A brilliant Falanghina for very little money

It’s useful to have a stock of wines that cost relatively little, but which taste really good. This is one of those Tuesday night wines. It’s a Falanghina from the southern tip of Italy, and it delivers. Asda Extra Special Falanghina 2010 Puglia, Italy 12% alcohol. Full yellow colour. Rich and exotic with pungent melon and pear fruit as well as a subtle nuttiness. Powerful and spicy, with some tangerine and nectarine notes. Very stylish and intense with good acidity. 88/100 (£6.48 Asda)

Bernard Baudry (Chinon, Loire)

Bernard & Matthieu Baudry (with Clos Guillot 2010) Cravant-les-Coteaux (Chinon, Loire) Chinon is sometimes decried as a region with uninteressing Cabernet Franc wines, as Chinon was known to be in the past the basic wine served in the Paris bistrots,...

Preview of the wine list at Uchi (Houston) @EatingOurWords

My post today for the Houston Press…

Tidbits

Been busy and not able to write as often, but please don't think that means I've been starving and not drinking anything interesting. Oh no, my friends, I've been a very lucky Brooklynguy lately, in large part due to the generosity of friends. Here are some tidbits, things from the past few weeks that are worth mentioning:Slope Farms sells pork now. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. Ken and Linda Jaffe (former Brooklynites who moved to the Catskills) are dedicated to farming healthy cows, and theirs is my absolute favorite beef. I'm not sure of the details on this new pork venture, but I hear they have an elder and respected neighbor who advised them as they set up their farm. This neighbor raises pigs. The Jaffes now sell their neighbor's pork. Look at the marbling on the meat, and the beautiful color. I've tried the chops and a rib roast so far, and WHOA, this is very very good pork.And on the other end of the food spectrum, processed food, I've discovered what I now believe to be one of the finest canned food products - Heinz baked beans, the kind they sell in England. These are done in tomato sauce, not in that cloying brown sugary sauce that our baked beans swim in. If you see these, try them. Okay, they're canned, but they're actually not that bad for you. And they taste so very good.Some wine too...2001 was not a very good vintage in Champagne. Not many vintage wines from that year - it was rainy, especially in the weeks leading up to harvest, there was a lot of rot, and it was a challenge for the grapes to ripen. I know from reading ChampagneGuide.net that this is considered to be one of[…]

Mr. Rich Hope, Everybody!

A longtime great pal, a wicked barber and all-around incredible musician- Vancouver’s Rich Hope did a little Green Couch Session recently!

Italian-American Food, All-American Wine

Torrisi Italian Specialties has an unusual list of wines, but none are from Italy.

The Ten Bells courtesy of Grub StreetHere is a post I did for Sidetour on the Top 5 Wine Trends I saw in 2011.

The Best Way to Open Wine

Guilhaume and i have a problem leaving corkscrews at tastings, which leaves us with nothing at the warehouse. Our solution has been to devise a homemade corkscrew. It works as well as any 120$ device and it’s impossible to lose.

Drinking in the Morning After

Do use a clean glass. No guzzling from the bottle, either. Drinking at breakfast is a rare pleasure with a noble heritage, and you need to show some decorum. If self-respect is beyond you at the moment in question, then settle for showing some respect for the institution. Treat this as a special occasion and dress to impress—a feat easily accomplished by waking up in or near your tuxedo. At the very least, affix a boutonniere to the lapel of your bathrobe.

Talking wine

Often times, as wine fiends, we think we know our tastes, supremely confident in the knowns and unknowns to us, the preferred and the shunned or slighted. Some good friends of mine (more in America, as France doesn't have the informatique infrastructure) make their wine purchases online and have the wines sent to their home, bypassing any physical act of wine store purchase.To my senses, they're missing out on something crucial: shooting the breeze with smart, like-minded folk.There is nothing to compare to stumbling into Caves Augé or Chambers Street Wines and seeing familiar faces and talking about the latest tastes. If travel expands your world, I think that talking to other people who are passionate about wine expands your palate, pushes you to new fields (regions, grapes).Of course, there can be flubs. Poor pairings, let's call them. Or a careless caviste. I'm never going to like that Riesling, mea maxima culpa. And I'm certainly not interested in paying thrice as much as my enjoyment for something I don't quite enjoy.But when I think back over the past months of my wine experiences, I get a little smile on my face when I see Chris Barnes at Chambers Street bringing over a Valdespino Inocente sherry. (Salty sharp zap to my brain!) Or Tim Mortimer offhandedly mentioning Lioco Indica at Discovery Wines in the East Village. (Oh, how pretty that is.) Or Max Delorieux giving the down-low on black wax Overnoy at Augé in Paris. Or Josh Adler at Spring Boutique pulling a cork on a Burgundy I have never tried.This is our tribe, after all. Tempting as a thousand, thousand candy stores, the smart friends of the bottle wait for us to push the door open and embark upon new landscapes.It's a playground sprawling throughout the city, throughout the world.

We've Moved!

WE'VE MOVED! The Wine Culture Project's older posts are archived here, but we have moved into new, cleaner, fresher and sleeker digs.  Link below. www.winecultureproject.wordpress.com

Burgundy = good

Over an excellent dinner at Rue Cler as the fifth wheel to two of my good friends and their wives. I have to give special mention to an English pea fritter that was essentially a falafel made with English peas. It may not sound great or exciting, but it was beautiful; in its simplicity.1997 J. A. Ferret Pouilly-Fuissé Les MénétrièresOver the hill. Too bad. I had a magnum of the Clos with the boys at Terroir SF not too long ago that was fantastic.2008 Niellon Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les VergersThis was my second time with this wine in the last two weeks. The previous bottle was a bit underwhelming, especially in comparison. I think it has to do with being opened about 5 hours before dinner. It was much more expressive than the previous bottle, but was still very pretty and light on its feet. I like the Neillon style and this should be better in a couple of years.2005 Pernot Bâtard-MontrachetThis was an excellent bottle, if a very young one. I’m someone who likes the qualities that white Burgundy shows when young and this had all those in abundance. Intense minerals and stones awash in white floral scents and yellow stone pit fruits. As the night wore on, it got even younger and the structure became mouthwatering to the point of excruciating. If I had other bottles, I’d hold off for another 3-5 before checking in again. Very, very good wine.2001 Barthod Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les CrasI opened this several hours before dinner and it really needed the air to open up. This is a more soil-driven, ferrous version of Chambolle. At an interesting place where the fruit is receding into something more permanent and the sous bois tones are starting to creep into the space left behind. This[…]