredible wines.
Merlot dominates the blend in some pretty opulent wines. Petrus: 95% Merlot (along with Cabernet Franc). How about Chateau Le Pin? 92% Merlot. Both of these wines sell for thousands of dollars a bottle. Oooh, now what to do with those Merlot prejudices? Maybe a brusque introduction to some great wines made from this grape will liberate you from your bias. Of course you could be uncomfortable having to confront your discrimination against poor Merlot. Take the challenge. Join us on Thursday April 27th to taste a few Merlots and decide for yourself. Then go watch the movie and challenge your own social more’s. We’ll taste 4 Merlots: Hanging Vine 2010 ($12), Shafer Vineyards Merlot 2009 ($52), Terra Burdigala Roc de Jean Lys 2008 ($18), and New York’s own Bloomer Creek White Horse Red 2007 ($21).
War Horse celebrates the majestic beauty and dignity of horses, which are an important part of Olivier Cousin’s work. In his vineyards, he has eschewed tractors for three horses to help him cultivate the land and this bottle’s label depicts him with one of them. Of course, War Horse is also about surviving conflict and Cousin has been enmeshed in a very serious dispute with French authorities over the Appellation system and how he designates his wines. We and the New York wine community continue to support him in this fight, which has quite serious financial consequences. The wines, however, are the opposite of bureaucratic interference – grapes grown biodynamically, no added sulfites, no anything. This is 100% Cabernet Franc all about fruit and floral notes: Roses, plums, cedar, raspberry, cherries, and currants on the nose and the palate. The vines are 65 years old, which explains the complexity achieved in this wine.
This richly textured Martin Scorsese film matches well with Loire Valley star Jacky Blot of Domaine de la Taille aux Loups. Like Scorsese, Jacky is a preservationist and a bit of a throwback to simpler times. A wine broker previously, Jacky acquired about 8 hectares of 50 – 75 year old vines in 1989. These prized parcels belonged to families that could no longer cultivate the vines and so were entrusted them to Blot and his team. Yields are kept low, and he ploughs now instead of treating chemically, allowing the roots to descend deep into the limestone bedrock. Harvest is done by hand, and as late as possible. Beautiful minerality, richly textured, yet chalky, dry and a bit austere with flavors of lemon and honey. Gorgeous balance. We look forward to hosting Jacky at a special tasting for our Wine Club members on March 19 – call or email us if you would like to attend!
Let’s start from here: “Sherry” is in fact a mispronunciation of Jerez, which is the greater region that these wines come from. Jerez (and its subdistrict of Sancluar de Barrameda) lies at the western end of Andalucia, in southern Spain (south of Sevilla, facing west towards the Atlantic). Sherish was the name used by Moorish occupiers, Sherry was what the Brits used.
In the case of the first wine that we spoke of above, that went so well with seafood, the grapes are pressed and a base wine is made. This very simple, low alcohol (typically11.5%) wine is then introduced into a series of barrels called a Solera. A Solera consists of barrels that have multiple vintages blended into them. The barrels at the beginning of the Solera have the youngest wine introduced into them, and wine is pulled from those barrels and put into the next series of barrels after room is made in those barrels by emptying them partially into the next series of barrels. Think of it like filling a tilted ice-cube tray – water spilling down into one ice cube well from the previous one, until all are filled from the top (and water spills all over your counter). The differences here are that the barrels are carefully filled and emptied by hand, and (most importantly) the barrels are never filled all the way, nor emptied all the way…
young (maybe we should try it?). In the particular case of the subregion of Sanlucar de Barrameda the flor exists in the cellars year-round, thanks to the proximity to the Guadalquivir river that runs thru Sevilla, passes off the west-facing beach of Sanlucar (not a bad beach by the way) and empties into the Atlantic. The lower part of the river by the town is an estuary, and across from the town is one of Europe’s largest nature preserves. The confluence of the river, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean currents coming from the nearby Straight of Gibraltar, along with the large nature preserve make for some of the most delicious and fresh seafood you will ever have in your life if you find the time to go there….. spiny lobsters that taste as fresh as the sea, have a rich meaty but incredibly delicate flavor that makes you consume mass quantities of them…. all perfectly washed down with the local Manzanilla wine, which is the local liquid specialty…..
We weren’t quite sure what to expect – my daughter and I had seen the bulls quite close up when we took a horse ride in the Camargue. They are very respectful of the horses and as long as you are on horseback you can get close – we were within a few feet of a herd of 20 or so. The younger ones are not too imposing, but they and their horns get bigger after a couple years. Unlike in Spain, the sport is not fatal to the bulls; here it is a ‘game’. One of the games is apparently having them run up and down the street herded by cowboys on horseback.
At one point my mother and I walked down to try to get a dinner reservation and got a little bit better view than we had bargained for. When the horses and bulls raced past us, we took cover behind a stone gatepost – they were much too close! We also saw the cattle car that they herd the bulls into – right up a ramp into the truck. Going out, the horses and gardians form a line in front of the ramp, with the horses tightly against each other. There were about 5 in front, with 2 or so on either side, so the bull or bulls could run in the midst of them without escaping. Hopefully anyway – apparently one year, a bull did escape and ran into a house, destroying everything! Once the horses were in formation two men would lift a door, and the bulls would race down the ramp. The horses would then gallop off, and the cowboys would keep the bulls where they were supposed to be. Sometimes they only run up and down a handful of times, but I think they made at least 15 trips – tiring out the boys but not necessarily the bulls! Exhilarating to watch and the horses definitely enjoy their job.
