Was at a casual little French restaurant last night in Anaheim (OC) and they had a small, rather simple wine list. The only wine that really caught my eye was a 2009 Louis Latour Marsannay rouge. I figured since it was a ripe year it should be okay with dinner and it was only $20 on the list - not sure the last time I saw a wine on any list for $20! Wine turned out to be very soft but had plenty of fruit and adequate acidity. Worked with the dinner in fact we got a second bottle and shared it with our waiter who was new to wine (another story!).
Anyways got home and decided to check on retail price and went to CT and low and behold I have this wine in my cellar! And I drank one last year and don’t have the foggiest recollection. Turns out I paid $16 in 2011 and is still available for around the same price.
There was a time I knew every bottle in my cellar - now its become a maze to say the least.
Check out their winelist - turns out most of the French wines are only about $5 over retail! Not the greatest wines but very drinkable with food.
Place is in suburban no mans land and takes forever to get there. Strip mall is rather dumpy in fact if we weren’t with a French teacher friend of ours, never would have stopped. All of the dishes were proper and a couple of them were excellent. Place was full last night as well and I think we were the only table doing the taster menu.
That’s very cool that they have a bottle like that at that price. I love going to small restaurants in France that have half bottles of (often local) wine for 10-15 Euro and similarly friendly pricing on 750s, but these days in the US it seems like many restaurants don’t want to list anything below $40.
The Latour wines aren’t great but they aren’t bad at all in my opinion. I’ve liked that Marsannay in other vintages.
I used to remember just about every single bottle I ever had. Not so much any more. Sure I remember the great ones, but on the edges it’s getting foggy, and especially with vintages.
I like LL Marsannay. Very nice little wine for the price – in good vintages like 2009, maybe one of the best larger production pinots in the world at that price.
That’s the kind of French red that you wish you saw on restaurant lists more often. Even with conventional 2x or 2.5x markups, wines like that, or QPR Bordeaux from better vintages (Lanessan, Pipeau, Caronne Ste. Gemme, La Vieille Cure, Reignac, etc.) are going to end up in the $30-65 price range and be drinkable without a lot of age.
Instead, we typically get no-name producers, off vintages, wines that are way too young to drink, and/or gigantic markups of wines that have some age.
Guilty as well. Did it earlier this year two times with bottles that weren’t cheap. I (now) look in CT before purchasing wine to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It wasn’t a big deal as I like the wine but really didn’t need additional bottles.
Agreed, except that I’m not sure any Marsannay qualifies as “larger production” in the grand scheme of things. Still, I would love to see it placed on the lists of more basic, but reasonably good restaurants.
