Dr Vino's wine blog

Succumbing to the pressure for year-end lists, and in keeping with the background theme of academia on the site, I decided to compile a list of top wines of the year. I use academic references to situate my favorites of the year. Of course these picks are not restricted to those in the Ivory Tower—just insert yourself where you think you fit. As ever, value (price to quality) considerations played a large role in the selection.

Best wine, graduate students (or interns)
The insecurity and poor pay of the exploited and hard-working grad student makes them want good bang for their buck. Borsao 2001 ($5) fits the bill nicely. This red wine from Spain is a great bargain that is packed with flavor and is sure to make whoever brings it the star of grad student parties. Château Cheval-Blanc Signé 2001 ($5) is a great Sauvignon Blanc that not only tastes fresh and clean but also has a nice label and the Bordeaux name to impress others at first glance.

Best wine, assistant professors (or junior sales executive)
Besides enjoying amenities like an office (with a window), a research and (gasp) telephone budget, the regularity of the paycheck is a welcome relief from the depravity of the grad student days. However, all the responsibilities of the new job and the new demands on the paycheck may spell a desire for the wine to flow in quantity over quality. The Castell del Remei Gotim Bru 1999 ($9) from Catalonia and the Mas de Guiot 2001 Grenache-Syrah ($9) from Languedoc are two excellent reds that are guaranteed to knock the socks off the department chair. Silverado Sauvignon Blanc 2001 ($9.99) has a sleek design and a crisp, clean taste that has converted several associate professors to this varietal.

Best wine for associate professors (or Vice-President for Something)
There are lots of good wines to choose from at the associate professor level-getting tenure has its perks. From the Barossa Valley in Australia, Cimicky Signature Shiraz 1999 ($23) is among the best shiraz I have had from Australia. More refined in style than the burly low-end Shiraz from Oz, this one is worthy of Cimicky’s John Hancock. Also eligible in this category are the Edna Valley Chardonnay 2000, which is a good value (now $12 although it used to be under $10 not so long ago) and the Loimer Spiegel Grüner Veltliner 2000 ($18), a crisp white wine that is very flattering to seafood.

Best wine for full professors (head honcho)
Having made major contributions to your field, the worldwide recognition and royalty checks are rolling in. Time to crank up those wine purchases a bit-you never know when the Dean my drop by. Sadly, excellent Chardonnays only start at $25: at this price, the Dehlinger Chardonnay 2000 from Sonoma represents an excellent price to quality ratio. With its multiple layers, notes of butterscotch, and a textured long finish this wine has turned many heads. In the reds, why not impress the Dean with the massive Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta 2000 ($45) from Chile. With Michel Rolland—one of several “flying winemakers” in Chile—consulting on the winemaking, this wine is a blockbuster that probably needs some more cellar time but that has wonderful complexity of dark fruits. Many retailers are trying to clear out the late 1990s vintages of Bordeaux so some good values can be found among them. Consider the 1999 Pichon le Baron de Langueville ($36), a great Bordeaux château now selling for a great price.

Best wine after finishing grading all those exams (or closing a deal)
Abadia Retuerta, Rivola, 2001 ($10.80). This lively Spanish wine with an earthy nose and a long finish definitely punches above its weight in price and is just what the Dr. ordered after all the grading is done.

Best wine for celebrating the acceptance of an article for publication (or meeting a big deadline)
Franus, Cabernet Sauvignon, 1998. ($21). Smooth and complex, this wine sells for about a 40% discount to the succeeding vintages from this Napa winemaker.

Best wine for curing the mid-semester (or mid-winter) blues
The cure is a little Zin as the big, red wine from California is known. Turley Old Vine Zinfandel, 2000 ($22), one of the best Zinfandels made and therefore one of the most difficult to find, but it packs a punch with its spicy nose and bonanza of flavors (and nearly 16% alcohol). Otherwise for zinfandels, in the words of Jay MacInerney, “almost anything that starts with R is good” (the producers here are Ridge, Renwood, Rafanelli, etc) and often easier to find. Hartford Court makes several excellent Zins but these too are hard to find (their phone is 800-588-0234).

Best wine to celebrate getting tenure (or a promotion and a raise)
Pol Roger Rosé, 1995 ($60). A favorite of Winston Churchill’s and a favorite of mine this year. Light bubbles and lively mouthfeel make this a good pick for a major celebration.

Best “wine” for not getting tenure (or shareholders of bankrupt companies)
Mad Dog 20/20.

Best wine to give to somebody you don’t really like/cooking wine
Charles Shaw Merlot or Chardonnay, $1.99 at Trader Joe’s grocery store. So this is where all those surplus grapes have gone-into the million cases that Franzia (as in wine-in-a-box) is selling exclusively through Trader Joe’s. Don’t be surprised if this “Two Buck Chuck,” as it is colloquially known, costs three bucks at Trader Joe’s outside of California. Within the state, the producer negotiates directly with the retailer whereas outside the state, a distributor must intervene thanks to entrenched state monopolies.

“I wouldn’t wash the family dog with it,” said the New England innkeeper where Mrs. Vino and I had our wedding reception. Cava, the object of his condescension, is a sparkling white wine from Spain. Although sparkling white wine and champagne are essentially the same thing why are they different in the innkeeper’s mind? Is it worth paying through the nose for champagne?

People in the wine industry love the last quarter of the year. That’s because we love to drink wine at our celebrations. Almost three-quarters of the year’s sales occur in the last three months. While Thanksgiving and Christmas may be limited by country or religion, New Year’s Eve is a global bash and champagne dominates it. “If everyone in the world had just one glass of champagne…” Or so the logic went for the millennium when sales were brisk and rumors spread about a potential champagne shortage. In the end, the shortage did not occur and the millennium left the producers with a hangover.

Champagne, as in the stuff that James Bond drinks, comes from the Champagne region just east of Paris. In 1911 residents of several communities excluded from the official growing area staged an angry protest and troops had to be brought in to quell the demonstrations. Although those residents’ zones were ultimately included in Champagne, they were the first of many groups worldwide who would try to crack into the prestige of the term. The Champagne producers have been able to rebuff other worldwide producers of the bubbly stuff through their exclusive claims to their origins in the Champagne region. As a result we are left with Cava, Sekt, spumante, and sparkling white wine from the rest of the world.

Champagne producers obscure the varietals that they use, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. “Blanc de blanc” means it is made from Chardonnay grapes while “blanc de noir” means Pinot Noir has been included. The producers also obscure vintages as the majority of champagne comes in a non-vintage form. As a result, the champagne houses are the very model of the corporate brand that so many New World producers seek to emulate. Just give them a couple of centuries and they’re bound to catch up.

Paying through the nose is common for champagnes but not always necessary. Yes, the likes of Cristal, vintage Dom Perignon and Pol Roger are wonderful, but they are well in excess of $100 a bottle. From California, Domaine Chandon (the US arm of Moët & Chandon, part of the LVMH luxury goods empire) and Pacific Echo (now owned by Clicquot, another part of LVMH) both offer good sparklers around $12. From Spain, Louis de Vernier has a good dry Cava for $9, but Cava uses the local grape varietals that some people, such as my innkeeper, find objectionable. However, the Brits have grown to love Cava over the past decade. In the highly competitive UK market, Cava now accounts for 47% of sparkling wine sales, up from only 7% in 1991 according to a recent report on winebusiness.com.

If you feel the need to get your bubbly from Champagne itself, good values are available around $25. Look for the non-vintage brut (dry) wines from Piper-Heidsieck, Louis Roederer, and Lansonfor a particularly good price to quality ratio.

Spain
Spain once harbored the ambitions to become “the world’s wine cellar” in the late 19th century but the phylloxera aphid laid waste to those hopes as it had to the French vineyards slightly earlier. While never really emerging from the long French shadow, Spain does have the most acres under vine of any country and is the world’s third largest wine producer. A transition to quality has been underway over the past two decades and several dynamic new growing areas and winemakers have been emerging. Finding great price-to-quality wines from Spain is easy: here are but a few suggestions.

Castell del Remei, Gotim Bru, 1999, $9
This excellent red wine comes from Catalonia, specifically, the Costers del Segre region not far from Barcelona. A blend of Spain’s tempranillo (50%) with the international varietals of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (25% each) produces excellent flavors of berry and leather with a good finish. Light in tannins and very approachable, this unfiltered wine has even made some non-red wine drinkers reach for a second glass. The advance word on the 2000 vintage is that it is perhaps even better, without a price hike, so keep an eye on this one.

Tres Picos, 2000, $7.50
This wine demonstrates that cooperatives can focus on quality. Using old-vine Grenache, the winemaker at the Agricola de Borja (located in Campo de Borja) used strict selection criteria to make an elegant wine that resembles a fine Rhône, where the price would be easily over $30. This cooperative also makes an excellent, fruit-forward wine under the Borsao label that sells for $5. Wines like these beg the question of why California producers don’t make wines at this price-to-quality ratio?!

Dehesa Gago, g, 2000, $7
Well, that’s a typo: the name of this wine is actually Dehesa Gago, but on the label stands a prominent “g.” The wine comes from the little-known region called Toro, down the Duero River almost at the border of Portugal, where Telmo Rodriguez shows that it is possible to make a good wine. Rodriguez has teamed up with the savvy importer, Jorge Ordoñez, to design a sleek, eye-catching label. But it’s not only the bottle that is attractive as this red wine from typical local varietals puts Toro on the viticultural map—no bull!

France
France produces many of the world’s top wines so the challenge in French wines is to find a good price to quality ratio. I find the far-flung growing regions of Bordeaux to be quite alive with innovation and great winemaking, yet quite well priced.

Chartron la Fleur, AOC Bordeaux, 2000. $7
As with all appellation wines from France, this white Bordeaux does not state the grape varietals used on the bottle. One thing is for certain: it is not a Chardonnay as there is not one vine of Chardonnay planted in the appellation vineyards of Bordeaux. This well-made wine, 80% Sauvignon Blanc and 20% Semillon, sells at half the price of similar wines from Australasia.

The Languedoc is really an up-and-coming area in terms of quality wines. The largest vineyard in the world with more than 800,000 acres under vine, the emphasis has traditionally been on quantity over quality. But recently there has been a clear shift toward quality inspired by increased foreign investment, the emergence of some innovative winemakers to serve as “locomotives” for the region and the impact of the EU quality policy. See where Languedoc is on the map. Here are a few examples from this exciting region.

Mas de Guiot, Grenache-Syrah, Languedoc, 2001, $8
This blend of the Rhone-style red wine varietals Grenache and Syrah is a knockout! The American importer, Robert Kacher, has worked with the vineyard owners to construct a winner. Wonderful color and complexity means this one is worth buying by the case!

Château de la Négly, La Côte Côteaux du Languedoc-La Clape, 2000, $7.50.
The proprietor Jean Paux-Rosset and his consulting winemaker, Claude Gros, are turning out what are not only the best wines of the Languedoc but also some outstanding wines by any measure. Robert Parker, the international wine critic, gave their top wine (which sells for $92 a bottle) a score of 96 points. Their low-end wine is an ideal wine for everyday drinking with meals—enjoy the virtues of the Mediterranean diet with this wine grown in sight of the Mediterranean!

Other parts of the south of France are also putting a lot more emphasis on quality. Provence, the Costières de Nîmes (just south of the Rhône), and further west in Gascony all have pockets of quality. This map can help sort out the location of these places.

Mas de Gourgonnier, Provence, 2000, $9
Most people think of Provence for vacations or vacation reading thanks to Peter Mayle. When it comes to wine, the region is known for rosés often best enjoyed while on a deck in Provence. But this bold, earthy red puts Provence on the radar screen for quality red wine.

Mas des Bressades, vin de pays du Gard, 2000, $9
This wine, imported by the quality-oriented Robert Kacher, comes from the estate Robert Parker has called “a consistent winner.” This wine displays the varietal names on the label (in this case the blend is 50-50 Grenache-Syrah) because it is made as a vin de pays, a category that finds a great deal of innovation in low-priced wines and now accounts for 25% of French annual production. From the Gard region in the south, this wine is packed with fruit and a real value.

USA
California wines have had a rapid transition to quality over the past 30 years. Unfortunately, the prices have risen almost as quickly as the quality levels. So while there are plenty of good wines in California, the real challenge is to find some value that maintains artisanal production instead of the industrial style that pervades the low end. Bountiful harvests and ever-expanding acres under vine should translate into lower prices in the bottle for consumers. Clever wineries of the middle range will make qualitative adjustments to avoid lethal price competition.

Joseph Phelps, Pastiche, 1999. $9.90 (that was with a 10% discount so it just barely scrapes into the under $10 category)
The CEO of Joseph Phelps was one of my best interviewees so I am partial to his wines. This blended wine has a long list of varietals and growing areas but nonetheless is a powerful wine that punches well above its featherweight price. The CEO told me that they lose money on this line because they grow the fruit to meet the specifications of their higher labels. While you may have to take that statement with a grain of salt, this Rhône-style wine will undoubtedly impress the neighbors.

Silverado, Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, 2000, $9.99
Do you ever wonder what makes Dopey dopey, Sleepy sleepy, Happy happy, and Doc so busy? Maybe they snuck into the Disney Vineyard. Silverado, owned by heirs of the Disney estate, has a reputation for making serious wines (hiho, hiho, it’s off to work we go!). This crisp, dry sauvignon blanc is their lowest cost wine and it offers an alternative to sauvignon blancs from New Zealand, which tend to be dominated by grapefruit and green apple. It is wonderful in the warm summer weather and an approachable wine for those who don’t like the tannins of red wine.
New Zealand

Cellars of Canterbury, Sauvignon Blanc, 2001. $9.99
I add this wine to the list in honor of my New Zealand relatives and the fine winemaking that is now prevalent in New Zealand. This white from Marlborough is packed with fresh fruits, notably grapefruit and other tropical fruits, and is very enjoyable on a warm summer evening. This wine is exemplary of racy Sauvignon Blancs from NZ that tend to exhibit better winemaking than most worldwide Chardonnays in the same price category.