Lots of them.

Hundreds of owners, or representatives, from all but the first tire of great Bordeaux chateaux, the Union des Grandes Crus de Bordeaux, were in New York last week showing off the 2009 vintage for the trade and press. Though why they bothered I am not quite sure.

Since even before the harvest the vintage had been proclaimed – yes, you’ve guessed it – another vintage of the century. Consequently demand has been exceptionally strong and the wine is sold out, at least at the chateau level, even if it’s only just now appearing in the shops.

It’s appeal is obvious – an almost perfect summer yielded wines that are luscious, voluptuous, plump and ripe. But is it a great vintage, a vintage to keep, to watch as it matures and deepens with time? That’s harder to say.

The people I talked to at the tasting fell into two camps. Those whose job it is to sell wine – sommeliers, retailers, auctioneers – were all adamant that while the wines were certainly very accessible now they also had the potential for long aging. More disinterested observers were less assured though.

One thing is certain – these wines are a lot more Napa-like that I would have thought possible 10 years ago. As Paul Wagner, the organizer of the tour, remarked to me “This is a vintage for drinking, not talking about.”

One of my favorites was the always impressive Chateau Gloria, Saint-Julien 2009 ($45) this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week. Soft, juicy and accessible the property seems to have worked the abundant good weather to its advantage, making a wine that’s brimming with ripe blackberries and plums tinged with hints of cedar, licorice and cinnamon. A wine that’s delicious today but still maintains some sense of equilibrium. It might even last a few years, though given it’s seductive drinkability now, it’s unlikely many bottles will be around long enough for us to find out.

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A second recommendation from the 2009 vintage will follow after next week’s Valentines Day Wine of the Week.

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And in the last category one finds this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the Taylor Fladgate Vargellas Vinha Velha Port 1997 ($220).

Let me explain.

All port is a blend. A blend of different varietals from different vineyards, different estates and, most of the time, different vintages. Only about 5% is deemed good enough to be bottled as vintage Port, and then only in good years. But in years that aren’t declared vintages some estates, or quintas, produce wine of such quality the it is bottled as single quinta vintage port, such as Taylor Fladgate’s Quinta de Vargellas.

And then we come to the rarified world of Vinha Velha, Portuguese for old vine.

Taylor Fladgate’s Robert Bower explains when and why this rare wine is produced. “Quinta de Vargellas Vinha Velha is completely different product to Quinta de Vargellas Vintage. Firstly Quinta de Vargellas Vintage is blend of grapes from the whole vineyard and is not made in declared years because the juice is in the vintage Port.

“Taylor Quinta de Vargellas Vinha Velha means old vine, and old vines, 80-120 years old, don’t perform in sync with the rest of the vineyard. What may be too stressful for the younger vines can often be ideal for the old vines with their deep root structure. We have to have a completely separate viticultural plan for our old vines in a vineyard. The net result is that in off years you can produce absolutely stunning wines from the old vines but not from the rest of the vineyard.”

The difference shows in the depth and complexity of flavour. Old vines tend to produce intensely flavoured wine, and this is the case with the Vinha Velha.  Not bigger or more powerful wine, in fact it is surprisingly delicate, but so pure and precise, so shot through with flavour that it leaves the otherwise superb Quinta de Vargellas Vintage looking insipid.

As for food to pair with this special wine, stay away from Stilton, the traditional accompaniment for vintage port, it’s too pungent and is better suited to a Tawny. Rather go with a hard cheeses like good cheddar, pecorino or manchego.

Vinha Velha is made only in years when the wine is not required for vintage or Quinta de Vargellas bottlings, and then only in miniscule quantities. The typically US allocation is 600 bottles, and the wine is so coveted by collectors that it’s extremely hard to find even if you’re willing to pay the mad-money price.

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However, when it comes to the wines themselves my feelings are a bit more ambivalent. The winery is family owned – can you imagine a corporate entity sanctioning such a wacky array of names? – and their wines certainly don’t lack for personality.

However, this stylistic bravura means that you are either going to love them or hate them, there’s nothing bland or mass-market about the portfolio.

One wine that happily falls into the former category is the latest Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the d’Arry’s Original Shiraz Grenache 2007 ($18)

Introduced more than 40 years ago and named for the winery’s principal, Francis d’Arry d’Arenberg Osborn – what a magnificent handle that is! – it’s nimble, fresh and juicy, with plenty of muscle while avoiding that leaden, over-ripe opacity that’s the curse too many Australian reds.

There’s also the typical Oz hint of mint though here it’s restrained enough to serve as an appealing accent, not, as is so often the case, a glaring defect. It blends naturally with the aromas of violets and lavender along a meaty, red-fruit quality made even more interesting by the addition of gentle peppery spice notes.

This is not a particularly subtle wine but it was robust enough to not give up and roll over when confronted with the slightly sweet barbecued Asian ribs I drank it with one night, or the spicy Bolognaise sauce the next.

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Today the company is presided over by Marchese Piero Antinori with day-to-day operations overseen by his three charming and capable daughters, Albiera, Allegra and Alessia.

Allegra makes her home at Guado al Tasso, an estate on the Maremma coast where she breeds horses along with rare Cinta Senese pigs, and grows a range of agricultural crops including, of course, wine.

The wines are all red with one exception, this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the Bolgheri Vermentino 2010 ($25).

Vermentino is grown in Corsica, Sardinia and southern France  – where it’s known as Rolle – as well as Italy’s Tuscan and Ligurian coasts.

Until recently it wasn’t exactly afforded a lot of respect, but modern viticulture and improved winemaking techniques

Guado al Tasso

have raised it’s standing and visibility considerably so today, if not exactly a noble varietal, it’s a charming and most appealing white wine.

The Antinori’s version is gently aromatic, soft and mellow, redolent of summer apricots and white peaches. It’s not a complex or sophisticated wine but is bursting with personality and immensely likable. It’s a delight to drink.

The Antinori’s are fastidious about every aspect of their business. I don’t mean just the winemaking, which is impeccable, but the face they present to the world, the look of their brand. This manifests itself in everything from the simple charm of the guest rooms at their various properties to their website, the design of their labels and even, in the case of the Vermentino, the shape of the bottle itself.

The difference is subtle but the reshaped lines give the suggestion of a curving sensuality that sets it apart from the generic functionality of your standard container.

Custom-made bottles like this are expensive but I suspect someone derived a great deal of pleasure from its conception and execution. This is not just about marketing because no one could claim such a whimsical indulgence was a necessity.

But then, perhaps, if you’re an Antinori, it is.

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So I put a stopper in it, pumped it out and left it. It then took two days to open up but when it did, it was magnificent.

This is why, despite the oceans of cocktail wine California produces, I am an eternal optimist, pulling cork after cork, because I know, every once in a while, I am going to discover a glorious wine like this.

It’s possessed of that hallmark Pinot Noir magic, that elegant ethereal fruit-laced delicacy combined, without a hint of contradiction, with a profound, pagan fecundity.

A perfect winter wine. To accompany a hearty Boeuf Bourgignon perhaps?

To learn more about this special Pinot I talked to winemaker Jon Priest. He explained that Heirloom is not a single vineyard wine but a special cuvée made from a particular strain of vines bread over decades to produce a small number of tiny, intensely flavored grapes. Hence the name.

“Because of the low yields and small berries these grapes tend to have the structure, the tannin to be able to hold these wines up over age. There’s also a different sense of acidity, they seem to have a brightness to them and that can add to the longevity of the wine.”

Such low yields do not exactly constitute a winning business plan though, and at one point this lack of financial viability threatened Heirloom’s existence. “They found these selections to be very maddening because they do produce a very small yield so from a grower’s standpoint, trying to maintain his financial stability, it really didn’t make much sense to have them in the ground. The growers just wanted to plough them under but it was important to us that we kept these because we can make a very, very substantial and special wine out of them and they are very important to us.”

So Etude came to an arrangement with the growers to pay by the acre rather than by the ton, hence the high, but totally justified price of Heirloom. Such commitment to a unique but financially challenging wine like this is unusual in the jet-fueled environment of Napa, so bushels of well deserved kudos to Etude and its corporate parent, Treasury Wine Estates.

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They tasted more of California than Tuscany and while there’s nothing wrong with California wines, I do rather expect them to come from California, not Tuscany.

Since then the wines of Coltibuono have become widely available in America thanks to the diligent marketing efforts of the estate, and while the increasing visibility of these labels did bring back fond memories of my visit, they didn’t tempt me to try the wine.

My loss it seems. The other day I pulled the cork on this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the Coltibuono Chianti Classico 2009 ($15) and was immediately captivated by this appealing and utterly Tuscan wine.

Gone were the attempts at over-ripe internationalism replaced by the simple, fresh charm of Sangiovese.

I queried winemaker Roberto Stucchi about this evolution. “We’ve got stronger relationships with better sources so we are able to buy in better quality grapes” he explained before getting to the heart of the matter. “The wines are now a bit more focused in terms of the purity of fruit. We want the Sangiovese identity, maybe we’ve got a bit stronger in that sense. Earlier we were leaning a bit more into an international style and now I think we’ve found a different balance of a more classic Chianti style, we like the fact that it’s very identifiable Chianti character.”

The resulting wine has that pretty freshness, that uncomplicated sense of fun, that utter lack at pretension that is exactly what I look for in inexpensive, everyday Chianti.

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It inspires awe amongst its devotees and head-scratching puzzlement among the many.

But why? What’s so special about Burgundy?

It is produced in minimal quantities and possessed of a nomenclature that challenges comprehension.

There are few big estates, the business being conducted by thousands of small growers and négociants among whom there are surprising variations in quality. Famous vineyards frequently have multiple owners each making wine under his, or increasingly her, own name.

Understanding this complex, frequently illogical, world requires a level of esoteric knowledge that would cause a medieval theologian to feel he had left things a bit too simple.

To make matters worse Pinot Noir, the red wine grape of the region, is maddeningly unreliable, so unless everything goes just right, which happens all too  infrequently, the resulting wine can lead to disappointment.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s also frighteningly expensive? So these disappointments turn out to be costly too.

Eric Rousseau

So why, a sensible reader might ask, does anyone bother with such an expensive, unreliable wine? The answer is simple – when it’s right, when the stars are aligned and Dionysus is smiling, the wine is sublime.

Thus it requires money, patience and a highly developed level of knowledge to negotiate this arcane world. It is the ultimate elitist wine.

These ruminations occurred to me following a recent dinner at the house of a friend in England.  Our host was one of these Burgundy partisans, and to accompany the roast goose he produced from his cellar three venerable bottles.

True to Burgundian form, two of these, while being eminently drinkable, did not touch the greatness of which Burgundy is capable. But the third – this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the Rouchottes Chambertin, Grand Cru, Clos des Rouchottes 1990, Domaine Armand Rousseau ($240-$470) did.

This was wine Heaven, utterly astounding. It glowed with dark cherries, ripe plums, raspberries and strawberries contrasted with the subtle pungency of spring morels, that impression of damp leaves the French call sous-bois. It had achieved the elusive magic – a crystal-clear brilliance, an ephemeral delicacy combined with that pure sense of earth and place that is the Holy Grail of Burgundy lovers. An absolutely perfect wine.

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Wine and European food have been evolving together in the cradle of the Mediterranean for thousands years and in the process, like a long married couple, they have learned to rub along together pretty well. They suit each other.

The same can not be said of wine and Asian cuisines. They just don’t share a common history.

Nowadays though both Asian food and the regular enjoyment of wine are spreading far beyond their original homes and people are looking for ways to bring these two pleasures together.

And while it’s not a natural fit it can, with a bit of imagination, be arranged. It does though require the suspension of some well-learned wine prejudices.

For one solution let us take a look at Riesling, specifically German Riesling from the banks of the river Rhine.

From it’s source in Switzerland the Rhine flows in a generally northerly direction, but at the town of Mainz it takes a sharp left turn for 20 miles before resuming it journey to the North Sea.

This is the Rheingau where the vineyards on the steep right bank of the river face towards the south, and the sunshine.

One of the region’s star producers is Josef Leitz whose Dragonstone Riesling 2010 ($18) I have chosen as this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week not only because of it’s a delight but because it works so well with Asian food.

It might technically be defined as a sweet wine – but remember that need to suspend certain wine prejudices – and it definitely gives the impression of being sweet on the front palate. But as the golden liquor slides back over the tongue complexities begin to appear, other sensations emerge. Along with the luscious fruit there is a vibrant acidity that acts like a coiled steel spring holding the whole show together and preventing the plump exuberance of the fruit from spilling over into excess.

So the impression is of tart and sweet, grapefruit and melons. It is fragrant with the aromas of jasmine, honeysuckle and tangerine, and one can even taste the slate of the soil in the wine.

This is a wine made for Asian food – I drank it with tuna marinated in soy, sherry and ginger then simply grilled, and the sweet, rich flavors of the fish played perfect harmony with the sweet/tart wine.

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And this is exactly what Baron Benjamin de Rothschild of Chateau Clarke, Baron Eric of Chateau Lafite and Baroness Philippine along with her son Philippe Sereys de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton, have done.

They have made three Champagnes that are just now appearing in the American market, and in a shrewd move that is sure to enhance the brand’s image of exclusivity, distribution is limited, at least initially, to a few select retailers and restaurants in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. No discount supermarket bubbles here.

I recently sat down with Philippe in New York to taste the Champagnes and learn how this unusual collaboration came about.

“Quite a long time ago we were always thinking about, ‘lets try and do a Champagne.’ But how do we do it? Do we buy a little maison du champagne, do we buy a brand? Do we buy both? How do we do it? So we never really went forward till a couple of years ago we started really going in the region to see what people were doing. However surprising it is, the Champagne region was very unknown to us so we sort of tiptoed in and finally spotted a place that was the closest to what we wanted, Cave Vertus.”

Deciding that they didn’t have the expertise to make Champagne from scratch they contracted with producer Cave Vertus to make wine for them to their specifications.

Tasting with Philippe Sereys de Rothschild

The result is three cuvées, all non-vintage: a Brut, a Rosé and a Blanc de Blancs. I have chosen as this week’s Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week the Champagne Barons de Rothschild Brut ($100) because, while all three are super, the Brut is the most accessible at the moment. The other two just need a bit more time.

It is rich, with an aromatic nutty quality, beautiful balance, grace and polish. There’s a multi-hued intricacy one really encounters in a non vintage Champagne.

This is revealing. Although officially a simple non-vintage Champagne, it is, in reality, a tête de cuvée given the percentage of reserve wines in the blend, the length of time the wine is aged before being release and, most importantly, the flavor.

When they embarked on the venture the cousins had no preconceived idea as to what kind of Champagne they wanted to make beyond that “we knew we were going to put our name on it so we had to go for the highest possible quality”

And in this they have succeeded admirably.

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Ruinart in owned by LVMH and it sometimes seems it gets lost in the shadows of the company’s more high profile sparklers such as the other Dom, Pérignon,  and Veuve Clicquot. This is just fine with Champagne aficionados because it means rap stars aren’t guzzling it by the caseload and  sports teams aren’t drenching their locker rooms with the stuff so there’s  more of it to go around.

Dom Ruinart, the house’s tête de cuvée, is special in two ways: it is a blanc de blancs, meaning it is 100% Chardonnay, and the grapes all come from grand cru vineyards. In addition, because of it’s small production Ruinart can afford to focus on making Champagnes of true subtlety and elegance, Champagnes that appeal to the connoisseur rather than the mass market.

This is gloriously apparent in the 2002, all be it in embryonic form. 2002 was a great vintage and perhaps because of this the wine is only just showing its true potential, despite it’s advancing age.

Frédeéric Panaiotis

As Panaiotis explains: “After 8 years on the lees the wine is still very young, on the color it’s still on the green side, the nose not totally open yet, but you can feel the potential, very mineral, very flinty like. There’s some fresh fruit character as well which is quite typical of our way of aging the wine. There’s no oak at all. It’s all stainless steel fermented so that preserves that primary, very clean aromas. There’s a spicy character as well….with well integrated acidity, there’s no sharpness which sometimes Grand Cru can have. Great length, still fairly young…..easily 5 to 10 years aging potential, at least.”

It’s obvious to me that there’s a lot going on in this wine, even if it’s still a bit shy and constrained at this stage. It’s beautifully focused and streamlined, very harmonious, with not a jarring note to upset the balance.

Initially all I got was a sense of the minerality but after half an hour it began to open up. Panaiotis agreed, remarking that  “At first it was quite closed. It was difficult to put names on any particular flavor. You could feel the minerality. Now you have pear, yellow plums I even find a little bit of that Viennoiserie, like biscuity, fresh coconut, fresh hazelnut character which brings a nice note…..and I have a bit of fresh mint.”

What I am going to do is buy a case of this Champagne and drink one bottle a year for the next twelve years, just to see if Panaiotis is right in his predictions. I rather suspect he is.

Next week’s column features a brand new luxury Champagne from a famous wine name but not a famous Champagne name.

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