Wine Journal
In France, it is now illegal to consume ortolan, a songbird near extinction. For those who have tasted it, if one is not blasé, he/she may hesitate to even admit it due to a sense of guilt. The ritual of eating the bird is shrouded in shame (for a dramatic depiction, watch Season 3, Episode 6 of Billions).
At Château de Chantegrive, the owners are songbird lovers. They named their property after songbird. Here, the songbirds are not fed grapes in confinement, nor are they fattened to be cooked as a delicacy. They merely sing among the vines and trees, and adorn the wine labels. This is a song bird one can love consuming without guilt or shame.
Uco Valley (Valle de Uco) is a key wine-growing region of Argentina. An hour's drive south of Mendoza, it is home to some of the region's most famous wines. It attracted the attention of Henri Parent, the owner of Château La Violette, a tiny estate of 1.8 hectares on the Pomerol plateau between Château Trotanoy and Le Pin. After acquiring the estate formerly known as Bodega Monteviejo Lindaflor in 1999, Henri Parent retained the talented Marcelo Pelleriti as the winemaker and director for his new adventure in Argentina. Mr. Pelleriti is also the winemaker at the parent company's flagship estate, Château La Violette. To reflect the parentage, the wine was renamed Lindaflor La Violeta.
Like most New World production, South American wines are often drunk while young. What's often lost is the opportunity to see what they can become after long aging. Recognizing the full aging potential of a 100% Malbec wine, starting with the 2013 vintage, Henri Parent
It's about time that you think of the best wines as liquid yet hard assets. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary insights. 2022 has been a tough year for investors. Bonds and stocks have sold off in tandem. Real estate is also starting to wobble. Have you got wine in your portfolio?
Last weekend (August 6 & 7), the Financial Times published an article on the front page highlighting that fine wine is passing the test as hedge against inflation. If you wonder how fine wine has performed over the past 20 years, here’s a chart by Liv-ex showing two indices: one is a basket of the top 100 wines, the other is a basket of the top 1000 wines. Both have performed positively.
Winemakers, by default, are in love with their land, and, by extension, everything that grows on it. We mean everything, even weeds, which is a byproduct and feature of the soil the biodynamic farming movement has come to embrace. But we can think of only one winemaker who loves his trees so much that he names every wine he makes after trees. Yes, we are talking about Jacques Thienpont, the legendary winemaker of Le Pin (“Pine”), L’If (“Yew”), and L’Hêtre (“Beech”).
You may have heard of Le Pin, one of the most coveted (ahem, expensive) wines from Bordeaux, and any wine-producing region in the world, for that matter. Le Pin is proof that sometimes the
Heat wave seems to be everywhere, the dog days of summer are upon us. There is always a good glass of wine to help you get through the season. Our first choice is Henri de Villamont's Auxey-Duresses La Canée 2015 - a crisp, un-oaky chardonnay from Côte de Beaune, Burgundy.
We also present Château La Lagune 2017, a softer and more expressive wine from Haut-Médoc, produced by the talented winemaker Caroline Frey, whose family also owns the legendary Jaboulet wines in the Rhône Valley. Its soft and feminine profile can sometimes lead consumers to mistaken La Lagune for wines from Margaux, not Haut Médoc – some even consider them “Burgundian.”
Our feature selection for the month of August 2022 is Château
Here's the latest release from LVMH, the holding company that brings us such amazing wines like Château d'Yquem and Château Cheval Blanc: Ao Yun, a wine produced at the foothills of the Himalayas by the team from Moët Hennessy (the MH in LVMH).
Ao Yun is an ambitious project by LVMH to create a unique, world-class wine estate in an ideal but new environment. The famed Australian winemaker, Dr. Tony Jordan, was commissioned to find such a place. He found his way to the foothills of the Himalayas in Yunnan, near the legendary and remote villages of Shangri-La. There he found not only conditions that reminded him of Bordeaux but also the remnants of a wholly forgotten series of vineyards planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc which had been introduced by French missionaries
This morning, we woke up to the jaw-dropping news that Château Angélus just announced it had withdrawn from the Saint-Emilion classification, to save itself from the unjust legal attacks for over a decade.
The legal case culminated in a recent court ruling against the former head of Angélus, Hubert de Bôuard. He was found guilty of "undue influence" while serving on the government appointed body which set the rules on promoting Saint-Emilion producers to various ranks. Under these rules, Château Angélus was promoted into the top rank - Premier Grand Cru Classé A of Saint-Emilion.
Until Château Angélus and Château Pavie were promoted in 2012, only Château Ausone and Château Cheval Blanc were recognized as Premier Grand Cru Classé A of Saint-Emilion. Unlike the Left Bank that has stuck with the original 1855 Classification
It's the season of New Year resolutions again. We support our clients' drive for better health. If necessary, January can be a drier month. Who needs the Prohibition if one can exercise self discipline? For those of us who only need a glass of wine on the weekend, here's our selection for January 2022:
- La Dame de Montrose 2018, Saint-Estèphe, rated 90-92 (Neal Martin). Made to the same rigorous standards as the First Wine, from grapes grown in the same vineyard, La Dame de Montrose is the second wine of Château Montrose, a heavy weight from Saint-Estèphe, just north of Pauillac. Supple and silky Merlot generally predominates in the varietal mix. Its very pronounced red fruit aromas and flavours reflect another expression of the terroir in a distinctive style which is less elaborately complex than
We have carried Château Siran year after year, believing our customers will be won over once they taste this unpretentious but well-made wine. It took a #1 ranking by a popular magazine to convince the buyers we haven't served before to clean out our cellar. By popular demand, we have restocked this wine in Bordeaux and will be shipping it into the states next spring. Pre-order yours now if you are curious what kind of top-ranked Bordeaux $45 can buy.
To the insiders, Château Siran has been a hidden gem for quite some time. As Bloomberg wine columnist Erin McCoy and Decanter Magazine previously reported, the 1955 vintage of Château Siran was used by convicted wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan as a primary ingredient in the blend to fake old vintages of Château Lafite and Château Margaux. Even some of the auction house critics were fooled. Is that reason enough to cellar some Siran 2018 to taste
