Wine Lover Gift Strategies

The Best of Bruce Schoenfeld

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My sister called from Florida last year when her husband Ed was turning 50. He had been dropping hints that he’d like a wine gift.

She wanted advice on a half-case (six bottles) that would average $100 or less. I didn’t want to include anything as obvious as a Bordeaux first-growth from the affordable 1999 or 2001 vintages, or even a second-wave cult Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. Ed could suss out those for himself.

But this was a 50th birthday, after all, so it also wouldn’t be appropriate to fill the gift box with underrated Chablis and best-buy Dolcetto. I needed skyrockets, marching bands, that sort of thing.

After much careful consideration, I suggested the following options (which you can apply to any upcoming landmark or holiday events in your life, too):

1. Like most wine lovers, Ed regards Bordeaux as the world’s benchmark region. The 2002s are the most reasonably priced recent vintage, but let’s splurge on a 2000 for him, though we might have to dig to find it. How about Margaux’s silky Chateau Kirwan ($75), which is at the forefront of that appellation’s recent revival? It won’t be drinkable for a few years, but that’s fine. He’ll be reminded of this gift each time he looks in his wine cellar.

2. Italy next. Few wine lovers give proper appreciation to Barolo, and I don’t think Ed has any in his collection. Good ones are expensive, but we’re under budget. So let’s buy a Paolo Scavino Bric del Fiasc 2001 ($105), one of the best Piemontese bottlings from a deservedly hyped vintage. Tight now, it’ll open with a few hours in the decanter, or three more years in the bottle.

3. To Burgundy. Maison Joseph Drouhin’s Vosne Romanee Les Petits Monts ($110) is made by the engaging Veronique Drouhin – who also runs the family’s Oregon property – from grapes grown in her own small vineyard. I haven’t had the 2003, the current release, but the 2001 and 2002 were gorgeous. And in Burgundy, I always trust the producer and the terroir more than the vintage.

4. Spain’s Pago de los Capellanes Reserva 2001 ($50) is the perfect gift for a true wine lover. This Ribera del Duero ranks among my favorite reasonably priced reds anywhere in the world. It’s balanced and elegant, but has the seriousness of purpose to be drunk on a milestone birthday. I’d be tempted to buy two bottles.

5. I’ve written before about Christophe Baron’s single-vineyard Cayuse Syrahs, but if you’re not on the Cayuse mailing list, they’ll be hard to find. Instead, Ed would enjoy a K Syrah Cougar Hills 2003 ($45), which tastes like plums and blueberries.

6. This leaves one wine gift for Ed to go, so I’m heading back to Italy. Though the ultra-ripe Fanti Brunello di Montalcino 1999 ($90) is made in a California style by Stefano Chioccioli, the Tuscan sun shines through the velvety fruit and new oak. It isn’t as restrained and beautiful as the ‘99 or ‘01 Sesta di Sopra, or as balanced as the ‘01 Ciacci Piccolomini Vigna di Pianrossa, but if you like that full-throttle approach, it might well be the most exciting wine in our gift repertoire.

Bruce Schoenfeld is a HinsdaleCellars.com columnist, author and nationally published magazine writer on wine, travel and sports.

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St.-Emilion Enters the 21st Century

The Best of Bruce Schoenfeld

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Once every decade, meaning two-and-a-half times less frequent than a U.S. presidential election or a soccer World Cup, the governing body of Bordeaux’s St.-Emilion appellation reviews its classification of top properties. This is more often than the classification of Bordeaux’s Left Bank properties gets altered, which is once in its 201-year history, but it’s still not exactly a frequent occurrence. It happened last (September).

Before the Internet, it could take days for news to arrive about the various promotions and relegations. When Chateau Angelus and Chateau Beau-Sejour Becot gained Premier Grand Cru Classe status in 1996, I scoured newspapers for a week before finally calling France for an update.

This time, it arrived in the form of a morning e-mail from the St.-Emilion press officer. As expected, a handful of properties were added to the list of Grand Cru estates, and a few – most notably Chateau Cadet Bon, which had been demoted in 1986 and promoted again in 1996 – were dropped. But the more important move, the one that ultimately means Euros in the bank, is the promotion from Grand Cru Classe to Premier Grand Cru Classe. As many as four properties were considered possibilities. Two were actually chosen by the St.-Emilion panel.

As of last week, Chateau Troplong Mondot and Chateau Pavie Macquin join 13 other producers on St.-Emilion’s top rung. (Actually, even the top is further divided into Premier Grand Cru Classe A, which is only Cheval Blanc and Ausone, and Premier Grand Cru Classe B, which is everyone else. But all 15 will participate equally in Premier Grand Cru Classe events, such as the formal dinner held in conjunction with the VinExpo wine fair every second June.)

I agree with both promotions. Impeccably run by Christine Valette, who renovated the entire property after taking control in 1981 and brought on Michel Rolland – and, later, Stephane Derenoncourt – to supervise the winemaking, Troplong-Mondot has been producing top-quality wines for years. I’m especially a fan of the gorgeous 2002, which wasn’t a headline vintage in St.-Emilion but rewarded careful, restrained winemaking. And by all accounts, the 2005 is remarkable.

Unlike Chateau Pavie and Chateau Pavie-Decesse, Nicolas Thienpont’s Pavie-Macquin is not owned by the controversial (and wildly successful) supermarket magnate Gerard Perse, but its wines exhibit the same full-throttle style. This is a wine I like to buy in vintages that aren’t especially ripe, such as 1999 and 2004, though I’ve also very much enjoyed the 1995.

Fifteen is a large number of wineries for a top classification. Unfortunately, St.-Emilion is a close-knit village, and nobody wants to offend a neighbor. So promoting properties to the Premier Grand Cru Classe level is far easier than dropping them.

To me, Chateau La Gaffeliere (not to be confused with the hard-charging Canon-La Gaffeliere) and Chateau Trottevieille have been under-performing for years. It’s all personal taste, of course, but a demotion to Grand Cru might have been the jolt that inspired them to a renewed push for quality. That’s what revisiting a classification is for, after all.

It didn’t happen this time for Chateau Trottevieille in St.-Emilion. Perhaps 2016?

Eben Sadie’s Mission

Bruce Schoenfeld in Swartland, South Africa

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Every once in a while, I come across a winemaker with such confidence in his convictions, such philosophical purity to his techniques, that he’s capable of singlehandedly altering the mindset of his appellation.

Eben Sadie of South Africa’s Sadie Family Wines doesn’t have the renown of the Rhone’s Michel Chapoutier, or Burgundy’s Dominique Lafon, or California’s Helen Turley. But he’s every bit as certain as they are that he’s making wine as it should be made.

It’s hard to argue with him. In this viticultural pocket about 20 miles north of Paarl, Sadie is crafting the most compelling wine from South Africa I’ve ever tasted. There are only three of them, a Rhone-blend white (Palladius) and two Syrah-based reds (Columella and Sequillo), and all are made in small quantities (though there’s twice as much Sequillo, the product of a joint venture with a South African millionaire, as the others.)

Almost nobody I know, even in South Africa, has ever had them. But word is spreading.

Traveling through the Cape winelands after visiting Sadie and tasting through the line, I was quizzed on Sadie’s ways of working. Is it true he doesn’t irrigate? What about his plans to make wine in buried amphora, like the ancient Greeks? Is his Columella wine really that good?

Sadie also owns a winery, called Dits del Terra, in Spain’s similarly arid Priorat region. I haven’t sampled those wines yet – I hope to this summer – but the way he talks about them makes it evident that they’re a product of the same intense vision.

It’s the only way he knows how to work.

Sadie traveled the world for several years, living in France and Germany, Austria and Italy, Spain and Oregon, immersing himself in the winemaking culture of each country. He helped gain acclaim for the Spice Route brand as a young winemaker, but has moved away from that fruit-forward style. “When you’re 24, you want to show the world how good you are,” he says. “The wines start to taste like your ambition.”

Now 34, his company in Swartland consists of himself, his brother, and his sister. Its entire business is capturing the terroir of these jagged hills of the Western Cape in a bottle. Consistency, that staple of brand-building, doesn’t interest him, and with wines made a few hundred cases at a time, it doesn’t have to. “The problem with the New World is the obsession with perfection,” he says. “There’s no such thing as perfection. It’s all imperfection.”

Almost alone among the area’s viticulturists, Sadie refuses to mitigate the intensity of a South African summer by irrigating. “It alters the climate,” he explains. “I want the vintage to announce itself in my wine. I want it to speak of fortune, misfortune, whatever the case may be.”
By doing so, he makes the suave consistency of most wines seem simplistic by comparison. His 2004 Columella has the core of black fruit typical of Swartland Syrah (Shiraz), but a bracing layer of red fruit plays rhythm guitar to the bass of the cassis and plum. One hundred of the four hundred cases have come to the United States, imported by European Cellars’ Eric Solomon. They’re worth every bit of the $70 price.

A barrel sample of the 2005 shows off an utterly different South Africa wine. Powerful but not overbearing, with a Rhone meatiness to the Syrah (Shiraz), but utterly limpid in a way that I wish more Hermitage could be, it could well evolve into the most interesting wine South Africa has produced.

Such wines aren’t made from marketing plans or focus groups, or even the desire to please your customers. It takes an almost religious certitude in your methods, and the sense that no other way forward is possible. Agree with the winemaker or disagree, you can’t help but taste that certitude in the wine.

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