The Perfect Thanksgiving Wine

The holiday season is a good time to drink - and sell - a lot of wine, so it's only natural that I have received a mountain of spam the past seven days that reads, "The Perfect Thanksgiving Wine." I only have myself to blame, of course, because (in many respects) I am a retailer's dream client: I buy steadily, all across the price spectrum, from vintage to vintage, and I encourage others to buy and drink more wine, too. I don't return bad bottles, even though the retailer who received it probably wouldn't have to pay for it in the end, and I am a loyal customer at my favorite shops. I'm in no sense perfect, however, as I do bitch and moan if I feel a wine underperformed, and no one likes to hear that a wine they sold wasn't very good, and I nag incessantly about screw caps. But more on that, later.

All these emails advertising the perfect wine for my Thanksgiving feast has got me thinking, again, about the perfect wine. Is the perfect wine an objective truth, a 100 point score from a professional critic, or a subjective one, e.g., the wine you've really wanted to try for forever and never have, which compliments your meal perfectly, and which leaves you wishing for me? Or is it simply a decent wine, that doesn't break the bank, that tastes good and goes down smooth and doesn't leave you hungover? I think it must be all three: a cheap, 100 point wine, that won't give you a hangover now matter how much you indulge, and that, my friends, simply does not exist.

So in this time of great upheaval and confusion, both economic and vinous, I have taken the liberty of suggesting some of my favorite wines from the past year to consider popping the corks on Thanksgiving (see below). Some are Good Values, others are Cellar Selections, all are American. (Why that's important to me ... I don't really know. But there it is.) None of these are "perfect," but they will go down smooth.

Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Merlot 2004 ** a very good merlot with blueberry notes and solid body that can be had for under $20

Bryce Vineyard Pinot Noir 2004 **** ripe and succulent but with sufficient acidity to hold it all together. This has the legs to last many more years, but is drinking nicely now, and if you can find it, will run you about $50.

Ridge Vineyards Lytton Springs 2006 *** A versatile and complex blend (predominantly zinfandel) for around $30 that could perfect a turkey feast.

Hendry Block 28 Napa Valley Zinfandel 2004 ** With succulent minerality and blackberry charm, this will suit those who want complex, noteworthy wines for dinner.

For my own dinner table ... I still haven't decided what I'm going to be opening tomorrow, but aside from those wines listed above, there's a 1979 Hanzell Pinot Noir that I've been eyeing hungrily the past few weeks. I think it's still good, and I don't think it will live past the weekend.

1980 Caymus Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon **

We dined at Henry's End in Brooklyn Heights last night, which was very good. Henry's End has an extensive wine list, with an emphasis on American wine, and they have a number of cellar selections from the 1980s, featuring Shafer, Caymus, Mondavi, etc. I ordered a bottle of the 1988 Dominus, which unfortunately was funked.

This raises the question of corkiness in wines and the cork v. screw cap debate. Most people, as soon as they hear a wine has turned, probably think that it was the cork that caused the wine to go bad. It was not the cork ... the wine had simply gone bad. It was probably stored improperly by whoever owned it before Henry's End bought it. In my experience, I have tasted more wines that have gone bad due to improper storage than due to bad cork. Take that for what you will. As I have stated before, I am a cork conservative. I do not buy or cellar wines with screw-caps, and I encourage others to follow suit. (A later post on the so-called "trend" towards screw-caps, especially from distributors I admire, will tackle this issue in greater depth.)

After sniffing and tasting the 1988 Dominus at Henry's End, I realized I had to send my first bottle of wine back, ever. I looked up at the maitre d' and said simply, "Do you want to try it?" As it turns out this was the second bottle of 1988 Dominus from the same cellar that had gone bad. The maitre d' opined that the wine was "matterized." I had never heard the expression before and unless you have tasted a wine that is "matterized" I wouldn't know how to explain it, but that is exactly what it was.

The maitre d' brought over a bottle of 1980 Caymus Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ** The primary note in the glass was a honeyed balsamic reduction. The wine was a cloudy dark cherry color, with oaky barrel notes throughout, with a silky texture and a tart strawberry and mildly sweet and sour cherry finish. At 28 years, the wine is probably past its prime, but the cork was still solid, and it was delicious.

Duty Free Wine Is Insane

I stopped in the Duty Free Shop on the return trip from Puerta Vallarta. This has been a habit of mine since I found bottles of Dom Perignon for $75 in a Duty Free Shop when I was travelling in Puerto Rico. At that time, the 1996 Dom Perignon was just hitting shelves in the States, and it retailed for over $125. Those same bottles now sell for $150. They are still chilling in the cellar.

Times have changed. The 1999 Dom Perignon is now in Duty Free Shops worldwide, advertised at $169. Veuve Clicquot's 1996 "La Grande Dame" (one of my favorite negotiant vintage blends) retails for $220, with their Demi-Sec selling for $40. Perrier Jouet's "Belle Epoque" 1999 (of which I am not a huge fan) retails for $99. These prices are all well above what you should expect to pay in a decent retail outlet in New York. By way of comparison, you can find Dom Perignon 1999 for under $150 at a number of New York merchants by checking Wine-Searcher, and for even less at auction at Wine Commune.

I cannot say what is driving the pricing of these items at Duty Free Shops. The mentality must be that when people are confined in a small space with lots of bright shiny things for sale they will be compelled to purchase them out of sheer boredom, if nothing else. For wine buyers, it should be noted that the largest Duty Free Shop chain of stores throughout the world is owned by LVMH, the very same conglomerate that owns Dom Perignon.

Prieur de Meyney St. Estephe 1999 **

The Prieur de Meyney St. Estephe 1999 ** (second wine of Chateau Meney) is a deep purple red Bordeaux with a little opacity, and a nice bouquet of dried herbs and fresh flowers. A texture of warm stones. This is medium bodied with strawberry and cocoa notes. Drinking very nicely now, this opened up completely after just 30 minutes and had died by day 2. Probably the best wine for $21 I have tasted in a long time, and I probably could find it for less. For a history of Ch. Meyney see the Wine Doctor.

Drink up - Good value.

Buying Wine in Mexico

Mexico is a difficult place to find a good bottle of wine. We recently returned from Puerta Vallarta on a family vacation, and while it feels like we've left paradise -- I could get used to waking up to watch the butterflies dance while in the distance the sun rises over the mountains across the bay -- for a wintry NYC autumn, I'm lucky I brought down a couple bottles of good wine to get us through the first two nights. Those were a Seavey cabernet and a Hansell chardonnay I purchased at Scotto's Wine Cellar nearby before we left. Fortunately, our friend also brought a bottle of Cantina Zuccagnini Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva, which we drank our last night. Unfortunately, there weren't any places to go wine shopping except the Mega store, pictured below, which mostly stocked non-vintage (NV) Chilean blends and big fruity wines, and some generally un-noteworthy French and Spanish table wines. I've listed what we tasted, below, in no particular order.

My advice on traveling to Mexico: Do what we did ... drink beer. 2004 Mouton Cadet Bordeaux. Ultra dry table wine without any herbaceous notes, with decent structure to match the fruit, but this is ultimately disappointing. 2006 Marques de Casa Concha Chardonnay (by Concha y Toro) D.O. Pirque, Chile. A flabby wine with little structure to hold it together. But in Mexico, this was a real find. 2004 Cantina Zuccagnini Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva * (Previously reviewed) Nice bright fruit this tasting, with good acidity and a lightly silty texture. Good value and highly recommended. NV Concha y Toro Reservado Merlot C.O. Valle Central, Chile. Exemplifies why you should bring your wine to Mexico. 2002 Seavey Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ** A big Napa cabernet of dried cherries with smokey and chewey tannins. Needs another year to fully develop, but drinking nicely now. 2006 Walter Hansell Russian River Valley Chardonnay ** Another big wine, this one from the RRV, with golden fruits. A little flabby, but balanced well enough to hold up to Mahi Mahi. 2006 M. Chapoutier "Belleruche" Cotes-du-Rhone * Tasted last at the City Winery. Deep and chalky, with spicy purple fruits and bright acidity. A great find ... I don't know how it got in there but I think this was found behind the counter in the back room of the closet in the Mega store. NV Barefoot Pinot Grigio California * Bright and light acidity, with nice grapefruit and orange notes.

2001 Louis Latour Corton-Charlemagne ***

The picture doesn't do it justice (poor lighting in the club) but this was a spectacular bottle of wine. Light grapefruit color. Utterly closed on the nose: the predominant note here was warm road tar, with secondary notes of anise and celery seed and a hint at frozen fresh orange juice. Wonderfully pure fruit. Exceptionally light bodied, with oyster texture. Went down like water.

2004 Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Merlot **

When the venerable Robert Mondavi passed away recently it seemed like every wine writer and blogger in the world felt compelled to write about it. I was keen to jump on the bandwagon, but what the hell did I know? I had never met Robert Mondavi, and all I really knew about him I gleaned from Julia Flynn Siler's scintillating book House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. I had never even been to the estate. So I kept mum.

But the time has come to break my silence. I was rushing home from work the other night when I remembered that my house was dry. That's right. We had no wine at home. God forbid. What was I going to do? Both local wine stores were blocks away - in different directions - and I just wanted to get home and crash. It was one of those days. So I stopped at the local liquor store, which is really saying something.

Our local liquor store is one of those old school places where you walk into a booth and the guy behind the three inch glass passes you a fifth of cheap bourbon. The wine list is less than robust, to put it mildly, and when I take the time to actually peruse what's held out as wine behind that huge plane of glass, the proprietor looks at me like I'm a weirdo. I do not venture in here often or for very long, and on the night in question, I actually thought I might get robbed on the way out. But this is the price you pay to obtain a bottle of wine when it's late and you're on your way home in Brooklyn.

I asked if they had any Ridge. What? he said. Ridge Vineyards? No, we don't have that, he said. Ok, I said. I looked back at the shelves of wine behind the three inch plane of glass. Nothing. There was nothing that interested me. And then I saw it. Robert Mondavi. Hmm. Robert Mondavi. Did I dare? I hadn't had a bottle of Mondavi in a long time. Since well before the company was sold to Constellation. But there was nothing else. It was the most expensive bottle of wine he had. It cost $24. I dared.

2004 Napa Valley Merlot **+ Thoroughly enjoyable. As you may guess, I had very low expectations of this wine, but the fruit is ripe, and the wine is forward but not sweet, it has good balance and good grip. Mondavi's website states the wine is made from 100% Napa Valley fruit and sees 20% new French oak. The oak note was a little overwhelming, but otherwise this was a good quality wine, and if you can get it at under $20, it's a good value. It's just too bad that too many producers who make wine for more than double or triple this amount don't have as quality a product.

2005 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ** The merlot was so good I went back and bought a bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon. This was mildly green and herbaceous. From a notoriously wet spring (which I experienced first hand) through a long mild fall, the many 2005 Napa cabernets I have tasted are all over the place quality-wise. This is 100% Napa cabernet, "47% from the Oakville AVA, with the majority of that (43%) from Robert Mondavi Winery’s To Kalon Vineyard." The wine saw 14 months of aging in 20% new French oak. This opened up very nicely after a few hours, but never really showed the complexity and big fruit of the 2004 Merlot.

Lastly, I'd like to mention the 1997 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (***) which I retasted when Robert Mondavi passed away. The 1997 Napa Valley Cabernet is a stunning wine. Dusty ripe raspberry flavors emerge at first, but on the palate this is not a fruity wine at all. It is woodsy and has complex notes of rawhide and cigar smoke.

This was one of the first bottles of wine I ever put down to age, and that was against the advice of people at the time who said Napa cabernets did not age well. I've never really understood why many critics say California wine should not be cellared. It's a position I whole-heartedly disagree with, and it's something I mentioned to Carissa Mondavi (Timothy Mondavi's daughter) at the California Wine Experience in NYC a few weeks ago. She's working at Continuum now, which I look forward to tasting again in many, many years ....

2003 Kistler Vineyards Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ****

Deep ruby color. Fresh raspberries and dried flowers on the nose. A sour cherry and dried cranberry synthesis on the palate with granite on the finish. Undeniable structure of dark stones.

Tasted just last year against Sea Smoke "Ten" and DuMOL finn, this Kistler Vineyard's Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir underperformed against its lesser known, riper styled siblings. It has always been somewhat of an underdog wine from an underdog vintage, with something of a lean & mean attitude about it. But it's starting to show nicely now. What was once unripe and too strongly acidic has become a flushed garnet gem. Drink this now and for the next five years. 

2005 Domaine du Joncier Lirac **

Deep color, almost opaque. Tightly wound nose of wild flowers and wood. This is a very good, wintery bistro wine from an outstanding vintage. According to fellow blogger Dave Treiger, this Lirac was, "Made from 45% Grenache, 45% Syrah and 10% Mourvedre." Dave liked its, "deep ruby color with initial aromas of black pepper and ripe plum." I agree with his notes. It's a "big wine," with 14.5% alcohol and can stand up to flank steak.