What’s being served tonight for our guest from France?
Google and ye shall receive
“All this will be washed down by wines from California - Newton “Unfiltered” Chardonnay and Anakota “Knights Valley” Cabernet Sauvignon, along with a California sparkling wine with French roots, Roederer Estate Brut Rose.”
Years ago my local grocery store had the Newton unfiltered chard marked at $15.00 so I got one and told the manager ‘I’m buying this if it’s ok but you’ve marked this wrong-this is the price for their ‘red label’ bottle, you need to fix it’ next week I went in, same price, he said ‘hey I called the warehouse and they said you’re full of shit they have it right’ so I bought a case and told him ‘I’m buying this but you need to call someone else because trust me you’ve got this price wrong, I’m in effect walking out of here with hundreds of your dollars’. Next week he said ‘hey you were right they were wrong, they asked me to ask you if you could bring that back and they’d give you store credit and I told them “theres no way I’m doing that”.
That’s my Newton story
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I enjoyed many bottles of Newton Unfiltered Chardonnay back in the day, when I lived near Wine Library and used to buy it pretty much every vintage, but I haven’t bought or drank any in probably 15 years…
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It was really popular back in the day. I heard a podcast with Dave Ramey and he said (in effect) ‘hell I never filtered MY chardonays I guess I just wasn’t smart enough to put it on the label’
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I get the first two, though I think they’re uninspired choices, but why the third? There are really good american sparkling wine producers that aren’t backed by french conglomerates. Roederer Estate Rose is pretty basic. Why not use Schramsberg J Schram Noir? Wenzlau? Ultramarine Rose? Soter makes a lush sparkling rose. Roederer Estate Rose is among the worst choices for a dinner like this that I could think up.
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I agree…uninspired is the perfect word. Here’s a chance to have fun with the President of France. Take advantage of an opportunity to build relationships.
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Messaging thru boring wines?
No Biggy Macs?
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You don’t allow a third mulligan?
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It’s a reminder that we cooperate on trade. French are still upset about the submarines.
Listen, Manny, you’re gonna shit your pants when you realize how much better this 1994 Dominus is than that Bordeaux crap you guys are always chugging over there with your baguettes. What? It’s a Frenchman’s project? Goddammit! Well then try this killer chard from Domain Drouhin Oregon, one of our fine American producers? What? Frenchman again? Well at least we’ve got Roederer Estate!
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Well…he coulda done worse. Like TrumpEstate Sparkling Wine…which has been labeled in some circles
as the US greatest wine.
Tom
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It’s about availability in the market. No way would there be enough bottles of Ultramarine available to do a dinner like this. Someone may be on the list, but that definitely isn’t in distribution.
I’m willing to bet that Kobrand threw a bunch of $$$ at that and that’s why the Roederer is being opened. We’re never truly seeing “the best” American wines being served at a dinner like this
Is that true? I feel like I remember seeing some dinner menus a while back that looked a heck of a lot more interesting than this. Maybe not the Harlan’s or Sine Qua Non’s of the world, but high end stuff.
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Interesting that WBers complain about serving wines inferior to their French counterparts but have totally ignored that Maine lobster is inferior to Brittany Bleu!
It all depends on the president. I’m sure some excellent wines have been served at these things in the past and will in the future. But, those are almost certainly the exception rather than the rule. We have to remember that to over 95% of the wine buying public, these are great wines and we represent barely a decimal point of that public
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I was impressed when President Obama served a Dumol Pinot
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True, but Nixon didn’t share
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