by Julian Schultz
julian@oxfordwineroom.com
Jim Nicas, gourmet Castle's maitre d'/master sommelier, burbled excitedly on the phone: "I need your advice on January's - Sunday, the 9th -- monthly afternoon wine tasting. It's going to be one of our best, if... not... the... all... time... best!"
"You don't want my advice," I said, "you want my confirmation. So why even bother to ask?" I was annoyed at his interrupting my eating a toasted bagel with a thick slather of cream cheese and even thicker fatty salty lox sandwich, which diet guru, Round Robin Rotunda, guaranteed would help me lose weight.
Jim, hoarse with uncontrolled excitement, "Gaja! Angelo Gaja!! That's whose wines we will taste - his noble wines of Italy's Piedmont region, which cost between $55 and $525 a bottle at wine shops! Gaja and Giacosa share the throne of King of Italian Wines!! So it's no wonder if you think I may sound unreservedly enthusiastic and unrestrainedly exuberant."
"Well, if these two guys, as you say, share the throne as King of Italian Wines, they must have skinny asses to be able to sit comfortably together," I said with a hint of sarcasm. "Do they?"
Snorting disdainfully, Jim said, "How should I know? I have more on my mind planning and conducting the tasting and planning with my father, Stanley, the matching hors d'oeuvres than to check the sizes of their asses." Now, Jim seemed annoyed with me.
Needing to have the last word, as usual, I said that noted Paxton philosopher, Ignutzy Addlepated, would say, "One royal throne cannot accommodate two behinds unless one royal throne is one royal bench."
Jim, sarcastically: "You sound like Yogi Berra."
I protested: "It seems that all I'm tasting these days are Italian wines, like I'm standing in them up to my ying-ying. I have an Italian wines tasting the night before yours with the Les Compagnons des Bons Vins at Dr. and Peg Zamansky's home. Haven't we already sampled the entire range of all we need to know about Italian wines?"
Responded Jim with melodramatic, thespian intonation: " 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' "
"What's with Hamlet?" I asked, now further annoyed with Jim. "I'm confused. What's Shakespeare got the do with Italian wines?"
"Hey, my Castle restaurant is a replica of an English castle of Shakespeare's time with a drawbridge over a moat, suits of armor inside, swords, helmets, spears, axes, crossbows, halberds, shields, tapestries - everything that Shakespeare was familiar with. But to answer your inane question, what the Bard means is that there is more to know about Italian wines than you ever thought to know."
Echoing Jim now: "You sound more like Yogi Berra than Yogi Berra sounds like Yogi Berra."
Jim shot laser looks at me. He continued: "Gaja's style of red and white wines that we will taste are achieving new peaks of quality and, unfortunately, high prices although very deep-pocketed wine connoisseurs laud their quality and cavalierly shell out big bucks for them."
Now came a mesmerizing Laurence Olivier-voiced oration from Jim: "Italy remains a land of undiscovered grape varieties of under appreciated merit. And Gaja's Piedmont wines deliver more quality for the quid (he reads England's Decanter wine magazine) than do most other super premium pedigree wines. Gaja has helped Italian winemaking come of age; now, vintners are making unorthodox blends with traditional and obscure Italian- and once-scorned Bordeaux grapes."
Twenty-nine connoisseurs had reserved early enough to attend the quickly sold out tasting. As Jim poured, his face reverentially transfixed with deified devotion, of necessity limited us to a nine-tenths ounce of each wine.
Jim entertained us, interspersed with humorous anecdotes, of Gaja's history and about some cynical Italian high-price-wine-setters. He admitted that although 70 percent of this afternoon's wines were well into the $100-plus prices, the quality of these Gaja wines were as worthy as the finest expensive Bordeaux and Burgundies:
"Whereas Gaja is right on target with his winemaking skills and justifiably commands high prices for his wines, there are other Italian winemakers who price their wines high -- wines that most often are lacking in quality and equality."
Others of us protested that the pleasant palate perfection of these wines was mitigated by the unpleasant surprise to the pocket book. Those so jolted by the prices were prompted to query, "As good as these wine are, are they worthy of these prices?"
I chimed in, suggesting to them that their biases were showing: "Whereas I know you pay top prices for renowned French wines, are you rebelling against spending big dollars for Italian wines of equal quality - or better! - because they are not Gallic?"
I added: "I don't attend Gaja tastings (my second) to confirm the merit of his wines - their reputation for outstanding quality is worldwide. I come to sample his recent vintages, to compare his wines with those of other Piedmont winemakers and to ascertain if his oldies that no longer may be available have held up."
One of the oldies, Barbaresco 1983 ($300), for some reason moved me sentimentally: After we tasted it, sadly, it moved on, gone and away forever for most of us; and neither our piety, nor wit, nor entreaties, nor tears could lure another bottle back to the tasting table (Jim had none). We were left to rely on flavorless notes and faded memories to recapture the rapture. Let it written: When you savor an extraordinary rare wine, lose yourself in it; exclude everything else from your consciousness. The romance and remembrance will linger longer.
Alaric Ambercrombie, Doctor of Letters, Cambridge University, England, on sabbatical at Clark University, here, renewed his acquaintance with me. He had received as a gift one of my wine columns books. We had corresponded since then.
Sometimes I don't like him, especially when he denigrates us: "You Colonials describe wine like wooden-tongued backwoodsmen, lacking in words of grace, romance, emotion, passion, gusto and imagination. You are dull statistical wine bookkeepers, not hedonists who should be ecstatically reveling in the pleasure afforded by the Bacchus-blessed beverage.
"Your syntax doesn't flow in cadence and rhythm, like the frothy brook gurgling joyously with lilting music. You describe wines, stuttering, stumbling, groping; like investigative reporters you diagnose aromas and flavors as being definite and absolute. How incomprehensibly naïve; an exercise in futility: aromas and tastes defy standardization... and worse yet your nauseating application of adjectives, adjectives, adjectives!"
Much to Jim's consternation, he then proceeded to enlighten us about the "Gaja viticulture and viniculture mystique": soil, slope, sunlight, stability, style, small yields:
* Proper soil comprises rich nutrients, which make grapes healthy, and stones to hold heat and reflect sunlight to the vines. Heat helps grapes to ripen; sunlight creates sugar for the grapes.
* Steep slopes provide ideal drainage, which prevents water from drowning the vine roots.
* Vineyards that face south obtain maximum sunlight, which helps grapes to achieve ripeness and lessens grapes' rot.
* Wine stability results from extended steeping of grape's juice and grape's skins and years of wine aging in barrels. Red wine Barolos and Barbarescos may take 15 to 20 years to mature in large barrels and in small barriques; they may continue to satisfy the palate for a like period before they decline.
* Richness, elegance, complexity and underlying earthiness are Gaja's wine style. His best wines are renowned for their intense bouquet, big fruit flavor, full body and lingering aftertaste.
* Gaja matches different Nebbiolo grape clones to vineyard soils most suitable for them. The wines are packed with fruit, aromas and flavors of berries, currants, tar, leather and are rich, chewy and flavorful and linger with a long farewell.
* Small grape yields, a concomitant of old vines, mean less wine. The limited quantity that is bottled is superior compared to wines made from substantial grape harvests of younger vines.
The pouring: Interjecting three defining words about Gaja's wines: intensity, quality, price.
Sauvignon Blanc "Alteni di Brassica" '99 ($75): fresh, grassy, crisp, melon-y, intense fruit flavors; typical Sauvignon Blanc attributes but in weighty muscular masculine style.
Chardonnay "Rossj-Bass '01, ($55): intense nose and big fruit, nuances of apples, vanilla and toast; pleasing fruit acid bite; grips the palate and won't release itself. No malolactic fermentation, which accounts the assertive acid bite.
Chardonnay "Gaia & Ray" '02 ($135): Much heavier than the '01, with deeper and more intense upfront fruit; perhaps lacking some acidity (consequently, longevity) from its having undergone full malolactic fermentation. Eminently enjoyable for the next five or so years.
Blended Red "Sito Moresco"(35 percent Nebbiolo, 35 Merlot, 30 Cabernet Sauvignon) '00, ($59): good light plum-y fruit, good acid bite, properly balanced and smooth. I expected greater intensity from the wines of the blend. Upon retasting: a hint of tar and earth emerged; an interesting wine.
Cabernet Sauvignon "Darmagi" (3 percent Merlot, 2 Cabernet Franc) '99 ($260): very intense noseful and mouthful of fruit and flavor with all expected attributes of berries, spice, cedar, leather on the palate; superbly balanced and surprisingly complex for so young a wine; its fruit not absorbed in complexity. A future cellar treasure. Best wine for some tasters; co-best for me with the next wine.
Nebbiolo "Conteisa" (8 percent Barbaresco) '98 ($185): another superb Piedmont region wine, loaded with plum and berry fruit, hints of tar, cooked prunes and coffee. Sandy Kraft, charming tasting companion at my right, hailed the Conteisa as her best red wine of the evening; husband, Jerry, seemed about to disagree but upon noting Sandy's baleful look snapped his mouth shut and his face to rigid attention. Other than the price, the wine was perfection - on par with Darmagi.
Barbaresco (100 percent Nebbiolo) '00 ($225): deep generous fruit, big in nose and mouth; nicely acid and tannin balanced; soft smooth swallow, moderately persistent aftertaste.
Barolo (6 percent Barbaresco) '98 ($260): big, robust, expectedly slightly harsh and tannic at its young age; combined bouquet of violets, tar, faded roses dredged up by my imagination; layered and intermingled flavors of spicy berries, tar, cherries, cooked beef; did I detect earth, nuts, coffee? I had difficulty nailing down this Barolo - perhaps too big for me.
Barbaresco "Single Vineyard of Costa Russi (100 percent Nebbiolo) '82 ($525): a nose and mouthful of aromas and flavors so complex that I was unable to extrapolate them; its sharper acid presence than the '83 presages a shorter life of wine's fruit; at the moment it is soft, velvety, rich, fragrant, more delicate than Barolo.
Barbaresco (100 percent Nebbiolo) '83 ($300): Abercrombie with brow-creased concentration sighted, sniffed, savored and leaped to his feet. He put his glass down and saluted it with flair: "Zounds and by Jove! This diamond of the Piedmont refreshes the lurking passions of my palate; the depressing dictatorship over mundane flavors is overthrown; excitement and ebullience reign; my spirit is revitalized from tasting drudgery. Age has not withered this Barbaresco, nor has time staled her infinite attributes of maturity and voluptuousness; of ineffable and ethereal flavors of fruit, tar, spice, tobacco."
When Abercrombie later heard my assessment of "dry, velvety, rich, fragrant, old roses, tar, springtime earth, reminiscent of --" he turned upon me:
"Why in God's name don't you describe this wine more colorfully? Like 'although roguish with swashbuckling bouquet and voluptuous with ripe flavor, this treasure finishes with the smooth of grace of a ballet dancer and swallows with the velvety mellowness of a Pommard or Corton.' "
When I said I understood nothing he said, he scoffed derisively: "You probably didn't understand Chaucer or Browning either!"
I replied that they were inarticulate, and to change the subject I asked him how he enjoyed the hors d'oeuvres of chicken and lamb kabobs, stuffed mushrooms, spinach/cheese pitas, turkey bacon wrapped apricots with cream cheese; Muenster, Cheddar, Blue cheeses; fresh fruit varieties; varieties of seven crackers, including crisp Japanese rice crackers and coated sesame sticks, baguettes hot from the kitchen.
"As good or better than anything at the Café Royale, Savoy, or Dorchester. So light they wear ballet slippers, so flavorsome they caress the palate, so satisfying they kiss the soul." When I said I wasn't sure I understood, he smiled: "They tasted grand!"
Carrie, my beautiful, unmarried, New York lawyer, almost-30-year-old- granddaughter, had planned to be with me. Like Lillian she would forgo the wine; like Lillian she would sit at the rear of the room; like Lillian she would read, observe, sample some hors d'oeuvres, and like Lillian she would speak smilingly with the many tasters who would approach her.
So at the tasting I thought of Lillian, visualizing her there - a remembrance of happy times past. I stepped out of the room for a moment...I never knew tears tasted salty - not good for tasting wines afterwards.
Thank you, Jim, for a memorable afternoon. Gaja's wines attracted eager, respectful aficionados who slowly sniffed, sipped, savored, swallowed and spoke as they consumed the hors d'oeuvres varieties. It was like we were being transformed to Paradise.
Alaric summarized the consensus opinion of Gaja's wines: "tastes are incredible, prices are impossible."
Small pockets of discussion about Gaja wines and prices continued around the hors d'oeuvres table as I left before the dark set in.
Wine Pick: Victor Hugo Petite Sirah 2000, around $19-$20, won three Gold Medals and one Silver in four different 2002 California wine competitions. Aromas of toffee, spice, plum with nuances of black pepper and spicy oak transfer to the palate; rich tannins, toasty oak in the smooth swallow are followed by an extended aftertaste. Great for tasting now and for another five or more years.
Email Comments to Julian at:
julian@oxfordwineroom.com