Saturday - December 6, 2008
11am-8pm
Okay, okay, we know. We ALL know. Things are tough. Your 401K is now a 201K. Pretty soon they're going to repossess the K.
Right, we all feel your pain, quite literally, not in the figurative way that certain presidents used to demonstrate their bona fides as just another guy. We here at Winestore are, well, just other guys going through the same thing. But that doesn't mean all the news is bad, even though that's the only news that seems to get anybody's attention.
Here's some good news. Really cool, expensive wines, highly allocated wines, are struggling to find customers. Yeah, sounds like bad news, right? No, not if you want to taste them and can't afford them. You see, since these formerly allocated wines are available, even if we don't see the need to buy a bunch of them, Winestore can afford to buy a few and put at least one on the Enomatic! So each of us can taste it, even if we aren't willing to forgo a house payment to buy a case.
And while we're on the subject of 401K's, you know those aren't doing so well. Maybe you should just cash the whole thing out and put it in wine. Even if the investment doesn't increase in value, it can hardly lose as much as some market funds have lost. Meanwhile, if the whole thing goes south, you can always drink your investments.
Okay, maybe that's a bad idea.
Back to the Enomatic: we're going to put 2005 Araujo Eisele Vineyard Cabernet and the 2007 Eisele Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc on the machine this weekend. I don't know about you, but I haven't had their 2005 Cabernet, and Araujo has a pretty stellar track record. 2005 is one of my favorite vintages in the last twenty years, so that seems like a good idea.
The 2005 Aalto PS is unlikely to be called elegant anytime soon; I'm not sure I care. I love Aalto for its unabashed fruit intensity and spicy barrel richness. The elegance that comes with Tempranillo is still a few years away, and 2005 is a fantastic year. I've yet to taste the 2005 Aalto PS, but I know already that words are likely to fail me, as they often do with this wine.
A couple more Spanish beauties have been promised: 2006 Clos Erasmus (made by Charlotte resident Daphne Glorian) and 2006 Mas Doix. Priorat is for people who want big wine, gorilla big, glowering and roaring in front of winedom's chattering schoolchildren. Both are great examples, but Erasmus is a very special place, one of the most perfect vineyards I have seen in Priorat.
Here's another good idea: a couple of Rhone wines should show up on the machine too: 2004 Auguste Clape Cornas and 2001 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle. Clape is one of the masters of the northern Rhone. His Cornas is powerful, dense and completely of its place: Classic Cornas richness and pepperiness, with earthy, dusty hints at the end. La Chapelle 2001 is a bit of a mystery; I haven't yet had it and opinions seem to be split. But 2001 is a solid vintage and La Chapelle is the epitome of elegance in Hermitage.
His style is not bombastic. There's nothing big about it. And some criticize the wines because they can be a bit hard nonetheless in youth. Most of the time that sort of criticism is well founded and reflects a winemaker's overuse of new oak, but that's not the case here. Steve makes wines with structure and ageability; their strength doesn't derive from oak but from the fruit and from the landscape.
So – come on in and enjoy some GREAT wine with friends – ‘Tis the season!
Doug Frost, MS MW
Master Sommelier & Master of Wine
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