Selecting Drinking Collecting Obsessing

Selecting, Drinking,Collecting & Obsessing

A WSJ Guide to Wine

Lettie Teague & Will Lyons

The Wall Street JournalNew York, NY

Contents

How to Read This Book v

ON SELECTING WINE (INTRODUCED BY LETTIE TEAGUE)

What You Need to Know About Grape Varieties 11How to Read a Wine Label 17

How to Write (and Read) a Good Tasting Note 21How to Break the Rules When Ordering Wine 27

How to Order a Second Bottle 32How to Order Wine on an Airplane 38

ON DRINKING WINE (INTRODUCED BY WILL LYONS)

How to Make Sense of Wine Scents 47How—and Why—to Do the Swirl 52

How to Match Wine and Food Without Overthinking 57How to Break the Rules of Food-and-Wine Pairings 62

When, Why and How to Decant Wine 66How to Serve Wine at the Right Temperature 70

How to Select the Proper Glassware 75

ON COLLECTING WINE (INTRODUCED BY WILL LYONS)

How to Develop Wine Expertise 85

How to Start a Wine Cellar 91How to Think About Aging Wine 96

Understanding Wine Auctions and How They Work 100Go Inside the World’s Largest Wine Storage Facility 107

Why Wine Collectors Love Magnums 112

ON OBSESSING OVER WINE (INTRODUCED BY LETTIE TEAGUE)

What Happens at Winemaking School 121How to Buy a Vineyard 128

How to Make Your Own Bordeaux Blend 135A Visit to Château Lafite Rothschild 141

How a Burgundy Wine Domaine Became the World’s MostExclusive

146A Defense of Wine Snobbery 153

About This Book 159WSJwine Offer 160

How to Read This Book

Is there a “right” way to drink wine? For some, the answer is simple:If you’re enjoying it, you’re doing it correctly.

Others see the matter as more complex. They believe the utmostenjoyment comes from making a lifelong study of the art and scienceof wine—from what to drink, when to drink it and how to serve it,to the specialized tasks of growing grapes, bottling wine and storingthe finished product.

Whether you’re sure where you sit on the question, could be con-vinced to update your position, or just want to burnish your creden-tials, this book is for you.

“Selecting, Drinking, Collecting & Obsessing: A Wall Street Jour-nal Guide to Wine” gathers columns from our pages into sectionsthat follow the progression from choosing a bottle to getting themost out of it – and then to the next levels of collecting wine andturning it into a lifelong passion.

Each section is introduced by a member of our two-person wine-writing team. Will Lyons, our European correspondent, has been

recognized in the Louis Roederer International Wine WritingAwards and was short-listed for the prestigious Glenfiddich WineWriter of the Year in 2006. Lettie Teague, based in New York, haswon three James Beard Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distin-guished Writing Award.

Feel free to start from the beginning and read through, scan thecontents and pick a topic that strikes your fancy, or jump to the end.Whatever your relationship with wine, we think you’ll find plentyhere to make you more curious and better informed; to inspire youto make different, new and wiser decisions; and to make you laugh,think and appreciate wine and life just a little bit more. Enjoy.

Signed,

The Editors

vi • How to Read This Book

On Selecting Wine

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

What could be easier than buying a bottle of wine? After all,it’s available everywhere: in supermarkets, specialty shops, restau-rants—even online.

And yet wine buyers fret over their selections in a way that pur-chasers of beer or soda would rarely think to do. Wine, clearly, ismuch more than a drink.

So, how to go about it? Some oenophiles are emboldened by theuse of wine critics’ scores. Others are compelled by good tastingnotes. Some situations, however, call for specialized knowledge.

What’s the best wine to choose when you’ve got a long planeflight? In restaurants, should you opt for the familiar or the new? Ifthe time has come to order a second bottle, should you get anotherlike the first or try something else? If the latter, what should youchoose?

Thankfully, centuries of wine-drinker experimentation and studymeans many seemingly esoteric questions have thoughtful answers.

On planes, you’re better off forgoing Bordeaux and opting for anAustralian Shiraz. (A softer, richer wine is the right choice at highaltitude.) In a restaurant, pick the obscure over a well-known bot-tle: Familiar labels generally get bigger mark-ups because sommeliersknow they will sell, while they fill in their offerings with lesser-known wines they truly love. As for second bottles, avoid a repeatpurchase. Not only is it boring, but it’s unlikely to match the coursesyet to come.

Of course, it always helps to know the names of some importantgrapes. While there are thousands of varieties—in Italy alone—thereare only a few you’ll see over and over again all over the world:Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, Grenache, Pinot Noir, Syrah andRiesling.

My advice for avoiding stressful wine choices? Start with a frame-work that helps guide your decisions – then start exploring.

10 • Lettie Teague & Will Lyons

What You Need to Know About GrapeVarieties

BY WILL LYONS

“I know nothing about wine—where do I start?” is perhaps the mostfrequent question I am asked. An obvious starting point is with grapevarieties, which each have their own distinctive character and flavor.

There are more than 5,000 varieties of wine grapes planted in theworld. Luckily, for those new to the subject, only 100 or so haveenough appeal to be deemed commercially viable. Luckier still, it’s arelatively small number that have found international recognition.

These used to be referred to as the Noble Grape Varieties, a termcoined by the British wine trade to describe the classic grapes ofEurope (though it’s no longer used in professional wine exams).Nicholas King, research and development manager at the Wine &Spirits Education Trust, says it drifted out of use in about 2003. After

using “common” or “international,” the educational body has nowsettled on the term “principal” grape varieties.

Whatever the term, it refers to the eight classic vari-eties—Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvi-gnon Blanc, Syrah, Grenache and Riesling—whose flavor and charac-ter have led to them being exported around the world. Their successhas, in many ways, been detrimental to their reputation: the level ofplanting being such that quality has inevitably been diluted.

Wherever you are on the wine journey, whether a connoisseur or anovice, an understanding and appreciation of these varieties will ben-efit you enormously.

I rather like the old term for them as, in their finest form, thesegrapes are capable of producing wines that are among the very best inthe world. Here’s my guide to what every wine drinker should know.

CABERNET SAUVIGNON

Principally associated with the red wines of the Médoc in Bordeaux,this variety has been planted all over the world. A late ripener, itssmall red berries produce wines that when young have a concen-trated, dark color and taste predominantly of blackcurrant. YoungCabernet can also have a spicy, herby character and a lot of tannin.With age (and the very best will be long lasting), they develop sec-ondary notes of cedar. Often blended with other varieties, CabernetSauvignon is also grown in Australia, Chile, South Africa and Cali-fornia, where it is very successful.


(Jean-Manuel Duvivier)

CHARDONNAY

Due to the fact that it can be grown successfully almost anywhere,this white grape variety from Burgundy is a global superstar. It canbe all things to all men, from rich, buttery and nutty in Burgundy totaut, clean, crisp and dry (most notably in Chablis); sparkling where it

Selecting, Drinking, Collecting & Obsessing • 13

is part of the Champagne blend; and ripe with a nose of exotic fruitsin warmer regions. Sublime in Burgundy, Chardonnay is also suc-cessful in Australia, California, New Zealand and Italy.

GRENACHE

Powerful, low in acidity, high in alcohol, this hearty red-wine grapeis the staple for Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where it finds its greatestexpression. Extensively planted, it is believed to have originated inSpain before being introduced to the Rhône valley, where it producesrich, fruity wines. Often blended with Syrah and Mourvèdre, youwill also find Grenache in Australia, California, Spain, and through-out the Mediterranean basin.

MERLOT

Soft, supple and fruity, Merlot is the yin to Cabernet Sauvignon’syang. Mainly grown on the Right Bank of Bordeaux, it is the prin-cipal variety of Pomerol and is often blended with Cabernet. It pro-duces red wines that are packed full of fruit notes such as blackcurrantand plums—wines that can be high in alcohol but, due to their softtannins, can be drunk young. Outside of France, it is grown in north-ern Italy, California, Washington state and Chile.

PINOT NOIR

Delicate, early-ripening and, with thin skins, difficult to grow, PinotNoir grapes find their natural home in France’s Burgundy region.Here, the variety produces texturally light red wines that have aromasof raspberry, cherry, violets and sometimes game. It is also success-


fully grown in cooler regions such as Oregon, Germany, parts ofAustralia, California and New Zealand, where it achieves greatness.As well as producing red wines (for which it is rarely blended), it isalso grown in Champagne and blended with Chardonnay and PinotMeunier.

RIESLING

This ancient variety from Germany is particularly popular withoenophiles. In Germany it produces wines that are crisp, light andfruity. Their nose can range from pungent perfume to flowers, limes,lemons and, with age, petrol. Their charm is the way they can marryacidity with either dryness or sweetness on the palate. The very bestare always refreshing. Riesling is also grown in Alsace, Australia,Oregon and California.

SAUVIGNON BLANC

Refreshing, grassy, aromatic, scintillating, light, direct—there aremyriad descriptors suitable for this white grape variety. Now widelyplanted, it was originally grown in Bordeaux and the Loire, where itproduces a crisp, dry style. Today it is best known for its new spiritualhome in New Zealand, where it overflows with ripe, tropical charac-teristics such as gooseberry, pineapple and green pepper.

SYRAH OR SHIRAZ

In France, Syrah produces a dark, brooding red wine, packed full oftannin, that smells overwhelmingly of pepper and can age beautifully.In the northern Rhône it is found in such famous appellations as Her-


mitage and Côte-Rôtie. In Australia, where it is known as Shiraz, itproduces an altogether different wine, replacing its savory northernRhône notes with dark fruit, chocolate and licorice. Widely plantedaround the world, this variety produces big, bold red wines that arebest drunk with red meat.

This article originally ran on March 27, 2014, under the headline “Get toKnow the Global Superstars of Wine.”


How to Read a Wine Label

BY WILL LYONS

Wine labels can be a little like cryptic crosswords: unfathomable,infuriating and intimidating.

Browsing the shelves of one of my favorite local wine merchants,a cozy little shop in London where the wines are stacked in bins thatstretch from the floor to the ceiling, I was faced with a scrambled col-lage of labels. There were wines with chickens on the label, wineswith etched drawings of Neo-Gothic houses, brightly coloredImpressionist-style labels, watercolors depicting far-off vineyards orsimply the name of a French village written in attractive, bold font.Some wines had the name of the grape variety clearly marked acrossthe label, but on the whole the display presented a pretty mysteriouspicture.

No wonder most people were wandering around in silence, Ithought, afraid to reveal their lack of knowledge. The subject of wine

can reward a lifetime of study, but for those coming to it for the firsttime, it must feel like a puzzle.

The good news is that armed with just a few simple rules, you candecipher the most complicated of wine labels, helping you avoid thepitfalls of confusing a sweet with a dry wine or a full-bodied red witha light, fruity Beaujolais.

Of course, there are myriad exceptions. But when it comes toEuropean wine, the first puzzle to solve is that wine producers uselocation as the descriptor of the taste, style and character of a wine,and not grape variety. If it says Burgundy on the label, it will be aChardonnay if it is white, or a Pinot Noir if red.

As a rule of thumb, the more specific the location, the higher thequality of wine. For example, Meursault in Burgundy is the name of avillage with a particularly strong reputation for producing Chardon-nay. Saint-Émilion is a village outside of Bordeaux, whose neighbor-ing vineyards are known for producing blends of Merlot-dominatedred wine. So a wine with Saint-Émilion on the label will be moreinteresting than one that is labeled as a generic Bordeaux. Everyregion uses a specific blend of grape varieties, which, with a littleapplication, one can learn.

The year the wine is made is referred to as the vintage. Most wineis made to be drunk straight away, certainly within five years of itsbottling. Fine wine benefits from bottle age, as it develops tertiarycharacteristics and more mature, complex flavors. These wines can becellared for 10 to 20 years.

The numbers on the bottom right-hand corner of the label are thealcohol percentage. Labeling rules can vary by country, granting the


winemaker a tolerance of around 0.5%. So it’s worth rememberingthat if it is as high as, say, 14%, it could actually be 14.5%. Regularreaders will know that I favor drinking wines with an alcohol levelof 11%-13.5%, which sadly, due to modern viticultural practices thatfavor a fuller, riper style, are becoming harder to find.

Labels also offer a slew of other information, from the name ofthe individual vineyard and the winemaker, to whether the wine hasbeen bottled at the winery, to whether it has been produced fromold vines, or “vieilles vignes” (older vines produce fewer grapes, withmore concentration and flavor). All of these tend to suggest the winehas been made by an individual winemaker from fruit grown in theestate’s vineyards.

Aside from the label, one can also identify European wine by look-ing at the shape of the bottle. All Bordeaux wines come in a high-shouldered, straight bottle. The glass is green for red wine and clearfor white. Speaking generally, outside of France, these high-shoul-dered bottles are used for a plethora of styles, including CabernetSauvignon, Merlot and Malbec.

Gently shouldered bottles are found in Burgundy, the Loire andthe Rhône. Outside of France, these are also—but not without excep-tion—used for bottling Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Long, thin bottles are used in Germany and Alsace. These invari-ably contain Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc and Gewürztraminer.In Germany, green bottles indicate the wine comes from the Mosel,and brown from the Rhine, where the wines tend to be drier.

These general guidelines will help in understanding a wine label


and, more importantly, take you a step toward solving the perennialpuzzle—how good is this wine?

This article originally ran on July 22, 2011.


How to Write (and Read) a Good TastingNote

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

If price is what most wine buyers notice first, the second must be thewine-tasting note. In fact, I’d bet a few good lines of prose tacked ona store shelf sells more bottles than a low price or a high score. Tast-ing notes help would-be buyers by telling them what the wine tasteslike, smells like and pairs with (chicken, meat or fish), not to mentionwhen to drink it (now or in 10 years). And yet, wine-tasting notesare often mocked and lampooned as pretentious and silly, or both.

One former sommelier turned blogger recently raised this brand ofmockery to a high art when he awarded a “Pulitzer Prize for WineReviews.” Ron Washam, who calls himself “the HoseMaster,” notedin a guest post on Tim Atkin’s wine website that Wine Spectatorcritic James Molesworth had mastered the form. Mr. Washam posted,tongue firmly planted in his cheek:

“Molesworth has created what can only be described as an amazingbody of work in very short sentences. With the precision of E.E.Cummings, the opaqueness of Donald Barthelme, combined with anintimate and commanding knowledge of fruit rivaled only by DelMonte, Molesworth entices us into a world where wine isn’t just abeverage, it’s the key to unlocking the secrets of the human soul.”

Mr. Washam’s post goes on to offer this sample James Molesworthtasting note: “Ripe and lush, but very pure, with gorgeous yellowapple, white peach and Cavaillon melon fruit aromas and flavors,lined with honeysuckle, heather and quinine and sailing through thelong, stone- and mineral-framed finish.”

While this write-up may be a touch florid, it shows a remarkableattention to detail (not to mention expertise with fruit). It also makesme curious to taste a wine that inspired this kind of prose.

It’s not the type of language that most wine retailers employ—infact it’s the sort that many eschew. Lorena Ascencios, head winebuyer for Astor Wines & Spirits in New York, said that elaboratedescriptors mean little to her customers who simply want “a goodbottle of wine.”

Although Ms. Ascencios writes most of the tasting notes thatappear in the store, she encourages her staff to contribute “staffpicks”—and lays out only one rule: The write-ups “cannot bash otherbrands.” Ms. Ascencios discourages brevity because “a longer noteseems more sincere.”

She uses simple words, like “rich” or “light-bodied”—the kindof language that non-oenophiles can understand. She also indicates


whether or not a wine is oaked. “Customers always want to know,”she said.

I can personally testify to the power of Astor staff prose. I’ve pur-chased wines I didn’t know I wanted—obscure Italian reds, small-producer Champagnes and several cheap roses—on account of enthu-siastic, sometimes long notes. More often than not it turned out quitewell.

I’ve also been moved to action by the tasting notes written by buy-ers at the K&L chain of California wine stores. As at Astor, K&L staffmembers can write almost anything they choose, but unlike Astor’swebsite, the K&L website also includes wine critics’ scores. It’s thetasting notes that are key, K&L vice president Trey Beffa told me.“We try to refrain from ‘pointing’ wine,” he said, referring to thepractice of citing the points without prose.

At the Wine Spectator, a publication famous for its numericalscores, the magazine’s executive editor, Tom Matthews, maintainsthat words matter just as much as numbers. In fact, Mr. Matthews,who estimates that he has written more than 10,000 tasting notes inhis 26-year career, called tasting notes a real art form—even if theyare easy to parody. “Whenever you try to translate a feeling intowords—whether it’s about wine or music or art—it’s easy to make funof,” said Mr. Matthews, who gamely tweeted about the “Pulitzer” thatMr. Molesworth’s work in his publication earned.

Meanwhile, Mr. Molesworth said that he was “flattered” by theaward and that some people even emailed to congratulate him, notrealizing it was a prank. “Tasting notes are meant to inspire,” he said.In fact, Mr. Matthews said he encourages his staff to “keep it personal


and fresh,” in their notes—albeit at 50 words or less (shorter than thisparagraph). He advises his staff to write much less if the wine getsa low score. “The lower the score, the shorter the note,” said Mr.Matthews. But even a perfect 100-point wine isn’t to receive morethan 50 words.

I told Mr. Matthews that I’d read restaurant reviews where thenumber of stars and the actual description of the meal didn’t seemto match up. What did Mr. Matthews do when the wine’s score andnote were far apart? In the case of a discrepancy, the staff did a “reme-dial” tasting that involved re-tasting and rescoring the wine, saidMr. Matthews, adding that such variances tended to happen with lessexperienced tasters.

Some critics use words as if they were scores. English wine writerClive Coates rates wines “Fine” or “Very fine plus” or “Very goodplus” or “Disappointing,” at the end of his tasting notes, whose stylecould best be described as “anti-Molesworthian.” Here is the verypractical Mr. Coates’s complete entry on Domaine Louis Jadot Closde la Roche in his book, “My Favorite Burgundies”: “Full colour.Rich. Concentrated, closed nose. Full body, concentrated, tannic,backward, and very profound on the palate. Very lovely fruit. Lots ofenergy. Splendid finish. Very fine plus.”

“The whole point it seems to me is to convey information. Notemotion,” Mr. Coates wrote in a recent email. He admitted his noteswere utilitarian, even boring, but he believed a reader only needed toknow a few basics: “The size of the wine, its balance, its elegance andits potential for aging.” As for those fanciful, Molesworthian write-ups, Mr. Coates felt that notes with a plethora of adjectives simply


said too much. “I want to be able to taste the wine in my imagina-tion,” he wrote.

Of course, some wine drinkers have better imaginations than oth-ers, and after many decades as a wine critic, it’s likely that Mr. Coatescan fill in the blanks of just about any utilitarian tasting note. But forthose of us whose range of reference is smaller, a more elaborate notemight be useful.

As a reader, I look for a few basic facts in a tasting note (that’s prettymuch all I tend to write as well; I’m more Coates than Molesworth,alas). But I was gratified to find the same is true of Eric LeVine, thefounder of CellarTracker, a website with a repository of over 3.5 mil-lion tasting notes written by passionate amateurs. Mr. LeVine saidthat the most useful things he found in a note were mentions ofwhether or not a wine was ready to drink, as well as its structureand personality. He looked for notes about fruit, acid and tannin. Mr.LeVine also wanted to know about “pleasure”—did the note-takerenjoy what he or she drank?

My friend Richard said he reads notes by amateurs and profession-als but never retailers (“they’re just trying to sell me something”).There is one thing that he cares about most: aroma. He likes to readabout the aromas that others had found and see if he could locate sim-ilar ones. “What’s really unique about tasting notes is what peoplesmell; there are things in there that are delightful,” Richard said.

I thought Richard would appreciate hearing the James Molesworthtasting note—it was, after all, full of aromas. Richard paused, thenchuckled a bit. “Wow, I’m impressed. There’s someone who wants tobe F. Scott Fitzgerald,” he said.


Maybe that’s the real story of wine-tasting notes—and why we hateand love them so much. From wine writers to retailers to regularwine drinkers, we all hold a secret desire to be F. Scott Fitzgerald—in50 words or less.

This article originally ran on Sept. 28, 2013, under the headline “Wine-Tasting Notes Don’t Need to Overflow.”


How to Break the Rules When Ordering Wine

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

As wine drinkers have grown more discerning, not to mentiondiverse, certain “rules” about ordering wine in restaurants may nolonger apply. For example, a man is no longer considered the auto-matic recipient of a wine list; women are (more) frequently regardedas eligible, too. In fact, I was handed the list just the other week (fulldisclosure: my male companion was frantically waving the sommelieraway).

Cowardly dining companions aside, one reason women may begetting the wine list more often may be that there are more femalesommeliers working the floor. Belinda Chang, wine director at theModern in New York, estimates there are 30% more female somme-liers now than when she started out in 1995.

Ms. Chang (who says she is handed the list 50% of the time whenshe’s dining out) takes a direct approach to determining the gender

of The Decider when she’s working. She simply approaches the tableand asks, “Who’s in charge?” Half the time, said Ms. Chang, “Theman will point to the woman.” (Though for some couples, this senti-ment may apply only to the question of wine.)

Ms. Chang said she can pretty much predict who is going to endup with the wine list. The aperitif is usually the giveaway.” If a guyorders a glass of lager, I probably won’t be handing the list to him,”said Ms. Chang, who gives a man—or woman—who orders a glass ofGrüner Veltliner much better odds.

Meanwhile, the wine list has lost a bit of its ceremony, not to men-tion heft. Another rule gone by the wayside is that a serious wine listshould look—and feel—like a library book. Today, a wine list may beno more than a few sheets of paper or even the back of a menu. Itcould even be a tablet computer. (Except at a steakhouse. Where beefis king, the wine list comes leather-bound.)

Scott Monette, co-owner and wine director of the Flagstaff Housein Boulder, Colo., switched from a traditional wine list to an iPad afew months ago—a move apparently so shocking it made the localnews. With a wine list that features nearly 3,000 selections and isupdated daily, Mr. Monette said he needed to reduce his paper andprinting costs. So far it hasn’t been cheaper—the restaurant spentabout $10,000 on 13 iPads. But in the long run Mr. Monette said heexpects to save money.

A smart wine list might be the reason to dismantle rule No. 3:Sommeliers are the best source of advice. With wine lists that allowdiners to access the Internet, sommeliers may not be diners’ firstsource of information. Electronically emancipated diners can now


look up descriptions, get the latest wine scores—and even find outhow much that Cabernet really costs at retail.

I asked Mr. Monette if he was afraid the iPads would stop his cus-tomers from talking to his sommeliers. And did his sommeliers resentthe change? I experienced a bit of iPad antipathy recently myselfduring lunch with a wine collector who spent about half an hourresearching a bottle on his own iPad—ignoring both me and the hov-ering sommelier.

Mr. Monette wasn’t worried. Though his wine stewards had beennervous at the beginning, Mr. Monette said the tablets had actuallyinspired his customers to ask better questions. According to Mr.Monette, there was a “deeper discussion” between stewards and din-ers. (I wondered if that included such penetrating questions as “Whyis this Cabernet marked up four times retail?”)

This brings us to the fourth rule ripe for discarding: When indoubt, order the second-cheapest wine on the list. The idea behindthis rule was always that the second-cheapest wine would be a prettygood deal and the person ordering it wouldn’t look like a cheap-skate—or at least not as much as if he or she had ordered the wine atthe absolute bottom.

Mark Ellenbogen, founding wine director of the famed SlantedDoor in San Francisco and now the wine director of San Francisco’sBar Agricole, was dismissive of the second-cheapest-wine rule. “Thesecond-cheapest wine is a formulaic maximum that obviously doesn’twork,” he said firmly.

Obviously? Well, it certainly wasn’t easy to find the second-cheap-est wine on Bar Agricole’s list. That’s because Mr. Ellenbogen has


organized it mostly by producers—a few famous, most obscure. Thesecond-cheapest wines that I found were the 2009 Señorío di P.Peciña Rioja ($29) and the 2009 Domaine de la Pépière CabernetFranc ($30).

In many cases, the second-cheapest wine isn’t such a great deal. AsChristopher Oppewall, wine director of the Hospitality RestaurantGroup of Cleveland noted, “The markups on the more expensivewines are much less.” This is pretty much a universal truth—a winethat costs $9 at retail will often show up on a restaurant list for $28.

On the other hand, on the Blue Point Cellar Big Bottle list, a mag-num of the terrific 2006 Quintessa, a top Bordeaux-style blend fromNapa Valley is $275 —about $40 more than retail.

My fifth and final invalid rule is the largely unspoken one that dic-tated certain wines—Pinot Grigios, Merlots and Chardonnays (par-ticularly from California) were unfit for consumption by well-informed oenophiles. Wines such as these were considered obviousor “starter” beverages that true wine lovers learned to outgrow.

But as wine directors have discovered compelling examples ofthese grapes, wine drinkers have responded accordingly. Seriouswine lists feature minerally Chardonnays from California’s RussianRiver and Sonoma Coast, well-structured Merlots from Napa andWashington state and complex Pinot Grigios from the Italian regionsof Friuli and Alto Adige.

Even Mr. Ellenbogen, whose wine list is an exercise in vinous eso-terica, has a Chardonnay among his Bar Agricole offerings, albeit onemade in the mountains of Jura, France, and blended with the Sava-gin grape. When I complimented Mr. Ellenbogen on the selection,


he disputed that he deliberately picked the obscure. It was just that hebelieved the best wine values were in the “least known” parts of theworld.

That’s a sixth rule, as yet unbroken: A great wine list (and a greatwine director) will always have a point of view.

This article originally ran on April 9, 2011, under the headline “SomeWine ‘Rules’ Are Made to Be Broken.”


How to Order a Second Bottle

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

First impressions matter the most. According to college recruiters,corporate executives and humorist Will Rogers (among others), “Younever get a second chance to make a first impression.” But what maybe true about life is not necessarily true about wine. In fact, I’d argueit’s the second bottle that counts most of all (unless it’s a second bottleof the same wine—but more on that later).

The first wine prepares the palate—its responsibility is pure refresh-ment. It’s more vinous entertainment than vinous enlightenment. Oras Michael Madrigale, sommelier of Boulud Sud and Bar Boulud,says: “The first bottle is the overture, the second is the crescendo.”(That’s the way sommeliers talk when their restaurants are locatedacross from Lincoln Center.)

I almost always start with a white wine that doesn’t have too muchweight, in terms of fruit and oak, but has plenty of acidity. That’s

why a Chablis is so often my default choice. I might also opt for aminerally Chenin Blanc, or maybe a dry Riesling or Grüner Velt-liner. Other common options include that Spanish mainstay, Albar-iño, as well as Soave, Verdicchio and Vermentino (Italy is particularlyfertile ground for first-bottle whites).

If the first bottle is sparkling, it almost always has to be Cham-pagne—most often a simple nonvintage, though occasionally a tête ducuvée (the prestige bottling of a Champagne house). I’ll rarely startwith a cheap sparkling wine, as it seems like too great a leap to thesecond, inevitably much better, bottle. It would be like risking thevinous equivalent of the bends, the decompression sickness of deep-sea divers who ascend too quickly from the bottom of the ocean.

When it comes to rosé, I’m of two minds. Many people I knowdislike rosé—they think, as one friend of mine does, that rosé signals“cheap.” (Never mind how fashionable rosé has become.) But I alsofind that if I order rosé first, I often want to keep drinking it—there’ssomething so seductive about a good rosé that I’ve even committedthe sin of ordering a second bottle of the same wine.

And it is considered a sin of sorts to order a second of the same.People who drink the same wine twice over the course of a meal arenot only displaying a lack of imagination and missing a chance to trysomething new, they’re also probably doing a disservice to the meal.After all, how likely is it that the wine will go as well with the secondcourse as it did with the first?

I feel like there should be a warning posted on wine lists: “Order-ing the first bottle twice may be injurious to your wine education.”Alas, there are plenty of people guilty of this particular sin. At Tony’s


(Marc Rosenthal)

in Houston, which happens to have a really good wine list, therestaurant’s general manager, Scott Sulma, told me that his customersordered the same bottle “about 50%” of the time.


Has he noticed any particular patterns? “Cabernet drinkers tend tostay with the same Cabernet more often than anyone,” Mr. Sulmasaid. The people who tended to be the most adventurous were adven-turous with both their first and second wines, he noted.

And what about that second wine? What sort of qualities should itpossess? According to Aldo Sohm, chef sommelier of Le Bernardin inNew York, the second wine should build on or maintain the qualitiesof the first. Mr. Sohm believes that first and second bottles are equallyimportant, though he noted that the second wine should “evolve”from the first in terms of both complexity and price. My friend Mark,a collector, believes much the same thing—although the last time I atedinner at his house, he served two wines that I consider second-bottletypes, 1998 Soldera Brunello normale and 1998 Soldera Brunello ris-erva. Both are rare, and both are great wines.

Not that a great second bottle always has to be a great wine. AsMr. Sohm noted, it can also be the proper evolution from the previ-ous bottle. That was the case at a recent dinner with friends at I Trullirestaurant in New York. I asked one of my dining companions, arosé-avoider, to choose the first bottle. “I like to start with a nice, crispdry white. I think it should be something that people are comfortablewith,” my friend opined. “Maybe a Vermentino or a Soave.”

Just then, I Trulli’s owner and wine director, Nicola Marzovilla,appeared. He suggested starting with a light red. “Why does every-one start with white?” he asked. He had a section of his wine list, enti-tled Chillable Reds, for this very purpose. Alas, we were all fixed on awhite. “Then try something different,” said Mr. Marzovilla. “Order aNosiola instead.”


The Nosiola, a Vermentino-like white wine from Trentino, wasdelicious—light, bright and charming—and a perfect start to the meal.(It also came with a perfect first-bottle price tag of $39. That’s anotherof my first-bottle rules: It should be inexpensive enough that the sec-ond bottle can cost a bit more.) We complimented Mr. Marzovilla onhis choice.

Did many people order the same wine twice at his restaurant? Iasked. Mr. Marzovilla looked horrified by the idea and practicallythrew up his hands. “Why do people do this?” he asked, addressingthe world at large as much as our table. “You wouldn’t have saladsalad salad for your meal!”

The Nosiola was so delicious and so drinkable, it soon disap-peared—too soon, in fact, as our appetizers had just arrived but thebottle was empty. We had two courses to go—would a second bottlesee us through, or would we need to plan for a third?

A third bottle presents an altogether different dilemma—and it putsthe second bottle into a different category as well. The second bottle,instead of being the crescendo, becomes more of an intermezzo. Myfriends and I discussed our dilemma. What should the price and char-acter of the second bottle be? Should it be another white or should itbe a red? We thought it should be pricier than the first wine but notthat much more expensive since we now had to budget for a possiblethird.

We pored over the wine list, weighing our options. There wereattractive Barberas, Dolcettos and other light reds that would pairwell with our pastas and provide a good transition to our next pos-sible wine. Mr. Marzovilla reappeared and suggested a Tuscan wine


made with grapes grown on his own estate, the 2010 MassoferratoSangiovese. You’ll love it, he said—and at $39, the price was certainlyright for a wine that might not be the last of the night. We quicklyagreed, and Mr. Marzovilla returned with the wine.

He poured us a taste and we all concurred it was delicious—markedby bright red fruit and a lively acidity. My friend the rosé-hater lovedit so much that he declared it was a “Sangiovese by way of Morey-St. Denis,” a reference to a famous wine village in Burgundy. As Mr.Marzovilla began filling our glasses, I noticed he wasn’t pouring froma regular wine bottle but a liter—a third larger than a standard-sizebottle. Our problem was solved. Sometimes a perfect second bottleisn’t a matter of evolution, complexity, color or price—sometimes it’ssimply a matter of size.

This article originally ran on March 15, 2013, under the headline “SecondThoughts: How to Follow Your First Bottle.”


How to Order Wine on an Airplane

BY WILL LYONS

We all dream of flying first class. Admit it, when the plane pushesback from the gate and begins its taxi to the runway, those of us notquite as close to the cockpit as we had hoped begin to entertain envi-ous thoughts about those up front, sipping vintage Champagne andnibbling their smoked salmon and Osetra caviar.

I’m one of those who still experience a little pang of excitement asthe catering trolley makes its way down the aisle. But such has beenthe downgrading of air travel in recent years that food is no longer agiven, let alone wine. To compound matters, modern aviation regu-lations mean the oenophile hasn’t a hope of bringing his favorite bot-tle on board.

I’m always reminded of the final scene of “Hannibal” (2001) whenAnthony Hopkins, flying in economy, takes delivery of a Dean &Deluca hamper complete with a half-bottle of 1996 Château Phélan

( Jean-Manuel Duvivier)

Ségur from Saint-Estèphe, an assortment of fruits, caviar and cheeseand, infamously, a tiny pot of brain.

Not that I would recommend drinking such a delicate wine insuch a small glass at 35,000 feet. Wines taste very different in theair; a combination of altitude and low humidity tends to accentuatea wine’s acidity and alcohol. Meanwhile, the cabin’s dry atmospherewill make the tannins—the bitter-tasting compounds found in redwine—more pronounced. And it’s not just the wines that are affected.The way we taste things also changes at altitude. As the recycledcabin air dries the mucus in our nasal passages, our sense of smelldiminishes, wreaking havoc with our olfactory appreciation.


Saint-Estèphe is known for producing wines with plenty of tan-nins and acidity in their youth—Dr. Lecter would be advised toplump for something a little riper and softer to pair with his brain;maybe an Australian Shiraz.

Which brings me to Australia and its flagship carrier, Qantas,which has, for the second year running, picked up a string of prizesin the annual “Cellars in the Sky” awards. The airline was judged tohave the best overall wine cellar, above Emirates, which won silver,and El-Al and Cathay Pacific, which shared bronze.

Qantas says its success lies in its wine panel, created in 2003 andcomprising three Australian winemakers: Vanya Cullen, StephenPannell and Tom Carson. They meet several times a year and assesshundreds of wines, asking questions such as, does it represent a pre-mium wine? Is it a benchmark of its style? Is it drinking well and willit show well under flying conditions?

A spokesman for the panel says altitude dulls a wine’s aroma,potentially ruining a good bottle of wine. Soft fruit and citrus flavorsare reduced, whereas wines with riper, red-berried fruit tend notto be so badly affected. Meanwhile, a young wine can seem hardwhereas older wines tend to taste better.

With its mainly Australian wine list, Qantas has got it right. Myadvice to fliers has always been to opt for those wines that are bigger,riper and more expressive, with low acidity. Something like a Merlot,Pinotage or Shiraz for reds or Chardonnay, Semillon and Viognierfor whites.

It does seem a shame, though, that some of the finest wines in theworld are consumed under such poor conditions. Having said that, if


I were traveling first class and were handed a cool glass of efferves-cent vintage Krug after takeoff, I’d take it.

This article originally ran on Feb. 20, 2014, under the headline “GettingOn Top of Wine’s Altitude Problem.”


On Drinking Wine

BY WILL LYONS

There is a difference between drinking wine and tasting it. Bothhave merits it is foolish to deny.

When we drink, we don’t give much thought to what is in ourglass. The job of a chilled glass of uncomplicated rosé, poured swiftlyfrom the bottle on a hot summer’s day, is to refresh, lift the moodand jolt our taste buds into action as we await the arrival of food.To extract the most possible sensory delight from a bottle, however,needs a little extra effort.

Wine isn’t as complicated as most experts would lead you tobelieve, but like the appreciation of music, art or literature the morecare and attention one gives to it the more pleasures will unravel.

When I was training as a young wine merchant in London, one ofmy first jobs was to prepare the wines for the lunches my employerheld for his more illustrious clients. I would be given a list of wines,

usually containing the best of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napaand—always—a vintage Port to serve, and great care was taken intheir opening, presentation and tasting.

Stepping into the damp, chilly cellar to find the bottles, I wouldcheck the labels and make sure the year and estate were correct. Iwould unwrap the small coil of foil and pull the cork. This little rit-ual, repeated hundreds of times, never lost its appeal. As I poured asmall measure into a tasting glass, inspecting its color, I would giveit a large sniff. (It is our noses, not our taste buds, which pick up thelayers of flavor a great wine reveals.)

After checking that the wine’s temperature was correct, I wouldcarefully pour it into a decanter before presenting it to my boss.Invariably, he would take a sip and ask “What do you think?”

There are dozens of ways to enjoy the taste of wine, and at least asmany occasions for doing so. Everyone will have their preference; Iam for learning the basics, then improvising. As my boss’s questionillustrates, there is no better palate than your own.


How to Make Sense of Wine Scents

BY WILL LYONS

A few years after I embarked on a career as a wine critic, I foundmyself in the cellars of a fairly well-known Bordeaux producer. Mywife and I were on holiday and I had surreptitiously scheduled anafternoon appointment at a château not far from Saint-Émilion. Theonly problem: The vigneron hadn’t been told, and I hadn’t told mywife. So, as he poured out his first barrel sample, I thought I’d betterconcentrate.

Lowering my nose into the tasting glass, I managed to detect afew telltale aromas: blackberry, red currant, vanilla and a hint of darkchocolate. It was enough. The vigneron’s mood visibly improved andmy spouse later admitted that it was the first time she actually believedthat, when it came to wine, I knew what I was talking about.

Wine appreciation is fundamentally linked to smell. Much of whatwe taste in the glass—about 70%—is based on its bouquet. There are

more than 1,000 different aroma molecules in wine and yet, outsidethe rarefied world of professional wine tasting, I suspect most drinkerscan only detect a handful.

Our sense of smell is one of our most powerful senses. But unlikeour eyes, which automatically recognize color, and our ears, whichare attuned to detect sounds, our nose needs to be trained. What I haddemonstrated in the cellars of Château Fonroque wasn’t some sortof magic trick but an analysis based on concentration and olfactorymemory. It isn’t hard, anyone can do it. But it does take a little appli-cation and time. And as anyone who has sufficiently developed theirsense of smell and learned the basics of a wine-tasting vocabulary willtell you, once mastered, wine will never taste the same again.

Our sense of smell comes into play not just when we sniff a glassbut when the wine is in our mouth as well. This is because our senseof smell is based above and behind our nose. Indeed, our nose ismerely a passageway to our olfactory bulb, which is part of the limbicsystem, whose other functions include emotion and long-term mem-ory. Hence when we walk into a room and smell a particular aroma,we are transported back to our childhood. In my case, this is alwayswood polish, as my school had wooden floors.

Trained wine tasters will have spent a fair amount of time inflorists’ shops, bakeries, vegetable stalls and spice counters, learningand honing their smell memory banks. I have even known one Mas-ter of Wine student who used to eat Parma Violet sweets so that hecould detect the faint trace of violet in Malbec. A more conventionalroute is simply to taste as much wine as you can. But unless you arein the wine trade or live in a city like London, which hosts a large



number of wine tastings, this is both expensive and logistically chal-lenging.

Around 25 years ago, in the Burgundian town of Chalon-sur-Saône, an amateur wine enthusiast named Jean Lenoir decided tosolve this problem. Convinced from the wine-tasting classes he washosting that more needed to be done to educate people on taste andsmell, Mr. Lenoir identified 54 aromas in red, white and rosé wines.

Collecting everything from pineapple to cut hay and dark choco-late, he bottled the scents in tiny perfume bottles and created Le Nezdu Vin. Starting at €25, each kit comes with an instruction manual,


a collection of numbered aroma vials and a key to tell you what theyare.

Mr. Lenoir suggests settling down in a quiet room and blindlysmelling a random bottle. With time, your nose should be able toidentify a number of aromatics.

He divides wine aromas into three categories: primary (those thatoriginate from the grape variety); secondary (those that come fromfermentation); and tertiary (the aromas that emerge from matura-tion). Within these broad categories, there are five essential notes:fruity (anything from lemon to blackberry); floral (acacia to violet);vegetal and spicy notes (green pepper to thyme); animal notes(leather and butter); and roasted notes (toast and coffee).

There are flaws to the system: Some scents are hard to identify, andit is a different skill smelling the aromas in isolation, compared withthe crowded combinations found in a glass of wine. But for anyoneunfamiliar with certain fruit descriptors, it is extremely useful. Per-sonally, I like to use it to keep sharp and to keep on top of the berryscents, which are often confused. There is now a range of kits, fromwine faults and oak to coffee. Recently, Mr. Lenoir launched Le Nezdu Whisky (€300).

Created in conjunction with whisky writer Charles MacLean, thekit contains an eclectic group of smells, including tar, broiled meatand tobacco leaf. Mr. MacLean says it is useful for identifying certainaroma profiles. For example, if a whisky has a fruit character, one canthen ask if it is fresh, dried or tinned.

My advice would be to try to master the scent of a few unusual butprevalent smells. Then, the next time a sommelier hands you a glass


to taste, or you find yourself in the cellars of a well-known winery,you’ll be able to sniff like an expert.

This article originally ran on Oct. 17, 2013, under the headline “MakingSense of Wine Scents.”


How—and Why—to Do the Swirl

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

After decades of wine drinking, there are certain things that I doalmost automatically: Check the alcohol level on the wine label,examine the cork upon removing it from the bottle and swirl thewine around in my glass. The latter is an absolute amongoenophiles—an action as necessary as tasting, perhaps even more soconsidering the importance of a wine’s aroma.

Swirling releases the wine’s aromatic compounds, known as esters,into the air. Every wine has these volatile aroma compounds,although some wines have more than others, depending on the struc-ture and character of the grape. Swirling can also affect the wine’sflavor. The oxygen introduced by the act of swirling binds with thetannin molecules to make the wine seem softer, more accessible.

I began thinking more seriously about swirling after watching aYouTube video a few weeks ago. (Isn’t that where most of today’s

obsessions begin?) Created by a group of physics professors and stu-dents from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne,the video, titled “Modelling the swirling of a glass of wine,” depictedresearch team member and Ph.D. candidate Martino Reclari (unac-countably attired in a Guinness T-shirt) swirling a glass of wine andexplaining that his team had studied the “shape of the wave” of aswirled glass of wine in the belief that it could be applied to theirstudy of cellular cultures.

While the Swiss researchers found wine swirling worthy of sci-entific analysis, the wine professionals I talked with seemed a bitmore blasé. “Swirling?” Alexander LaPratt repeated when I told himthe reason for my call. I thought Mr. LaPratt, the sommelier ofNew York’s DB Bistro Moderne and the reigning Best Sommelierin America (as the winner of the biannual competition hosted by theAmerican Sommelier Association) might have some deeper insightinto the subject of swirling—perhaps he’d even taken a few swirlingtests in his title quest?

He had not, but he did, in fact, swirl all the time. “I do it automati-cally. It’s a reflex,” he said. What did Mr. LaPratt consider the greatestbenefit of swirling? That was easy. “Oxygenation,” he said. “Swirlingis like a kind of miniature decanting.”

What about Champagne? There are conflicting theories about this:Some wine drinkers believe Champagne should be swirled like anywine, others believe the act is deleterious to the bubbles in the glass.Then of course, there is the practical challenge—it’s hard to swirl aChampagne flute or detect much aroma from the narrow bowl of theglass. “It’s funny how controversial things get when you add bub-


bles,” laughed Mr. LaPratt, who does swirl his Champagne, which hedrinks out of a regular glass. “But I’m fine with drinking flat Cham-pagne,” he said.

The glass is of great importance when it comes to swirling. So isthe volume of wine: The glass should be no more than one-thirdfull. This allows the aromas enough room to circulate—and gives theswirler sufficient space to fit his or her nose into the glass. The glassitself should be generously proportioned; the glasses that Mr. LaPrattemploys at his restaurant are large enough to fit the contents of anentire bottle of wine.

Is there an optimum swirling glass? I put the question to Maximil-ian Riedel, scion of Riedel glass.

“The glass must be lead crystal,” Mr. Riedel said. “When you swirla wine in lead crystal, the aromas are easier to identify—the winerubs the inside wall of the glass.” Lead crystal is rougher than regularglass—it agitates the surface of the wine, thereby increasing the oxy-gen flow.

Though Riedel makes hundreds of types of wine glasses, seeminglyone for each grape—and Mr. Riedel strongly recommends havingmultiple sets of glasses for different varietals—I decided I’d use onetype of glass for my swirling exercises. After all, most people can’tafford that many sets of glassware. And in his book “The Taste ofWine,” famed Bordeaux oenologist and researcher Émile Peynaudrecommended using a single glass for tastings: “Otherwise a wine’sodor cannot be analyzed exactly the same way.”

I decided on a Riedel Vinum Burgundy glass—the bulbous shapeand large bowl of the Burgundy stem is designed to allow the accu-


mulation of aromas. I gathered a group of friends and an eclecticgroup of wines, some overtly aromatic and others not: Pinot Noir,Gamay, Zinfandel, Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer,as well as less famous grapes like Falanghina, Greco di Tufo, Torron-tés and Frappato.

I chose only young wines. Many older wines may not benefit froma vigorous swirl—for example, a fragile old Burgundy is best leftunswirled.

It’s also important to smell the wine before swirling to note thedifference. In most cases, we didn’t find much in the way of aromaspreswirl, save for the Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, whose grassycharacter practically jumped out of the glass.

Then we swirled. For how long? No one seemed to know theideal, but four or five seconds seemed like the right amount of time.

Some wines were aromatically reticent even after a vigorous swirl,so for those, I put my hand over the top of the glass and reswirled.This helps to concentrate the aromas—or, in some cases, amplify awine’s problems.

I noticed that we were all swirling in the same direction: coun-terclockwise. Why? “Because I’m right-handed,” offered one friend.“Because I live in the Northern Hemisphere,” suggested another,positing that people in the Southern Hemisphere swirled their winesclockwise, just as their water went down the drain in a differentdirection. (I checked with a couple of Southern Hemisphere wine-makers, Peter Gago, chief winemaker of Penfolds in Australia andSusana Balbo of Crios in Argentina, and found that both swirled


counterclockwise, though Ms. Balbo said sometimes she went theother way, too.)

Could the direction of the swirl make a difference? For example,did a clockwise turn emphasize fruit, while counterclockwise pro-duced more notes of oak? I had read that some winemakers believedthat direction made a difference, but when my friends and I triedswirling both ways, opinions were decidedly mixed. Some thoughtthe fruit was more vibrant in a counterclockwise direction, whileothers disputed there was a difference at all.

There is clearly much more to know about swirling, which for allits simplicity and benefits is an act whose particulars—direction andduration of the swirl and optimal glass—are unknown. Perhaps theSwiss physicists knew more? I emailed Mr. Reclari, who replied thathe was in the middle of additional research but the results would notbe available for several months. Meantime, I’ll keep swirling. Afterall, as Prof. Peynaud said, “The study of aroma requires considerableapplication and many repeated attempts.”

This article originally ran on March 3, 2012, under the headline “TheArt—and Science—of the Swirl.”


How to Match Wine and Food WithoutOverthinking

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

While wine may be worthy of extensive, even exhaustive study,there’s one aspect that I think has received far too much scrutiny inrecent years: matching wine with food. I could eat and drink quitehappily for decades without hearing anyone ever again utter thosefour consecutive words.

It’s not that I don’t like putting wine and food together; I do itevery day of the week. It’s the ceremony that I object to—the eleva-tion of a few common-sense principles to something approximatinggreat art. When did wine-and-food pairing start having to be studiedso carefully—as if it were postmodernist art or “Beowulf”?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, food-and-wine matchingrarely rated more than a mention on the back label of a bottle:pair with chicken, pasta and fish. Its glorification is a fairly recent

event—in fact, I’d date it to 2006. That’s when two of the most suc-cessful books on the subject were published: “What to Drink WithWhat You Eat,” by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, and “Per-fect Pairings,” by Evan Goldstein, a master sommelier and wine edu-cator.

Mr. Goldstein—who has educated tens of thousands of sommeliersover the years, by his own estimation—believes that sommeliers are toblame for the overemphasis on overly exact wine-and-food pairing:“The modern-day sommelier feels very strongly about you havingthe right wine with the right food—they become quite draconian,” hesaid during a phone call last week. “And it’s not always done with thecustomer’s pleasure in mind.” (Presumably, those sommeliers weren’teducated by him.)

The book by Ms. Page and Mr. Dornenburg is quite comprehen-sive—every wine in the world seems to have been examined for itssuitability to food—while Mr. Goldstein looks at just 12 grapes andpairs them with appropriate recipes (created by his mother, JoyceGoldstein, the San Francisco restaurateur and chef). Mr. Goldstein’sadvice is sound and the recipes are appealing, but what if someonedidn’t want to think about pairing? Could he recommend wines thatwould work with most types of food?

He could. And they all shared the same attributes, said Mr. Gold-stein, who offered a list: moderate alcohol, moderate to high acidity,soft tannins and little or no oak. There were lots of wines with thesequalities—made from all kinds of grapes from all over the world—buta few examples that came to his mind first were red grapes like Bar-


bera, Gamay and Pinot Noir, which Mr. Goldstein called “the silverbullet.”

Was there a sommelier who could simplify things as well? AlpanaSingh, a Chicago-based sommelier, author and almost-restaurateur(her Boarding House restaurant is opening soon), had a useful ruleof thumb: Look for red wines “that you can see through,” she said.These included the same three grapes that Mr. Goldstein mentionedbut a few others as well, namely Cabernet Franc, from the Loire, andFrappato, a red grape native to Sicily. “I’m drinking a lot of Frappatolately,” said Ms. Singh.

What about white grapes? Were there any that she considered justas versatile? “Pinot Gris,” Ms. Singh replied decisively. “It’s my Vel-cro of wines. It has acidity but also roundness and a little residualsugar—that’s the magic fairy dust of wine pairing.” There are onlya few Pinot Gris on her list right now, although there are severalChenin Blancs—my personal all-around favorite white grape withfood.

I liked the idea of wines that were so flexible it wasn’t necessaryto think about how to match them with food. But was it simply toogood to be true? I decided to stage a little food-and-wine-matchingexperiment. I assembled a few of the basic foods cited on those backlabels of bottles (meat, chicken, pork, fish and pasta) and made themsimultaneously to taste with the wine (no small feat on a four-burnerstove). I made a pan-fried steak, a piece of sautéed salmon, a linkof grilled pork sausage, a braised chicken breast and a pot of cheesetortellini and paired them with some of the food-friendly grapes sug-gested by the experts: Pinot Noir, Gamay, Barbera, Pinot Gris and


Chenin Blanc. While the cooking wasn’t completely successful (see:four-burner stove), the wine pairings all worked—almost.

The Gamays (the grape of Beaujolais) were definitely the mostfood-flexible of all, with just the right measure of acidity, earthinessand fruit. Of the three I tried, the 2010 Julien Sunier Régnié, a cruBeaujolais, was particularly good—substantial yet lithe. The two Bar-beras were almost as versatile, especially the bright and juicy winefrom Elio Perrone. The Pinot Noirs ran a close third. The lighterexamples from Oregon and Burgundy were a touch too delicate forthe steak, but the velvety-textured 2010 Arista Ferrington VineyardPinot Noir, from California’s cool Anderson Valley, overperformed,with a bright bolt of acidity balancing all its rich, ripe fruit.

The two white grapes, Chenin Blanc and Pinot Gris, went wellwith almost everything—the pork, the chicken, the pasta and thesalmon all fit, and the wines were rich and viscous but also minerallyand clean. (I tasted both domestic and imported examples of eachgrape.) The only sticking point was, unsurprisingly, the steak. Whilethe wines’ voluptuous texture matched the steak’s richness, their min-erality proved a bit of a jarring contrast, particularly in the case of the2011 Chidaine Vouvray Les Argiles. (A minerally white just isn’t asversatile as a minerally red.) But they both came admirably close touniversal usefulness, and I was quite pleased with my food-and-wine-matching experiment, not to mention the advice of my experts.

Then I had a chat with Thomas Pastuszak, wine director at NewYork’s Nomad restaurant, who said the best match wasn’t betweenwine and food at all but between wine and diner. “I would rather pairthe right wine with the right person rather than the dish,” he said.


How did how that work? Did he ask diners to fill out a questionnaire,submit to a brief interview? It was far more practical than that, saidMr. Pastuszak. He simply gave them a taste of the wines he poured bythe glass and waited to see which wines they liked best. More oftenthan not, they cared less about choosing the right match with theirfood than choosing a wine that came with a good story attached.

Winemakers clearly know this to be true. After all, their backlabels feature stories about the winery, the winemaker and the winerydog—and only a few words about food: “Pair with pork, chicken andfish.”

This article was originally published on Nov. 25, 2012, under the headline“Wine and Food: Pairing Without Overthinking.”


How to Break the Rules of Food-and-WinePairings

BY WILL LYONS

There isn’t an exact science behind choosing wine at a restaurant butI’m guessing that when most of us step inside the dining room weselect the dish we want to eat first and then a wine to accompany it.What happens when you reverse the process? Imagine asking for thewine list first, choosing the style, country or vintage you would likeand then asking the waiter to choose a dish to go with it.

In most cases, I suspect it would throw up some pretty safe options:oysters to accompany that glass of Chablis or perhaps a roast leg oflamb to bring out the subtle flavors of the cru classé Médoc you havecarefully selected. But with the plethora of international cuisine nowavailable to us from southern India to Thailand and Japan, the tradi-tional European-based rules of food and wine matching are no longerthe preeminent catch-all guide they once were.

Readers of this column will know that in the past year we haveexplored the subjects of what to drink with seafood and whetherwhite wine pairs well with cheese, but what about often spicy Asiandishes? Traditionally, European based experts, of whom I am one,would recommend steering clear of pairing delicate wine with hotfood. A glass of beer used to be the preferred option or, if one didhave to opt for a wine, possibly a Riesling. These wines get theirstructure from acidity, which, together with their mineral-infusedfruitiness, can prove an appealing partnership with delicately flavoredAsian cuisine. Moreover, in Germany’s Mosel valley you can findexamples at 8% alcohol, which works well with the heat of someAsian food.

But as more wine, mainly red wine from France, is being con-sumed by traditionally non-wine-drinking countries such as China,Japan, Singapore and India, we are gaining more knowledge andexperience of what pairs well with non-European food.

Recently, I spoke with Nicolas Glumineau, technical director atBordeaux’s Château Montrose, who now visits Southeast Asia severaltimes a year. Marvelling at the variety of recipes found in countriessuch as Thailand, he also explained that from his experience Asianconsumers weren’t as afraid of tannins as Europeans. Moreover hesaid that the tannins found in red Bordeaux match well with certainAsian dishes based around duck and veal. I was surprised, as I alwaysfound that spicy flavors matched with the bitter tannins of red winecan prove an unpalatable partnership. But I was falling into the trapof imagining the unknown from what I knew; most of my experi-ence of Asian cuisine has come via Europe.


As Fiona Beckett, author and publisher of matchingfoodand-wine.com, says, food and wine matching isn’t just about matchingdifferent flavors, it is cultural too.

“In the Far East, people want to and expect to drink serious redwines with their food. In places such as Szechuan in China they likechilli and heat. The fact that a tannic red wine accentuates that char-acter is a bonus rather than detraction.”

Sriram Vishwanathan Aylur, chef and proprietor at London’sMichelin-starred Indian restaurant Quilon, says the picture is compli-cated, given the variety of recipes and dishes found in Asia.

“If you look at Indian food, you can eat in the north of India andthe south of India, and you can almost feel that you are eating foodfrom two different countries. It is not just about the dish being spicy,it is about how spicy it is and how it is cooked that also make it com-plicated.”

He points to red wines that are low in tannins, such as a NewWorld Merlot with plenty of fruit, as a possible accompaniment todishes flavored with strong spices as they absorb the heat of the dish.

From my own experience, I still enjoy matching white winesfrom France’s Alsace region with Asian food, in particular Pinot Gris(which pairs well with a variety of dishes) and dry Rieslings. But Ialso feel soft, fruit-driven red wines pair well with grilled or barbe-cue meats in the Indian tandoori style. It seems that, given the inter-national flavor of today’s wine-drinking landscape, we’re learning allthe time. If you would like to drink red wine with your Asian food,by all means give it a go. Just remember to ignore the quizzical lookfrom your sommelier.


This article originally ran on April 19, 2014, under the headline “Breakingthe Food-and-Wine-Matching Rules.”


When, Why and How to Decant Wine

BY WILL LYONS

For wine lovers, there are many established norms that always seemto provoke heated discussion. Should you serve only white wine withfish? Does wine need to be chilled? And, the classic restaurant tussle,is your wine corked?

But perhaps the most universal flash point is that of decanting. Aswith all matters vinous, the answer is never straightforward. On oneside are the pro-decanters, among whom I count myself, who arguethat all wine improves with decanting, while the aesthetic appeal ofa shimmering decanter adds to the theater of an evening. Others dis-pute this, saying decanting can actually deaden the wine’s flavors, los-ing some of its character.

The two principal aims of decanting a wine are to remove any sed-iment and aerate the wine. The latter will help draw out its nuancedflavors, soften the harsher, spicier, bitter notes and invigorate the

(Anna Parini)

wine. Whether you are decanting a mature or young wine will affecthow you pour it into the decanter.

All wine that will throw sediment should be decanted; this includesred Bordeaux, Rhône, Rioja, vintage Port and heavy grape varietiessuch as Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. Also—and this is open to dis-cussion—young wines.

In my experience, exposure to air unfurls the complex layers of fla-vor in young fine wine. A wine that was tight, closed and rather dif-ficult to taste can, with time in the decanter, transform its personality.The smell changes, becoming replete with ripe fruit; the bitter tan-nins subside; and the wine opens up, revealing its true character.

Generally, I have found this to be the case with Old World winesfrom the classic regions of Europe, as opposed to New World wines,which change less in the decanter. White wines can also be decanted.


Old Rieslings, white Rioja and young Chardonnay all improve withaeration.

If you prefer your white wine chilled, there are various decantersthat will fit in a fridge, or you can buy an ice-pocket decanter, whichhas a small built-in capsule for ice that will help keep your wine cool.I prefer my whites lightly chilled and find that a bottle that has beenin the fridge for an hour or two benefits from decanting, to take thechill off.

How long you should decant a wine for before serving depends onthe age and type of the wine. When reviewing wines, I always preferto decant. A recent example was with an Italian red wine made byCantine Paradiso. On the first night, the wine was impenetrable, tast-ing hard, closed and bitter. On the second night, it still wasn’t quitethere, but by the third evening, I could taste a host of intriguing fla-vors.

There are those who believe certain vintages should be decanted atbreakfast, hours before they will be drunk at dinner. Sadly, there areno hard and fast rules on this and it is really down to personal prefer-ence. Certainly, very old wine should be decanted just before serving,as exposure to oxygen can cause it to lose its flavor quite quickly.

Young wine can withstand up to three or four hours or, in somecases, days. I am in favor of decanting shortly before I serve thewine—that way I can taste it immediately and track its evolution inthe glass. If it turns out to be particularly impenetrable, I can alwaysleave it for the following evening.


CHOOSING YOUR DECANTER

This is purely about aesthetics. The shape, size and look of a decanterwill not affect the wine inside. The traditional decanter, a glass vesselthat holds one bottle of wine, has changed very little in design sincethe 18th century. There are a range of decanters on the market, fromtraditional shapes, such as ship’s decanters and Claret jugs, to modern,sometimes overly elaborate designs. But any vessel will do—even, ifpushed, a jug.

CARING FOR YOUR DECANTER

Decanters should be washed and rinsed with hot water after use. Dry-ing a decanter can be particularly tricky; although the outside can bewiped clean with a dry cloth, the inside needs a little more atten-tion. You can drain a decanter by placing it upside down on a drain-ing stand. Another way is to buy drying crystals; these come in along, thin packet and, when hung inside the decanter, absorb all itsmoisture. To remove troublesome stains, there are various decanterbrushes available. For encrusted wine from the night before, fill thedecanter with a handful of uncooked brown rice, pour in hot waterand swirl around. Finally, microfiber polishing cloths will help add ashine to your glass.

This article originally ran on Jan 31, 2013, under the headline “To Decantor Not to Decant.”


How to Serve Wine at the Right Temperature

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

One of my early wine mentors, the late, great wine writer AlexisBespaloff, gave me a brief—but nevertheless valuable—piece ofadvice: “If the wine is too warm, put an ice cube in the glass, swirlit around for four seconds then take it out.” His suggestion becamewhat my friends and I called “The Alexis Bespaloff Four-SecondRule.”

Over the years, I’ve passed the A.B.F.S.R. along to every winedrinker I know—or, for that matter, anyone I’ve ever encounteredwho complained that his glass of wine was too warm. It’s a techniquebest suited to an overly warm red, as cooling a white takes a few sec-onds longer, but it will make any wine brighter, more refreshing,more vivid. Whereas warmth can blur a wine’s character, the rightdegree of coolness brings the wine more fully into focus.

Unlike proper wine glasses or the act of pairing wine with food,

wine temperature isn’t something that most wine drinkers thinkmuch about. Even some wine professionals don’t seem to considerit overmuch, judging by the service and storage conditions I’veencountered over the years.

I’ve been in restaurants where the wine bottles were stored at atemperature best described as “balmy”—stacked over the bar or linedup under lights on some very high shelves. I’ve even been served redwine in a glass that was taken straight from the dishwasher to thetable and was literally too hot to touch. (This happened at a famoussteakhouse in New York.)

Correct wine temperature—in both service and storage—is one ofthe most crucial aspects of the enjoyment of wine. A bottle that istoo cold or too warm is a wine that’s not going to be fully enjoyed.The ideal temperature for serving isn’t actually that far from the oneat which the wine should be stored. In both cases the answer variesaccording to the wine’s color, type (sparkling or still) and even vari-etal.

For example, a sparkling wine should always be served muchcolder than a still one—in part because sparkling wines are generallyhigh in acidity and a high-acid wine is particularly unpleasant todrink warm—but primarily because the cold preserves the carbondioxide (aka the bubbles). The colder the bottle of Champagne, themore carbon dioxide is dissolved into its contents, and the longerthe sparkle will hold. The inverse is true too: A too-warm Cham-pagne is a Champagne that may well be flat. (While a refrigerator is agood short-term storage place for Champagne, long-term storage in


a fridge can also make the wine flat, as such a dry environment willeventually dry out the cork.)

Texture and acidity are important parts of the temperature equa-tion. Non-sparkling white wines are best stored around 50 to 55degrees (about 10 or 15 degrees warmer than the average fridge) andserved a bit warmer if they are particularly full-bodied and rich. Forexample, a big Chardonnay can be served several degrees warmerthan a Sauvignon Blanc—which in turn can be served a bit warmerthan, say, a very light Pinot Grigio.

Red wines can be stored around 55 degrees or colder and servedabout 10 degrees warmer (60 to 65 degrees) though light red wineslike Beaujolais or Dolcetto can be served lightly chilled (55 degrees,bearing in mind this is all an inexact science). The rule here is similarto that of white wine: The higher in acidity and lighter in body thewine, the lower the serving temperature. If you only have one placeto store wine and are limited to a single temperature setting, the clas-sic cellar is 55 degrees.

Too-cool has a price: When a wine is very cold, the flavors aremuted, while other aspects like alcohol and tannins are likely to cometo the fore. The aromas will be pretty much obliterated as well. Trydrinking an ice-cold glass of red wine and see if you can tell muchabout it. If this is a good wine then you’re missing a lot—of course, ifit’s a cheap wine it’s probably just as well.

As for an oxidized wine (one that is flawed or flat due to excessiveexposure to air), it’s better served really cold, as a high-profile NewYork sommelier who preferred to remain anonymous, knows. Hewas confronted with a large number of oxidative Burgundies that had


been flown over from France for a private dinner. The winemakerdidn’t have replacements for the flawed wines. “So we piled on theice,” the sommelier recalled. “It was the only thing we could do.”

Wine temperature is also a matter of individual taste. Some peoplelike their beverages very cold; some don’t like anything on ice. Oftenthis has to do with geography. Chris Baggetta, wine director ofQuince and Cotogna restaurants in San Francisco and formerly asommelier at Eleven Madison Park in New York, found that “NewYorkers like their whites colder and their reds warmer” than theirBay Area counterparts. Why was that? I asked. Ms. Baggetta specu-lated that San Francisco’s “more consistent” climate allowed Bay Areadiners to be more sanguine about temperature while New Yorkerswere more accustomed to extremes in temperatures (not to mentionin daily life).

San Francisco diners are more open to discussions about properwine temperature, said Ms. Baggetta. “They’re really curious andinquisitive about temperature variations,” she said. They’re also flex-ible; they will allow Ms. Baggetta to decide whether or not to leavethe bottle on the table or to put it in a bucket with ice. New Yorkers,on the other hand, like what they like.

I told Ms. Baggetta that I hate it when a sommelier puts my bottleof wine in an ice bucket. The wine gets too cold and it’s usuallysomewhere far away, often out of sight. I worry that someone else isdrinking my wine (yes, this has happened). Surprisingly enough, Ms.Baggetta agreed with my point; she said she doesn’t like to have herbottle far from the table either.

Of course I would always choose too-cold over too warm. Around


a decade ago there was a trend among New York sommeliers to servewhite wines at room temperature. A sommelier would bring a body-temperature bottle to the table and ask in a disapproving tone, “Youdon’t want this chilled, do you?” Clearly anyone who replied in theaffirmative would be cast as a fool. I’d hedge my answer: “Just a bit.”A friend who remembers that period said he would always respond,“Yes! Yes! I want it cold. As cold as you can get it”—an over-the-topresponse that he said made sommeliers think he was nuts and leavehim alone.

Geoffrey Troy, proprietor of New York Wine Warehouse, a retailstore and wine storage facility that is home to some great collectionsof Burgundy and Bordeaux, believes that cold is always best. He citedhis father’s personal cellar, which was set to a constant 48 degrees(seven degrees colder than the conventional cellar temperature).

The lower temperature kept his father’s wines so well that “theytaste years younger than the same wines,” said Mr. Troy, who keepshis professional warehouse at 55 degrees in part because a lower tem-perature would cost much more. But if he could afford it, he wouldset his storage thermostat to 48 degrees too, he said. Consider it theGeoffrey Troy 48-Degree Ideal Cellar Rule.

This article originally ran on Aug. 30, 2013, under the headline “Strike theJust-Right Degree of Wine Cool.”


How to Select the Proper Glassware

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

Some children grow up in musical families and learn how to sing orplay an instrument. I grew up in a family whose focus was glassware.Did you ever see a glass so well-proportioned? Did you notice how itcatches the light, my father might ask, holding up a wine glass madesomewhere like Poland or France. (He rarely mentioned the wine.) Arunning joke between my sister and me was that no matter what thetopic might be, my father could turn it to glassware.

My father spent decades working for a variety of glass companies,and our cabinets contained glasses from all over the world: Ireland,England, Austria, Finland, Germany and the U.S.

Today, my own glassware collection is much less wide-ranging.There are three types of wine glasses in my house—red, white andChampagne—although the red wine glass is the only one that I con-sistently use. The white wine glass is too small, and the flutes are too

fussy. Perhaps it’s a very late form of childhood rebellion, but I don’tfocus overmuch on glassware.

After a few memorable encounters with some particularly impres-sive stemware, though, I began to think I might be missing out. Andas Aldo Sohm, chef sommelier of Le Bernardin restaurant in NewYork, said to me recently, one glass simply isn’t enough. Or as heput it: “Life is simple. But not that simple.” In fact, Mr. Sohm wenteven further, saying, “You can’t love wine and not care about wineglasses.”

Mr. Sohm was one of two New York sommeliers whom I met within recent weeks to talk about glassware. The second was ThomasCarter, wine director of Estela, a trendy newish restaurant down-town. Both men are quite knowledgeable about glassware, and couldeven be described as glassware-obsessed.

Mr. Carter is an impassioned audiophile, and he finds many paral-lels between the two worlds. “Speakers are to music as glasses are towine,” was one of the first things that he said to me when we metat Estela. Although Mr. Carter’s restaurant is small and the wine listis short, his collection of wine glasses is large and somewhat untra-ditional. For example, he likes to pour Champagne into white wineglasses. “Champagne flutes make no sense,” he said. “Champagne is awine that just happens to have bubbles.”

Mr. Carter believes that a wine glass can alter the taste of awine—for better or worse—and he pulled together a sampling ofhis stemware to prove his point. We had six glasses for tasting twowines—a red and a white. There was a bulbous Burgundy glass, astraight-sided Bordeaux glass and a smaller white wine glass, all made


by the German company Stölzle, as well the 7-ounce glass fromBormioli Rocco that Mr. Carter was using for all of his wines by theglass. He also brought out two possible replacements for the Bormi-oli—a glass made by Riedel and one by Spiegelau.

He began with the red wine, a Gamay from the Loire, whichwe tasted from each of the glasses. The Bormioli glass was so smallthat I could barely get my fingers around the stem, let alone fit mynose in its bowl. It didn’t offer much of an impression of anything.The wine was as lacking in distinction as the glass. The Bormioliglass’s two possible replacements were a bit better—they had largerbowls and more room between the bowl and the stem. (Mr. Carterexplained that he initially chose the small glass to convey a certaincasual, unpretentious attitude about wine.)

But the bowl of a wine glass must be large enough to facilitateswirling, which all serious wine drinkers do to coax the aromas outof the glass. (Mr. Carter, a dedicated swirler, calls it “kneading thewine.”)

“‘You can’t love wine and not care about wine glasses,’ said a sommelier.”The wide-mouthed Burgundy glass accentuated the wine’s bright

cherry notes, and made it seem pleasingly fruity. (Burgundy glassesare generally believed to accentuate fruit; they tilt the wine towardthe front of the tongue.) The taller Bordeaux glass showed a higheracid side of the wine. (Bordeaux glasses generally orient the wine tothe back of the tongue, and are said to highlight a wine’s structure.)The white wine glass made the red wine seem rather herbaceous.“Some people might even call that aroma ‘mousy,’ ” Mr. Carter


offered. That was a very good reason not to serve the wine out of thisglass, I thought to myself.

The differences were striking, and they turned out to be evengreater in the case of the white, a Chardonnay from Jura, in easternFrance. The Bormioli bombed once again. The wine tasted likesomething you’d be served in coach class on a plane. (Mr. Carter,equally displeased with the glass, has since switched it out for onefrom Spiegelau.) Clearly the glass from which we were tasting wasn’tdoing the wines any great favors. The Chardonnay was pleasant ifsimple in the smaller, tulip-shape white wine glass. In the roundedBurgundy glass, it seemed a bit flat. But in the squarish Bordeauxglass, the Chardonnay was round and generous, even complex.

It was an interesting, if somewhat inconclusive exercise. Therewasn’t one glass that consistently showed best. Mr. Carter said itwould have been different if he’d had his Zaltos, Austrian glasses witha slight trapezoidal shape and a cultish following. “Everything showsin a Zalto,” he said. Alas, his Zalto glasses were at home, not at therestaurant. “They’re just too expensive,” Mr. Carter explained.

I’d heard about Zalto glasses many times. They’re delicate, hand-blown, lead-free crystal glasses whose angles, the company says, aredesigned to mimic the tilt of the Earth (which somehow improves thetaste of the wine, according to Zalto). The one time I drank from aZalto, I was worried it would break. When I mentioned this to Mr.Sohm, he told me that the glasses weren’t fragile at all—in fact, he’dcarried two in a bag on the subway from Manhattan to Queens andback without breakage. The intra-borough odyssey was one of sev-


eral tests that Mr. Sohm performed before signing on as the “Ameri-can face” of Zalto glass.

Mr. Sohm said that the glasses were the “most powerful” he’dever encountered. He still uses Riedel and Spiegelau stemware at therestaurant; in fact, when I stopped by Le Bernardin one afternoon hebrought out a couple of Spiegelau glasses to compare with the Zaltosin an impromptu tasting of Meursault and Champagne.

Once more, there were stark differences—the bulbous SpiegelauBurgundy glass made the Meursault seem fatter and flatter while inthe Zalto Universal glass, it was more minerally, showing a higherlevel of acidity. In short, it just seemed more precise. I tried them bothover and over. The Spiegelau shows the fruit and the Zalto shows theminerality, said Mr. Sohm.

Mr. Sohm was certainly an impressive advocate, but since he earnsa royalty from the company, I needed to try the glass again formyself—and against the one I’d been using at home. So I bought aZalto Universal (said to work with all wines—never mind Mr. Sohm)for $59 from Crush Wine & Spirits in New York. I poured a simpleDolcetto into both glasses. The wine was pleasant, if a bit muted, inmy standard glass. It was brighter in the Zalto, but it seemed a bitsimple and one-dimensional. That’s another thing people say aboutZalto—everything is sharper, for better or worse. I thought of Mr.Carter’s audio analogy. It was like hearing mediocre music blaringout of very good speakers.

I repeated the experiment a couple of days later with a muchbetter wine—the 2010 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Chassagne-Mon-trachet Les Baudines. The wine was still young and showing a fair


amount of acidity. Marked by citrus notes with a firm mineral thread,it was lovely in both glasses, but it practically vibrated in the Zalto.

My husband, who had been happily drinking from our basic glassfor years, tasted the wine from both. He preferred the Chassagne-Montrachet in the Zalto, but he was even more impressed by how theZalto looked, and the way that it felt. “I don’t want to stop holdingthis glass,” he said.

That’s another quality of a great wine glass—it must be lovely tolook at and to hold. That was something that my father knew best.

This article originally ran on Jan 3, 2014, under the headline “GlasswareThat Raises the Wine Bar.”


On Collecting Wine

BY WILL LYONS

Wine is ever-changing: No two bottles, barrels or vineyards areever quite the same. Wine renews itself each year, its style, agingpotential and flavor shaped by the vagaries of each growing season.

It is against this backdrop that wine can become a collector’sdream. There are literally thousands of wines to try, and the range ofvarieties, regions and food pairings to taste create what the Englishwine writer Hugh Johnson refers to as a “moving target.”

I have been collecting wine since the late 1990s, and I always try tofollow the advice of Professor George Saintsbury who urged readersto steer from the “known to the unknown” in his seminal “Notes on aCellar-Book.” I keep a copy on my desk at home and often dip, glassin hand, into his fascinating chronicle of the vineyards and vintagesthat brought him the greatest pleasure in his drinking life.

“Notes” was published in 1920, long before the current fashion of

classifying wine by grape variety (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and soon) or flavor (light and crisp, or heavy and smooth). Instead, it isthrough the villages of France and countless other countries that welearn how each bottle of wine offers a flavor snapshot of the place andtime where it was made. That unique combination of soil, climate,culture and tradition is what the French call terroir.

If the options for collection seem daunting, I’d recommend atheme that is entirely personal. Vintages from the year one was born,married or graduated, perhaps. Or you could focus on wine dis-covered during a particular holiday, or a favorite Château, estate ordomaine.

You don’t have to take Professor Saintsbury’s advice. If you wantto collect by grape variety or taste profile, by all means—do. Wine isa journey you can travel any way you like.


How to Develop Wine Expertise

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

I’ve studied the French language for decades in the hope of attainingsome form of fluency. And yet all the conversation, the readingand the travel hasn’t produced a “plus française” me. My conversa-tional powers are largely limited to discussions about wine and, oddlyenough, furniture. I know some aspiring oenophiles who say muchthe same about wine; they’ve taken classes, bought reference booksand tasted lots, but they can’t seem to get beyond the six basic grapes.

Wine can be just as hard to learn as a language, even though themain requirement—regular drinking—seems like less of a grind thanthe conjugation of verbs. Becoming a wine expert is actually just asformidable as learning a language, requiring a similar degree of dedi-cation and practice, as well as some form of full-on immersion. Whilea student of language might be advised to live abroad, a would-bewine expert is often counseled to work in a restaurant or wine shop.

(David Schwen)

That was how my own wine education began. While I was still astudent in college, I decided I wanted to spend my life in wine—eventhough I didn’t know exactly how or where. A wine importer I’d mettold me that I needed to learn the business from “the ground up,” andrecommended me to the owner of a prominent wine store in NewYork.

My year and a half in the retail business taught me far more aboutwine than I could have learned on my own. I was constantly tastingwine, and surrounded by people who knew much more than I did(many of whom were actually my customers).

But what’s the best way to gain a deep knowledge of wine if some-


one doesn’t want to commit a year or more to working in a store? Iguess it depends on how much you want to know. If it’s just aboutlearning to buy a good bottle, then that shouldn’t take long. But if it’sabout understanding wine altogether, that’s a bit more involved. Isthere a form of wine education that’s best overall? I put the questionto a few top wine educators and wine professionals.

The first person I called was Kevin Zraly, the unofficial dean ofAmerican wine educators. Mr. Zraly has been teaching Americansabout wine since 1976, when he opened his Windows on the WorldWine School in New York. His book, “Windows on the WorldComplete Wine Course,” is on its 29th edition. Mr. Zraly said that hehas sold more than 3 million copies of his book, making him the onlywine educator I know who calculates his number of followers in thesame way that McDonald’s estimates customers served.

The name “Wine School” is a bit of a misnomer because there is noactual school—just an eight-week-long course that Mr. Zraly teachesin a Midtown hotel. The weekly classes aren’t meant to turn studentsinto experts or pros, said Mr. Zraly, but to familiarize them with theprocess of trying various wines. This is the key to acquiring exper-tise, he said. “I thought for years that geography was important untilI realized it’s all about tasting,” he said.

It’s also important for an aspiring expert to visit wineries and vine-yards, said Mr. Zraly—a point I agree with, as long as the studentgets out of the tasting room and into the winery. Seeing how wine isactually made makes the learning experience complete. Mr. Zraly, bythe way, doesn’t believe in calling someone a “wine expert.” It’s pos-sible to be an expert on Italian or Spanish or French wines, he said,


but there is no such thing as broad “wine expertise,” as the world issimply too wide.

Mary Ewing-Mulligan, the president of the International WineCenter, a New York wine school, and a co-author of the “Dummies”wine books, believes that tasting is important, but thinks that wineexpertise can be acquired by reading. “At least for a certain type ofperson,” she added. (Such expertise cannot be achieved by reading“Dummies” books, she admitted.)

An education by the book will take longer, and it lacks the dimen-sion of one in the “structured setting” of a school, added Ms. Ewing-Mulligan, who holds a prestigious Master of Wine certification. The“MW” from the London-based Institute of Masters of Wine is gen-erally regarded as the greatest educational credential a wine profes-sional can earn. A candidate can spend years preparing for writtentests. There are currently 314 MWs in the world.

Ms. Ewing-Mulligan finds that formal schooling is likely to bemuch broader in scope than the sort of education that people under-take for themselves. “People who are self-taught are more likely tofocus on wines that they like rather than a variety of wines,” said Ms.Ewing-Mulligan. “That produces a more narrow sort of expert.”

I thought this was an especially good point. I know certain collec-tors who will only drink one type of wine (e.g., Burgundy or Bor-deaux or grower Champagne) and only ever learn about that wine.The wines of rest of the world remain a mystery. For example, oneBurgundy collector friend of mine had never tasted Vermentino, oneof the most common white grapes of Italy, until he and I traveled to


Tuscany. And yet he had tasted some of the greatest Burgundies evermade—many, many times.

Marnie Old, a Philadelphia-based sommelier, wine educator andauthor of the recently published “Wine: A Tasting Course,” is lessthan keen on structured learning that includes memorizing grapesand regions. She thinks information learned by rote isn’t easilyretained. She questioned the teaching of tasting terms and grapesinstead of focusing on larger issues. For example, “Why don’t peopleaddress important questions like the difference between white wineand red?” she asked.

Ms. Old’s book is full of eye-catching visuals and a lot of fun exer-cises (e.g., comparing sweetness levels in wine or varying shades ofred wines) but it also contains plenty of that more structured infor-mation, such as facts on countries and grapes. I guess the “basics” likegrapes and regions are as impossible to forgo as the tenses of verbs inFrench language books.

But it’s one thing to know that Chardonnay is a grape, anotherto describe what Chardonnay tastes like when it’s grown in Chablis,France, versus California’s central coast. That’s something that canonly be fully understood by experience—and tasting.

Keith Wollenberg, Burgundy buyer at the multistore K&L WineMerchants of California (who said he received his wine education“on the job” in a wine shop), believes that the best route to gainingexpertise is developing a relationship with someone who is passionateabout wine. Someone with a palate and preferably a cellar that out-matches your own. And if you don’t have such a friend? “Then


befriend a wine merchant,” he said. (Wine books, he felt, were bestsuited as background references.)

Of course, some wine merchants are more passionate than oth-ers—and just because a person owns a wine store doesn’t mean heor she prizes education over a sale. For example, the manager ofthe wine shop where I once worked used to suggest wines that hethought I should try. It was only later that I discovered they were allwines that he wanted to sell. I stopped asking for his advice.

There is also a small group of wine merchants with whom I consultregularly about wines that I don’t know or I haven’t tried. These pro-fessionals possess a desire to share their knowledge—and to sell winesat a fair price. So with a small caveat, I think Mr. Wollenberg’s sug-gestion is an excellent piece of advice: Find an honest, wine-lovingmerchant or friend.

The best kind of wine fluency is achieved through a mix of all thesethings: wine-loving friends, a trustworthy wine merchant (or som-melier), a shelf of good reference works and regular visits to vine-yards—preferably where great wine is produced. All that goes beyondacquiring wine expertise to making wine an important part of yourlife. If only I could do the same with French verbs.

This article originally ran Jan. 31, 2014, under the headline “The Long andTasty Path to Wine Expertise.”


How to Start a Wine Cellar

BY WILL LYONS

If you enjoy wine, are starting to take more than a passing interestand have perhaps bought the odd reference book about vino varieties,it might be time to think about beginning your very own wine cellar.

The worst habit you can get into is to stop off at your local wineshop once a week and pick up the odd few bottles. A much betterapproach is to buy by the dozen or a six pack, as most wine merchantswill offer a discount on a mixed case. Better still is to select two orthree wine merchants, order their catalogs or look online and, whenyou’re in the mood, spend some time selecting your favorite winesand comparing prices. I like to do this on the weekend, with a cup oftea and all the catalogs spread out over the kitchen table.

But a cellar isn’t just a few cases of your favorite wine. It maysound like a cliché but a good cellar requires a bit of forethought andplanning to provide pleasurable drinking over the long term. I like

to break wine collecting into three categories: wines for immediatedrinking, wines to lay down that will improve with age, and invest-ment wines—those special bottles whose value will steadily increaseyear on year.

I started my own cellar soon after I left university and began work-ing in the wine trade. I well remember buying a case of northernRhône Syrah to lay down—I still have four bottles—and six bottlesof a well-known New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc producer. I nowbuy most of my wine twice a year: during the bin end sales at thebeginning of the year, when merchants are unloading old stock atdiscounted prices, and when a wine is offered En Primeur (winefutures). This is where the wine is put up for sale from the barrel,months before it is bottled and shipped. The advantages are that youcan guarantee an allocation of your chosen wine, you can choose thesize of the bottle it is shipped in and also secure it at a discountedprice. However, the latter isn’t always guaranteed—Bordeaux 2010being a case in point. Many of the wines are cheaper now than whenthey were when released En Primeur.

The common practice was always to buy three cases of yourfavorite wine. As the wine went up in value, one case could be sold,the profit of which would pay for the other two. Now wine invest-ment isn’t as simple and it’s worth consulting an established, trustedwine merchant before buying wine to lay down. The golden rule isthat investment wine should never be delivered to your home cellar;it should lay in professional storage, as provenance and storage his-tory are crucial in retaining resale value.

So, after all this, what should you be buying? A good cellar should



be a collection of your favorite style of wines, growers and years. Thelatter requires a bit of understanding and research. A good wine mer-chant, a specialist magazine or a wine column will tell you whichyears are better than others.

Within the categories of drinking now, laying down and invest-


ment, I would divide any collection into five categories: sparkling,sweet and fortified, full- bodied red to lay down, fruity red for youth-ful drinking, full-bodied white to lay down, and young fruity wineto consume.

In an ideal world, investment wines pay for future purchases andno category is ever fully depleted, although the latter normally isn’tan issue as many collectors I know have more wine than they willever be able to drink! But a word of warning: Once you catch thecollecting bug, it’s difficult to shake off.

THE GUIDE TO STORING WINE

Your wine’s delivered, so time figure out how to store it. Leaveinvestments to the professionals, but the rest can be stored at homeusing the tips below.

WHERE TO STORE YOUR WINE

A north-facing room is best, so long as it retains a constant temper-ature, is free from vibration, isn’t exposed to direct sunlight and isfairly humid. Below the stairs or in the garage is also suitable, as longas the rooms are well-insulated and aren’t too dry. Wines for imme-diate drinking can be stored in a more accessible place than those thatneed to be aged. As a rule of thumb opt for the coolest room in thehouse.

TEMPERATURE

This is the most important element in wine storage. Wines should bestored between 10-20°C, with an ideal temperature being between


10-15°C. I have found the constancy of the temperature is moreimportant than the actual temperature, so avoid large fluctuations. Asimple maximum/minimum thermometer, hung on the wall, will beable to give an accurate reading.

HUMIDITY

A very dry room can, with time, cause the corks to dry out, whichcan affect the seal. Too humid, and the labels will start to peel and rot.Buy a cellar hygrometer to check levels. A caution: Apartment blockstend to be very dry.

WINE RACKS

Bottles should be laid down on their side to prevent the corks fromdrying out. Racks should be positioned away from sunlight andvibration, and should be spaced out enough for easy access. Cellartags are a good idea as they can hang on the neck of the bottle, avoid-ing the need to keep pulling bottles from the rack for identification.

WINE FRIDGES AND BESPOKE CELLARS

If space is a premium and your collection isn’t huge, it may be worthinvesting in a wine refrigerator. They come in all shapes and sizesand can store wine at a constant temperature. For those looking forsomething a little more permanent, install a spiral cellar either belowthe floor boards or in back garden. Starting at around £9,500, thesewatertight cylindrical systems can safely store up to 1,500 bottles.

This article originally ran on April 30, 2014.


How to Think About Aging Wine

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

“Aged like a fine wine”: Has this phrase become more of a marketingtool than a relevant wine-drinking fact? Has aging wine become anoutmoded custom?

After all, nearly every wine in the world today is made to be con-sumed soon after it’s bottled. (I’ve seen figures as high as 99%.) Winedrinkers seem willing to do their part. According to Bear Dalton,wine buyer for Spec’s, a Houston-based wine store chain, nearly 98%of his customers drink the bottles they buy in under a week.

At Calvert Woodley in Washington, D.C., proprietor Ed Sandsposits that 90% of his customers drink their wines quickly, so mostof his inventory is comprised of wines meant to be consumed withintwo years or so. Even at Sherry-Lehmann in New York, a bastionof blue-chip (aka age-worthy) Bordeaux, nearly half the store’s cus-tomers are buying wines under $15 a bottle, according to the com-

pany’s president, Chris Adams. Mr. Adams lamented that not manywine drinkers were likely to experience the enormous pleasure that awell-aged wine could bestow.

Mr. Adams had a point, though I couldn’t help wondering howmany people would share this regret. It isn’t just that a well-agedwine can cost so much money or require a long wait (Americansdon’t like their pleasures deferred)—there’s also the question of flavor.An aged wine tastes very different from a wine that is young. In theplace of dazzling, bright fruit, there’s subtle restraint. While the tan-nins may soften, the fruit may be dim a bit, too, replaced by flavorsmore earthy or mineral—flavors that are not necessarily familiar oreasy to like. Of course, this happens only with age-worthy wines:Non-ageable wines that are left unopened for years usually just tastetired, dried out—and old.

All age-worthy wines have certain attributes in common, the mostimportant of which is acidity. Wines that are low in acidity can beeasy to enjoy while young, but they don’t mature very well—think ofthe perpetual adolescents who fail to ever become adults.

White wines that are high in acidity—like German and AustrianRiesling, not to mention Chablis, Champagne and CheninBlanc—can improve for decades, though much depends on producerand vintage. A wine from a too-warm vintage may lack sufficientacidity, while a wine from a too-cold vintage may not have com-pletely ripe fruit. If a wine isn’t in balance, it won’t age well.

In ageable reds, tannins are an important component—they serveas both preservative and frame. Tannins are derived from both barrelsand grapes and while all grapes have tannins, some, such as Cabernet,


Nebbiolo and Syrah, possess tannins that are particularly strong.Some great ageable wines are made from these grapes (Bordeaux,Barolo, Hermitage), though a lot of mediocre wines are made fromthem as well. The difference is a matter of winemaking talent, loca-tion and vine age, and all the mysterious components that make upterroir.

Wines that are high in extract (the components of the wine thataren’t acids, water or alcohol) also tend to age more sturdily. That’sone of the reasons that winemakers strive to make wines of greaterextraction, though it also happens to be the fashion in winemakingright now, as winemakers try to make wines of maximum concentra-tion, both in flavor and color. It’s possible to take this too far, how-ever: over-extracted wine can be bitter and coarse.

Most of all, an age-worthy wine needs a track record—historicalproof that it has actually improved over time, many times. That’s onereason for the high cost of great Bordeaux. Great Bordeaux have along track record—longer than most other wines in the world.

But none of this matters if the wine isn’t well-stored. No wine isage-worthy if it’s stashed in a closet or left on the floor. The latter wasactually the preferred location of a late wine writer and friend of minewho “stored” everything from cheap Cabernet to first-growth Bor-deaux along the edges of his living-room rug. Dinners at his housewere a fraught mixture of desire and dashed hope as pedigreed bottleswere opened and poured—into glasses and down the kitchen sink.

The expense of storage is another reason so few wine drinkersmight think about aging wine—and for restaurateurs, it’s much thesame. Few restaurants have the space or the deep pockets to keep bot-


tles that they won’t be selling for decades. One of the exceptions isCrabtree’s Kittle House in Chappaqua, N.Y., where there are dozensof affordable wines on the list, in part because its cellar is so large.Glenn Vogt, the general manager and wine director, has bottles headmits he has lost track of—and happily, he seems to have lost track ofthe pricing as well. I had an excellent 10-year-old Chablis there lastyear that cost $25 a bottle.

But even ownership of a cellar doesn’t mean some people won’tdrink their wines young. Mr. Dalton told me that he has some clientswho fly to Napa every year in private planes, buy up dozens of bot-tles of cult Cabernets—and drink them soon after they return hometo Texas.

This may be one reason so many Napa Cabernets are styled dif-ferently these days, made with riper fruit and more upfront appeal.Bordeaux-trained Philippe Melka, who makes some of the mostsought-after Cabernets in the Valley (Vineyard 29, Dana Estates),says he is making wines that are more approachable than they were adecade ago.

Age-worthy wine may not (yet) be obsolete, but its biggest chal-lenge—beyond money, time and proper storage—may be the belief ofa buyer in a bottle, the conviction that something truly transforma-tive can take place. Aging wine is, above all else, an act of faith.

This article originally ran on Feb. 11, 2012, under the headline “Does GoodWine Come to Those Who Wait?”


Understanding Wine Auctions and How TheyWork

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

Although most wine drinkers think of fall in terms of harvest and vin-tage, the big news—or at least the big money—isn’t in grapes, but inbottles.

And right now, the entire wine-auction world seems to be fullof good news—at least for the sellers and the auction houses. BenNelson, president of the Chicago-based auction house Hart DavisHart Wine Co., says that sales at his house this year are over $25million—more than 33% higher than last year—with two more bigauctions to take place in the next couple of months. He estimatesthat total fine-wine auction sales in 2012 exceeded $300 million. Nowonder news releases from major houses announcing sale results allseem to contain phrases like “exceeded all expectations” or “exceeded

estimates.” The figures cited are inevitably large—often five and sixfigures.

Perhaps that’s why every auction director I spoke with soundedquite pleased—even those who have yet to hold a single sale. MichaelJessen, president and CEO of the newly-launched Wally’s Auctions,characterized the market as “incredibly vibrant.” Wally’s, which isbased in Los Angeles, will hold its first auction next month in NewYork. One lot that Mr. Jessen is particularly excited about is six bot-tles of 1993 Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux, Vosne Romanée. The lot isestimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000.

So who are the buyers and who are the sellers in this gilded sce-nario? Where do they come from? The answer was inevitably “allover the globe.” In my conversations with the auction house heads,the word “global” came up almost as often as the phrase “exceeded allexpectations.”

The market may be global, but the biggest auctions take place inthree major cities—New York, London and Hong Kong (and to alesser extent, Chicago, thanks to Hart Davis Hart). With the majorityof the purchasers scattered about the globe, most of the bidding takesplace online. This makes the market “much more efficient,” as Mr.Nelson said, though it might make it a little less exciting for specta-tors, too.

Still, wine auctions can be pretty good theater, at least for winelovers who like to see big numbers flashed on screens and listen tothe auctioneer’s loving (if very brief) descriptions of the lots. Manymajor auction houses hold their live auctions in first-rate restaurants,offering lunch or dinner and sometimes tastes of a few auction wines.


That’s as close as you’ll get to the actual bottles, which otherwise onlyappear in the auction catalogs.

And what a pleasure those catalogs are to behold. The thick, glossypaper is flush with notes about wines and vintages accompanied bybeguilingly lit bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy. It’s all seeminglycalculated to tempt bidders to abandon fiscal good sense.

Even though many sales are taking place online, the catalog stillmatters. “Many customers still want to see the catalog before placingtheir bids,” Mr. Nelson wrote in an email. In fact, he added, manybuyers would actually wait for the catalog to arrive before placing abid.

Auction catalogs may be the most significant constant in the ever-changing auction world, which has seen two very big shifts in thepast 20 years. The first took place in 1994, when wine auctions werelegalized in New York. As Jamie Ritchie, CEO and president of wineAmericas & Asia at Sotheby’s noted, this changed wine from some-thing that was the province of a small community of collectors to acommodity that could be bought and sold the same way as a work ofart.

The second big shift took place in 2008, when the 80% wineimport tax in Hong Kong was stripped away. This change in lawbrought a flood of wine brokers and auction houses to Hong Kong,where buyers seemed to have an inexhaustible amount of money andan equally inexhaustible appetite for Bordeaux.

One Bordeaux was of particular interest to Asian buyers: ChâteauLafite Rothschild. At a 2010 Hong Kong auction, three bottles of1869 Lafite Rothschild were expected to sell for $8,000 apiece; the


wine went for $232,692 a bottle instead. Two years later, 12 bottlesof a much younger (1982) Lafite sold at another Hong Kong auctionfor an impressive $42,350.

Today’s Hong Kong auction market is smaller and much less flashythan it used to be. Take, for example, the recent history of Sotheby’s.The house sold $53 million worth of wine in Hong Kong in 2010,$45 million in 2011 and about half that amount ($27 million) in 2012.This year is shaping up to be a bit stronger than last, with total salesof $25 million so far.

There is also much less emphasis on Lafite and Bordeaux in theHong Kong market. Zachys president Jeff Zacharia, who travelsto Hong Kong quite often, described the market as more “well-rounded” than it was in those heady days—the same words that JohnKapon, CEO of Acker Merrall & Condit auction house, used todescribe the auction world overall.

And yet even in this “well rounded” market, one wine reignssupreme: Burgundy. Buyers and sellers alike are all looking for winefrom this hallowed region. As Jamie Pollack, North American man-aging director of Zachys put it: “Burgundy is hot, hot, hot.”

Some wines warrant such praise—especially any Burgundy pro-duced by Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (aka DRC). At a recentSotheby’s auction, a single case of 1999 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold for $159,250. Needless to say, this “exceeded all estimates.”Other Burgundy domaines have racked up impressive, if somewhatless meteoric numbers—like the case of 1990 Clos de la RocheDomaine Dujac that sold last month at a Hart Davis Hart auction for$23,900.


Of course, numbers like these have a way of attracting the atten-tion of wine thieves. The auction world has been rife with fraud.Burgundy, of course, is a big target Just last week, an Italian fatherand son were arrested in France on suspicion of making $2.7 millionworth of what they tried to pass off as DRC. While thosewines—which were said to be lousy—may or may not have made it toauction, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t many more fraudsters whosework has yet to be found. The most famous example of a fraudulentwine at auction was a lot supposedly of Burgundy producer DomainePonsot, which was nearly sold at Acker Merrall & Condit in 2008.The auction was stopped when Mr. Ponsot himself showed up anddenounced the bottles as frauds.

Beyond Burgundy, other auction-house best sellers include matureBordeaux and cult Cabs from Napa Valley producers like ScreamingEagle, Harlan and Dana Estates (two bottles of 2007 Dana sold for$1,792 at a recent HDH auction), but they seem like bargains com-pared with Burgundy.

Are there any real bargains in the auction world today? Mr. Kaponnamed “Classic California wines” like Dunn and Montelena as over-looked and underpriced, while Ms. Pollack cited older Riojas. “Youcan get Riojas from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and the value isexceptional,” she said. (Three bottles of 1920 R. López de HerediaViña Tondonia sold for $980 at a recent Zachys auction; the sale’sother Riojas sold in the low four figures.)

So what does this all mean to a collector thinking of selling or abuyer who might want to enter the market now? Sellers should knowthat certain auction houses set minimum prices on the wines they


accept. Sotheby’s, for example, won’t look at any collection worthless than $20,000. Some houses are a little more flexible. “We decideon a case-by-case basis,” said Ms. Pollack, who offered the example ofa man who asked if Zachys would accept a double magnum of 1982Château Latour for auction. Although the wine was only worth a fewthousand dollars, Zachys agreed to sell the wine at auction. It turnedout the man had a multimillion-dollar cellar, which he later sold atauction with Zachys.

Each auction house has a different commission policy, too. Thismay vary from a few percent points of the total to nothing at all (asat Acker Merrall & Condit), though no auction director would giveme an exact number. Finally, a seller should know how each auc-tion house comes up with their estimates—the price range where theyexpect the sale price to fall. Some auction houses offer unrealisticallyhigh estimates hoping to attract would-be sellers—like real estate bro-kers who overprice a house just to get the listing—and then hope thewine will sell. It’s useful to check a few final sales.

The most important number for buyers to know is the buyer’s pre-mium—the not-inconsiderable sum that’s tacked onto every lot sold(and for which the buyer is responsible). Premiums vary by house:At Hart Davis Hart, the premium is 19.5% while Zachys and Sothe-bys ring in 22.5% (no one knows where the half-percent businessstarted). Acker Merrall tops out at 23%. The final hammer price plusthe buyer’s premium is referred to as the “aggregate” amount.

Successful selling or buying at auction means doing research. Infact, the word that auction directors invoked almost as often as theydid “global” was “homework.” A good deal on either end is virtually


impossible without a lot of study. And perhaps the cultivation of ataste for (very) old Rioja.

This article originally ran on Oct. 25, 2013, under the headline “The Stateof Fine-Wine Auction Houses: Less Flash, More Fire.”


Go Inside the World’s Largest Wine StorageFacility

BY WILL LYONS

It’s a still, warm, late-summer day as the taxi driver weaves his waythrough a maze of narrow country lanes deep in England’s rural land-scape. Flanked either side by lush green hedgerows, the road veers tothe right up a short drive beyond which acres of gently rolling, arablefarmland stretch as far as the eye can see.

“I know the way,” nods the driver in his soft West Country accent.“My brother works here,” he adds. “They have plenty of bottles allright; some of them he tells me are worth up to £3,000.” He’s notwrong. Lying 30 meters below us is the wine world’s answer to FortKnox, an enormous subterranean cavern holding more than £1 bil-lion worth of fine wine. If you are storing your wine through areputed U.K. merchant, then the chances are it is probably stacked

here alongside the other 680,000 cases, in one of the largest under-ground storage facilities in Europe. No wonder security is tight.

“They won’t let me in,” says the driver as we pull up at an anony-mous looking steel gate, alongside a security hut. So I get out, and ashe speeds away I take a look around at the picturesque English coun-tryside. One hundred miles west of London and I am in the middle ofnowhere. Which is just how cellar master Laurie Greer likes it—withprecious bottles of wine dating back to 1869, discretion is paramount.

Welcome to Eastlays mine deep in Wiltshire. First quarried inthe 19th century, it is now known as Corsham Cellars, owned byCert Octavian, one of the U.K.’s largest private wine-storage facili-ties. When the first tunnels were excavated, much of the honey-col-ored sandstone was used to build the Georgian town houses in thenearby towns of Bath and Corsham. In the late 1930s, when warlooked imminent, the Ministry of Defence requisitioned it and trans-formed the place into a giant ammunition store, replete with light-ing, whitewashed walls and concrete floors. Since 1989, following itspurchase by businessman Nigel Jagger, its labyrinthine corridors havebeen stacked not with TNT but wine, belonging to collectors such ascomposer Andrew Lloyd Webber, financier Guy Hands and restau-rateur Michel Roux Sr.

“It’s rather like an underground vault,” says Mr. Greer, who hasoverseen the mine since it was converted into a wine cellar. He saysit now contains wine belonging to more than 130 wine merchants,various wine investment funds, restaurants, as well as around 2,500private clients from as far afield as continental Europe, the U.S. andthe Far East.


“The biggest change we have seen is that clients who own finewine have become much more knowledgeable,” says Mr. Greer.“They want to know where their wine has been stored, what condi-tion it is in, even how it is looking. For some, the cases down beloware their pride and joy.”

It isn’t unusual for private clients to pay a visit to Corsham Cellars,where from above ground they can watch their cases of wine loadedonto the industrial goods train as it makes its way down one of themain shafts, nine meters below ground, into an area the size of 20football pitches.

In fact, such is the attention to detail that the company has installedthree photographic studios to meet the demand of clients wanting tosee emailed photographs of their stored bottles of wine.

If this all sounds a little unnecessary, then one has to understand thecontext. Fine wine’s remarkable bull run—which has seen Bordeauxchâteaux wines, such as Lafite Rothschild 2000, increase in price bymore than sevenfold in the past seven years—has focused collectors’attention on storage. Cases of wine that were once squirreled away inan old garden shed or below the stairs, now have to be kept in opti-mum storage conditions if they are to retain their market value.

Most collectors know that wine stored in direct sunlight or in aroom that is too hot can damage the liquid, as can dramatic temper-ature swings. An average temperature of between 10 and 15 degreesCelsius is preferable. But with the value of wine soaring, there is alsothe very real threat of security.

“One of the great advantages of having an underground storagefacility as opposed to an above-ground warehouse,” says Mr. Greer,


“is that a thief can’t just take a large vehicle and smash their way in.”Breaking into Corsham Cellars would require the sort of elaborateheist fictionalized in “The Thomas Crown Affair.”

Descending the 157 steps, I can see security is watertight. Forthe record, anyone looking to break in would have to negotiate theabove ground CCTV cameras, before dodging the movement detec-tors placed at the top of the mine. Once past these two obstacles,there is the small matter of starting up the goods train that transportsthe wine into the cellar—either that or it’s a steep climb down. Onceunderground, the thief would have to locate a fork lift and then findthe rarest and most precious wine amid more than 10,000 bottles. Bywhich time, a separate alarm would have alerted the police.

Eastlays mine is one of a number of underground bunkers, con-verted from former stone quarries, that were used as massive ammu-nition depots in Wiltshire in World War II. Mr. Greer says the minewas also used as a set for the filming of the early episodes of “DoctorWho.” Nearby is Burlington, a 14-hectare site that was converted toa subterranean Cold War City, which could house up to 4,000 gov-ernment personnel in the event of a nuclear strike on the U.K. Withthe ending of the Cold War, the site has since been decommissioned.

Back at Eastlays mine, there is a reminder of World War II withsome graffiti depicting the war leaders etched on the wall and varioushumorous rhymes and vignettes.

Wandering through the passages of this cavernous cellar one won-ders what the many men who spent hours underground stackingammunition while Europe was at war would have thought of the factthat 50 years later it has become a giant depository of fine wine. Judg-


ing by some of the graffiti scrawled on the walls, they would havesmiled.

This article originally ran on Sept. 16, 2011, under the headline “The WineConnoisseur’s Underground Vault.”


Why Wine Collectors Love Magnums

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

A magnum of wine pretty much means one of two things: twiceas much Yellow Tail on the table or a $2,000 grand cru Burgundy.There aren’t many options between the super-cheap and the superla-tive in this two-bottle-size bottle. Or so I discovered when I wentshopping recently for wines to share with my friends. I was hopingfor something between those two poles (price-wise, not palate-wise)in a magnum size and was surprised at how few wines I found. Whywere “middle class” magnums in such short supply?

With the holidays close at hand, I had figured it would be easy.Magnums are the perfect size for large dinners and parties—they con-tain about 12 glasses of wine. They’re also the best format for agingwine. As most collectors agree, a wine ages more slowly and grace-fully in a magnum, owing to a much greater proportion of wine to

air. That’s one reason that magnums of great wines are particularlyprized.

Magnums are also much more festive than regular bottles; theirproportions alone suggest a party in progress, a bounteous, bottom-less good time.

They can also serve as a restaurant’s floor show. According MichaelMadrigale, wine director at New York’s Bar Boulud, when he pourshis wines by the glass from a magnum, it captures the collectiveattention of the place. “It’s theatrical,” he said. “People stare.” Hecompared the sight of a magnum to that of a well-endowed woman.(Though in the case of a magnum, the contents are always real.)

Even magnums of lowly Muscadet provoke similar shows ofappreciation, according to Joe Campanele, the owner of New York’sAnfora wine bar, who pours magnums of Clos de la Pépière “LeGras Mouton” Muscadet by the glass ($12). “People get really excitedwhen they see a magnum,” Mr. Campanele said.

But many wine directors shy away from buying magnums.Andrew Green, wine director of Spruce in San Francisco, says it’shard to find a good supply. Often, they aren’t included in importers’and distributors’ catalogs, and need to be requested personally. Plus,he said, “a lot of sommeliers are afraid of magnums. You have to havea real bravado to sell a magnum.”

Perhaps that’s why magnums are scarce in restaurants, but why arethey also often missing from stores? “People may think of magnumsas ostentatious,” said Jeff Zacharia, president of Zachys in Scarsdale,N.Y., where I found about a dozen magnums priced for less than$100 each.


Gerald Weisl of Weimax Wines in Burlingame, Calif., blamed alimited audience for his lack of magnums. “Women never buy mag-nums,” Mr. Weisl said. “Men buy them occasionally as trophies.” (Asif to underscore that fact, his magnum section is adorned with a pic-ture of that very manly 1980s man, Tom Selleck, aka Magnum, P.I.)

Bear Dalton, the wine buyer for Spec’s, an 80-store Texas chain,said he has tried offering magnums of good wines, including a mid-price Château de Saint Cosme Gigondas. His regular bottles of thewine flew out the door, but the magnums didn’t move. Furthermore,he said, sellers don’t really like dealing with the bigger bottles. “Therearen’t really any easy ways to display magnums. You can’t put themon shelves, so they usually end up standing up somewhere in the backof the store.”

That was exactly where I found my magnums at Zachys—next tothe emergency exit and a dusty display of kosher wines. But at leastI found a few promising bottles: a 2007 Calendal Côtes du Rhône bygenius French winemaking consultant Philippe Cambie ($68), a 2007Chinon by Catherine and Pierre Breton ($72) and a cru BourgeoisBordeaux, Château d’Agassac ($65).

I acquired more bottles by shopping online. I found the Chevalierde Grenelle, a sparkling Samur from the Loire Valley that sported aparty-perfect silverplate label ($40), from Sherry Lehmann, and fromCrush Wines I found a gorgeous saber-shaped magnum of GermanRiesling from the great 2009 vintage by producer A.J. Adam ($55).I found a great Gamay from Oregon on the Brick House winerywebsite and a surprising number of Muscadets from various places(notably Chambers Wine) that were cheap. Once I’d accumulated a


sufficient quantity of bottles, I set about my true magnum mission:sharing the wines with friends.

I soon discovered that aside from wine collectors, almost no oneI knew drank from magnums, let alone purchased them, especiallywomen (reinforcing Mr. Weisl’s claim). In fact, three female friendslooked quite surprised when I showed up with my big bottle ofsparkling Samur. “A magnum!” they said with collective delight. “Iwould have loved to serve something like this at my birthday,” saidmy friend Monica. Why didn’t she? “It just never occurred to me,”she said. The wine was lovely—creamy with a bright acidity.

Another group of friends expressed more skepticism. “It’s one ofthose big bottles,” said Mary rather dubiously when she saw the bot-tle of 2005 Château d’Agassac Haut-Médoc Bordeaux ($65) in myhand. In fact, Mary had recently dined with a friend who had chidedthe waiter not to try to “fool” her by trying to sell them a big bottleof wine. Although she’d been led to believe big bottles were alwayscheap, Mary was pleased with the Bordeaux I brought—”It’s muchbetter than I thought it would be,” she said. We both agreed, though,that the wine wasn’t quite as impressive as the bottle itself.

The magnums of Clos de la Pépière Muscadet Clos des Briords andthe 2007 Calendal Côtes du Rhône that I brought to a dinner partyof six were both very big hits and, characteristically, seemed to bebottomless bottles. The Calendal was big, lush and deliciously ripe,while the pleasingly minerally Muscadet inspired my friend Allisonto say she’d actually consider buying a magnum. “Thirty-five dollars?I could do that,” she said.

There is one big downside to a magnum, however, which I dis-


covered firsthand with the magnum of Chinon that I brought to aBYO restaurant in New Jersey. I presented the bottle with a greatflourish and my friends made all the appropriate expressions of awe.I poured four glasses. The wine seemed dull, the fruit diminished. Itasted it again. There was no question: the bottle was corked.

In effect, we had not just one bad bottle but two. A flawed mag-num, after all, is a problem compounded. I was almost afraid to pointit out, since everyone had been so excited by the sight of the bot-tle. This doesn’t taste like it should,” I ventured. “Why don’t we havesomething else instead?” I opened a bottle of 2008 Williams SelyemHirsch Vineyard Pinot Noir (in a regular-size bottle) that I just hap-pened to have brought along. It was delicious—full of ripe, gorgeousfruit and marked by heady aromas of cherry and spice.

And the magnum sat in the middle of the table, a still-splendidcenterpiece. Then as we were getting ready to leave it behind, myfriend’s wife grabbed the wine. “I love this bottle,” she said, clutchingit to her chest. “I’m taking it home.” What could I say? The allure ofa magnum can be beyond common sense.

This article originally ran on Nov. 13, 2010, under the headline “MagnumForce: Big Bottles for Big Bashes.”


On Obsessing Over Wine

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

Are wine lovers obsessive by nature? Or does wine make themobsessed? It’s an oenophile’s version of the chicken and the egg: It’shard to tell which comes first.

What’s clear is that wine can provoke passion and excess, evenamong the most self-possessed.

An obsession with wine evolves over time and in several stages. Itoften begins with a single, memorable bottle. Soon enough, the winelover will want more and more and will begin to collect. He or shemay start with just a few bottles, but soon enough a cellar is amassed.

Entire sections of the wine lover’s house may be devoted to wineand wine memorabilia—and they may want to speak of nothing elseover dinner. (Wine lovers can become rather single-minded conver-sationalists.)

The particularly obsessed oenophile may try his or her hand at pro-

ducing some wine. He or she might take a few classes in winemakingtoo—perhaps even viticulture. (A truly obsessed wine lover is a well-educated oenophile.)

The most well-heeled among the obsessed go one step further:They will buy a winery, vineyard or both. (California’s Napa Valleyis frequently the most-desired address.) Those stories can haveunhappy endings, but they also work out: My visit with a happy manwhose wine is selling well is chronicled here. Ideally, a wine obses-sion should leave the lover with good memories and a steady supply,but without massive debt.

Finally, what of the dreaded-term “wine snob”? Is it a line not tobe crossed, a description to be avoided at all costs? I’m convinced itis not, and that a true wine lover can wear the badge proudly. Hope-fully, by the end of this book, you’ll agree.


What Happens at Winemaking School

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

Who doesn’t want to be a rocket scientist? A best-selling novelist?Or, for that matter, a winemaker? Certain professions simply soundmore glamorous than others. Yet the aerospace industry isn’t exactlythriving, and Amazon can make any book seem like a best seller—atleast for a while. Winemaking, too, isn’t nearly as romantic as somepeople might think. This point was driven home particularly wellwhen I visited the University of California, Davis, a few weeks ago.

The UC Davis viticultural and oenology program (or V&E, asit’s called) isn’t only one of the oldest winemaking programs in thecountry, but arguably the most prestigious. Some of the most famouswinemakers in this country are Davis grads; I’ve even heard peoplecall Davis the Harvard of winemaking schools.

Located just west of Sacramento and about an hour east of NapaValley, the school is one of the largest universities in the state’s sys-

tem, with more than 30,000 graduate and undergraduate students.The wine program, however, is quite small, with fewer than 100graduates each year. Created in 1880 by an act of the state legislature,the Davis oenology program became famous for its rigorous scientifictraining and the expertise of its faculty members. The winemakingfacilities, though, were never quite as impressive. “Remedial” was theword that famed winemaker and UC Davis grad (class of ’79) DavidRamey used to describe the old Davis winery, which he likened to ananimal husbandry shed.

That changed for the better almost three years ago, when a12.5-acre vineyard was planted next to a new winery. Every piece ofequipment was the latest model, often more sophisticated than thoseowned by most commercial wineries. The winery is one of the fivenew buildings that comprise today’s oenology campus. (The variousbuildings opened between 2008 and 2013.) Robert Mondavi, the latepioneering vintner, contributed a considerable amount of the build-ing cost of what is now called the Robert Mondavi Institute of Foodand Wine Science.

The college has benefited from the generosity of many other wine-makers and wineries—Jess Jackson, Jerry Lohr and Silver Oak, toname a few. It’s hard to forget any of them, as their names are onplaques all over the school’s winery. The August Busch family evendonated funds for a new state-of-the-art brewery, and their namelooms on a rather large plaque outside the facility. Even individualfermentation tanks in the school winery will bear plaques. The afore-mentioned Mr. Ramey, for example, will have his name on a tankthat will eventually hold some student’s wine project.


(Keith Negley)

Mr. Ramey, like many Davis graduate students, came to winemak-ing after pursuing other interests. In Mr. Ramey’s case, he was anAmerican studies major at UC Santa Cruz. Of course some career-


changers are better prepared than others. One 28-year-old graduatestudent I met during my recent oenology immersion had graduatedfrom college with a degree in mathematics. He left a lucrative bank-ing career in New York after deciding that his life would be better, ifpoorer, spent making wine.

His math background wouldn’t go to waste. In addition to a goodpalate and a certain degree of artistry, a winemaker must be able toread and interpret data to make informed decisions (e.g., when to addsulfur to the fermenting must, and just how much). In fact, this skillmight be even more important than the artistry—as I learned in anAnalysis of Musts and Wines class, where the professor taught his stu-dents all about soluble solids and hydrometers (instruments used tomeasure sugar in juice).

The school’s undergraduate and graduate curricula share many ofthe same requirements, including organic chemistry, microbiologyand plant science, as well as viticulture and oenology. It’s a rigorousprogram, and graduate students who didn’t bulk up on science asundergrads are required to take extra courses to enter the graduateprogram. Some UC Davis courses are rigorous in otherrespects—requiring students to stand in the sun for long periods oftime, for instance, while examining leaves for identifying character-istics or marks.

The Viticultural Practices lab that I attended was held a few milesfrom campus, in the old Davis teaching vineyard. Professor AndyWalker was teaching 30 or so students how to identify various grapesby their leaves and fruit. This task was complicated by the fact thatthe vineyard was “full of diseased vines,” according to Mr. Walker.


Some leaves afflicted with leaf roll virus, for example, were coveredwith spots. The leaves on the shady side of the row were also harderto identify, said Mr. Walker, but he wanted to avoid the sun—andperhaps sunstroke. There had been “a couple of faintings in the vine-yard” in the past, he said.

The class seemed unfazed by the twin facts of heat and old vines,and eagerly followed the professor as he strode down the rows,pulling out one leaf after another and pointing out their differingtraits—the hairy leaves of the Pinot Meunier, the waxy leaves ofGrenache and the ruffled, wavy leaves of the Sauvignon Blanc.

I couldn’t imagine identifying so many varieties by their leavesalone but the students seemed quite enthused. I asked a studentnamed Russell his opinion of the class. “It’s awesome,” he said. “I getto hang outside and eat grapes.”

Mr. Walker recommended that the students return to the vineyardfor between four and 20 hours a week to study the vines. “The vine-yard is always open,” he said. It was only with repeated visits that theywould understand what the professor called “the gestalt of the vine.”

My next class, Wine Production, was a much smaller gathering.Professor Linda Bisson’s class was assembled around a sorting tablefilled with just-picked Grenache grapes from the school’s new vine-yard. Some students were picking out damaged fruit, sticks and rocksbefore the grapes went into the crusher, while others manned thenearby hose and tank. The school’s winemaker, Chik Brenneman,hovered nearby, cautioning students to watch for out black widowspiders, and not to stand too close to the must if they were allergicto sulfur. A student had almost fainted from this, he said. (Fainting


is, apparently, a hazard at wine school.) Meanwhile, Ms. Bisson rem-inisced about the time her students missed a rock during the sorting,and it blew the hose apart.

This type of hands-on instruction is one of the big changes fromthe “old” to the “new” Davis, according to the professors, and the newfacilities have brought a big improvement, in the way the classes aretaught. I’d heard a saying about Davis over the years—”Davis gradsdon’t know how to run a pump”—meaning that its graduates werebetter with theoretical than practical stuff. When I mentioned this toMs. Bisson’s teaching assistant, Scott Frost, he dismissed it, saying thatDavis offered something much better: “It teaches you how to thinkabout wine and the science of wine.”

The strength of the school’s science program was something else Iheard about again and again. A scientific understanding gave studentsconfidence in their decisions—and an ability to fix things straightaway if they didn’t go right. As Mr. Ramey put it: “If you have anoenology background, you know what you can change—and how toexperiment. It enables you to make better wine.”

An ability to make good wine is what it’s all about, after all. Butwhat about great wine? Of all the Davis students I’d met, who wouldturn out to be the next David Ramey, Aaron Pott, Helen Keplingeror John Kongsgaard (all of whom attended Davis)? And what werethe traits of a future great winemaker?

Self-sufficiency was key, said Roger Boulton, who has taught forseveral decades at the university and is one of the most esteemed pro-fessors at Davis. A great winemaker was “someone you could pick upand put in the desert,” he added. (An odd place to propose putting a


wine professional.) He or she was also “someone who had a healthyrespect for science and the scientific method. And someone whowants the lifestyle of a farmer, of being outside.”

I thought of Russell, the student I had met during Mr. Walker’sclass in the vineyard. He would need to know a lot of organic chem-istry, statistics and food science to earn his degree. But to be a greatwinemaker, he would also have to be the kind of guy who was happyjust to stand in a vineyard, eating grapes.

This article originally ran on Oct. 18, 2013, under the headline “So YouWant to Go to Winemaking School?”


How to Buy a Vineyard

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

The dream of owning a winery is one that many may harbor butfew are actually able to fulfill. The expense is considerable and theodds of success are incredibly long. Yet the list of actors and athletes,financiers and film directors who aspire to see their name on a labelsimply goes on and on.

After a recession-related pause, the number of would-be vintnershas been growing of late, according to real-estate brokers who spe-cialize in the market. And some recent high-profile sales, such as thepurchase of cult-Cabernet producer Araujo Estate in Napa Valley,Calif., have given prospective buyers greater confidence, accordingto Napa broker Katie Somple.

But what inspires the dream itself? It’s often driven by a desire to“return to the land” (preferably inside a $10 million house), or to cre-ate a legacy for the next generation. Sometimes it’s simply a matter

of loving wine, and sometimes it’s about having something (more) toown.

The country’s most sought-after winemaking address is Califor-nia’s Napa Valley, followed, in no particular order, by the state’sSonoma, Santa Barbara and Mendocino counties. The WillametteValley in Oregon and Washington state’s Walla Walla are also desir-able locations. New York state has seen some action of late, in theFinger Lakes district and Long Island’s North Fork.

Even though Manuel Pires was born in Portugal’s Douro Valleywine region, he aspired to own a winery in Napa Valley from hisvery first visit, many years ago. Why not in the Douro? “Because I aman American,” replied Mr. Pires, whose family emigrated to the U.S.when he was 15. He went on to build a large fortune in the secu-rity business. (His security-key system, Morse Watchmans, is used inprisons and casinos all over the world.)

Anyone looking to get into the wine business basically has twooptions: Buy raw land and start from scratch, or purchase an existingvineyard. The former is cheaper, but more difficult in terms ofobtaining all the necessary permits and planting the right rootstock.And there is always the chance that the land is no good. Finding agreat vineyard is the best, if most expensive, option. Yet it isn’t easyeither. The story of how Mr. Pires, a 56-year-old self-made Con-necticut millionaire, came to acquire one of the most storied vine-yards in Napa is a tale of persistence, timing and luck.

Perhaps the greatest advantage Mr. Pires had—besides hiswealth—was a formidable determination. I learned a great deal aboutMr. Pires and his particular brand of perseverance in the two days that


I spent in his company at his winery atop Pritchard Hill. (PritchardHill is a prestigious address in Napa Valley; some of the region’s mostfamous names grow grapes there.) Mr. Pires had hoped to call hisestate Pritchard Hill, except the name was trademarked by the Chap-pellet family, longtime Pritchard Hill residents. Mr. Pires decided tocall his winery Gandona, which means “humble man” in Portuguese.Gandona was the nickname given to Mr. Pires’s grandfather when, atage 36, he returned from America to Portugal. It became Mr. Pires’snickname, too.

Although he had visited Napa many times over the years, it wasn’tuntil 2005 that Mr. Pires decided to invest in his dream. The first stepwas highly unusual: He simply walked into a real-estate office andasked to see some properties. No one who actually has $10 million tospend does that, according to Holly Shackford, the real-estate agentwho became Mr. Pires’s tireless companion and guide. “Someone inManny’s position normally has a contact or an agent,” she said. A per-son interested in buying a winery usually calls in advance, especiallyas the potential buyer has to be vetted by the realtor to ensure she orhe has sufficient cash before a single property will be shown.

Ms. Shackford found that, unlike many buyers, Mr. Pires had apretty good idea of what he was looking for. For example, he knewthat he wanted a hillside vineyard. “I got a map out and we startedtalking about appellations,” Ms. Shackford recalled. And thus beganone of many eight- and 10-hour drives in her car.

The pair drove all around Napa, but nothing Ms. Shackfordshowed Mr. Pires appealed to him. There was a winery for sale righton Highway 29 that was a turnkey operation, with a winery, brand


and staff in place. It wasn’t about building a dream but buying a busi-ness, and, as Mr. Pires pointed out, he already had a business in Con-necticut. There was a remote hillside property near Angwin that Mr.Pires found interesting, but his wife, Cristina, rejected it on accountof all the Spanish moss hanging from the trees. It looked “like Hal-loween,” said Ms. Pires. And so Mr. Pires and Ms. Shackford contin-ued looking month after month. They ventured to Sonoma a coupleof times, but Mr. Pires’s heart was set on Napa.

It was a pretty bleak time, Mr. Pires recalled. He was in the processof getting his hip replaced. He couldn’t walk and his dream seemedlike it would go unfulfilled. It had been almost a year, after all.

Just before Christmas, in 2005, Ms. Shackford asked her husband,John, a real estate appraiser, to make some calls. Mr. Shackford hadmany contacts in the industry, including local lawyers, one of whomtold him about a property that wasn’t listed. It was a prime offeringon Pritchard Hill. Ms. Shackford called Mr. Pires and told him aboutit. Though Mr. Pires—who was living in Connecticut—was just a fewweeks out of surgery, he got on a plane again.

He purchased the 116-acre parcel from the Longs, an establishedgrape-growing family, for $9.2 million, in April 2006. GandonaEstate is over a mile straight up a hill, and it was three years beforeanyone even knew that he’d bought it, said Mr. Pires. It only becamepublic knowledge when he filed for a larger winery use permit. (Theproperty had come with a 5,000-gallon use permit, which Mr. Piresincreased to 20,000 gallons.)

A winery with a use permit is a great advantage, according to Ms.Somple. This permit can be hard to obtain, and quite expensive—as


much as $2 million for a commercial winery with a tasting roomon the main thoroughfare, Highway 29. (Given the modest size ofhis winery, Mr. Pires’s permit cost much less.) A different permit,an Agricultural Erosion Control Plan, is required to plant a vine-yard. “Anything with over a 5% slope, you will need a permit, andanything over 30% isn’t going to happen,” said Ms. Somple. (It’salmost impossible to obtain a permit for a new vineyard whose slopeis greater than 30%.)

Most of the Gandona vineyards are on slopes much steeper than30%, but they were planted in the 1960s and 1970s when there wereno such regulations, and are grandfathered in. Mr. Pires could ripout the existing Chardonnay vines and replant the vineyard to muchmore valuable Cabernet Sauvignon without requiring a new permit.

Mr. Pires had to obtain a permit to enable his vineyard manager,Jim Barbour, to plant 2½ additional acres of vineyards two yearsago—at a cost of about $100,000 an acre. Once a permit is obtained,planting comes with its own significant costs. It’s much more expen-sive to plant in the hills in Napa. Almost all hillside properties arerocky, and, according to Mr. Pires, the rocks he removed from hisvineyard site had to remain on the property because of a local regu-lation. As a result, Mr. Pires’s rocks surround his vineyard as a ratherdramatic wall.

There is much to attend to in the vineyard—even with a managerand several full-time staff members. Mr. Pires spends a great dealof time out of doors, looking after his grapes. During my visit, theowner and manager met over a few vines to discuss red blotch—a dis-


ease that is affecting a good many Napa vineyards right now, includ-ing a few vines in Mr. Pires’s property.

Mr. Pires hired Mr. Barbour, one of Napa’s most sought-after vine-yard managers, right after buying the property. He also hired super-star winemaker Philippe Melka, even though he was years away frommaking a wine. A Melka-made wine commands attention—and agood price. The first vintage (2009) of Gandona made its debut at$190 a bottle, and the 2011 was one of the top five wines in this year’sPremiere Napa Valley auction.

It’s cost Mr. Pires about $15 million so far to realize his dream—thatincludes building a winery, digging underground tunnels for winestorage and building a new house, which is almost finished. He’s notsure his three children have any desire to follow in his footsteps. Butthat wasn’t the point, said Mr. Pires. “It’s no longer a property, and it’snot just a place to live. It’s my soul.” That may not be how most vint-ners in Napa talk, but it’s what a man with a fulfilled dream believes.

DOS AND DON’TS

Few fantasies are readily realized, and becoming a producer of great wineis especially hard. The following are a few tips compiled from conversationswith Napa Valley real-estate agents Katie Somple and Holly Shackford.

Do decide how much you can spend. If all you have is the pur-chase price, then you shouldn’t get into the wine business.

Don’t think the wine business is about making money. It’s(almost) never about making money. It’s about not losing money.


Do understand that it will take time to find the right prop-erty. Many properties are privately listed with an individual agent.Very few appear on multiple listings. Wineries often do not wanttheir names mentioned at all; a winery that is for sale risks losing itswinemaker or distributor.

Do work with local consultants—engineers, planners and lawyers,once you’ve found the property that you want. It will save moneyand time. But make sure the local is a popular local.

Don’t believe an agent who tells you that a piece of land is‘plantable’ without an ECP (Erosion Control Plan). Plantableland means a vineyard already has an ECP. Planting ‘potential’ meansit does not have an ECP. Buyers should verify the difference.

Do start with the best vineyard that you can buy. A good wine-maker or a good vineyard manager won’t work with a bad vineyard.

Do figure out what kind of wine lifestyle you want. Is your heartset on an actual working winery? Or maybe you just want a vineyardview?

This article originally ran on Dec. 6, 2013, under the headline “So YouWant to Buy a Vineyard.”


How to Make Your Own Bordeaux Blend

BY WILL LYONS

A few months ago, in early spring, a group of enthusiastic wine-lovers gathered in the harvest room of one of Bordeaux’s better-known Grand Cru châteaux to celebrate the previous vintage. As a15-liter Nebuchadnezzar of the estate’s 1985 was poured, glasses wereraised to a banquet prepared by a two-star Michelin chef. Though2013 was one of the region’s most challenging seasons on record, theatmosphere was one of jubilation, as each of the guests had enjoyed afirsthand experience in making the vintage.

In the list of dream jobs, being a winemaker scores pretty high. Mynotebook is full of stories of men and women who have either madea fortune and reinvested the proceeds in a vineyard or given up theirday jobs and sold the house to follow their desire to make the bestwine possible. The 80 or so people seated in the harvesters’ hall ofChâteau Lynch-Bages chose a third option. Without buying a vine-

yard or giving up their jobs, all have made their very own barrel ofBordeaux wine.

“This has been a blast,” says Pete Johnson, a 43-year-old wineenthusiast who has flown in from Los Angeles to take part in themaking of the past five vintages. “Honestly, I wish I could spendmore time here but, at the moment, with work, it is just impossible.”

One day, he says, he will retire to Bordeaux and be part of thewhole process. In the meantime, he gets his annual vintner fix bymaking his own wine with Viniv, a company located in the heart ofPauillac, one of Bordeaux’s grandest appellations.

Co-owned by Jean-Michel Cazes of Lynch-Bages and former techentrepreneur Stephen Bolger, Viniv gives clients the opportunity toproduce, under the guidance of Château Lynch-Bages’s winemak-ing team, 288 bottles (one barrel) of wine for €7,350—or about €25 abottle.

Winemaking with Viniv involves everything from choosing thevineyard plots and taking part in the grape harvest to managing thewine’s fermentation, overseeing the barrel aging (known as élevage)and, most important, deciding on the final blend.

“When I first started in Bordeaux, most people thought it wouldnever work,” says Mr. Bolger, a Franco-American who launchedViniv in 2007 after leaving his career in industrial minerals. “Onegrower said to me: ‘How can you say that someone who has nevermade wine before is a real winemaker?’ Another asked me to stopdemystifying the winemaking process.

“My response was simple,” he continues. “If people are so interestedin Bordeaux, it is because they want to understand. They want to get



on the inside, they want to understand the inner-workings. Hidingthe beauty of Bordeaux winemaking is, I think, kind of counterpro-ductive.”

We’re standing on the edge of Le Château, a small parcel of vine-yards in Bordeaux’s Canon-Fronsac region. It’s damp underfoot andthe spring sky threatens rain but, despite the heavy cloud cover, thelandscape is spectacular. With its gently rolling hills and lush grass,


the region is far removed from the gray, flat panoramas of the north-ern Medoc. Behind us flow the Dordogne and Isle rivers. This isMerlot country, where the south-facing slopes and rich clay-lime-stone soil produce dark ruby wines with aromatics of red fruit.

I’m here to try my own hand at winemaking. It’s been 12 yearssince I first visited the region professionally. In that time I have tastedthousands of wines and visited numerous châteaux and cellars. It hasbeen my job to evaluate, criticize and describe the wines. But in allthose years, I have never had the experience of making my own.When I met Mr. Bolger at an event in London, I jumped at thechance to empathize with the vigneron. So I have taken a few daysout of my tasting schedule to see what it’s like on the other side of thefence.

I say winemaking but—as it’s early April—the picking, sorting andfermenting have been done and the barrel aging is under way. I’mhere to test my taste buds and try putting together a final blend. AsMr. Johnson says: “I like to say that I am a fashion designer for wine.I’m picking out the materials and getting somebody else to sew themup.” I’ve opted to work on the 2012—still challenging, but not astough as 2013.

First, though, I want to see the vines that my grapes have comefrom. After Canon-Fronsac, we head into St.-Émilion to visit moreMerlot grapes before making our way to the other side of theGironde, where Cabernet Sauvignon thrives on the spectaculargravel plains of St.-Estèphe and Pauillac. Each vineyard producesgrapes that impart a different character. For example, Pauillac pos-sesses more power than the tightknit, tough tannins of St.-Estèphe.


It’s a jigsaw that will hopefully come together in the blendingroom above Viniv’s winery in Pauillac, where I’m joined by DanielLlose, who oversees winemaking at Lynch-Bages and has beenblending wine since the 1970s. I tell him I want to make somethingquite refined—what the French refer to as classique. This is predom-inantly Cabernet Sauvignon, which has more structure than the bigfruit of St.-Émilion Merlot. Mr. Llose explains that, first, you have tofind the wine’s backbone. But he quickly adds that he’s just there as asounding board—the makeup of the wine is entirely my choice. I feela little like I’m back at school having to perform for my schoolmaster.

I start off with a straightforward Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlotblend, made from vineyards in St.-Estèphe, Pauillac and St.-Émilion.The structure is right, but perhaps a little too Cabernet-dominated. Itneeds more finesse. So I try Cabernet Franc from a parcel in St.-Émil-ion—replacing 10% of the Cabernet Sauvignon with Cabernet Francadds more elegant aromas. I try a third blend with more Merlot. Itdoesn’t work; there’s too much flesh and the wine loses its bite. Thefourth is fresher but a little overcooked. And so we go on, sniffing,tasting and swirling. It’s complicated, but fun.

After an hour, we have five blends. Undecided, I sit down and tastethem all again. I keep coming back to the second. I love its smell—theCabernet Franc just adds something. That’s my blend. Sometimes,Mr. Llose says, you get it right early on.

With my final wine complete, there is only one thing left to do.Would I like to go ahead and buy a barrel? I look at the wineand envisage myself writing a check. Then I remember the difficult


growing season … The beauty of wine is that there is always anothervintage. Maybe next year.

This article originally ran on July 11, 2014.


A Visit to Château Lafite Rothschild

BY WILL LYONS

Crossing the Jalle du Breuil on the southern slopes of Bordeaux’s St.Estèphe commune, the marshland unexpectedly clears. Here, the D2road straightens from its northern curve, cutting through what manyregard as the heart of Bordeaux’s classic Médoc region: the vineyardsof Pauillac.

For anyone familiar with this magical stretch of road, it isn’t theimmaculate carpet of vines that trail down to the banks of theGironde estuary that catches the eye, but a thin line of weeping wil-lows on its bank. Oenophiles know to slow down. Barely visiblethrough the swaying branches are the manicured gardens and turretof Château Lafite Rothschild—a view little changed since the 18th-century and one immortalized by its distinctive engraved label.

The estate’s 2011 is, as one would expect, reserved. But under thecloak of its youthful tannins, black currant and a delightful, fresh

suppleness is revealed. For a wine so fine, the tannins are exquisiteand its ethereal weight is remarkable. It is reminiscent of a meal in aMichelin-starred restaurant, where the flavors and texture are power-ful, but the finish on the palate is light.

Despite the obvious quality of Lafite’s wines, some nagging ques-tions remain: Why has this château caught the imagination like noother in Bordeaux? What makes someone pay £43,000 for 12 bot-tles of the 2009 vintage, as one bidder did at a Hong Kong auctionin 2010, redefining the price of youthful fine wine? And, given therecent downturn in the Bordeaux fine-wine market, can it retain itselevated price?

Those familiar with this region know there are at least eight winesthat can rival Lafite’s immediate charm, including the four otherBordeaux First Growths—Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion and MoutonRothschild. On the other side of the Gironde, in Pomerol and St.Émilion, are Le Pin, Pétrus, Ausone and Cheval Blanc. But in termsof investment potential, international recognition and marketdemand, over the past few years, Lafite has eclipsed them all.

Since the 1990s, the estate has been under the careful guidance ofCharles Chevallier. Reserved, almost reticent, Mr. Chevallier says heis as perplexed as anyone as to why its price has risen so dramati-cally. He points to the quality of the wine, which he says comes froma process that involves precisely timing the picking of the grapes,not extracting too hard when drawing the flavor and color out ofthe skins, and respecting the house style of elegance and finesseover brute power and high alcohol. But above all, he recognizes the


importance of the soil and its gravel, which in parts of the vineyardstretches down more than four meters.

He explains that his winemaking team, oenologist and winemakerChristophe Congé and vineyard manager Regis Porfilet, goesthrough exactly the same procedures at the Rothchild’s neighboringestate, Château Duhart-Milon. The two properties are less than onekilometer apart, and since 1962 have been managed by a single team.But the definition and style of the wines are different, Mr. Chevalliersays. So too is the retail price, with a bottle of 2010 Duhart-Milonpriced at around €134, compared with €1,047 for Lafite.

“The crucial factor in making great wine is to pick at exactly theright time,” Mr. Chevallier says. “We do this by spending a lot oftime in the field…. I taste, then I make a decision. We try to find theright balance between the acidity and the sugar ripeness. From thenon, the process of making the wine is quite easy.

“At the end of the maceration, we have to control by tasting also,”he adds. “Those are the two main decisions in the life of the wine.”

In many ways, though, Lafite has become more than a wine. Aswith a number of other premium French wines such as Domaine dela Romanée-Conti, its following among wealthy collectors in Asiahas driven its price to astronomical levels. Only last week at a Bon-hams auction in London, a case of 1982 Lafite sold for £21,850, or£1,820 a bottle.

“I always think of Bordeaux as Formula One,” says JonathanMalthus, owner of Château Teyssier in St. Émilion. “Wherever I goin the world, all winemakers want to show their wines against the


wines of Bordeaux. It is still the benchmark and, within our lives, willremain so.”

The linchpin to that benchmark is the 1855 classification, a listdrawn up under the instruction of Napoleon III for the ExpositionUniverselle de Paris. Compiled by brokers, it ranked the châteaux ofthe Médoc in five groups of quality. Lafite was ranked at the very top.It is this ranking, some argue, that provides a clue to the château’spopularity in the Far East. Demand in Asia may also be explained byits classical label, which has never changed, its lineage and, in recentyears, by the fact that Domains Barons de Rothschild has a presencein eastern China with year-old vineyard plantings.

“Bordeaux is still the largest single area of great vineyards thatexists,” says British importer Mark Walford. “And it is undoubtedlythe first winemaking area to open up any country that is likely tohave an interest in wine.”

But Château Lafite Rothschild’s history hasn’t always been pep-pered with success. Yes, the estate supplied wine to Britain’s firstprime minister, Robert Walpole, in the 18th century, but throughoutmuch of the 20th century, it struggled. Some critics argued it under-performed against its peers in the 1960s and ’70s. Indeed, in an inter-view with The Wall Street Journal last September, Nat Rothschild,scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty that has owned the châteausince the late-19th century, quipped that “it was a millstone round theRothschild family’s neck for 100-plus years.”

This changed when the release price for the wine started to rise inthe late ’90s, climbing steadily from around €50 a bottle in the mid’90s to €600 a bottle for the 2011.


But there is evidence that the fine-wine market, after a tremendousbull run, is experiencing its own downturn. The 2011 en primeurwas one of the slowest to sell on record, with many négociants sayingit was the hardest to sell in living memory and some arguing that toomuch wine has been sold to investment funds and the Asian marketin the past five years.

This is borne out by the recent fall in price. According to Liv-ex,the London-based fine-wine exchange, the 2011 Lafite has lost 18%of its value since it was first offered to the market in April, fallingfrom around £5,500 a case to £4,500 a case. “Has there been a slow-down in terms of increase of price? Yes,” says Richard Harvey, Mas-ter of Wine and head of Bonhams wine department. “There is toomuch wine floating around, and it is not moving out of Hong Kongquickly enough.”

Others are more sanguine. “The fundamentals are right,” says Liv-ex director Anthony Maxwell. “There is limited supply, the qualityis increasing and demand is increasing—maybe not on a month-by-month basis or a quarter-by-quarter, but it is increasing.”

But away from the auction houses and market indexes, workersat Château Lafite Rothschild are praying for dry weather. The vinesneed a long, dry growing season for the grapes to ripen fully and forthe roots to burrow deep and extract the mineral elements that addto the structure and flavor of the wines. For it is the soil, says Mr.Chevallier, that provides “the magic of Lafite.”

This article originally ran on July 12, 2014, under the headline “The LafitePhenomenon.”


How a Burgundy Wine Domaine Became theWorld’s Most Exclusive

BY WILL LYONS

At No. 1, Rue Derrière le Four in Vosne-Romanée, the midafternoonsun catches the courtyard, casting a shadow across its white-washedwalls, briefly illuminating a small oval-shaped plaque that sits atop apair of burgundy-colored gates. Against the light one can just makeout the letters “RC”—the one clue as to what lies behind.

It is here, sandwiched between a stone house and an outbuilding,that one finds the home of what many people regard as the world’smost sought-after and precious wine—Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Walk past and you would miss it.

It may not be the world’s grandest architectural frontage, but theseinitials represent two of the most bewitching names in the worldof wine. There are many enchanting addresses in the vinuous land-scape—Château Petrus in Bordeaux, Champagne Krug in Reims and

Château d’Yquem in Sauternes—but few can compete with the mys-tery and allure of Romanée-Conti.

The name itself is that of a 1.8 hectare vineyard that lies just a shortwalk behind the village of Vosne-Romanée on a southeastern-fac-ing hillside of the Côte d’Or, a thin, 48-kilometer ribbon of land thatstarts just south of Dijon and ends in the villages south of Santenay.Split into two sections, the Côte d’Or or “Golden Slope” divides intothe Côte de Beaune in the south, known for its white Burgundies anddelicate red wines, and the much shorter Côte de Nuits in the north,home to Vosne-Romanée. It is in the latter, on a multilayered soil oflimestone, red clay, gravel and pebbles, where the Pinot Noir grapefinds its most sophisticated and fascinating expression.

Take a stroll up to the vineyard of Romanée-Conti at any timeand you are more than likely to be met by a crowd of wine enthu-siasts stopping to get their photograph taken beside the stone crossthat stands on the southern perimeter of the vines. But it is neitherthe cross, nor the vineyard that has given the name Romanée-Contisuch resonance. It is the wines.

Not that there are many people who have had the opportunity totaste a glass of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Firstly, there is thehurdle of the price. According to U.K. importers Corney & Bar-row, a bottle of 2007 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti will set youback a mere £4,500, which adds up to around £56,000 for a case of12. If, and it is a very large if, you can source a case. Productionof Romanée-Conti is tiny—a better description would be minute—ataround 450 cases, or 6,000 bottles a year. Faced with this, it is hardlysurprising that some importers only ever sell in mixed cases, in other


words, to buy one bottle of Romanée-Conti one has to purchasea case that contains the other wines of the domaine as well: LaTâche, Richebourg, Romanée Saint-Vivant, Grands Echézeaux andEchézeaux. But I doubt anyone who received such a case would becomplaining, as all of these wines are characterized by a purity, graceand finesse that puts them in many cases on a par with the domaine’snamesake itself.

Given its scarcity and the fact that it will only ever be tasted by ahandful of billionaires and connoisseurs, why visit? The answer liesin attempting to understand the philosophy and wine-making prac-tices that have earned the domaine its international reputation. Andto do this, one has to speak to its winemaker: the thoughtful, don-nish 71-year-old Aubert de Villaine, who, along with his co-directorHenry-Frédéric Roch, has, for more than a quarter of a century, hasbeen at the forefront of not only restoring the reputation of the winesof Domaine de la Romanée-Conti but also of the wines of Burgundyitself.

It is with this in mind that I press the tiny button beside thedomaine’s steel gates to announce my arrival for a tasting of the 2009vintage, a year that, on present evidence, in Vosne-Romanée has pro-duced fresh, supple wines with an abundance of forward fruit. WhenI am ushered into a small annexe, it is difficult to equate my sur-roundings with the domaine’s reputation. Unlike châteaux in Bor-deaux, there is no grand Palladian mansion, elaborately built cellars oran army of staff. Just a receptionist, a few men working in the win-ery and, after a short wait, Aubert de Villaine, who, after introducing


himself, politely asks if we can go to the cellars straight away as it isvintage time in a few weeks and there is a lot to do.

“What I have learned is that the talent that makes the wines isnot with us,” says Mr. de Villaine, dipping a pipette into a large oakbarrel named Richebourg and drawing out a dark, purple wine. “Ittakes some years to understand that the talent is in the vineyards. Theimportance of your work adds influence naturally, but, essentially,what really gives the taste to the wine is the plot of land, the terroir.The more you express the character of the land, the more you aredoing your job.”

In Burgundy, terroir comes first. Unlike Bordeaux, where classi-fications are ranked by producer, to understand the wines of Bur-gundy, one has to first think of the vineyard, then its village, thenits producer, often written as a tiny footnote on the bottom of thelabel. In Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s case, the crus the family hasacquired through a process that started with Mr. de Villaine’s great-great-great-grandfather, Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet, are someof the most sought after in the whole of Burgundy. As well as owningthe entirety of Romanée-Conti, they also own the larger La Tâchevineyard; 44% of Richebourg, 55% of Romanée Saint-Vivant, 38%of Grands Echézeaux and 12% of Echézeaux.

Aubert de Villaine has been working at the domaine for more than40 years, a period during which he has honed a philosophy that isbased on respect and humility for the land he farms: What is taken outof the soil is given back, there are no chemical fertilizers, treatmentsor many of the modern wine-making gadgets available to the con-temporary vigneron. An example is the reintroduction, a few years


ago, of horses to replace the use of heavy machinery in the vineyard.The gentle action of the horses’ hooves, Mr. de Villaine says, “doesnot compact the soil as much.”

“The more we learn, the more we learn to use less technology,” hesays. “In the ’70s and ’80s we were tempted by using mechanization,which was bringing a lot of shortcuts. But now we are going backfrom this, and we are more manual today then we were 20 years ago.”

We are tasting in the maturation cellar, which is a short walkaway at another famous Vosne-Romanée estate, Domaine du ComteLiger-Belair. Generously, Mr. de Villaine says that we are not obligedto spit, but such is the scarcity of these wines that after the first sipwe have to pour back the remainder of our glass into the barrel.We start with Grands Echézeaux, move onto Richebourg, RomanéeSaint-Vivant, finishing with La Tâche, and finally Romanée-Conti.

The wines are some of the oldest in the world, dating back to theRomans who first cultivated the vines. The monks of the Priory ofSt. Vivant had acquired the vineyard, then known as Cros des Clous,from the Dukes of Burgundy in the 13th century. In 1631, ownershippassed to the de Croonembourg family who renamed it Romanée.The Conti was added after Louis François de Bourbon, the Prince deConti and first cousin of Louis XV of France, paid 8000 livres in 1760for it. After the Revolution, the land was sold to Napoleon’s bankersbefore being bought in 1869 by Duvault-Blochet, who built up mostof the holdings.

So how do the wines taste? It is always hard to be completelyobjective when faced with such iconic wines, especially when tastingfrom the barrel, as these wines are famously difficult to taste young;


with age it becomes easier as they develop more complex, tertiaryaromas. Over the years, the adjectives used to describe the taste of thewines have ranged from satin and silk to violets, wild cherries, rasp-berries and game. To which I add licorice, spice, plums and the forestfloor.

But they are special. To describe these wines simply in terms oftaste is to miss the point. Without descending into the incomprehen-sible, when I taste these wines, they evoke a similar intellectual stim-ulation that I derive from listening to a piece of challenging classicalmusic or viewing a beautiful work of art .

Mr. de Villaine prefers to describe his wines in terms of character,as opposed to taste. “Richebourg is a wine that every year is very mas-culine and arrogant,” he says. “I often describe it as musketeer, thebodyguard of Romanée-Conti, and a wine that wants to laugh.”

“Romanée Saint-Vivant has two faces,” he continues. “One face isvery elegant and fine, close to Romanée-Conti in finesse; the otherside is more abrupt, monastic even. La Tâche is a wine that is alwaysshowing tannins that usually have the character of liquorice. In thecenter, it is very vertical and sharp, but surrounded by a lot of laceand velvet. Romanée-Conti is a wine that doesn’t want to show off;it doesn’t have lipstick or makeup. It has a hidden elegance.”

Those who know him well say Aubert de Villiane is slightly aghastat the prices his wines achieve in the marketplace. A modest, deep-thinking intellectual, his world seems a million miles from some ofthe upscale cities where Romanée-Conti is drunk.

“These wines will always need the hand of man and the way they


are made today requires patience and a long-term vision,” Mr. de Vil-laine says.

And with that, it is time to go. As I emerge from the cellar, the sunis beginning its late-afternoon descent. Leaving the courtyard, I walkto the car, parked casually across the kerb; the silence, punctured bythe echo of a distant bell, filling the medieval village with its rhyth-mic toll.

This article originally ran on Oct. 1, 2010, under the headline “Searchingfor Perfection.”


A Defense of Wine Snobbery

BY LETTIE TEAGUE

America has never been overly fond of its intellectuals. Ralph WaldoEmerson took note of this fact in a speech made at Harvard almost200 years ago: “The mind of a country, taught to aim at low objects,eats upon itself.” Even today, anyone with a higher degree or a well-articulated belief risks being called an “elitist.” The same seems tohold true in the American wine world, where an impassioned andknowledgeable oenophile is—often as not—simply labeled a “snob.”

The wine-snob backlash has lately been led by a group of winepopulists fond of proclaiming that it’s not only unnecessary butdownright undesirable to know too much about wine. Drink whatyou like and don’t worry about the particulars, they like to say,employing tasting terms like “yummy” and “fun” while comparingwines to cigars and black dresses and even gym socks.

A wine snob can talk about wine in terms that encompass history,

geography and meteorology. Wine snobs know where and why cer-tain grapes are grown and who does the very best work in a particularvineyard.

A wine snob also takes notes. Wine snobs are very good at writingthings down. A wine snob is also quite good at drinking—albeit in aserious, note-taking sort of way.

It almost goes without saying that wine snobs are some of the verybest customers in restaurants and stores. Who better to appreciateeverything from the fanciest grand cru to the most obscure bottlingfrom the furthest parts of the world? A wine snob can appreciate awinemaker’s noble intentions and subtle artistry and is willing to paythe price for them, too. A wine snob keeps the wheels of wine com-merce going around.

And yet, the fruits of a snob’s study aren’t always appreciated.Sometimes even a modest display of wine knowledge can provokeaccusations of pretentiousness or worse.

I’ve been accused of this myself. It happened a few years ago whenmy friends and I were dining at a bistro in Paris. (Isn’t that whereall wine-snob stories start?) We’d ordered a rosé that turned out tobe terrible. I (briefly, I promise) cited a few of its flaws and sug-gested that we might want to try something else. My friend’s husbandbalked. Why couldn’t we just drink the wine? he asked—a questionthat was actually closer to a demand. And furthermore, he added,why was it that I had to talk about the wine at all?

The fact that I was simply trying to save him from drinking some-thing lousy was seemingly forgotten—along with the fact that therehad been many earlier instances when these friends had expressly


(Marc Rosenthal)

sought my help in wine selection, including the occasion of theirwedding.

But my friend’s husband is hardly alone. I’ve witnessed similar,though perhaps less vehement, responses by others over the years.Wine talk seems to trigger a particular sort of outrage among non-


oenophiles. It may be in part because the language of wine is arcane,and the terms employed aren’t the sort that people normally use.There likely aren’t many people outside the wine world who knowwhat garrigue means (underbrush in the Mediterranean—it’s used todescribe wines from the Rhône) or who have described something astasting like “melted tar” or “damp earth” and meant it as a compli-ment.

Perhaps what antisnobs really need is a taste of the wines thatthe snobs revere. The best way to understand something better isthrough personal experience, after all. And contrary to what manymight believe, the wines that snobs love aren’t always precious andthe prices aren’t always three figures and more.

A wine snob likes wines with a singular character and taste, winesthat are made in a particular place. Take, for example, Chablis.Although it’s made from the Chardonnay grape, it doesn’t taste likeChardonnay from any other part of the world. This is thanks in partto the climate and in part to the soil, a mixture of limestone and clayand thousands of fossilized oyster shells (a wine snob could probablyeven name the type of oyster). A great Chablis is pure and austerewith a shimmering acidity and mineral thread—characteristics thatcan be found in even the most basic and affordable wines as well.

A similar transparency is found in the great Rieslings of Germany,once considered the noblest wines in the world, thought sadly muchless fashionable now (except among wine snobs). With their capti-vating aromas of flowers, fruit and spice, bright minerality and juicyacidity, they’re also wines that last a long time.

Wine snobs are also fond of grower Champagnes—sparkling wines


made by Champagne farmers instead of the large Champagne brands.These men and women, known as récoltants, make Champagne fromtheir own vineyard holdings instead of blending grapes from vine-yards all over the region, as is true of the brands. Grower Cham-pagnes are a fairly recent phenomenon—most growers couldn’tafford to make their own wine—but thanks to wine snobs who havechampioned their cause, they’re now some of the most sought-afterChampagnes in the world.

A wine snob cherishes wines with a history, from hallowed regionslike Rioja in Spain and Piedmont in Italy. The red wines of Rioja areaged in a manner unlike most other wines—a tradition dating back tothe 18th century. Some Riojas can be aged more than 10 years in abottle before they’re released, and the very best achieve a subtle, mel-low character unmatched by any other wine in the world.

The same is true of Barolo, the Piedmontese wine prized aboveall by wine snobs for its power and finesse—two seemingly oppositeterms that manage to converge in the same wine. A great Barolo ismarked by an unmistakable perfume—tar and roses and minerals andearth—and is styled to reveal itself over time, transitioning from for-biddingly tannic to lithe and elegant, almost Burgundian in style. Agreat Barolo rewards those who will wait, although there are moreand more Barolo producers who style their wines to be more accessi-ble sooner.

Emerson, the great champion of individualism, was a big propo-nent of experimentation and change: “Unless you try to do some-thing beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow,”he said. It could be the motto of every wine snob I know.


This article originally ran on July 6, 2012, under the headline “ThinkWhile You Drink: In Defense of Wine.”


About This Book

“Selecting, Drinking, Collecting & Obsessing: A WSJ Guide toEnjoying Wine” was published in August 2014 by The Wall StreetJournal.

The art director was Manuel Velez. The front cover poster art wasby Susan Burghart. The chapter heading illustrations were by SergeBloch. The editors were Beth Kracklauer, Fiona Matthias and DavidMarino-Nachison.

For questions about this or other e-books from the Journal, [email protected]. For more news, information and subscriptions,visit wsj.com.

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