Otis Chandler's Reviews > Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France

A bit old, but a great overview and tour through French wines. Fascinating to see that even then the wines that tasted best were not the big names, but the ones who were doing it "the old way" and not using huge modern technology that filtered the wine. But this of course doesn't scale so less and less of these are around.

One fascinating thing to me was how much Kermit railed against the big, bold, strong reds. Because those are my favorites!

"in those days the California palate (mine included) demanded big mouth-filling wines at the expense of any other virtues, including authenticity."

But he points out time and time again that a good wine should pair with what it will be eaten with. And this means one can drink a wide variety of wines, depending on what is being eaten. This, along with many of the examples he gives has helped push my thinking a little about what wines to buy.

"A wine can only be judged as it relates to the environment in which it is served. The Chardonnay that looks best in the context of a comparative tasting is not likely to win next to a platter of fresh oysters. I began to notice that most of the blind-tasting champions in my own cellar remained untouched, because I had no desire to drink them. Just as they had overwhelmed the other wines to win a blind tasting, they overwhelm practically any cuisine. Drink with Stilton? lamb fat? enchiladas?"

Another interesting bit was the examples he gave about how much shipping and storage matters. He would give examples of shipping wine via ordinary methods that arrived flat, and how it only tasted the same if shipping correctly.

"The difference between a wine shipped at cellar temperature and one shipped in a standard container is not subtle. One is alive, the other cooked. I can taste the difference. And one never knows exactly how much the wine will suffer, because the climate en route cannot be predicted. It might arrive dumb like those first de Montilles, or it might arrive dead. By reefer the shipping costs are higher, but the wine is not damaged."

Another bit I loved learning about was how much the terroir affects the taste of the grapes. Not just the soil either, but how much sunlight, and even things like nearby plants like sage, rosemary, lavender, thyme - he gave a great example of how one wine one year suddenly stopped tasting like blackberries, and he asked the vintner what happened, and learned that the wineries neighbor had removed some blackberry bushes that bordered their properties. Fascinating.

"There is only one possible explanation for this mysterious transfer of aromatic quality from one type of vegetation to another. Bees! The bees gather nectar from blossoms—in this case, wild-currant blossoms—then they alight on the grape blossoms, their little legs fuzzy with pollen from the currants."

Wines it mentions to try:
* Meursault: white and mineral
* Domaine Tempier: best reds in Provence
* Domaine de la Gautière: just outside the border of Côtes du Rhône but just as good
* Northern Rhone: There are but a handful, including some of France’s noblest: Saint-Péray, Cornas, Saint-Joseph, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Condrieu, Château Grillet, and Côte Rôtie
* Cote Rotie: A Côte Rôtie is by no means light stuff; it is a substantial wine, but what is unusual is this saplike quality combined with a certain finesse, a certain delicacy. Top it off with that amazing perfume of Syrah fruit grown in this special terroir and you have a wine set apart from all others. Anyone can make a heavy, oaky wine. All you need is a new barrel and sugary (or sugared) grape juice. But a Côte Rôtie that tastes like Côte Rôtie can come only from the terroir of the roasted slope and from the traditional vinification developed over the centuries in the cellars of Ampuis.
* Bergundy: Savigny or Pernand, a Mercurey or Rully. Volnay or Pommard, Chambolle or Nuits.
* Today, from all the appellations of the northern Rhône that produce white wine, there is only one sure thing year in and year out, and that is the quality of the Chave Hermitage blanc

"Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull. People talk about the mystery of wine, yet most don’t want anything to do with mystery. They want it all there in one sniff, one taste. If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover."