The Weekly Re’Wine’der
I know – too many e-mails. This is getting like the ones that come across your desk in big black letters with highlights in big red letters – 20 a day! My apologies. On the other hand I have to admit that on the days when I don’t send out the Re’wine’der, or, like today, when I send it out late, I get so much abuse!
It’s been one of those months – a lot of travelling, a lot of pain but a great deal of wine – ending in Virginia on Monday and Tuesday to visit one of the more influential importers on the Eastern Seaboard, many of whose wines we bring in through his New York distributor. Some excellent new stuff that we are sifting through and discussing now with the intent to bring in for the Spring. In Europe there was a lot of chatter about prices with almost everyone agreeing that even though they are hurting from their recessions, just as much as we are here, guess what? Prices are going to go up. Obviously Middle-Eastern concerns are driving up the price of oil – bear in mind that the number of households in Saudi Arabia that have access to the Internet is large – maybe, just maybe, we’ll see some demonstrations of democracy in the one country in the middle-east that really needs it. Problem then is the price of oil goes to $300 per barrel! Price of the dollar continues to weaken – every time Bernanke opens his mouth he drives the dollar weaker – many of my FX friends were touting 1.37 euro on the upside, now it looks like 1.40 will again be breached and guess what?, that means higher prices for importers and we import a hell of a lot of European wine – so the chatter had substance. Prices will be higher. My view on higher wine prices is the is: to a point there is an inevitability in higher prices, but then it becomes our fiscal responsibility to find wines, as good as their peers, whose prices, though they may have risen, are comfortable replacements for our on-shelf wines whose prices have now risen beyond my comfort zone. That’s one of the reasons we have been tasting so much wine the last two months – in Virginia I found some excellent South African wines that we should receive tomorrow – a chardonnay and a sauvignon blanc – I only bought in a little just to see how customers like it, but it’s cheap! Probably $12-13 (if not cheaper) on the shelf, and its very well made, all estate grown on the western coast of the Cape Province region of South Africa. Easy drinking, clean, fresh and very true to varietal without being overly extracted and overbearing. Personally I really like the juice so I hope that you will too.
As I mentioned it’s been a month of travelling and I thought you might get a kick out of some of the comments I pieced together on my last leg – it’s not edited, but no apologies, I don’t think it needs to be:
It’s been a weird few weeks. I probably shouldn’t go into it but I’m sitting here in a Virgin Atlantic airplane heading back to the US and I’ve watched two movies and so I’m bored and I’m thinking about the last two weeks in more detail than I probably should. Three weeks ago I was in steamboat and that didn’t go so well but I was intrigued that there were restaurants that observed the desire to offer their customers wines that were way off the beaten track. This last week I ended up in England celebrating a 50 something event and I was equally elated to find that the restaurant I had chosen to celebrate this rather strange milestone also followed the wine trail less travelled. We parried between a commonly named wine maker, William Fevre, but one of his less common Chablis, his 1er Cru Fourchaume, a wine that lived up to everything that has been written about it, and a Cheverney that literally blew the cockles of Brighton beach (I was in Brighton after all). The Cheverny tasted like a Sauvignon blanc without the asparagus, without the exotic fruit that NZ tends to pour into their savies and without the cat’s pee typically associated with a Sauvignon Blanc. Both wines were terrific. Onto the red pairing and I put up a cotes du Rhone against a Domaine Mas Blanc, Collioure. The Fevre I appreciate is a little common, but the other three wines were totally out there and 9 guests went home convinced that everything they had drunk before was just a prelude. It ws such fun seeing friends totally turned around by what they had drunk. That’s how it should be. That’s what wine should do; it’s what it should be about. It should be about taking you down a path blindfolded, what the he’ll…they are friends, take the risk. Next time you have dinner party pour something that’s just out there. Pour something that even you don’t know how it’s going to turn out…what do you have to lose? A friend? Trust me, that’s not going to happen. The day before we flew back we had lunch at Le Caprice. I hadn’t been there in 23 years so there was a lot of OMG going on, but we had an 06 Chateauneuf du Papes Mont Redon. Delicious. So we decided to have another one with the second course…with the fish. Outstanding. Tell the critics to find another shelf to sit on. Red wine and fish is great. And to all those friends that came out in Brighton, and to AC in London – you made a quick trip enormously fun. Thank you. The thing is, during the last three weeks I have been fortunate to spend time with truly good friends, and whilst I admit, I did fret about the wines, at the end of the day the friends were real and the wine was great. And I deliberately went off the tracks because I wanted to see what would really happen. Can you screw up so badly that your friends will desert you? Of course not. And in fact, the weirder I got with the choices the more compliments I got on the choice of wine. And these were friends that go back too many years to care about giving you compliments anymore. So take a chance. Play with your taste buds and play with your friends!
We have taken in a lot of wine this week. One of the most exciting came totally out of the blue. A number of years ago we bought a Cabernet from California made by Peter McCoy. His Rex Cabernet. It was the 2003 vintage. I liked it so much that I bought a few cases for myself and just in the last few months we have been drinking some of them and enjoying the hell out of them. Shortly after we bought that vintage, and I tried to get more of it we were told of the untimely death of Peter McCoy. No more Peter, no more wine so I felt privileged to have at least bought his last vintage and to have been able to drink it. Well, move forward a few years and the distributor came in yesterday and told me they had found 10 more cases. I bought half of them – I am certainly taking one home, I would like to take two but let’s see how many you all want. I have kept the price the same – $35 per bottle, $31.50 on a case. I know that there were customers back in 2008 who bought this repeatedly so I would hazard a guess it’s going to go very quickly – call or e-mail if you want some. The last bottle Kathy and I had was just before we left for England – 10 days ago. I think we had it with short ribs, but honestly, the wine was the memory, not the food. It was still absolutely delicious and we lost a great wine-maker with Peter’s death.
No need to remind you about the dinner next Wednesday with Cecile – you probably all got the e-mail this morning. Other events coming up – we may have Chris Brocway, the really exciting wine-maker behind the Broc Cellar wines, in the store in the next few weeks – chances are we can only grab him for an hour but if we get him we’ll open up some juice, put on the Dispatch CDs and have some fun. Also coming soon, Marc Pichon – one of my favorites from the Rhone – many of you ladies have been swallowed up and swallowing down his white wines – the Pichon Chardonnay, Pichon Viognier, Anne Pichon Viognier. These are all terrific, inexpensive and beautifully made Southern French wines. I am hoping that when we get a date from Marc we can team him up with one of our good customers, Hayes Cavanagh who plays a beautiful double bass and his good friend Mark Shane, a Fats Waller style pianist who should be instantly recognizable to any great jazz aficionados. More to come on that one. Also in the following weeks we are going to try and put together another dinner with Eric Sothern and the Robert Sinskey wines. That will hopefully be at One North in Armonk, so more on that one also. With regard to our own Wainwright House Annual Tasting – there is a lot going on here – it’s quite possible that the Wainwright House may not be able to offer us their hospitality. There is a decision about to be handed down by the Planning and Zoning Board next Tuesday with regard to their future – allegedly there is a neighbour who is disgruntled and with deep pockets care of Wall Street he may bring down the deck of cards! We’ll know on Wednesday if we can continue our Shebang (more of that wine came in today folks) over there and we’ll let you know as soon as we have a date.
Be good, invite friends over this weekend, and serve them up something funky – you know we have it if you don’t!
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