The author and his wife, Kayce, at Barboursville Vineyards in Virginia
There’s no doubt I have a lot to be thankful for in life: family, health, friends and general happiness. Add that my hobby is writing a wine blog, and there’s no seriously arguing that I don’t have a good existence on this planet. I’m especially happy with 2019 because it marks the first full calendar year of being married to a great woman and the attendant benefits of great in-laws in my life. 2019 carried with it some challenges, but all-in-all I loved it. And because 2019 was also a great year in wine for me, I’ve been especially excited to write this year’s retrospective best-of post.
These retrospective pieces are admittedly a bit self-indulgent; they are effectively an exercise in bragging (look at all this great wine I got to have, and all these great places I got to go!). I justify writing them nonetheless because if you’re into wine like I am, and I know some of the Good Vitis readers are, you want to read about the wine experiences of others because wine is a unique way of appreciating the world, and it can be inspiring. It adds, literally and figuratively, flavor and beauty to life in ways that can make one feel better about, and more appreciative of, the people around them and the planet they inhabit.
Some of this impact can be revelatory, and these experiences are almost always more meaningful and impactful when shared with others. All of the experiences below were made better because of the people I shared them with, and I hope reading about them will motivate readers to seek out more special moments of their own in 2020.
With this in mind, and in keeping with the Good Vitis tradition of doing each year’s retrospective a bit different from those before it, this year’s piece will focus on the eight most personally revelatory wine experiences of the year. Here we go.
Revelation No. 1: Sauvignon blanc is amazing
Aaron before February 6th, 2019: I don’t much care for sauvignon blanc. It’s unbalanced and too acidic, it’s green, it’s lean and it’s monolithic in profile.
Aaron on September 14th, 2019 after a sip of 2005 Edmond Vatan Clos la Néore sauvignon blanc from the Loire Valley: This is the best wine I’ve ever had.
In 2019, I’ve had four sauvignon blancs that collectively have turned me from a hater to an appreciator. I’m a lover of these four, and more willing to try sauvignon blanc in general. The first to show me that the grape could be more complex and enjoyable than I’d previously known was the 2017 Loveblock sauvignon blanc. In the article I published about the winery started by Erica and Kim Crawford of New Zealand sauvignon blanc fame, I said of the wine that “[the] Loveblock style of sauvignon blanc is rounder, more tropical and complex [than that made famous by the Kim Crawford label]. My tasting note on the wine describes an expressive, jovial and entertaining wine with more intrigue then the typical New Zealand profile tends to inspire in me.” I gave the wine 91 points with a value of A.
Around the time that I published the Loveblock article, my wife Kayce and I had dinner with Sam Teakle, the winemaker at Capture Wines in Napa. Although Capture mostly makes red wine, it has two sauvignon blancs and Sam brought with him the entry level bottle which is called “Tradition.” Kayce, who like me wasn’t a sauvignon blanc lover at the time, loved it, as did I, and so in following up later I asked for a full bottle so I could write a Try This Wine feature on it, which I did.
In the short piece, I noted that the Tradition “offered more substance, weight and depth than I had been accustomed to finding in the variety. I had always thought of sauvignon blanc as a lean, citrusy and acidicly- sharp wine that was simple and even sometimes unpleasantly bitter. The Captûre Tradition proves all this wrong – it proves the haters wrong – at an incredibly reasonable price of $25. It will over-deliver as a pop-and-pour summer white wine, and has sufficient seriousness and complexity to be decanted for an hour and enjoyed over the course of an evening.” I gave it 94 points with an A+ value rating.
Picture poached from Isaac Baker’s Instagram
Several months later, I visited a friend of a friend, with the mutual friend, who wanted to swap some wine from his cellar for stuff he’d never had before. I’m not sure what was traded for it, but we walked away with a bottle of 2005 Edmond Vatan Clos la Néore. This is a sauvignon blanc from Sancerre in France’s Loire Valley, and to be fully transparent, I’d never heard of it before (waiting for the gasps and looks of disproval to subside…). We ended up drinking it that night with another wine loving friend at his suggestion. I took one sip and thought, “well holy fucking shit, I don’t even know…I mean…wow.” I pulled out my phone, opened the CellarTracker app, and wrote a tasting note:
This is otherworldly. The nose wafts a crazy cornucopia of waxy golden raisin, Thai basil, honeycomb, kiwi, peach, crushed rock minerality, cantaloupe and spearmint. The palate is spry but delivers seriously hefty layers in a mind-blowing juxtaposition. The flavors are crazy cool, delivering serious star fruit, Sichuan spicy, honeyed melon, poached pear, poached peach, grapefruit, Calvados, rose water, kiwi and spearmint. It’s entering a transcendental phase. 98 points.
That’s the highest point total I’ve ever given to a wine, and the taste and texture and complexity and mouthfeel remain incredibly fresh in my mind. As I said above, it’s the best wine I’ve ever had. I want more, I will always crave this wine. And I feared that I’d never enjoy another sauvignon blanc again after the Vatan.
Then, about a month and a half later, I opened a bottle of 2009 Chimney Rock Elevage Blanc that I’d bought at auction and realized that the Vatan had not ruined the variety for me. I’d visited Chimney Rock in Napa in March of 2019. Known as a red wine house, I was most impressed with their rosé and the Elevage Blanc, their only white. I included the latter in a Try this Wine post about what I called “spring whites” that included the Chimney Rock along with others from Carlisle, Copain and Yangarra, all of which fit my conception of a white wine perfect for the season between winter and summer:
“The profile of white that I’m suggesting – some weight, multiple layers of flavor, thick acid – is also more versatile food-wise than many other wines. This is to say, it can hold its own with grilled vegetables, chicken, turkey and fish as well as red-fruited wines like pinot noir, trousseau, gamay, cabernet franc and zinfandel. Just because you’re going to a friend’s grill-out doesn’t mean you should avoid white wine.”
Chimney’s Elevage Blanc is a blend of sauvignon blanc and sauvignon gris, and I gave the 2016 that I tried at the winery 93 points with a value of A-, and said of it:
“It offers incredible smoothness in personality and feel. With a deft full body, it boasts loads of stone and tropical fruits, spicy zest, marzipan, slate and flint minerality and a smoky finish. If you tend to find sauvignon blanc too bitter and cutting, this is one that may change your mind.”
Based on this experience, I bought the 2009 off Winebid hoping that it would be something cool, and it was. The note:
“The saturated and tropical nose offers aromas of paraffin wax, dried kiwi, dried papaya, dried pineapple, white pepper and orange preserves. It is full bodied on the palate with lush acid that gets slightly gritty on the finish. The balance is on-point and the mouthfeel is sumptuous. Flavors come in fascinating waves of pear, cantaloupe, barely ripe papaya, green chimichurri sauce, Key lime, almond paste, Mandarine orange and flint minerality. This is a super cool, interesting wine that is at the very end of its prime life.” (I gave it 93 points).
I did an Instagram post about it in which I said “[this] fascinating 10-year-old Napa blend of sauvignon blanc and sauvignon gris delivers captivating balance, a lush mouthfeel and deeply layered flavors that only come from the combination of great fruit, terroir and winemaking.” I tagged John Terlato of Terlato Wines who owns Chimney Rock, and he was nice enough to post this comment on it:
“Thank you for the kind words. Our goal was to make a white wine for red wine drinkers – a wine which was at the same time complex, sublime and possessed the ability to age. Glad you enjoyed our work. Elizabeth Vianna’s hand clearly showing here. Inspiration + talent + vineyards = potentially extraordinary wines. Thank you again.”
Although the Elevage Blanc wasn’t as good as the Vatan, it seriously juiced my newfound love of sauvignon blanc and boosted my interest in trying more. If 2019 was the year of any grape for me, it’d be sauvignon blanc. A year ago I never would have predicted that.
Revelation No. 2: Judging a wine competition is weird
I was honored to be asked to participate in the judging of the 2019 Maryland Governor’s Cup competition. It was my first wine competition judging experience, and made me realize (a) just how hard it is for a competition to be worthwhile for the consumer, (b) just how hard it is to design and run a competition that allows the best wines to actually win, and (c) just how frustrating it must be for the industry that competitions are what they are. That said, I tip my hat to the gentlemen who is hired to organize and run the competition. Given the limitations impressed upon him by the factors involved, he did a hell of a job. I learned the following things:
- The Maryland competition and many like it are open only to wineries who want to pay to enter, so it does not cover every winery that otherwise could be part of it.
- Many use volunteer judges, and because it’s often a full day event that judges must travel to, when judges judge for free you rarely get the best overall quality of judges.
- At this competition, no judge tasted every wine. In fact, we tasted at most half of them each. I’m not sure about other competitions, but I imagine many of them are the same. This, when combined with #1 and #2, meant for me that only two of the eight winners deserved to make the final round.
These competitions are helpful for many in the industry, especially up-and-coming regions like Maryland and for really saturated markets like California where the best wines don’t need competition awards to sell out every year and the lessers are looking for ways of impressing customers. If I sound pessimistic about all of it, I am, but I do believe at the end of the day they’re a net positive for the industry, especially Maryland because of where it is in its maturation as a wine producing state. It needs these opportunities to compete against itself so that the bar is continuously raised.
Revelation No. 3: Even you can import wine
Okay, so not really. I didn’t import any wine. I can’t, I don’t have the permits or the business license to do it. But, my friend Peter Wygandt of Weygand-Metlzer Importing does. When I found out that he was traveling to the Republic of Georgia, I wanted to him to visit my friends over there who make incredible wine, the Togonidze family. I told him that if he could squeeze one more winery visit in while he was there, he’d taste the best wine he’d have on the trip and that there would be no way he’d be able to bring any of it into America because they don’t make enough to export. Peter said he’d try, and I sort of forgot about it.
If the name Togonidze rings a bell, it might be because you read the Good Vitis post about my visit there, which is called “Words Escape Me: The Country, Food and Wines of Georgia.” I truly love Georgia. The people, geography, beauty, food and wine are individually incredible and collectively breathtaking. The main feature of the piece is the night I spent eating and drinking with the Togonidze family at their home. Their Mtsvane (a white grape with very green skin) is among my very favorite wines and probably the most unusual wine I’ve had that actually works despite how unusual it is.
Peter (left) with Gia Togonidze in Georgia
A few months after talking with Peter, I saw that the Togonidzes had posted pictures of them with Peter at their home. I got the biggest grin. How cool is that?! Still, I thought, no way Peter is signing an account with them, they don’t make enough. But then, another month or two later, I get the email from Peter: I’m importing Togonidze. I rejoiced. When the wine arrived, Peter hosted a tasting at his brick and mortar store in Washington, DC and sent me a note making sure I would show up. Of course I would, and of course I did. Peter was gracious enough to acknowledge my role in bringing Togonidze to America to the crowd that was there when I arrived. We happily bought a case and half and are reserving the bottles to share with the people closest to us.
Revelation No. 4: Mosel is for real
The Master of Mosel, Markus Hüls
Speaking of Peter Weygandt, after Kayce and I decided our honeymoon was going to include Germany, I asked Peter if he could connect me with one of his producers in the Mosel Valley because we were going to spend three days there. He chose a producer named Markus Hüls and set a tasting up for us with Markus himself. For a while I hadn’t cared for riesling, but I’ve slowly grown to appreciate it over the last three or so years. Before you think “he doesn’t like sweet wines,” I do. The issue for me was acid – the riesling I was told was the good stuff was too acidic for me.
I started to turn the corner, actually, after a conversation with a coffee roaster in Syracuse, New York, in 2012 who told me that “acid means flavor,” which translated means that acid carries flavor to our taste buds, almost like salt. I started paying more attention to acidic foods and wines and how the flavors might be different in those compared to others with lower acid, and I noticed that he was often right. Acid is also part of a wine’s physical structure and sensation, and in white wine its impact is particularly felt because of the absence of tannin. I wouldn’t say I’m a raging aid head, but I certainly like acidic wines much more now than before.
I wrote a feature piece on Hüls in September in which I praised the acid profile in the wines and Marcus’ ability to harness acid to drive aromatic and flavor profiles that build gorgeously structured wines. “Markus Hüls is a revelation in steep slope Mosel wine,” I wrote, “that delivers an acid profile defining something both unique and exceptional.” We now have a case of Hüls aging in our cellar, and I’m on the hunt for more riesling.
While crystalizing a desire to add more riesling to our cellar, the three days spent in Mosel clarified for me why it is considered by many to be the best place on earth to grow and make riesling. Riesling is one of those grapes with enormous range, and the impact of the winding rivers and steep slopes on the vines explains how one grape can be made to taste so many different ways.
Revelation No. 5: Cayuse can age well
Let me apologize now for small size of the crowd for which this revelation is relevant. Growing up in Washington State and getting into wine through the state’s industry, chances are good that you come to revere Cayuse Vineyards even if you don’t taste their wines. They are among the most legendary wineries in the state, and also among the most closeted and elitist. Its founder and winemaker, Christophe Baron, famously happened upon Walla Walla, Washington, on his way from his home in Champagne to Oregon where he intended to make pinot noir. Captured by an internship in Walla Walla, he never left. He now owns several labels, all of which receive numerous mid to upper 90s scores from the major reviewers, including several 100’s. He sells almost exclusively through a wine club that maintains a wait list that is five to ten years long.
I waited on the list for seven years myself before I was offered 3 bottles of a single wine of my choosing. My choice was the God Only Knows Grenache, and I came in at the 2013 vintage. At some point in the last year or two, I received an email saying that I could opt into a lottery for older vintages of wine because they were clearing out the library. The rule was: you get what you get, up to six bottles, and you have to take them all. I sent a note to two friends asking if they wanted to split the spoils, and we went for it. We ended up with the 2000 Coccinelle Vineyard syrah, 2004 Cailloux Vineyard syrah and 2008 The Widowmaker (En Chamberlin Vineyard) cabernet sauvignon. One friend added his own 2011 Cailloux Vineyard syrah.
The Cayuses, and other great wines from that remarkable night
There is some debate as to whether high end Washington wine gets better with significant aging. The best stuff has the tannin and acid, but some worry that the warm climate produces too much tannin as well as too much alcohol for a wine to get better over ten-plus years. Within this discussion, Cayuse is hotly debated. This library lottery gave me the chance to find out for myself, and the answer is an unqualified “yes.” They are magical wines. To be able to say that with absolute clarity is a big deal for me, even if it only matters to a handful of people. We were all impressed by the wines, and though we didn’t taste any of the Cayuse I have in my cellar, it gave me confidence to sit longer on the wines I’m hoarding. If you’re curious, you can find tasting notes here.
Revelation No. 6: Old wines rock
I’m just starting to get to the point where I know what to look for in old wine, and I say this both from the perspective of buying it and tasting it. It began a few years back with an extraordinary flight of 2000, 2002 and 2003 Cameron Abbey Ridge pinot noir from Oregon, and it’s taken off since then. 2019 was the first year in which seriously old wine became a somewhat regular thing in our household.
It’s hard to describe the qualities that make old wine worth the wait, especially because different types of grapes go through different kinds of changes, and because winemaking becomes a bigger factor when it goes up against the test of time. We get to see how the structure of the wine plays out. Did the components – tannin, acid, alcohol and fruit – find harmony, or fall apart? Did the depth of the wine reveal itself, allowing the drinker the opportunity to smell and taste everything it has to offer but needed time to reveal? Really good wine that is aged appropriately takes on qualities and physical sensations that no young wine, regardless of what it is or how it was made, can have. It’s the nature of the difference that is so special to me.
A contributing factor to my love for old wine is the revelation, good or bad, of tasting a wine that’s spent so much time by itself. What has it done with that time? Did it make the most of it? There’s also the game of when to open it. Is ten years enough? Fifteen years too many? There’s only one way to find out: pull the cork. The anticipation, and the result, are fun to experience.
Allowing wine to age teaches you a lot about the winery, the vintage and the region. In 2019, we drank 23 bottles of wine that were at least 10 years past their vintage. In addition to the older wines discussed above, I’m listing several below along with the lessons I learned from having them.
2009 Vincent Dauvissat Les Preuses Grand Cru Chablis – Chablis is one of my favorite regions, but can be hard to judge on ageability. My favorite aspect about Chablis – its twitchy, nervous acid – tends to fade fairly quickly, so aging it means losing that. On the flip side, as this wine proved, Chablis can take on a multitude of dimensions with age that are special.
2008 JD Varja Ruggeri Langhe – I love nebbiolo, but it can be a tough grape. It’s quite tannic and acidic, and so it can age for a long time, and often should. But on the lower end, while it can retain sufficient tannin and acid, it doesn’t always develop the requisite fruit to go the distance. This was an example of that. I liked it, but didn’t love it. It was ideal probably five years ago.
2007 Willi Schaefer Graacher Himmelreich Kabinett Riesling – This was one of the best wines I’ve had, and a perfect example of how quality riesling gets amazing with age: so many deeply developed flavors with acid that keeps them raging, seemingly indefinitely. It could’ve gone for another ten great years.
2006 Domaine Pierre Usseglio & Fils Cuvée de mon Aïeul Chateauneuf du Pape – This was a good vintage for Chateauneuf du Pape, and Usseglio is known for producing particularly age-worthy wines. The case with this one, though, was disappointing because I opened it too early. It was only just starting to awaken, and it had miles of depth left to unravel.
2005 Lucien Le Moine Burgundy – Maybe the most frustrating wine of the year for me. When it was released, I’m told by the person who bought it, it was maybe $15 or $20. It’s Moine’s entry level Burgundy. Today it goes for $50+. It was damn good, much better than nearly all of the sub-$50 pinots I’ve had from anywhere, and better than many $100+ Burgundies I’ve tasted. If I could go back to the mid-2000s, when a lot of great Burgundy was still being made without a ton of oak, I’d buy it by the pallet so I could start opening it now.
2005 Spring Mountain Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon – The lesson to be learned here is that the size of the bottle matters. Because the cork allows oxygen into the wine, the ratio of oxygen to wine is the highest when the size of the bottle is the smallest. I had this out of a half-bottle, and while it was delicious, it was past its prime. It would not, however, been past its prime if it had come out of a regular or large-format bottle. Lesson being, don’t age your half bottles as long as you would larger bottles.
1989 Domaine Huet Le Mont Moelleux Premiere Trie – I got this birth year bottle to celebrate my wife’s 30th birthday. Loire chenin blanc is her favorite wine and among my favorites, so it was a no brainer. This particular bottle is pretty special; I think it’s safe to say that Huet is universally regarded as among the best Vouvray producers and one that gets better and better over its first 30-plus years of life (incidentally, not unlike wife). I had personally verified the quality of Huet previously, and can now verify its ageability. This bottle will make it hard to drink Huet that isn’t decades old.
1967 Chateau Lescombes Margaux – This bottle was a gift I received less than a minute into meetings its original owner. We crossed paths at Domaine Storage in DC where we were both storing wine. I got a locker there about six months ago, and he was in the process of emptying his out. He was a bit into retirement and realized it was time to drink through the remainder of his collection, most of which he’d forgotten about. We were having a nice conversation and he reached down into a box and pulled out two of these bottles and handed them to me with the advice to not forget about the wines I was buying, like he had, so that so many wouldn’t go to waste. These 67’ Margauxs were past their prime and he knew it, but figured it would be fun for me to take a flyer on them since I wasn’t paying for them and he had so many. We haven’t opened the second bottle, but the first bottle was both past its prime and delicious (especially the nose). I doubt I’ll find myself in the position he was with someone like me decades from now, but his advice is a great reminder that collecting wine is about finding your sweet spot and reveling in it.
Revelation No. 7: Barboursville Vineyards
I wrote about a two-day stay at Virginia’s Barboursville Vineyards over on The Cork Report back in February in which we tried multiple vintages of the winery’s best red wines (in my opinion at least): cabernet franc reserve, nebbiolo reserve and Octagon, their Bordeaux-style flagship wine, going back to 1999. I’ve visited some of the best-known and most respected Virginia wineries, but I didn’t appreciate how good Virginia wine could be until the Barboursville visit. Their signature is no flash, all substance. As I wrote in the piece, “[a] trip to Barboursville Vineyards in Virginia feels to me like what a visit to Gaja in Piedmont, William Fevre in Chablis or López de Heredia in Rioja might: the chance to experience an especially iconic, historical, traditional and consistently high-performing estate in its respective region.”
#NoFilter
Barboursville has been around forever relative to the Virginia wine industry, and the know-how they’ve developed through low personnel turnover and farming the same vineyards for decades has translated into the rare Virginia wine that deservedly belongs in lineups with the best producers in the world. The 2010 Nebbiolo Reserve and 2007 Octagon were particularly revelatory for me and I’d love to see how they would perform in blind Barolo and Pomerol tastings, respectively. Viniculture and winemaking are labors of love for the people at Barboursville, and for their long-term winemaker-turned general manager Luca Paschina, it’s a way of life. He has shown what Virginia is capable of, and the more Luca’s the state has, the better.
Revelation No. 8: Emidio Pepe
During our honeymoon this summer we spent three days at Emidio Pepe in Abruzzo, Italy. I wrote all about it in a profile I did of the winery so I don’t need to go in depth here. What is most important to say now is that it may have become my favorite winery. There is an obvious bias in play because we spent time there, and it was wonderful. Amazing food and wine, great service and people, unreal setting, the romance of the honeymoon, etc. – I have names, faces, vineyards, views, aromas, flavors and emotions to connect to the wine that can’t be replicated by a retail experience. But even still, for my palate it doesn’t get better than Pepe.
The characteristic of Pepe’s wines that I most connect with are the evolution they go through as they age. As I explained in the linked profile above, Pepe purposefully makes reductive wines that work with the naturally high acid and tannin of Abruzzo and their vineyards to make wine that transcends itself over periods measured in decade increments, giving the depth and complexity of the grapes times to marry and sing. The beauty of the wine is then amplified by winemaking choices – pressing technique, aging vessel, etc. – that are chosen because they assist the grapes and vineyard in putting their best selves forward. It’s as if they extract all of the best qualities of the grapes and terroir…and then some. This is the good kind of human intervention. While there is beautiful wine made from human decision-making that goes beyond, or around, expressing the grape and vineyard, there is something especially extraordinary and rare about a wine that wows you without needing cosmetic surgery. Pepe pulls it off better than any other wine I’ve had.
Closing
Let me finish with a quote that brings home the point of these retrospective pieces:
“One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” – French poet Charles Baudelaire.
Wine brings people together and plays the role of a properly adjusted saturation filter for life. Make sure you enjoy some (safely) with the people who matter most this holiday season.
