Wine Education - Wine Blog from The International Wine of the Month Club

The Best Wines to Serve with Holiday Meals

December 7, 2018 by Don Lahey

It seems that everyone wants to sell us something, almost everything in fact, before the holidays. And similarly, there is no shortage of pundits to advise us on what we should buy; this is especially true of wine. Unsolicited or not, I am repeatedly asked by friends, acquaintances, and even total strangers what wine I recommend they serve with their holiday dinner.

My answer to the inevitable holiday wine question is this: What are you serving and what do you like? I can’t, nor should I, tell you what you like, but I may be able to offer some suggestions based upon decades of experience as to what wine and food pairings tend to please most people’s palates, so below is a stab at answering the question.

With poultry, whether turkey, chicken or duck, light reds and full-bodied white wines make good companions. Pinot Noir, red burgundy, and Beaujolais Villages work especially well with poultry. Pinot Noirs from California’s Russian River, Santa Lucia Highlands, and Santa Rita Hills appellations as well as Oregon’s Willamette Valley tend to get the highest marks. Some tried and true Pinot producers to consider are Benovia, Walt, Bethel Heights, and Bergström, among others. As for Beaujolais fans, they will want to consider Janodet’s excellent Beaujolais Villages or a cru Beaujolais from one of the appellation’s 10 cru villages. California Zinfandel also merits two thumbs up. Similarly, Chardonnay lovers have a wide array of producers and wine styles from which to choose. Excellently crafted oak aged Chardonnays from Benovia, Chappellet, and Morgan are readily available and garner considerable acclaim from critics and consumers alike. For more mineral and terroir driven Chardonnays, consider serving a Pouilly-Fuissé from the likes of Domaine Gilles Noblet or other premium Mâcon producers.

If seafood is on the menu, Pouilly-Fuissé, Mâcon-Fuissé and Mâcon Villages Chardonnays are again top crowd pleasers, but I would not overlook the delicious Gavis from La Giustiniana Lugarara or Stefano Massone, as they provide equally compelling companionship to fish and shellfish with more body and character than Pinot Grigio.

If meat and hearty vegetarian dishes grace your holiday table, the world of wine is at your fingertips. Big reds such as Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Malbec, Meritage offerings, Ribera del Duero, Rioja, and Super Tuscans all shine with beef, lamb, and other red meats. There is no shortage of eligible candidates from among that list, though several producers stand out for quality and consistency: Chappellet, Domaine du Vieux Lazaret, Domaine Grand Tinel, Round Pond, Luca, Tikal, Dominio Basconcillos, Valenciso, and Urlari, to name just a few.

With cheese, pasta, pork, and tomato based dishes, consider a delicious Côtes-du-Rhône from Chamford or Guigal, a Ventoux from Domaine de Vieux Lazaret, or a rich Petite Sirah from D. Pfaff, Carmen, or Peltier, but as you like it because the holidays and life itself are too short to drink wine you don’t like or someone else’s palate.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and the safest of Holidays,
Don

The 10 Most Important Things to Know About Wine

November 16, 2018 by Don Lahey

Wine has played a huge role in my life, whether tasting it, drinking it, studying it, or simply sharing it with friends, family, and wine lovers around the world. Although I have other interests, wine seems to be the topic everyone wants to discuss with me or, perhaps, I am the one who feels compelled to speak of wine out of a sense of my own passion or the perceived expectations of others. Whatever the case, in the more than 40 years I have been enjoying wine and worked in the trade, two questions invariably ensue. Firstly, what is your favorite wine? Secondly, what are the most important things everyone should know about wine? The answer to the first question is simple: I don’t have one single favorite wine. Besides, I don’t drink wine that I don’t enjoy, so the wine in my glass is invariably my momentary favorite. The second question requires a more lengthy response and encapsulates what I have learned about wine and life in the previous four decades.

Wine is meant to be enjoyed.
Wine doesn’t mean much until it’s shared and someone else enjoys it, too, so share.
You can’t drink a label, a price tag, or anyone else’s palate, only the contents of a bottle. All else is snobbery.
Paying too much or too little for wine is a recipe for disappointment.
Variety is truly the spice of life, so try new and different wines often; you will learn a tremendous amount about wine and your own palate.
Food and wine are fast friends; each makes the other shine and doubles the pleasure.
Pair different wines with the same dish to see which pairings work best.
Trust your own palate.
Drink wine from fine thin glassware that you wash and dry carefully by hand. Soap spots and water stains add nothing pleasurable to wine.
Read about wine and the world’s wine regions from multiples sources, learn about the varietal connections that link Old and New World wines, and taste, taste, taste… but don’t forget to enjoy! Wine is not a contest.

Salud!
Don

The 2015 and 2016 Bordeaux Vintages Are Not to Be Missed

October 19, 2018 by Don Lahey

In some wine regions of the world, the quality of wine varies little from year to year. The reason is that the weather in some wine regions remains fairly consistent and predictable. This is particularly true in areas with Mediterranean climates. In other wine lands, such as Bordeaux, vintage means everything. The weather in Bordeaux varies enormously throughout the growing season and from one year to the next, and because weather largely determines the quality of the vintage and the resulting wine, vintage speaks volumes in the most hallowed of French appellations.

The adage in Bordeaux is June makes the quantity, August the style, and September the quality. If the flowering and subsequent berry set go well in June, growers can look forward to a bumper crop. And by August, the vignerons know roughly what to expect in style. But it’s September and, to a lesser extent, October that ultimately determine how good the Bordeaux wines will be, particularly the reds, based largely on the amount and frequency of rain that falls during those months. If a tropical depression sweeps in from the Atlantic, all bets will be off. With this said, Bordeaux has enjoyed two of the finest back to back vintages in recent memory in 2015 and 2016, and neither should be missed.

Not only is quality superb top to bottom from Grand Crus to Petits Châteaux in 2015 and 2016, subsequent vintages can hardly match this dynamic duo. Although the resulting wines are different in style, each of these vintages enjoyed ideal weather in September and October. Consequently, 2015 and 2016 produced a bevy of exciting and downright profound wines, with the red wines surpassing those even in the heretofore exceptional 2009 and 2010 vintages. Consequently, I’m putting as many 2015 and 2016 red Bordeaux in my cellar as I can afford because Bordeaux doesn’t get much better than the wines of these two vintages and neither 2017 nor 2018 can match what 2015 and 2016 have to offer.

Salud!
Don

America’s Love Affair with Pinot Noir

September 24, 2018 by Don Lahey

America is in love with Pinot Noir, but it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. A generation ago, Pinot Noir was the proverbial step child of American grape growers, an afterthought and an anomaly at best. Only a few stalwart visionaries like André Tchelistcheff of BV vineyards dared to plant France’s most coveted, yet often mercurial, grape variety in California. And frankly, those early attempts yielded less than exciting results.

Today, Pinot Noir’s fortunes have changed. Pinot Noir is all the rage, not only in America but around the world where it stands at the pinnacle of the world’s grape varieties, but it is not because the planet’s other favored varietals (Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo to name a few) are incapable of greatness; rather Pinot Noir is the rare grape variety that is capable of being transformed annually into the planet’s most complex red wines as well as the most exquisite rosé, still, and sparkling wines.

Although Pinot Noir was born in Burgundy a millennium before Cabernet Sauvignon made its appearance in Bordeaux, it now thrives in Champagne, California, Oregon, and in rare hallowed parcels across the planet in addition to its native Burgundy. However, the difficult to grow and often unforgiving Pinot Noir varietal demands attention, a cool, temperate climate, and a deft hand in the cellar. When all stars align, Pinot Noir yields light to full-bodied wines of stunning aromatics, depth, and length of flavor. Moreover, good Pinot Noir can age gracefully for as long as any wine when stored properly. Not surprisingly, it also yields the world’s most expensive wine on average, which makes it all the more attractive to collectors and a growing legion of admirers.

Salud!
Don

Mencia: Spain’s Other Great Red Varietal

May 23, 2018 by Don Lahey

Spain has long been associated with great red wines, particularly the red wines of Rioja and Ribera del Duero from the iconic Tempranillo varietal, so much that other equally exciting indigenous varietals such as Garnacha, Prieto Picudo and Mencia have been all but ignored until recently.

Mencia is a premium red Spanish grape varietal found primarily in the Bierzo, Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras appellations of northern Spain. Although the Mencia varietal was once considered by enologists to be the direct ancestor and precursor of Cabernet Franc, recent DNA testing has shown that this is not the case. Mencia and Cabernet Franc share some common characteristics, but not the same ancestry. It is now widely believed that Mencia and Portugal’s Jaen de Dão (Jaen for short) grape variety are one and the same. However, not everyone agrees. What we do know is that Mencia is an ancient varietal that has been around for quite some time. Bierzo’s original plantings of Mencia likely date to the earliest Roman settlers in the region, who cultivated the varietal two thousand years ago in what remains one of Europe’s most isolated wine regions. It is the grape’s isolation and not any inferior quality that caused it to be overlooked outside its ancestral home.

Bierzo is a remote area of Galicia, Spain’s cool, windswept province astride the Atlantic. Certainly, it is the very isolation of the Bierzo that has allowed Mencia to survive and even thrive. Moreover, the average age of the hillside vines in Bierzo is quite old, which lends itself to the production of high quality wines. Consequently, the wonderfully fruity, spicy, and wholly intriguing Mencia varietal has recently been discovered, or rather re-discovered, by modern legions of wine drinkers. They are no doubt intrigued by this unique viticultural entity we call Mencia, whose many attributes are accentuated by organic farming, low vineyard yields, and modern winemaking techniques practiced by Losada Vinos de Finca and other like-minded wineries whose emphasis is on quality rather than quantity. Since the 1990s, Mencia has steadily grown in popularity to the point where there are now more than 20,000 acres of Mencia vines being cultivated in Spain. Altos de Losada, Peza do Rei, and Casal Novo are three excellent producers whose Mencias are well worth seeking out.

Salud!
Don

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