Granted that this is a bit of a rant, but it’s 2012 now and the whole “Wine X is like Halle Berry” trope is really tired and more than a little sexist, no?
Awwwwww, Bruce…as the one who coined “DollyParton Viognier”…this hits a little too close to home.
I think it very accurately describes a certain style of Viognier.
To blunt the sexism charge, I think we should start comparing wines with too much wood to John Holmes, wines with broad shoulders to Arnold Schwarzenegger, wine with long legs to Manute Bol, and so forth.
Obviously, you haven’t read James Suckling’s review of the 2010 Margaux:
“It’s like the desert winds flowing through Egyptian ruins on a mid-summer’s night with a beautiful princess waiting open armed for me. My mind fills with poetry tasting the wine from barrel”
Touché, though I don’t get to do this professionally. Please point me towards any critic capable of making a ‘A’ in Emory Frosh English Composition, I’d like to read more than just Levenberg.
TN: Clos de la Roilette 2009 Fleurie Cuvee Tardive
Post Number:#1 by Keith Levenberg » Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:22 pm
This is my first taste of 2009 Beaujolais so I don’t know if some other examples are bearing out people’s speculation that the vintage may be marked by fat, overdone fruit. That is emphatically not the case here. Steve Martin had a memorable line in his novella Shopgirl: “When you work in the glove department at Neiman’s, you are selling things that nobody buys anymore. These gloves aren’t like the hard-working ones sold by L.L. Bean; these are so fine that a lady wearing them can still pick up a straight pin.” The 2009 Clos de la Roilette Cuvee Tardive is made out of the same material as those gloves. This is the old-vine cuvee from Coudert and indeed what makes this special is that unique ability of very old vines to deliver intense flavor out of physical material that is so sheer and fine it’s practically not even there. > This is practically waifish with a refinement that is already very pinot noir-like in the fashion of Burgundies with an Audrey Hepburn figure> , but the flavors show gamay’s tart wild-berry side seasoned with something I find myself calling “mealy” for lack of a better term, kind of reminiscent of cereal and multigrain, already past the primary.
Victor is the husband of famous Italian chef Marcella Hazan. His book on Italian wine is essential reading. Then there is this (from our newsletter over a decade ago):
A sad day in Dirtville
Any of you who have ever had the pleasure of meeting famed Italian wine author Victor Hazan (or his wife, Chef / Author Marcella) or read his works know that he is an absolutely passionate, poetic and honest man. We have often recommended his book “Italian Wine” to aficionados over other books with more raw data while noting that “if you just read the paragraph describing Roero Arneis you will be so jazzed you will call your travel agent and book a visit to Piemonte!”. That book was published in 1982 and, while it is still a certifiable classic, we have been eagerly awaiting his updated views on the subject. So imagine our reaction upon reading in one of his recent essays that, after tasting wines the length and breadth of Enotria for three years in the late ‘90’s, “I knew what I had to do. I asked my agent to return the publisher’s advance and I wrote my editor to explain why I was abandoning the project. Why? I found I could not write a guide to Italian wines when I no longer recognized many of the wines being produced as being Italian. Following the examples set by Antinori and Gaja, the producers had begun to master a style of wine that drinkers and critics at home and abroad found irresistible: clinically perfect bottlings filled with massively concentrated fruit wrapped in easy, tender tannins and emitting the dulcet, toasty vanilla scent of new French oak familiar to wine drinkers everywhere.”
Then he drops this bombshell: “These popular, well regarded examples of ‘Italian’ winemaking make me think of so many geishas, sweet smelling and thickly powdered, hiding any blemish or evidence of alarming individual character. They speak to us of those who fashioned them rather than the places where they were grown; they represent the triumph of style over substance, of image over identity. They could have been made anywhere”!!!
As is our wont, we will throw in some musical analogies: Which is a more authentic plea of enduring love, that insufferably perfect and overproduced Celine Dion song from “Titanic” or Aretha Franklin purring “You make me feel like a natural woman” to her own sparse piano accompaniment? Can you really tell The Back Street Boys from In’S’ynch from O-Town without looking at a video of the song in question? Brian Wilson is a genius as an arranger and chose to go to warp nine in producing “Good Vibrations” yet stripped “Sloop John B” down to the musical bone to let its simple melody and wistful emotions shine through…we could go on for days! But instead, we will bring you some truly authentic wines:
Stuff Parker would hate, long since sold out here.