The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture

by Michael Steinberger

  Sure, some extraordinary vintages deserve the hype they generate. In 2005, Bordeaux and Burgundy both produced incredible wines, two of the finest vintages that these regions have ever had. The most acclaimed wines were amazingly good, and not surprisingly, they were staggeringly expensive. (Case in point: in the early 2000s, I was able to buy Domaine Mugnier’s Musigny, a fabulous grand cru red Burgundy, for around $80 a bottle in France; when the 2005 Mugnier Musigny was released, its price instantly soared to $5,000 a bottle. Needless to say, I’m no longer a buyer of Monsieur Mugnier’s Musigny.) But 2005 yielded great wines at all price points, and fabulous Burgundies and Bordeaux were to be had for $25 and $30 a bottle. In the case of the 2005 vintage, it paid to believe the hype.

  But not all highly touted vintages merit the acclaim. For instance, the Wine Spectator gave the 2000 vintage in Italy’s Piedmont region a 100-point rating. But among Barolo and Barbaresco producers and collectors, the Spectator’s rating was considered a bit of a joke. Yes, some excellent wines were produced in 2000, but it was widely agreed that 1996 and 2001 were much stronger vintages (and the Spectator has since downgraded the 2000 Piedmont vintage, now rating it 93 points). Just as critics have lots of incentive to give out high scores for individual wines, they also have incentive to hype every promising vintage that comes along, and that’s because buzz sells. But the hype isn’t always justified. How do you find out when it is and when it isn’t? That’s tough. A trusted retailer can help. Following the chatter on a wine discussion board such as wineberserkers.com can also help. But the most reliable way of determining whether a vintage is overhyped or appropriately hyped is simply to taste some of the wines yourself.

  Here’s something else to keep in mind. All the buzz over vintage obscures an essential point: the producer matters more than the vintage, and great producers make excellent wines pretty much every year. Even under the most favorable conditions, a middling producer is not likely to make a brilliant wine. By contrast, a gifted vintner can turn out compelling wines even under the most challenging conditions—and it is often those wines that they are most proud of. If you were a producer in Burgundy who failed to make a fabulous wine in 2005, when the conditions could not have been more favorable, you should probably be in another line of work. In contrast, 2008 was a very challenging year, with lots of rain and rot in the vineyards, but the finest producers in Burgundy still managed to craft excellent wines—not as strong as their ’05s, to be sure, but delicious wines in their own right, and much more attractively priced. The point is this: don’t let yourself succumb to the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome. Some intelligent buying in so-called off years can yield a lot of drinking pleasure.

  BUYING FOREIGN WINES

  Obviously, imported wines can be intimidating ones to buy. The names are unfamiliar, and the bottles often don’t list the grape or grapes used to make the wine. By law, for instance, most French wines are labeled according to their place of origin, not the grape or grapes that went into the bottle. (The major exception is in the Alsace region, where the wines are identified by the grape.) Chablis, for instance, is a region in northern France, not far from Paris; the wines we know as Chablis come from this region and are made from the Chardonnay grape, but producers are not allowed to put the word Chardonnay on their labels. This stricture is rooted in the notion of terroir, which is the cornerstone of French viticulture—the belief that the vineyard is the most important component in the winemaking process and that the grape is merely a vehicle for conveying the voice of the soil, the terroir. Most Italian and Spanish wines are also labeled by place rather than grape.

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  Should the French ease up and allow producers to put grape names on their bottles? It’s a contentious issue. France’s winemaking tradition is rooted in the notion that the vineyard matters more than the grape and that a wine’s first duty is to express a sense of place; allowing winemakers in Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Rhône to label their wines by grape variety rather than site would be a repudiation of that centuries-old heritage and the philosophy that has guided it. But it’s also the case that millions of consumers around the world buy their wines according to the grape name, and lots of them don’t drink French wines in part because the labels confound them. They go to the store looking for a Chardonnay, see a French wine labeled Mâcon-Lugny, and don’t realize that a Mâcon-Lugny is a Chardonnay (and the kid working behind the counter might not know it, either). For the collector crowd, there is no such confusion, and there is no need to list the grape varieties on, say, a bottle of Château Haut-Brion. At the discount end of the global wine market, however, the French have seen a huge loss of business over the past fifteen years, and their competitive position would probably be helped by allowing lower-priced wines to be sold by grape names.

  But even though imported wines can be intimidating, there is actually an easy, almost fail-safe way to find good ones: flip the bottle around and see who imported it. Importers have played a central, even defining role in the emergence and growth of American wine culture. Combining impeccable taste with evangelical zeal, people such as Kermit Lynch, Robert Chadderdon, Robert Haas, and Terry Theise have not only introduced Americans to many of the greatest wines that Europe has to offer; they have also helped cultivate several generations of palates. But the wine world has broadened dramatically in the decades since these importers started out; entire regions—entire countries—that produced mostly rotgut twenty years ago are now making respectable wines. Amid this global quality revolution, a number of newer importers are continuing the work started by Lynch, Chadderdon, and their generation and are scouring the Languedoc, Galicia, Sicily, Mendoza, and McLaren Vale for tomorrow’s star winemakers.

  Here is a list of importers whose wines can be counted on to deliver pleasure:

  AUSTRALIA

  Epicurean Wines

  Old Bridge Cellars

  The Australian Premium Wine Collection

  AUSTRIA

  Winemonger

  Monika Caha Selections

  FRANCE

  Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant

  Alain Junguenet/Wines of France

  Becky Wasserman Selections

  Robert Kacher Selections

  Dan Kravitz/Hand Picked Selections

  Jenny & François Selections

  Jon-David Headrick Selections

  Roy Cloud/Vintage ’59 Imports

  Martine’s Wines

  FRANCE/GERMANY/AUSTRIA

  Savio Soares Selections

  FRANCE/ITALY

  Rosenthal Wine Merchant

  FRANCE/ITALY/SPAIN/GERMANY

  Louis/Dressner Selections

  GERMANY

  Rudi Wiest Selections

  GERMANY/AUSTRIA/CHAMPAGNE

  Terry Theise Estate Selections

  ITALY

  Marc de Grazia Selections

  Leonardo LoCascio/Winebow

  Neil Empson Selections

  Vias Imports

  Domaine Select Wine Estates

  SPAIN

  José Pastor Selections

  De Maison Selections

  Gerry Dawes Selections—the Spanish Artisan Wine Group

  Jorge Ordóñez

  Olé Imports

  Grapes of Spain

  SPAIN/FRANCE

  Eric Solomon/European Cellars

  EVERYWHERE

  Michael Skurnik Wines

  Polaner Selections

  Vineyard Brands

  Kysela Père et Fils

  Weygandt-Metzler

  COLLECTING WINE

  People collect wines for two reasons: so they can drink them at a later date and so they can sell them for a profit at a later date. Wine investing can take different forms. Collectors will sometimes buy two cases of a wine, intending to sell one of them for a tidy profit so they can drink the other one effectively for free. But some people buy wine purely for investment purposes; in fact, some wine investment funds are now available to “high net worth” individ
uals, as they are known. (Wine is what’s referred to by financial wizards as an “alternative asset class.” Nothing like Wall Street jargon to drain the romance out of something.) These funds invest in blue-chip wines—mostly top-growth Bordeaux—and pay out investors in cash; the wines are never actually consumed. It is no surprise that people have started wine investment funds: over the past thirty years, wines such as the 1982 Château Pétrus have delivered amazing returns. However, those huge returns are probably a thing of the past, and wine speculation, if not exactly immoral, is certainly antithetical to what wine is all about.

  If people wish to buy Pétrus purely for investment purposes, that’s certainly their prerogative—and I have the right to belittle the practice. Sure, wine is a business. But it is also a beverage, meant to be drunk. Hemingway once said that wine is “the most civilized thing in the world,” and he was right. To reduce wine to a mere commodity, to see it as no different from pork bellies or gold bars, strikes me as completely counter to the spirit of wine. Robert Parker has said that he was repeatedly invited to appear on Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Week but declined every time because he knew that the host wanted to talk about wine as an investment opportunity and he found the idea anathema. Parker took an admirable stand, and the wine world owes him a debt of gratitude for his outspoken opposition to wine speculation.

  But wine speculation may be a self-correcting problem at this point. Prices for the most sought-after Bordeaux, both older vintages and more recent ones, are now exorbitant—over $1,000 a bottle in good vintages—and it is hard to see them going significantly higher anytime soon. Ditto the most acclaimed Burgundies. True, Burgundy prices more accurately reflect supply and demand than Bordeaux prices; Domaine de la Romanée-Conti makes just 6,000 bottles a year of its flagship wine, called Romanée-Conti, whereas Château Latour annually pumps out nearly 200,000 bottles of its grand vin. Still, with Romanée-Conti selling for $5,000 a bottle in top vintages these days, it’s hard to imagine that there is much additional upside for the wine. One can argue that the likes of Pétrus and Romanée-Conti are now fairly valued or overvalued; it is hard to argue that they are undervalued. And one thing that is sure to keep a lid on prices going forward is fear of fraud. The huge run-up in prices for top wines naturally created an incentive to create counterfeit bottles, and it appears that the rare-wine market has been flooded with fakes.

  Although few bargains are to be found in Bordeaux and Burgundy, there is value elsewhere—not the kind of value that will yield big financial returns, but value that can deliver a lot of drinking pleasure at prices that are, relatively speaking, quite attractive. In particular, four categories of wines are arguably undervalued relative to the quality:

  • Classic California Cabernets Wines such as Ridge Monte Bello, Montelena Estate, and Mayacamas have been among California’s standard-bearers for decades now, and they remain at the top. Bottles from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s can still be picked up for attractive prices, and current releases are reasonably priced, too.

  • Old Riojas Riojas from the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s can be some of the earthiest, most complex and pleasurable wines around. Look for bottles from López de Heredia (still making great wines), La Rioja Alta, CVNE, Marqués de Riscal, and Marqués de Murrieta.

  • Old Barolos and Barbarescos The Piedmont region of Italy is a red-wine Valhalla, and few pleasures are more sublime than drinking a great old Barolo or Barbaresco. Wines from producers such as Bruno Giacosa, Giuseppe Mascarello, Bartolo Mascarello, and Giacomo Conterno are not cheap, but they are, in my view, equal in quality to the finest Burgundies and Bordeaux and sell for a fraction of the price.

  • Vintage Port Much of the world seems to have lost its taste for dessert wines, and vintage Port has been among the casualties. Sales are not bad, but they aren’t particularly robust, and sensational vintage Ports from legendary houses like Taylor and Fonseca, both new releases and older vintages, can be had for very attractive prices these days. You can add Madeira and Sherry to this category.

  All wines get old, but few wines actually improve with age. In fact, most wines are meant to be consumed on release or not long thereafter. However, a fairly sizable list of wines do reward cellaring; it includes Bordeaux, Burgundies, Rhônes, Napa Cabernets, German Rieslings, Barolos, Barbarescos, vintage Ports, and some Champagnes. By reward, I mean that the wines will take on greater aromatic complexity as they mature and will display a level of refinement beyond what they are capable of showing in their youth. Not every Bordeaux or Burgundy or Rhône gets better with age; in general, only the finest ones do, and how much they improve over time, and how long they will last, varies from vintage to vintage. Broadly speaking, white wines age on their acidity, red wines on their acidity and tannins (though it must be acknowledged that some of the greatest red wines of the last century came from vintages that were relatively low in acidity). Whether white or red, wines that come from warm, ripe years have the most aging potential.

  To me, the most persuasive argument against costly wines is a slightly picayune one: fear of 2, 4, 6-trichloroanisole, or TCA, a chemical compound that is harmless to humans but lethal for wines. TCA is what makes a wine “corked,” giving it an off-putting damp cardboard aroma and rendering it lifeless on the palate. When you hear people talking about corked wines, this is what they mean, and it is estimated that 5–10 percent of wines sealed with natural cork are tainted in this way. If it is a $10 Côtes du Rhône you bought last week, no big deal; you take it back to the store and exchange it. But if it is a 1986 Ramonet Montrachet that’s been sleeping in your basement for fifteen years, you’re screwed: the wine is undrinkable, and the store that sold it to you, if it is still in business, is probably not going to refund your money.

  THE WINE WORLD’S SEARCH FOR CLOSURE

  For an oenophile, there is no bigger buzz kill than opening a wine you’ve eagerly anticipated drinking and discovering that it is corked—and if you drink wine long enough, this is bound to happen to you, probably more than once. As you might imagine, lots of wine enthusiasts, and many producers, too, have long wished for an alternative to natural cork and an end to the problem of corked bottles. Those prayers have been answered: several alternative closures for wine bottles are now available. However, they are not without problems, too.

  The most prevalent alternative is the screw cap, which in certain places, such as Australia and New Zealand, has overtaken natural cork. But screw caps have some serious flaws. One of the advantages of natural cork is that it permits a little oxygen to seep into the bottle, which helps wines to age well. But screw caps admit no oxygen, and as a result, the wine often shows signs of what is called reduction, which expresses itself in the form of a rotten-egg or cabbagelike aroma. (If you’ve ever had a “skunked” beer, it is the same smell.) Some evidence also suggests that screw caps don’t hold up well over time—that they start to decay after a certain point—which would obviously be a strong disincentive for producers of fine wines (grand cru and premier cru Burgundies, classified-growth Bordeaux, and the like) to use them. A number of those producers are known to be experimenting with screw caps to see how the wines fare over the course of ten or more years. Even if the results are encouraging, it will probably be a long time before you start seeing screw caps on high-priced Burgundies and Bordeaux.

  Some winemakers are bottling their wines under synthetic corks, but these have been shown to be rather poor sealants, permitting too much oxygen into the bottle. Glass stoppers are now also on the market, but they are relatively costly, which has thus far prevented them from catching on in a big way. In the meantime, there is at least some anecdotal evidence that natural cork manufacturers, faced with rising competition, have improved the reliability of their closures and that the incidence of cork taint is declining. That would seem to be the best solution of all, because natural cork really does excel as a stopper. And—call me sentimental, call me a Luddite or a flat-earther—I will also admit that I adore the soun
d of a popping cork; it is part of the romance of wine, and I would hate to lose it. Lose it if we must, I say, but I’d rather we do not.

  IS THERE A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

  ON RETURNING FLAWED BOTTLES?

  If I purchase a bottle from my nearby wine shop, open it tonight, and discover that it is corked, I will take it back to the store tomorrow expecting to be offered a refund or a replacement bottle, and I hope the merchant will do just that (I hate arguing in public). But what if I put the bottle in my cellar and don’t open it for a year? Should the store still be willing to take it back? What if I don’t pull the cork until, say, 2018?

  This is an issue for which there are no regulations or guidelines; retailers make their own rules. I think it is reasonable to expect a retailer to take back an obviously corked wine within twelve months of the sale, and as long as the customer has a receipt, I see no reason why such a wine can’t be returned eighteen or even twenty-four months after purchase. And it’s worth pointing out that the merchant doesn’t eat the cost of that damaged bottle: the cost is ultimately passed back to the winery. But after two or three years, it might be tricky to get a retailer to agree to refund the money. That doesn’t necessarily mean you are out of luck. If it is a foreign wine, you might approach the importer and see if something can be done (perhaps the importer can arrange a refund or help get you a replacement bottle). If it is an American wine, you might go directly to the winery; the good ones care deeply about customer service and may well be willing to replace the bottle.

  However you decide to handle the issue, you need to be sure that the bottle really is corked or otherwise damaged. If the wine just isn’t to your liking, that’s a tougher proposition. If you bought the wine on the recommendation of the merchant, he or she should be willing to take it back; if you bought it of your own volition, there is no obligation to do so, though a smart retailer, like a smart restaurateur, will go out of the way to make the customer happy, even if that means losing a few dollars.