Convino

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Spring 2011 • Issue 13

CONVINO ten architectural wonders of the wine world · 4 wine & chinese food? · 20

the low down on wine · 22

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celebrating life with wine

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Issue 13 • Spring 2011

CONVINO

Contents

4 Wine & Architecture

TEN ARCHITECTURAL WONDERS OF THE WINE WORLD Jared Newman

8 Wine & Wonder

this wine goes well with fish Alan Tardy

10 Wine & Region

Greece’s wine gods

Jane Sigal

13 Wine & Design

Educational packaging at its best Tim Nudd

14 Wine & Etiquette

The sniff test Lettie Teague

17 Wine & Recipe

Pears in wine 20

Wine & Food

pairing wine with chinese food

Jen Lin-Liu

22

Wine & Dialogue

THe low down on wine Globetrotter Diaries

24

Wine & Review

Ten EXCITING WINES OF 2011 Bill Price

EDITOR IN CHIEF Taylor Raquer CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kari Davidson PHOTO DIRECTOR Michelle Frappier PRODUCTION DIRECTOR James Atkins CHIEF SUB EDITOR Kinsey Gross ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Laura Black WRITER Ellen Peterson RESEARCHER Felix Wang MANAGING EDITOR Nicole Yeo PHOTO ASSISTANT Tracy Hughes ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Pamela Mullinger ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Anders Braso ADVERTISING MANAGER Kiera O’Brien ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Karri Palts PR & EVENTS MANAGER Emily Smith DISTRIBUTIONS MANAGER Helen Leech MARKETING EXECUTIVE Michelle Velan SECTION EDITOR Robert Bound SECTION EDITOR Hugo Macdonald SECTION EDITOR Alicia Kirby

TEN ARCHITECT of the

WINE W

By: Jared Newman

To the religious and the secular alike, wine holds a special place in the hearts of men. It is no surprise, then, that the wineries of the world have become like churches themselves– while adherents to the worship of wine travel the world over, visiting the great wineries in Napa, in France, in Argentina. Continuing this metaphor, the modern wineries of today have been given the same architectural importance as the chapels of times past. To celebrate the most progressive, most beautiful modern wineries in the world today, here is DesignCrave’s list of the Ten Architectural Wonders of the Wine World.

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4

architecture

WINE &

TURAL WONDERS

WORLD

Leo Hillinger Winery

california

Dominus Winery

austria

5

SPRING 2011

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Dominus Winery

california

california

new zealand

Peregrine Winery

Dominus Winery

When Dominus Winery decided to build their new winery in Napa Valley, California, they turned to Herzog & De Meuron architects to design a functional, environmentally conscious warehouse, winery and office building. The result is a stunning angular obelisk of natural stones contained within a tough wire mesh. From afar, the building appears to be fully concrete, but as you approach its stone character is revealed. The result is a functional system that allows the California breezes to aerate the winery and its product.

Peregrine WinerY

new zealand

Petra Winery

Designer Chris Kelly’s simple industrial canopy lets the light in while offering spectacular views of the countryside. Kelly has described it as “a transformation reflecting the process the grapes go through.”

Judges from UK magazine The Architectural Review like it too, placing it in the top five of its annual emerging architecture awards.

tuscany

Designer Mario Botta has said this structure “wants to be a new version of the old houses in the countryside in Tuscany,” in which the surrounding farmland plays a role in the overall design. Made of stone, the building features plant life on top and two arcades that extend, flowerlike, out to the grounds.

The modern wineries of today have been given the same architectural importance as the chapels of times past.

Boutaris & Son WinerY

The Merus Winery

italy

california

A wide open tasting room with couches and a communal table make this Napa Valley, Calif., winery a great place share drinks with friends. The smooth black countertops and slightly arched ceilings give way to the somewhat un-modern arched ceilings, but we’re okay with that.

Lopez De Heredia Winery

south america

Though much of this winery’s architecture dates back to the 19th century, designer Zaha Hadid built a thoroughly modern stand at the front of the complex to greet visitors.

The structure, built of a lattice framework of metallic rails, blends with the surrounding walkways and accesses. It’s a modular building, but we like it right where it is.

O. Fournier Winery

Fitting with the quaint white structures that dot Santorini’s cliffsides, this winery in Megalohori includes an administration area, an exhibition and sales building and “Tholos,” the domed structure pictured above. Tastings and audio-visual presentations happen inside, but the real treat is outside, with the contrast of the buildings against the greens and blues of the island.

Artesa Vineyards & Winery

california

This Napa Valley winery has the unusual appearance of being built right into the countryside. Hints of the manmade come from the entrance way and the prism-shaped window, which offers great views from the inside. The building, also peppered with artwork, follows a path to a courtyard with a beautiful fountain.

Winery Collemassari

argentina

First, get the pronunciation right: O-FourKnee-Err, because it’s Spanish, not French, being located in Argentina. Admire how the green fields give way to the building, which winds up to a perfect frame of the Andes Mountains. To minimize the use of pumps, this winery uses gravity, and somehow this architecture manages to suggest that.

italy

This Italian winery resembles a luxurious modern home, but maintains the spirit of a factory, with each compartment performing its individual task. The browns of the building blend with the green grounds, as do the horizontal and vertical lines leading to the vineyards.

Leo Hillinger Winery

austria

Inside and out, the Leo Hillinger in Austria oozes style. The building keeps a low profile with to the grounds, cut deeply into the slope and replaced with soil used to plant grapes. The eight pyramidal structures you see in the lefthand photo let light into the underground production halls, and at night the well-lit grand window can be seen from miles away.

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The Merus Winery california

Artesa Vineyards and Winery california

I. Botaris and Son Winery

italy

Peregrine Winery new zealand

SPRING 2011

7

This is a typical Ligurian Wine — lean, crisply acidic, minerally, almost salty — made of local varieties from vineyards conditioned by their proximity to the sea.

THIS WINE Goes Well wi By: Alan Tardy Consider Piero Lugano, 63, the suntanned artist-turned-winemerchant who opened a shop called Bisson in this town on the Italian Riviera in 1978.

Not content merely to sell wine, he soon began making it. Ten years ago he decided to try producing sparkling wine from indigenous varieties grown in vineyards overlooking the Golfo Paradiso on the Mediterranean.

But he immediately encountered a problem: there was simply no space in his already cramped shop and winery to carry out the aging required to make a bottle-fermented sparkling wine in the classic method of Champagne. Then, as he recalled recently, “a light bulb went on in my head: I thought, why not put the wine under the sea?”

This might seem logical to someone like Mr. Lugano who has long struggled to reconcile his twin passions for vine and sea. To most everyone else, the idea of making wine underwater might seem a bit unusual.

But Mr. Lugano makes an interesting argument: “It’s better than even the best underground cellar, especially for sparkling wine. The temperature is perfect, there’s no light, the water prevents even the slightest bit of air from getting in, and the constant counterpressure keeps the bubbles bubbly. Moreover, the underwater currents act like a crib, gently rocking the bottles

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and keeping the lees moving through the wine.” (The lees refer to yeast particles.)

It’s quite a creative solution to a space problem. But Italy is infamous for its labyrinthine bureaucracy. And the place he wanted to put the wine happened to be in the tightly controlled waters of a national marine preserve, the Area Marina Protetta di Portofino.

So the odds would seem overwhelmingly against such a project.

Undaunted, Mr. Lugano ran the idea by a friend-with-a-friend at the Agriculture Ministry in Rome. Much to his surprise, his friend called back a week later; not only was it possible, the ministry thought it was a very cool idea. The next and most crucial step was to approach the local authorities.

In the winter of 2008, Mr. Lugano pitched his idea to a group at the Area Marina Protetta di Portofino that included the director, Giorgio Fanciulli, and a number of scientific advisers from the University of Genoa. “My first reaction,” Dr. Fanciulli said recently, “was: ‘No way! Our job is to prevent people from putting things in these waters, not help them.’

“But when we discussed it in private, the young scientists were very excited. It would have zero impact on the fragile ecosystem and demonstrate our philosophy of a positive synergy between man and nature. We also thought it might promote our park and raise awareness of the need to protect our marine resources.”

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WINE & wonder

SPRING 2011

Piero Lugano

The scientists did research to ensure no environmental impact and determine the ideal site to place the wine. On May 20, 2009, 6,500 bottles of wine from the 2008 vintage of Bianchetta and Vermentino grapes, made without adding sugar, in the traditional method known as pas dosè, were put in noncorrosive stainless-steel cages and lowered about 200 feet below the sea at a spot called Cala degli Inglesi.

That the project had come this far was an amazing accomplishment, but would it be successful? “It was a big risk,” Mr. Lugano said. “No one had done this before, so we really didn’t know what would happen.”

When they went to retrieve the wine 13 months later, they found the bottles intact but transformed. Far from having a negative impact on the underwater environment, it was the sea that had had an impact on the bottles.

“When we began to lift the cages,” Mr. Lugano said, “all kinds of sea creatures came rushing out. Some remained.” The bottles were covered with algae, seaweed and barnacles, all of it carefully cleaned, dried and preserved on the bottle in a plastic sheath.

(Some even had oysters, shrimp and starfish attached to them.)

More important, when the first bottle of the wine (christened Abissi, meaning depths in Italian) was opened for a celebratory toast, Mr. Lugano was, as he put it, “quite pleased.”

Piero Lugano has turned to the sea to make wine, shown here after it had been underwater for over a year.

Eith Fish

It’s easy to see why. When first poured, the bubbles come rushing up to the surface of the glass like sea foam at high tide, but then quickly relax into a fine perlage. The color is pale golden-yellow with greenish reflections, while the aroma suggests caramelized lemon peel and dried flower petals with hints of baked apple and allspice. On the palate it is surprisingly soft, leading into ripe, almost sweet, white peach followed by bracing acidity and a dry mineral finish.

This winter, the second edition of Abissi, made from the 2009 vintage and brought up from the sea on July 2, 2011, will be available in America for the first time through Bisson’s importer, Neil Rosenthal. (It has not been determined how many bottles will come to the United States or what the price will be.) Though bottle-fermented in the classic manner, Abissi should not be compared to Champagne. This is a typical Ligurian wine — lean, crisply acidic, minerally, almost salty — made of local varieties from vineyards conditioned by their proximity to the sea.

In fact, the earth where the vines grow was once under the sea.

That this wine undergoes its crucial maturation under water brings the process full circle, giving the concept of terroir an even deeper, aqueous dimension.

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Greece’s WINE GODS

Even if they’re not in the kitchen, I’m glad Greek winemakers are so focused on food.

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WINE & region

By: Jane Sigal

Some are iconoclasts trained in Bordeaux, others are scions of the wine trade branching out in new directions. Jane Sigal meets some of Greece’s world-class winemakers, tries their best bottles and visits the restaurants where they hang out.

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Epanomi, Greece

SPRING 2011

We’d started our wine-tasting tour at Vráchos, a fish restaurant in Thessaloníki.

Winemaker Evangelos Gerovassiliou had sent his associate enologist, Thrassivoulos Giantsidis, as his ambassador. When the first wine came to the table, I muttered to the retsina-loving Master of Wine that we didn’t need to go to Greece to drink Chardonnay. Then we spread some taramasalata on a pita toast and tried it with the wine. We both got very quiet. This Chardonnay, with plenty of crisp acidity and the aroma of ripe peaches, was delicious with the salty pink dip. So was the wine from another white grape, one I’d never heard of, Malagousia (mah-la-gou-ZYA). I smelled jasmine. It was fresh but softer than the Chardonnay. I wanted to know more about it.

A few days later we toured Domaine Gerovassiliou, a half-hour drive southwest of Thessaloníki and just outside the town of Epanomi. As we walked around the property, I couldn’t help thinking of France. All the plants were pruned with elegant precision—the grapevines, of course, but also the shrubs on the terrace overlooking the sandy vineyards, the Gulf of Thermaikós visible in the distance. Here, as in Bordeaux, red rosebushes were planted at the ends of some of the vine rows. French-speaking Evangelos Gerovassiliou—tall, with thick and graying hair, wearing a button-down oxford shirt— could have been a Bordelais winemaker.

As he showed us his winery’s basementcum-museum, filled with 1,300 corkscrews and cases and cases of old winemaking artifacts, including amphorae dating back to the first century b.c., Gerovassiliou told us about his background. One of the first Greeks to study at the University of Bordeaux in the 1970s, he became a protégé of the legendary consultant Emile Peynaud.

At Domaine Porto Carras, perched on the Sithonía peninsula in southern Macedonia, he began experimenting in the late ‘70s with international varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc—as well as Assyrtiko, Santorini’s exquisite, Muscadet–like grape. Then at home in Epanomi, starting in 1983, he worked to bring back the native white grape Malagousia from virtual extinction.

Gerovassiliou is still making new wines with ancient Greek grapes. “I’ve got three

Domaine Gerovassilou

At the stomach doctor in Thessaloníki’s covered market, a waitress deposits spicy, thin hamburgers and skewers of pork sprinkled with oregano directly onto the paper-covered table in front of us. Charcoal-grilled sardines, sausages and bowls of vinegary shredded cabbage tossed with scallions, carrots and parsley are delivered to us along with cups filled to the brim with cold retsina, the traditional Greek wine fermented with pine resin. We squeeze fat lemon wedges over the sizzling meat and fish and start eating, pausing only to grab at one of those spring-fed steel napkin dispensers because everything is soon dripping with juice—mouths, chins, hands.

It could be the 1950s, after the Greek civil war, when wine was cheap and sold in bulk by a few big companies and co-ops. Or the late ‘60s. The customers standing at the bar drinking grappa-like tsipouro could be talking about the military junta that ran the country until 1974.

I’m having tsipouro, too, flavored with anise. Everyone else at the table, including a Master of Wine, an enologist and a wine importer, is reveling in the thin retsina. Its very awfulness seems to excite them. We all crave something that doesn’t require note taking. We need a break from obscure indigenous grapes with hard-to-pronounce names. We’re tired of asking about what’s in the blend.

We’ve been tasting scores of singular, distinguished wines since we landed almost a week ago in Thessaloníki, Greece’s secondlargest city, on the Gulf of Thermaikós, and the historic capital of Macedonia. We’ve been crisscrossing this northern Greek region bordering Bulgaria, Albania and the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, stopping to taste world-class bottlings at wineries and restaurants favored by local winemakers. Dozens of these wines are made with indigenous grapes; many are amazing values. And Macedonia is just one of Greece’s premier wine regions. Producers are also making terrific wines in Peloponnese from Agiorgitiko (ah-yor-YEEti-ko) and Moschofilero (mos-ko-FEE-le-ro), and in the Cyclades islands from Assyrtiko (a-SEER-tee-ko). Sometimes these grapes are blended with other indigenous varieties, sometimes with European grapes like Sauvignon Blanc or Merlot.

Pavlidis’s intensity clearly extends to eating, because he seemed to order everything on the menu.

varieties in trials,” he told me. “We’ll see what they taste like in five or 10 years.”

At a special lunch in one of the winery’s tasting rooms (these are open to the public, though reservations are essential on weekends), we ate one of Gerovassiliou’s favorite dishes: pork shoulder and leeks braised until meltingly soft, served with rich cooking juices that had been thickened with egg yolks and sharpened with lemon. With the stew, we drank his Malagousia and Chardonnay again, alongside the Gerovassiliou White, a blend of Malagousia and crisp Assyrtiko, and I thought, These whites are amazing. Flashy, superoaky wines turn me off, and these were subtle and fruity, balanced by acidity.

I realized I was witnessing a fantastic white-wine phenomenon when I drank the Ktima Pavlidis White (ktima means “estate”) produced by 38-year-old Christoforos Pavlidis, one of Greece’s young winemakers on the rise. Pavlidis met us in Thessaloníki at 7 Seas, a two-year-old fish restaurant on the promenade facing the Gulf of Thermaikós, to introduce us to his wines. At any time of the day or night Thessaloníkians stream past—mostly young, mostly decked out—occasionally stopping at one of the nearby cafés for frappé, the frothy, cold, sweet, caffeine-charged Nescafé drink. Seashell lights hang above the French doors at this modern spot, and popular Greek music plays a little too loudly. The room is decorated with sailing paraphernalia: a buoy, a model ship. Above the banquette, metal fish seem to be swimming out of the wall.

Pavlidis is small, dark and intense. After earning an MBA from Oxford, he worked in his family’s marble business in Drama, 93 miles northeast of Thessaloníki, before launching his own winery nearby in 1998.

Pavlidis hired the brilliant Angelos Iatridis to consult on everything from harvesting to bottling.

Pavlidis’s intensity clearly extends to eating, because he seemed to order everything on the menu. Dill-flecked, smoked fish pâté.

Butter-grilled bay scallops. The most delicious boiled vegetables I’ve ever tasted.

How could cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower served with olive oil and lemon halves be this good? There was a Greek salad with dry rusk toasts, ridiculously tender octopus

in tomato sauce, and a platter of linguine topped with spicy shrimp, shells and heads intact. My favorite, though, was the blackened eggplant that had been scooped out of its skin and sprinkled with feta, olive oil and parsley. It had a great smoky flavor.

And I loved the tender fritters made with hunks of silky salt cod, served with a garlicky potato puree for dipping.

I couldn’t imagine any better wine with this food than the Ktima Pavlidis White.

Sauvignon Blanc gives this blend its melony, grapefuit-like aromas; Assyrtiko contributes a briskness and mineral flavor. The wine’s refreshing acidity was perfect for the salads and seafood. But here, as with Gerovassiliou’s wines, the freshness was surprising. In warm Mediterranean climates, grapes can get very ripe, producing wines that tend to be low in acid and high in alcohol. Pavlidis’s vineyards are up in the foothills of Mount Falakro, he explained, close to Macedonia’s ski resorts, where the weather never gets unbearably hot.

Trying white wines made from native Greek grapes was thrilling, like discovering Austrian Grüner Veltliner a few years ago.

The Greek reds seemed less compelling.

Then I had my first taste of Xinomavro (ksee-NO-ma-vro), Macedonia’s traditional, most-planted red grape.

Driving past olive trees and rows of fruit trees pruned like goblets, we had found our way to Náoussa, a town in central Macedonia about an hour northwest of Thessaloníki. We were meeting Stellios Boutaris, of the prominent Boutaris wine family, at the restaurant Náoussaiiko. It was a rustic place, with wooden bistro chairs and white tablecloths laid over plaid undercloths. Large windows opened onto a small square, and sheep bells, kerosene lanterns and boat-shaped weaving shuttles decorated the stucco walls.

Stellios uncorked more than a dozen Xinomavro wines from estates around Náoussa, including several from Kir-Yianni, the winery his father, Yiannis, had founded in 1997. They were a light ruby color with spicy notes, great acidity and lots of tannin.

I thought these needed food because of all the tannin, like an Italian Nebbiolo. I wasn’t sure yet if I liked them.

As we tasted, Stellios told us the story behind Kir-Yianni. Yiannis and his brother, Konstantinos, owned and ran Boutari, the large wine company started by their grandfather in 1879. Yiannis rocked family tradition in the late 1960s by planting a vineyard, buying land in the Náoussa appellation, at 1,150 feet, to grow vines. “You have to understand that we were wine sellers,” Stellios said. “We were not farmers.” At one of their estates, Yianakohori, Yiannis lowered crop yields, built a new winery and introduced modern winemaking

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techniques and single-vineyard wines. In 1996 he left Boutari to devote himself fulltime to winemaking.

I was very hungry when the first courses arrived—fried cheese sprinkled with lemon juice, sausage-stuffed phyllo, onion fritters and eggs baked with stewed tomatoes. I drank a rosé—the deep pink, medium-bodied Kir-Yianni Akakies made from the Xinomavro grape, which tasted of strawberries. Its juiciness and delightful acidity were wonderful with the rich, fried foods.

The main courses were heartier: a pork stew and local lamb braised in an earthenware pot with onions, tomatoes and sweet pale green peppers. The Ramnista, KirYianni’s barrel-aged, 100 percent Xinomavro wine, peppery and tasting of plums and raspberries, was a great pairing with the braised meat.

Now that I had discovered Xinomavro, I wanted to taste more of it. From Náoussa, we drove northwest into the remote region of Amyndeon about six miles from the Albanian border to meet Angelos Iatridis.

Thirty-nine-year-old Iatridis had consulted on the first vintages at Kir-Yianni, as he did later at Ktima Pavlidis. Then in 1997, when he was just 29, the French-trained (Bordeaux and Suze-la-Rousse) Iatridis started buying land to create his own vineyards under the Alpha Estate label, a plateau surrounded by mountains in the coldest wine-making region in Greece.

As Iatridis gave us a tour of his sandy vineyards planted with 11 different grapes— including Xinomavro, Mavrodaphe (mav-ro-THAF-nee), Merlot, Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc—he shared his ideas about winemaking. He thinks everything can be measured, every aspect quantified.

Most of the winemaking at Alpha Estate is monitored by computer: the temperature in the fermentation tanks, even the moisture in the soil.

How does this philosophy affect his wines? His Xinomavro shows the grape’s characteristic pale-red color and is spicy with big tannins. But Iatridis brings a new level of power and new-world personality to the wine. It ages for nine months in oak, not so long that the wine is overwhelmed.

It’s dense, extracted, fruity and lightly oaky.

Since we need to have something to eat while we drink, Iatridis produced a couple of savory deep-dish pies, a feta one that was as light as an Italian ricotta cheesecake and a spinach-filled one. Iatridis, it turns out, comes from a family that has produced pastry chefs for four generations.

How did he end up a winemaker? “I didn’t like how many hours my father worked in the shop,” he told me. “I wanted to be outside in the countryside, not stuck baking in the basement.”

Even if they’re not in the kitchen, I’m glad Greek winemakers are so focused on food. Maybe that’s why, as they started improving their wines, they made sure these bottles would be at home on the dinner table. If the wines keep improving at this rapid clip, I imagine, one day soon it might even be difficult to find a thrillingly bad retsina.

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WINE & design

Australian Wine

uses infographics as its bottle labels.

What a wonderful thing for all you data nerds out there: Between Five Bells, an Australian wine, had begun using infographics about its wine-making process as labels on its bottles. The first of many has just been unveiled. "If you take the 2010 Red label, you will see the central image as something alluring and interesting," BFB owner David Fesq writes. "This is actually all the data of the various grape varieties as they entered the winery and went through primary fermentation. There are eight axis at play, including the heat of the ferments, the time on skins and the ripeness of the grapes.

These are all things I find interesting, and even for a casual drinker, with a little research, they can tell you a lot about the flavors to expect." More generally, he adds: "The labels on these wines should tell you something about the wine inside, be honest about it, and maybe even inspire a bit of wine research." The label was designed

by Nicholas Feltron. The company plans to do infographics on all of its bottles from now on.

sni

the By: Lettie Teague

Writer Lettie Teague adores perfume almost as much as she loves wine. As she sips and sniffs with two scent-obsessed sommeliers, she follows her nose to the most aromatic bottles.

My obsession with perfume began when I was 18. That was a full two years before I began to care about wine. In theory, I should have abandoned the former as my appreciation for the latter grew; instead, they have developed along parallel lines. I continue to wear perfume, and I continue to taste, drink and write about wine— though not at the same time, of course (except, perhaps, the writing part).

It’s practically a given that perfume is deleterious to wine; its aromatic domination is so complete that it is routinely banned from professional wine gatherings. Yet I believe perfume and wine have a great deal in common: Perfume is all about aroma, and aroma is critically important to wine as well. According to famed enologist Émile Peynaud, aroma is what gives a wine its personality. In fact, wine pros often say that everything you need to know about a wine can be found in its aroma, or nose. Even the word nose is significant: A wine has a nose, and a great perfume artist is called a nose.

Both wine and perfume have transformative powers. A great wine can evoke a place, even a particular piece of ground, just as a great perfume can transform a person into a bouquet of flowers or the sea. Both stir conversation and debate and even stir strong emotions.

One wine pro who is as passionate about wine and perfume as I am is Belinda Chang, the wine director of The Modern restaurant in New York City and the creator of one of my favorite wine lists. I found out about Belinda’s love of perfume when I was at her apartment for a tasting party. I’d stepped into the bathroom to wash my hands and found several perfumes and scented candles lined up on the shelves. Two fragrances were from L’Artisan, one of my favorite brands. I buttonholed Belinda: Did she like perfume as much as I did?

Belinda, it turned out, not only liked perfume but was, in her word, “obsessed.” In fact, she confessed, one of the best parts of her job at The Modern was its midtown location; it meant she was very close to the perfume counters at Saks. But wasn’t a love

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of perfume at odds with her profession?

Belinda gave a big laugh (she laughs a lot).

“I guess I just want our world to smell better,” she replied. But alas, like me, she can never wear perfume when she’s at work.

It was easy enough to lure Belinda to Saks for a little perfume sampling. I felt the same thrill of possibility as I did when I was about to taste some promising wines.

The Thierry Mugler counter was straight ahead of us, the Mugler salesperson poised and ready to spray. “Angel is the first gourmand fragrance,” he said, showing us the bottle. “It’s aged in a cognac barrel.” (We heard this several more times throughout the store; cognac-barrel-treated perfumes are all the rage, apparently, although they don’t smell like cognac at all.) Gourmand?

“This is the first fragrance in the world without flowers in it,” he said. I thought it smelled far too sweet. Belinda liked it more.

“It smells like pastry,” she said. “I think any woman should be allowed to wear this during the dessert course.”

As we talked with the salespeople, I discovered more similarities between wine and perfume terms: A fragrance is defined as having a beginning, middle and end, just like a wine. Actually, perfume talk may be more complicated than winespeak. Even the formidable wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr., might be impressed by virtuoso perfume writer Elena Vosnaki (perfumeshrine. blogspot.com). Here is what she said about the new Marc Jacobs fragrance, Apple: “Deliciously fruity, Apple is aromatic and energizing, built around a green apple impression full of freshness…. The unexpected surprise of rosemary, jasmine and soft stellata magnolia playfully join in. At last, warm driftwood, coriander and cardamom gently delight.”

We heard a lot of this sort of thing at Saks, though Belinda and I couldn’t stay in one place long enough to hear more than snippets. We liked Jo Malone’s French Lime Blossom and Grapefruit fragrance, which was pretty if rather one-note. We both loved Chanel, my onetime favorite. “Coco Chanel is Napa Cabernet,” Belinda declared.

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etiquette

test

“Women who wear Coco don’t switch,” the saleslady said. (I didn’t want to tell her I had long since stopped wearing it.)

But as much as we loved Chanel, it was Hermès that won Belinda and me that day, specifically the Hermès 24, Faubourg (named for the Paris flagship’s address). I fell for it immediately; its layers of spice and citrus brought to mind a great Bordeaux. “This perfume makes me think of Haut-Brion!” I said to Belinda and bought a bottle of the eau de toilette.

Then we repaired to The Modern to sample some wines. Belinda had brought out a few of her favorites, along with some of her most beloved perfumes. “I think there is an obvious connection here,” she said. “The perfumes are ones that I chose for myself, and these are the wines that I chose by the glass, all of which are pretty aromatic.” She raised a glass of the 2007 Cuilleron Condrieu Les Chaillets, the great, fragrant white wine of the Rhône, and inhaled its heady scent of peach and apricot. “This is the first wine that I ever had that made me realize wine could smell great.”

Belinda stuck her nose almost all the way into the glass, and I followed suit. We both took a few short whiffs (which convey aromas better than a long sniff). This is, of course, what wine professionals do to first assess a wine. The goal is not limited to determining whether the wine has notes of flowers and berries or minerals and earth: It’s also to learn useful information about acidity. If the acidity is particularly high, the aromas will be sharp and lifted; if it’s exceptionally high, it might even make your eyes water. You can even tell the type of oak in which the wine was aged (French oak is spicy, whereas American oak has more vanilla notes). All of this, and more, comes wafting out of the glass.

We tasted two wines that reminded us of Florascent’s fragrance Mimosa, all primary fruit wand floral notes: the 2008 Weingut Prager Hinter der Burg Grüner Veltliner from Austria and the 2008 Momo Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. Then we tried a wine that was as rich and layered as the Coco Chanel perfume: the 2006 Arietta Quartet. This Bordeaux-style blend from Napa was so fragrant that notes of red fruit, even licorice, billowed out of the glass.

I was surprised, in fact, by its intensity, as many Napa Cabs can be aromatically SPRING 2011

restrained in their relative youth.

And then Belinda produced a half-bottle of 2004 Haut-Brion, a highly rated vintage of the legendary first-growth Bordeaux.

“We have to test your Hermès,” she declared, pulling the cork. The aromatic resemblance between wine and perfume was striking: In each there were notes of dried flower and spice—and equally deep, rich and penetrating aromas. They were both glorious. The wine and the perfume were so perfectly in sync, in fact, that I even wondered if I could wear the 24, Faubourg while drinking Haut-Brion.

Perhaps, I thought, a perfumer would have some insight into how the worlds of wine and perfume might be reconciled, so I called Fabrice Penot, co-founder of the acclaimed perfume company Le Labo.

There are 15 Le Labo “perfume laboratories” in cities all over the world, including New York. There is no single Le Labo perfumer; instead, the company’s scents are all created by different top noses. When I called Penot, he told me, “Like a great wine, a great perfume should make the world more wonderful; if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t deserve to exist.”

To Penot, a great perfume has “a soul and a shape,” attributable to both art and technique. The technical aspect of creating a perfume cannot be underestimated: A fragrance may have up to 75 components, real or synthetic or both. I wondered, did Le Labo offer a fragrance that I could wear while drinking wine?

Penot suggested I visit his New York store and meet its COO, Sophie Deumier.

Le Labo’s New York headquarters looked like a cross between an alchemist’s lab and a downtown bar. The narrow allwhite room was dominated by a steel bar, with dozens of brown glass bottles lined up where the liquor might have been stored. Three small displays of fragrances were on the opposite side of the room, underneath the French words for womenand men and unisex. Sophie, a pixie-ish woman, approached me and, before even shaking my hand, took one of the bottles and doused herself completely in Tubereuse 40 perfume.

“I’m hoping to find a perfume that I can wear while drinking wine,” I told her through a Tubereuse 40 cloud. “You will need a perfume with citrus notes,” she 15

said decisively. “Citrus is one of the important components in wine.” (I wasn’t sure about this, but I went along.) She handed me a tester of the Fleur d’Orange 27.

“The problem with most commercial perfumes is that you have no idea how long they’ve been sitting on shelves,” Sophie said. “That’s why we make a fresh perfume each time.” She indicated the brown bottles on the shelves. “We date all our bottles and tell people to use their perfume within a year.” None of my perfumes last that long, but I loved the idea. It’s similar to howChampagne makers print disgorgement dates on their bottles, I told Sophie—a kind of freshness dating. “Very interesting,” she replied. “I would really like to learn more about wine,” she added wistfully.

My perfume tour was nearly over when I discovered a fragrance that grabbed me: Neroli 36. It was fresh, bright and clean; it had a quiet presence (not the kind you can sense across the room) that was practically visceral. “It smells like a cool breeze.

Actually, it feels like a cool breeze,” I said to Sophie. “That’s exactly what it was made to evoke: a sea breeze,” she replied. “It was made by Daphne Bugey; she is a very famous perfumer.”

cedary cologne that smelled like a Cabernet Sauvignon.”

But his was a talent with a downside.

“There’s a perfume that smells like a corked wine,” he told me. “I wish I knew what it was, because I smell it a lot. One time I opened a bottle of wine and the man who ordered it thought the wine was off, but it was really his date’s corked-wine perfume.

Of course, I could not tell him that.”

Then he left to check on the restaurant. A few minutes later, he returned to the bar.

“There’s a lot going on now; you should come in.” Emanuel installed me at a table in the middle of the room and said he would let me know when there was something to smell. A few minutes later, he came back and suggested a route through the dining room. “You’ll find apricots and peaches to the right, and then you’ll smell cinnamon and spice. As you walk to the back, you’ll find the large man in the booth is wearing a cedary cologne.”

They were both glorious. The wine and the perfume were so perfectly in sync, in fact, that I even wondered if I could wear the 24 Faubourg while drinking Haut-Brion.

I knew just where I was going to wear it: to New York City’s Café Boulud, where the sommelier, Emanuel Moosbrugger, was, according to Belinda, as obsessed with perfume as we were. In fact, when I called him up to confirm this, Emanuel confessed he was so scent-obsessed that he even pairs the perfumes he smells in the restaurant with wines in his head. Could I perhaps trail him around the restaurant some night? I asked. He hesitated until I assured him that I wouldn’t start sniffing his guests.

I brought my two new perfumes with me to Café Boulud. “It’s slow right now,” Emanuel said by way of greeting. “There’s not much to smell.” He suggested I wait at Bar Pleiades next door. A black-and-white Art Deco space, the bar—appropriately enough—looked like something designed

by Chanel.

Had Emanuel always been interested in fragrance? I asked him. “I like to smell things,” he said. “Whether it’s on the street or in the subway or in the restaurant, I’m always walking around in a cloud of aroma.”

His fascination with perfume came about almost unwittingly, he said. “I would smell a peach-and-apricot-based perfume and think of a German Spätlese Riesling. Or a

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As the dining room grew crowded, the amount of fragrance intensified, too, and the scents of peach and apricot hung in the air. Emanuel began bringing over glasses of wine. “This German Riesling, a 2006 S.A. Prüm Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Kabinett, is just like that fragrance you walked through,” he said, handing me a glass. Ditto the Condrieu, which was an aromatic double for a blonde woman’s peachy perfume.

The glass of Chateau La Vieille Cure, a red Bordeaux, turned out to be a strong echo of the fat man’s cologne.

What did Emanuel think about my two perfumes, the Hermès and the Neroli 36?

He took several whiffs. He admired the Hermès but seemed dubious about whether I could wear it while drinking wine. “It is too much, I think,” he said. The Neroli 36, on the other hand, pleased him. “It’s very clean; it smells like the sea.” He brought me a bright white from the Loire, the 2007 Luc Choblet Muscadet—a vinous double for my perfume. “Do you think I could wear the 36 while drinking this wine?” I asked. “A little,” Emanuel said judiciously.

And so, though I love the 24, Faubourg, I don’t wear it often. It’s like a wine I reserve for special occasions. The Neroli 36 I use occasionally, as Emanuel suggested, in small amounts. I wore it out to dinner with a winemaker, who didn’t notice it until I pointed it out, much later.

And I guess that’s my final answer to the question of whether wine and perfume can be enjoyed together: only in very small amounts. Or, as Fabrice Penot said to me, “Perfume, like wine, is beautiful when you know how to stop.”

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WINE & recipe

Pears in Wine Traditional Spanish Recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients 4 big firm Conference pears.

(Any firm pear variety will be ideal for this recipe.)

red wine

(Preferably 1 litre, but 75 cl will suffice)

225 g brown or white sugar 2 cinnamon sticks 2 cloves

Peel of an unwaxed lemon

How to Prepare

Cooking time: 45-50 minutes Wash the pears as you will use the skin.

Peel the pears from the stem to the base, but do not remove the stems. Reserve the skin.

Put the whole pears flat in a large saucepan together with the skin, the wine, the sugar, the 2 cinnamon sticks, lemon peel and cloves.

Bring the wine to the boil over a medium to low heat and continue cooking the pears uncovered. After about 20 minutes, carefully turn them over. Suggest you turn them with a couple of wooden spoons so that you don´t break the flesh of the pears.

Continue cooking the pears over medium to low heat for a further 20 minutes and then carefully remove the pears from the liquid and place them in a dish.

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Now, continue cooking the red wine with the skins and the cinnamon. Slowly reduce the liquid until all alcohol has evaporated and the consistency of the liquid has thickened.

When the liquid has thickened to a syrup sift the liquid into a large jug. Return the syrup to the pan, add the pears in an upright position with the stem sticking out of the syrup and cook for five more minutes very carefully so that the syrup does not burn. From time to time baste the pears with the syrup.

Place your pears upright in a serving dish, pour the red wine syrup over them and either serve immediately warm, or let them cool. The pears are delicious on their own but a dollop of cream or a large spoon of vanilla ice cream can only add to this flavoursome sweet.

PAIRING WINE with CHINESE FOOD

The range of dry to sweet rieslings can match all types of Chinese food, plus it’s never too heavy, but rather fresh and fruity.

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WINE & food

including kungpao cashew chicken with its sugar, black Shanxi vinegar, chili peppers, and faint hint of Sichuan peppercorns.

With a medium body and high acidity, the riesling balanced the sugar, salt, and the pickled flavor of the wok-fried bamboo shoots.

By contrast, a 2007 Seresin Estate Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand, while slightly effervescent and zingy on its own, was too light to retain its identity when awash with other flavors.

“I love rieslings; they go well with Chinese cuisine because the mouth-feel is quite refreshing,” said Ms. Sun, the magazine editor.

“The range of dry to sweet rieslings can match all types of Chinese food, plus it’s never too heavy, but rather fresh and fruity.”

We also discovered two other versatile wines: a 2007 grüner veltliner from Nigl, an Austrian winery, and a 2006 Yering Station pinot noir rosé from the Yarra Valley in Australia. The light pepper and fruity aroma of the grüner veltliner, a lesser-known white grape that is almost exclusively grown in central Europe, complemented the steamed sea bass and the stir-fried cabbage hearts with shiitake mushrooms. The soft texture, subtle tannins and floral notes of the extra-dry pinot noir rosé made it go well with nearly everything from the pan-fried pork and pumpkin dumplings to the sweet and sour pork (which turned out to be one of the hardest dishes to pair).

One surprise was that the 2006 Te Tera pinot noir from the Martinborough Vineyard in New Zealand worked quite well with several dishes, including twice-cooked pork. The spice, sugar and lightly fermented sauces of the pork dish amplified the pinot noir with light tannins, making it taste more like a full-bodied merlot.

Two wines that did not find a place on the table were the 2006 Miss Harry blend of grenache, shiraz and mourvèdre from Hewitson in South Australia and a 2005 red Burgundy, the Hautes Côtes de Nuits from A.F. Gros. “I can see these going with something heavier, like red-braised pork,” Mr. Ragg said.

We also found it difficult to match any of the wines with two dishes laced with Sichuan peppercorns, the oil-braised beef and the Chongqing spicy chicken. They clashed with each sip of even the more elegant wines, like the light-bodied 2007 Chablis Premier Cru from Jean-Marc Brocard and the red Burgundy. Each taste set off an echo chamber of numbing spice in my mouth. “It’s a lovely dish on its own,” Mr. Ragg said, almost apologetically. He suggested that a palette-cleansing sparkling wine might be interesting to try with Sichuan peppercorn dishes on another occasion.

The evening demonstrated that pairing wine with Chinese cuisine wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, save a few Sichuan peppercorns. Mr. Suk, the wine auction house representative, suggested that if a Chinese restaurant doesn’t have a decent wine list, bringing your own bottle is usually an option. Corkage fees at Chinese restaurants in China and abroad are typically low, ranging from $5 to $10, while many hole-in-the-wall eateries may allow you to bring wine for free.

The evening also showed the enthusiasm the Chinese have for wine. Winemakers should be heartened by the conversion of Ms. Lok, the wine broker from Guangzhou, who had primarily consumed baijiu before tasting her first imported wine in 2006. She soon learned about the difference between New and Old World wines and became an avid drinker of the wines of Spain, Germany and Argentina. But she still vividly remembers her first sip of an imported wine: “It was a south Australian shiraz. It was so much better than the Chinese wines I’d had in the past, and you didn’t have to add Sprite to it.”

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Sichuan Peppercorns

The red, Sichuan peppercorn-spiked gravy that covered the tender slices of beef served as a warning: This was going to be no easy task. “This is where most people reach for the beer,” said Campbell Thompson, a Beijing-based wine importer. “Or maybe just a glass of water,” said another guest. “Or maybe just white rice,” chimed in a third dinner partner.

On a recent Tuesday evening, I gathered a group of eight wine and Chinese cuisine experts in my kitchen in central Beijing to taste a broad range of ten Chinese dishes with eight wines. The goal was to test the common perception that it’s challenging — or downright impossible — to pair wines with Chinese cuisine.

The Chinese have a dinnertime tradition of drinking baijiu, a high-grade Chinese grain alcohol, but in recent years, more international wines have begun to appear on restaurant menus in China, from the most traditional state-owned Chinese restaurants to trendy ones like Lan and Da Dong in Beijing.

But even as wine lists have emerged at restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai, some wine experts argue that little thought has gone into putting those wine lists together. Burgundies, costly bottles of Lafite, and anything labeled Bordeaux are often served at lavish Chinese meals meant to impress important guests. But some wine experts say that those wines clash with the spice and complex flavors of Sichuanese food and are too heavy to go with the delicate seafood dishes of Cantonese cuisine.

“The young nature of the local wine market is what inhibits creative wine pairings,” said Gabriel Suk, the senior representative in Asia for the Chicago-based wine auction house Hart Davis Hart.

“Chinese restaurants are told what to purchase by the local distributor, who might be making decisions based on sales margins rather than a concerted effort to find the best pairing.”

Another challenge in pairing wines with Chinese cuisine is the complexity of sauces and ingredients that go into the dishes, said Fongyee Walker, who owns the Beijing wine consultancy Dragon Phoenix Wines with her husband, Edward Ragg. In Western cooking, she said, “you can almost think of the wine as a sauce that goes with the dish.”

“In Chinese cooking,” she continued, “the dishes are already balanced and complete in themselves. For example, a touch of sugar goes into almost every savory Chinese dish.”

The upside is that because pairing wine with Chinese cuisine is a relatively new concept, “it’s a blank slate,” said Mr. Ragg.

I figured my kitchen, where I hold cooking classes and private dinners, would be a good place to discover what works. Joining me for the dinner were Mr. Thompson, Mr. Ragg and Ms. Walker; Melissa Wong and Robert Chu, a Chinese-American couple living in Beijing who are avid wine drinkers; Fiona Sun, the editor of the magazine Wine in China; and Vicky Lok, a Guangzhou-based wine broker.

For the occasion, Mr. Thompson, who owns a wine importing company called The Wine Republic, donated four white wines, one pinot noir rosé blend, and three red wines from the New and Old World that retailed from 170 yuan to 520 yuan, or $25 to $75, in Beijing.

Mr. Thompson chose light to medium-bodied wines, and reds with lower tannins, too much of which can clash with salt and spice. Dishes were served in order of their complexity of flavors, beginning with lighter dishes and ending with two dishes loaded with Sichuan peppercorns and dried chili peppers, before moving on to a dessert of candied “basi” apples, a common Beijing dish.

One definite winner of the evening was a semisweet riesling.

The 2007 Mount Difficulty Target Gully Riesling from Central Otago, New Zealand, stood up to spicy, more complex dishes,

china

Kashew Chicken

china

By: Jen Lin-Liu

Wine is a

necessit

tyforofme.life Napa Valley

california

The Low Down on Wine

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WINE &

dialogue

Some of Michael’s Favorites: Sauvignon blanc: bracing acidity, citrus notes, very clean palate Rhone reds/syrah: big, juicy wines with spice, medium tannins that will enhance most dishes Gewürztraminer: floral, spicy white from Alsace that is killer with Asian and Cajun cuisine.

By: Anna Howland There are some jobs I want. Michael Cristillo has one of them. He’s the wine and spirits buyer for Bristol Farms, a gourmet and specialty food retailer in California that I’m a big fan of. And as the buyer, he gets to taste and make a decision on every bottle their stores carry. See? Some jobs you just want. I love wine. But, I would say I still have one foot in the kiddie pool when it comes to my wine knowledge. So, I’ve asked Michael a few questions that would point someone like myself in the right direction when it comes to buying and appreciating wines.

What’s trending in wines for 2011?

MC: Much as it was last year – good wines at a very affordable price. Malbecs from Argentina, reds from Spain, especially the Jumilla and La Mancha region are at the forefront. People are also discovering alternatives to chardonnay, from the vibrant sauvignon blancs to the floral viogniers and spicy gewürztraminers. Pinot Noir is still very popular (our 3rd best category behind chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon) and the wines of Italy, especially the reds of Montalcino that produces the great Brunellos is creating a lot of buzz amongst wine aficionados.

Any suggestions for a wine neophyte?

MC: Begin with the softer wines – in reds, that could be pinot noir, beaujolais. With whites, sauvignon blanc is wonderful because it works with most foods and is delicious on its own. And for something in between, Rose is an excellent choice. Those can be found generally in the under $15 range, be they domestic or import. And don’t cringe and think “sweet”; most roses are vinified dry, but remain fruity. They have appropriately replaced the overly sweet and often innocuous white zinfandel.

What are some good affordable wines?

MC: Argentina and Spain are hot right now as they offer wines that over deliver on the quality and many can be found for under $10. At Bristol Farms, we created something called our “Wine Stimulus” offering last year – basically, its 10 wines under $10. It’s a great deal that everyone should look into.

We taste through several hundred wines and pick the ten best that represent very good quality for the price. You don’t need to mortgage the house to enjoy a good bottle of wine!

And what do you recommend for a splurge?

MC: Brunellos from Montalcino in Tuscany.

These are receiving amazing press, will age beautifully, and can easily go toe-to-toe with the best wines from Bordeaux and Napa, sometimes delivering a knock out punch. They range from the $50 to above $100+ range, but they are a rare breed in that they are actually worth every penny you pay for them. And if you want to relish such a wine, but not pay through the proverbial nose, try the “baby Brunellos” called Rossos di Montalcino. These are younger vined Brunellos that use the same grape, Sangiovese Grosso, and come from vineyard blocks not designated as “Brunello quality.” A great and less expensive wine.

What is your philosophy on food and wine pairings?

MC: Beyond the white with fish and red with meat mentality, it’s great to experiment with the different grape varietals available to us. Our famous chef matched a full bodied cab with blackened scallops.

Viognier is a great match with grilled or sautéed green vegetables. Often it’s not so much the protein or veggie that decides SPRING 2011

23

what wine to use, but the sauce and spice preparation. Our motto for our Stimulus wine offerings is “drink outside the box” and that applies to wine and food pairings as well.

Any exciting new things wine producers are doing?

MC: Trying to stay afloat in this economically chaotic roller coaster ride. Many are coming up with “inexpensive” alternatives to their pricier wines, thus offering good value with good quality. Also, some chardonnay producers are creating “non oaked” wines that lay off the fat, buttery oak elements and showcase the grape itself.

Organic and bio-dynamic wines are gaining momentum to coincide with the “green” philosophy in today’s society.

Some countries around the world produce great wines. Any countries that are front runners in your opinion and how do they compare to California?

MC: I’d have to say Spain and Argentina, simply because they produce wonderful wines at all price levels. It’s hard to find a really good California wine at or under $10.

There is a plethora of those wines from those two countries.

Descriptions of wine can get pretty creative. What’s the funniest word you’ve seen used to describe wine?

MC: “Unctuous”. We’ve actually had several consumers take exception to this word, because it not only describes a wine as being full bodied and mouth coating, but “oily” is another one of its descriptors. In the glass of the beholder, I guess.

Te Excit Win of 2

The wine delivers noticeable power and structure, ideal for cellaring.

10

Château de St.-Cosme

Gigondas Valbelle 2009 Southern Rhône, France

The warm, dry 2009 growing season produced an early harvest of ripe grapes balanced with fresh acidity.

9

Alain Graillot

Crozes-Hermitage La Guiraude 2009 Northern Rhône, France

The first vintage of this wine was 1982.

8

Domenico Clerico

Barolo Ciabot Mentin Ginestra 2006 Piedmont, Italy

The 2008 is dark and concentrated, with finesse.

7

Quinta do Vallado

Touriga Nacional Douro 2008 Douro Valley, Portugal

Ursa, Latin for “bear,” has always been impressive for its suppleness and pure flavors.

6

Baer

Ursa Columbia Valley 2008 Washington

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en ting nes 2011

The wine delivers noticeable power and structure, ideal for cellaring.

5

Dehlinger

Pinot Noir Russian River Valley Sonoma County, California

About 30 acres of vines, the oldest of them planted in the mid-1960s, are used for its Brunello.

4

Campogiovanni

Brunello di Montalcino 2006 Tuscany, Italy

Fresh acidity counterbalances the resulting sweet wine’s concentrated fruit and spice notes.

3

Domaine Huët

Vouvray Moelleux Clos du Bourg Première Trie 2009 Loire Valley, France

Seamless texture, wonderful focus, purity of flavor and persistent finish.

2

Hall

Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Kathryn Hall 2008 California

The team made 11 outstanding Pinots, including our Wine of the Year for 2011.

Wine of the Year Kosta Browne

Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2009 Sonoma County, California

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The only thing I regret in life is not drinking enough champagne.