At dinners with a bunch of wino comrades, debating and decision making are as much a part of the evening’s fabric as any other stage of the meal. Other nights involve guests less willing to sacrifice time and brain cells debating wine selection. Last week at Veritas (oenophile nirvana) with Dan, I found myself somewhere in the middle.  We had a significant amount of news to catch up on, but the wine was equally important to both of us.  I had not worked with the Head Sommelier Rubén Sanz Ramiro before so I did not feel comfortable enough turning the entire experience over to him nor burying my head in the epic Veritas wine list for twenty minutes.  Here is the game plan I followed:

Proven White Wine Value: Kick-Off

We needed something to drink immediately, but didn’t want to trump our early catch up conversation with solitary wine list huddles.  Nor did I want to rush into a big up-front cash investment without enough time to think things over.  Not having established rapport with the sommelier yet, delegating was off the table.  I turned to the Loire section and quickly ordered the **** 2010 Huet Clos du Bourg Sec.

Our Boston tasting group had just conducted a blind tasting of Loire Valley chenin blancs and this Vouvray was my favorite.  It jumped off the list as an easy choice for the straight forward enjoyment and palate awakening I was hoping to quickly uncover.  While the “sec” designation is true to the wine’s overall dry nature, there is enough residual sugar framed by significant acidity to qualify it as a shoe-in for a pleasing start to the evening.  The later vintage did not disappoint with familiar steely notes, hints of background sugar, grapefruit and lemon meringue delivered in a round and luscious mouthfeel, chalk, and a crisp finish.  It’s a go to wine, and one that didn’t break the bank at roughly $70 on Veritas’ not-so-cheap list.  While we had a long game ahead of us, it was a perfectly designed kick-off play.

Cellared But Not Tried: Third Quarter Audible

With the dinner unfolding and middle courses arriving, this was no time to fool around.  I called time out and spent three minutes on the sideline scanning the list.  Without leaving the Loire section, I stumbled upon the ***1/2 2007 Clos Rougeard Les Poyeux.  I am an admitted sucker for Clos Rougeard, had tasted the already immediately enjoyable 2007 Saumur Champigny, but wondered if the Les Poyeux would provide as much immediate accessibility.

The wine also sat in my cellar and this was the perfect chance to check it out without draining my limited 2007 Clos Rougeard stockpile. Not wanting to waste too much more time with the list, I went with it.  I called for a producer that always knocks me to the turf.  This particular cabernet franc made by Rougeard’s Foucalt brothers showed trace hints of its truffle and licorice bones, but remained seriously tight all the way through to the end of the bottle.  It never opened up.  The wine seems like it will stay closed down for at least several years to come.

While the move informed delaying future 2007 Les Poyeux drinking, it did not do as much for our dinner.  It was a win/lose; I should have consulted the sommelier.  With just one question about its approachability (admittedly, a doubt I quietly pondered) he would have known the wine style I leaned towards and could have dealt a more accessible alternative.  Live and learn; turnover.

Consult Sommelier, He Understands Me Now: 4th Quarter

Rubén agreed the wine was too tight to really appreciate.  But, we went to school on that experience together and now had the beginnings of mutual understanding.  I asked him what he would drink next if he wanted something similar, but at the peak of its development.  He suggested the ****1/2 1998 Bois de Boursan Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee des Felix.  I knew ’98 to be a prodigious year in Chateauneuf du Pape but had never heard of the Cuvee des Felix blend.  It turned out to be the first Cuvee des Felix vintage.  Rubén assured me this Boursan held the style I had probably hoped for with the Clos Rougeard, and was perfectly ready to drink now.

Touchdown!  The Boursan was a massive mouthful of well aged wine that smoothly coated the palate with unabashed silkiness, delivering rich and advanced raspberry and black cherry fruit flavors, animal fur and mushroom aromatics, and a streak of serious acidity to keep the wine as lively as it was exotic.  It generously expressed the licorice flavors the Clos Rougeard held closer to its vest.

The strategy worked and created a rewarding evening of drinking.  The structure of the ordering, inside this wine temple called Veritas, helped to keep my adrenalin in check.  Step 1: Known delicious white wine value.  Step 2: Classic wine laying in my own cellar to monitor drinkability.  Step 3: Ask the sommelier to follow your early moves with his own superior list knowledge.

What’s your game plan?

Heimoff heralded and pivoted off a recent Jason Calacanis claim that “blogging is dead and stupid people shouldn’t write”.  Heimoff suggested, as indirectly and gently as his style allows, that topical expertise is required to blog about wine and the new Web 3.0 environment will filter out marginal wine content creators and “sharpen the research and writing abilities of the bloggers who remain, making the wine blogosphere a more professional platform.”

Wark focused on “wine blog burnout” and that the “wine blog explosion was just that.”  Fewer launches are combining with increasing numbers of shuttered blogs to eventually consolidate authority with the remaining few “competent bloggers.”

Yarrow celebrated his blog’s eighth birthday (a formidable achievement) by looking back at the stages of the wine blogosphere’s development and how different classes of writers joined in over time.  He eloquently mapped the early lonesome days, all the way through a period where traditional wine journalists and critics started leveraging these new online publishing tools.

But Yarrow’s chronicle waxed personal; almost confessional.  He recalled starting Vinography to be more efficient with communications to friends seeking his wine opinions and also to figure out how blogs work.  He closed his post by genuinely admitting to continual blogging because “…some people knit, I write about wine. Sitting here in front of my blog is an aesthetic pursuit as much as it is anything else. I enjoy it infinitely more than watching television.”

Yarrow’s point of view resonates most; as if it came from a kindred spirit.  It helped me understand why Vinography content is so easy for me to appreciate.  Like Alder, I started my blog to more efficiently share wine perspectives with friends who always asked, and to immerse myself in web content creation so I could be a better leader for my content marketing and social media company, DigitalSherpa. Yarrow admits his ultimate pleasures come from the engagement that his content produces.  For me, wine blogging’s greatest rewards are the virtual and real life connections with people who share my passion for wine.  It expanded my network, advanced my learning, and mostly connected me with people that I never would have had the chance to meet.

Yarrow’s confessions also helped me understand where Heimoff and Wark are probably coming from with their orientation for dominance and consolidated online authority.  I am guessing that unlike Yarrow, me, and hundreds of others…they blog to advance their professional standing in the wine trade and with consumers. That’s just instinctive conjecture, and I am sure that both guys also feel the same jollies that bloggers without professional agendas do.  They each seem bright and smart, one a wine PR professional and the other a wine journalist and critic.  Blogging enables expanded professional postures and business outcomes.  It develops authority around regular remarkable content and pays large professional dividends.  My company does this for thousands of businesses; I know it to work just that way.

It’s no wonder that Wark and Yarrow track how bad bloggers are weeded out, a narrowing playing field, and consolidating web dominance.  They make livings in the wine trade and I respect their focus in that regard. Yarrow stays glued to the keyboard because he’s hooked on the engagement and what it brings.  Different worlds, same blogosphere.

I never intended to create the world’s next great wine community at WineZag.  Nor did I ever have designs on WineZag becoming a center for wine criticism; a new media player in the world of wine media.  I do it for me, just like Yarrow chooses it over knitting and TV. While Yarrow has accomplished more than any blogger would aspire to, it apparently came as a byproduct of more humble goals.  It’s completely sensible that Steve and Tom talk about expertise, dominance, and authority.  The disconnect I have is blogging for me is about the experience, human connection, or, as Yarrow puts it, “aesthetic” pursuit that squelches any other priorities like “weeding out the stupid”, establishing dominance, or consolidating authority.

I suppose that human connection will continue to combine with easy web creation tools, like blogs, to support a robust blogging community for years to come; made up of enough writers who really don’t care about dominance at all.

Champagne prices were always relatively high and it never seemed to make sense investing time to develop a deeper understanding of the region and its wine. After all, the whole affair was about a luxury beverage designed for something other than regular consumption. Right? Bordeaux felt entirely more accessible when I was picking spots to invest my very limited wine budget back in the mid-eighties.  Knowing that I was getting Montrose, Leoville Las Cases,  or Haut Brion grown and made product when I bought their wines was subconsciously important to me.  The big Champagne brands that bought and blended fruit to achieve house and label styles like Moet & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, and Perrier Jouet, as examples, felt predictably manipulated and overproduced. They achieved luxurious consistency and uniformity while stripping high volume purchased fruit of nuance and terroir.

It’s been a crazy prejudice, especially since the occasional opportunities to drink these wines were always enjoyable on some level.  Somewhere along the way, my palate redeemed itself by shedding its unappreciative Champagne bias.

I now recognize my increasing exposure to Grower Champagnes, wines made by the same people that grow the fruit, helped motivate me to drink and learn more about Champagne

So I was excited to have our Boston blind tasting group take on a dozen grower Champagnes; eleven non vintage wines and one 2006 vintage bottling.  I was ready to find a handful of wines that I could stock for regular drinking from the following:  

Egly-Ouriet Brut Tradition Grand Cru $75 ****

Vouette et Sorbee Blanc d’Argile $100 ***

Pierre Peters Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Reserve $65 ****1/2

Guy Larmandier Vertus Premier Cru  $50 ***

Franck Pascal Sagesse Brut Nature  $60 ***1/2         

Rene Geoffroy Brut Expression $45 ***       

Jacques Lassaigne Le Cotet Brut Blanc de Blancs $70 **

Laherte Freres Brut Nature Blanc de Blancs $35 **        

Jean Lallement Brut Cuvee Reserve $60 ***        

Pierre Gimonnet 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs $45 ****         

H. Billiot Brut Reserve $50 ****        

2006 Jose Dhondt Blanc de Blancs $50 ***

I asked Rich Auffrey, who writes at The Passionate Foodie, to share some background on Champagne with the group, whatever he wanted, since he spent some focused tasting time in Champagne this year. Rich mentioned that 90% of the vineyards are divided into about 280,000 plots that are farmed by 15,000 independent growers.  Most of them don’t produce wine and just sell their grapes.  About 2/3 of all the grapes are bought by large Champagne houses.

Growers known as Recoitant-Manipulants (look for RM on the bottle), grow and harvest their own fruit and make their own wine.  Rich shared some statistics underscoring the fact that most Grower Champagne stays in France.  Even though of all the Champagne imported into the United States only 3.7% is Grower Champagne, it is a rapidly growing segment of this French bubbly export market.

I like them because of the unique profiles. Grower Champagnes are more reflective of their terroir, not as consistent from year to year as wines made by the big Houses, and offer flavors belonging to their vineyards of origin.  To me, they are wines born out of the idiosyncratic struggles and advantages attached to their native patch of vineyard land.  Maybe that’s why there was no clear favorite and why so many of the wines we tasted blind offered something uniquely interesting.  The Billiot, Gimonnet, and Peters all shared the same amount of votes and tied for top wines.  Our blind tasting group had never produced a tie like this before. Only one wine, the Laherte Freres (unfortunately the cheapest) received zero votes.  Every other wine scored close.

The Egly Ouriet showed mushrooms, yeast, smoke, and dark color that made it stand out in this lineup with the Pascal for its distinctively oxidized notes and creamy mid-palate (a highly controversial wine, but my second favorite of the night).  Peters was my favorite for its brightness, sweet fruit and floral perfumed nose, and peach flavor.

The group’s consensus was that every wine offered something enjoyable; not an unattractive wine in the bunch.  The most expensive $100 Vouette et Sorbee, with its highly expressive baked apple nose and clean fresh flavors had fewer votes than the $45 Gimonnet, the $50 Billiot, and the $45 Geoffroy.  But each one had its own endearing style, and our many different palates leaned toward their own comfortable landing zones.  Cream, lemon, apple, yeast, crisp, tight bubbles, elegant, caramel, quince, summer fruit, tangerine, mushroom, acidity, etc.  The rainbow of characteristics was colorful and varied, each wine lining up neatly in it own appropriate spot on the spectrum.

There is a lot to like about Grower Champagnes; starting with their relatively low prices and ending with varied style and unique terroir.  They are authentic wines that are finally making it fun for me to drink and learn more about Champagne.  You won’t go wrong with any of these wines, but if you drink all of them side by side like we did, you will find your preferred style.

Note:  Thanks to Matteo at Wine Bottega for helping me source most of these wines with ease.