Category: Best Of

Go Go Montbourgeau!

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Yup, we were making a Negroni. Sbagliato. And were probably going to put prosecco in it since we were going to be featuring it during a prosecco tasting. That all may sound very familiar read from the vantage point of 2024. But look at the date this was originally published. 2011. Yeah, we were just that ahead of our time.

Wine geeks love wines from the Jura. This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Well, it doesn’t come as a surprise to a certain sect of the world’s wine geeks …the Juranistas, to coin a phrase that really shouldn’t be coined. I’m one of those Jura-loving wine geeks and Frankly Wines stocks more wines from this region than my accountant considers fiscally responsible. So anytime an article appears touting the joys of these obscure, unique wines, I do a little happy dance.

I did a big happy dance following Eric Asimov’s most recent Jura post. This one specifically mentioned Domaine Montbourgeau, which is located in the sub-region of L’Etoile. This estate, overseen by Nicole Deriaux, is one of my favorite. I’ll even admit to a girl crush on Nicole and her wines, of which I stock quite a few, including her “starter” Chardonnay. This Chardonnay – which has nothing in common with big, buttery, Cali-style Chardonnay, beyond the name – is my gateway drug to the Jura. I price it aggressively, at $19.99, a price at which many people are willing to take a chance. It has the twangy, earthy, funkiness so typical of the Jura, balanced by an elegant minerality and a bit of roundness that softens it up a bit. ‘Accessible ’ is probably not the right word – this is not a wine everyone will like – but if you’re looking to try a white from the Jura, made in the classic style, this is a good place to start.

Montbourgeau L’Etoile 2008 (L’Etoile, Jura, France): Pair it with some comte cheese, or with a creamy sauce, possibly involving mushrooms, and you could just find yourself turning in to a Jura-loving wine geek. And if that happens…don’t worry, I can help you get your fix. Price $19.99   

Musar-fest Spring 2011: USA Left Swimming in Serge Hochar’s Wake

Originally published on March 3, 2011.

Serge Hochar, the man for whom the word legendary is not simply marketing blah blah blah, recently made his annual drive across the US marketplace. During these visits, he hosts wine dinners and holds court at various tastings in various cities. These events usually involve mind-blowing verticals of Chateau Musar’s reds and whites. For a peek behind-the-scenes of one of the NY tastings (and for some background on the Chateau, which I just can’t bear to write. yet. again.) check out David Flaherty’s post at Grapes and Grains.

While the wines themselves are stunning (and the amount of history in the glass is incredible – this time around, Rouge ’00, ’98, ’93, ’83, ’74, ’64, Blanc ’03, ’93, ’80, ’75), the real star of the show is Serge himself. He rarely talks about specifics of the wine. Routine questions about blends, vintage conditions, or flavor profiles are springboards for discussions of philosophy, family, history. To sit in the company of someone so passionate about his work, listening to him tell his stories while drinking in wines that trace the history of your life and beyond – it’s a pretty heady experience. People walk in as fans, or merely curious and leave as disciples. It’s amazing to watch.

In addition to the trade tastings and the dinners, there are also informal lunches, late night bar-nights, and the occasional even later-night margarita. Fans half his age – even a third of his age – find it difficult to keep up. (I tried this time around, and failed miserably, sleeping through a late-night Musar-fest at Anfora in order to preserve myself for a lunch the following day.)

And this was just New York. Prior to arriving, Serge had been in San Francisco, Texas, Denver, Aspen, Boston, and possibly a few other cities. This year, unlike years before, you could follow the great wave of Musar through the Twitter wine community. There was someone spellbound by the reds in California. Then someone in Texas, stunned by their first experience with the whites. Serge quotes tweeted from Boston. One of my own customers stumbling on a tasting in Aspen.

By the time Serge made it to his late-night date with Anfora, the Twitter feeds were swimming in Musar. It was as if the US wine community was at one big, continent-wide week-long wine tasting. A little nuts, a little exhausting, and a testament to one man’s larger-than-life-(and-the-internet) passion.

Thanksgiving Day Suggestion #1: For Those Who Really Trust Us

Originally published November 13, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Cue up the old lady crying into the wind. Other oldish-timers will look at the price below and start to scream as well. Lopez de Heredia Rosado was never meant to be a cult wine. At a long ago breakfast-tasting (yes, breakfast tasting,) Maria José López de Heredia told those of us there that this wine was something made just for the local people. It was something they liked to drink that was never really meant to be sold outside the town. If my numbers hold, I think the number of cases was something like 200. But it was sold out of town, and a handful of account fell in love with it, including mine. We would buy it five cases at a time. On deal pricing. Yes, long ago thre was a FIVE CASE PRICE on Lopez de Heredia Rosado. These days, you’re lucky if you can get FIVE BOTTLES!!!! Because if you do the math, even if every bottle of those 200 cases were sent to the USA (which they were not), it doesn’t take long before all those bottles are sold – with or without a five case deal. And this was a very long-aged wine…. so as I noted below, one year we were selling the 1997, the next year, the 1998. Then the 2000. And in 2010, this was probably around the time of that breakfast tasting with Maria José, when she quietly dropped the new that there would be no more rosado for many years, because they needed to let what they had age as the previous vintages had. (I think they “many” was seven, but I would need to check my notes.) So there was a very long period of no rosado to be had. When it eventually returned to the market, it had acquired the status of myth among a new crop of buyers It had also acquired a very new price – it now lists at most shops for over $100 per bottle. I don’t begrudge that price – this is truly a small production wine that requires a very long period of aging – and I think/hope that the winery is seeing as much of this price increase as the distributors and the retailers. There are many wines out there that cost as much or more and offer much less in terms of rarity and the time-value-of-money. But I do feel a bit of resigned nostalgia. Nostalgia for the ability to buy as much as I wanted whenever I wanted. And of course, for the price. But it was more than that – that general accessibility allowed the handful of buyers that fell in love with the wine to run with it for a bit, to make a market in it, to introduce it to would-be fans in our own communities. That was simply put, so very much fun. At the higher price – and given that each shop or account gets something like three bottles… you already have to be in the know if you ever want to drink it. And that’s a bit of a bummer.  And with that… the old lady crying into the wind is heading off to get her coffee.

I write this post every year. Well, to be completely frank (ha ha), I just cut and paste this post every year. Which I’ll do again, with a few notes about how this vintage differs from the last. So go ahead and read below…or be truly trusting and just click right through the Frankly Wines store. Lopez de Heredia Tondonia Rosado Gran Reserva 2000 (Rioja, Spain)

This post is a re-run. But I thought it was pretty perfect when I wrote it last year (and the year before that). And I still think it’s pretty perfect. The wine in question is the Lopez de Heredia Rosado. Two years ago the 1997 was in stock. Last year it was the 1998. And this year, it’s the 2000, which I find to have more of the mineral notes of the 1997 than the rounder, more tropical fruit of the 1998. But even at its fruitiest, this is not a fruity wine, which is unexpected for a rose. Unexpected enough that we stuck a warning label on the wine. But if you trust my pairing recommendations – and you’re up for a little adventure – a little Lopez Rosado could be just the thing to perk up your Thanksgiving spread.

Here’s the scoop:

Imagine Thanksgiving dinner (the food, not your crazy uncle or your tispy cousin-three-times-removed.) The cranberry sauce, the turkey, the yams, the turkey, the stuffing, the turkey. It’s a wine-pairing nightmare. But this is the wine that can handle it all. Delicate enough to handle the turkey (which let’s face it, is pretty bland), a little fruit to deal with the cranberries and exotic enough to stand up to the stuffing, yams, and even pumpkin pie. It’s perfect.

But it’s not exactly your typical rosé – it has some of the tangy-ness you’ll find in a good fino sherry, only a hint of fruit, and lovely exotic spices like cardamom and ginger. So if you’re intrigued and looking for a little adventure, track down a bottle and include it in your turkey day wine spread. You should be able to find it for under $30 which may be a lot for a typical rosé, but not this rosé.

Price: $23.99

A Wine Store Owner REALLY Looks at 40

Originally published on October 7, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This turned out to be a very good party. We wound up having it at the apartment, and as the night went on, we wound up on the roof. We needed ore wine so I told a couple friends they could go bring up anything they wanted from the wine fridge. “Anything?” they asked. I did a quick mental inventory and said sure, anything. Of course they came back with the one bottle I had forgotten about: Krug Clos du Mesnil. Yeah, no. Not that one. So they went back down and resurfaced with the bottle I had expected them to come up with: Krug 1996. And it was good. I’m now 50 and still haven’t opened that bottle of Clos du Mesnil. Soon. Soon. Certainly before I hit 60!

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about helping a customer select a birthday gift for a friend turning 40. At that point, the store had been open for less than 6 months, I was less than two months away from popping out my third kiddo, and the big 4-0 seemed a very, very long way away.

And now it’s less than two weeks away. (I actually had to check the calendar to confirm that small detail.)

But while I may not be diligently counting down the days to the milestone day, I have been diligently collecting the wines. I’ve scrounged up several bottles of things from 1970, my birth year. I have the good fortune of being born in a decent year for old wines, so I’m not related to the Port bin for birth year wines.

On tap from 1970:

  • Lopez de Heredia Tondonia and Bosconia
  • Carema Produttori
  • Cappellano
  • Chateau d’Yquem

I’ve also picked up some other milestone wines over the years – 1989s for high school graduation, 1993 for college.  I love old wines, not just because I love the taste, but because I love pausing to remember what was happening in my life – or the world in general – when the grapes were being picked. 

It’s time in a bottle in the most literal sense.

From the Frankly Wines Shelf Talker Files

Originally published on September 18, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Wine puns, they never get old.

OK, they’re not really shelf talkers (those actually attach to the shelf.)  They’re more like neckers, which slide on the neck of the bottle.  Except my neckers are actually price tags with just enough room to scribble a tiny little tasting note. 

Or a warning. 
Or a pairing suggestion. 
Or sometimes just a piece of near total nonsense.

The latter would be the case for the tag we’re putting on the Les Clos De Tue-Boeuf “La Butte” Gamay 2009 tomorrow.  Now this is very tasty wine.  It’s made by Theirry Puzelat, generally considered to the man among the too-cool-for-school natural wine kids.  Maybe because I get a little annoyed by the whole too-cool-for-school thing (perhaps because I haven’t been in school for a very, very long time), I haven’t spent much time with the Puzelat wines.  And these are wines that you really do need to spend time with – to try them at a trade tasting really doesn’t do them justice.  They’re not stand-and-spit types of wines.  They need a little thought.

But a little while back, I was at Ten Bells, bastion of vin natural, and decided to order a bottle of La Butte. And it was so crazy good that I spent most of the night ignoring my husband and friends while trying to keep the bottle very close to my glass. It was just bright and good and fruity and slightly funky and everything that is best about natural wines.

So I went and ordered a bunch for the store.  Because that’s what you do when you own a store and spend the evening with a wine that you really, really enjoy.  Especially when you can sell if for less the $15.

But…I was talking about shelf talkers. 

So here’s the shelf talker soon appearing on this wine….because potty humor never goes out of style:

La Butte…kicks ass.
La Butte…is the shit.
La Butte……we’ll stop now.

Much, MUCH more useful (and entertaining?) than a corporate shelf talker with a numerical rating!

Frankly Wines Frequently Asked Questions

Originally published on June 19, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Most of this still holds true up in Copake-land. Except for the delivery bit. That’s a whole different story up there!

Certain questions come up over and over.  Questions that actually have to do with wine (vs. questions about corks, parking, and how to get to the World Trade Center site.)  So we put together little cards that answer those FAQs.  Below, you’ll find the official answer and the behind the scenes answers (available on this blog only.)

Question: Do you deliver?

The Official Answer: Why yes, we do! And if you’re below Canal Street, it’s free and there’s no minimum order. Otherwise, there’s a minimum or a delivery fee.

The Behind the Scenes Answer: Yes, we’ll deliver one bottle. And yes, we’ll even deliver it across the highway. But we’re not set up like a restaurant, with bike-loads of delivery people on call, so it might take a while. This will be true whether you want one $10 bottle or a case of high end Champagne*. So yes, we’ll get it to you. And we’ll let you know when we can realistically get it to you. But that answer won’t always be “in 10 minutes.” And sometimes, like when you call 5 minutes before close and want one bottle delivered 10 blocks up and 5 blocks over, that answer may actually be no. (Well, the answer would really be “we can get it to you tomorrow,” but that’s probably still not the answer you’re hoping for.)

*To be completely honest, if you order a case of Champagne and we’re working solo, we’ll probably buck up and call in a delivery service. For single bottles, this probably isn’t a mathematically feasible option.

Question: Do you offer case discounts?

The Official Answer: Why yes, we do! 10% off mixed or full cases.

The Behind the Scenes Answer: Yes, I’m perfectly aware that such-and-such a store offers a 20%, or even a 25% discount on cases. But I’m also very well-versed in New York wine store math and if someone is regularly offering a case discount that deep….well….it’s more than a little possible their regular mark-up is a tad too high.

Question: Do you have Champagne?

The Official Answer: Why yes, we do!

The Behind the Scenes Answer: It always amazes me that customers ask this – that they don’t automatically assume that a wine store will have anything sparkling on the shelves. This is a problem for Champagne in particular and sparkling wine in general – that so many customers think of it as something so far removed from wine (and “wine occasions” to get all marketing-speak on you) that they don’t even expect a wine store to carry it.

Question: Can you keep track of my purchases?

The Official Answer: We try to, but we’re admittedly not very good at it.

The Behind the Scenes Answer: We’d really like to be better at this but simply put, it is a pain in the ass using an off-the-rack Microsoft Point of Sale system. First we need to get you in the system. And it’s tough to do this without raising the fear of spam in most people. Then once you’re in there, we have to remember to ask you if you’re in the system. And then even though you just told us you think you are, we have to remember to add you to the transaction. And if we don’t, we have to manually add what you just bought in the “notes” field because there’s no way to add you to a transaction after the fact. And if you order on-line or call in an order, that’s a totally different system and we have to track it manually anyway. And that system can securely store your credit card info. But only if you reorder within 3 months. Which is a pain, but it keeps your credit card info secure in a way that storing it forever on an index card can’t. So that’s a good thing, really.

Anyhow, we’ll get better at it. And eventually, we’ll cough up the really big, huge bucks for some sort of fully integrated system. Until then, if you want us to track your purchases, just let us know and we’ll do the best we can.

That Customer #4.6: The Unreliable Witness (Part 3)

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I can’t believe that it took me nearly three years from opening the shop to stock this wine. And I can’t believe I stocked it on a whim! I still adore this wine and love selling it… and need to reorder it for Copake Wine Works soon. Looking back, this wine (along with the Bornard poulsard pet-nat) were probably the first big steps I took into the natural wine-proper side of things.

This would have been long before natural wine morphed into “natty wine,” when it was just starting to tiptoe into wine shops like mine – the cool, neighborhood-focused shop that stocked small production wines… but didn’t really focus too deeply on what “production” actually meant.

Originally published on June 6, 2010.

Time to wrap up on this Unreliable Witness series. I’m going to close it with a success story – and give a mention to a tasty, funky wine I’ve been wanting to mention for a while. A combo That-Customer-Wine-You-Never-Knew-You-Needed column.

Like I’ve said before, the best way to make sure you can find that great wine you had the other night is to write it down. Better yet, write it down….and take a picture. Then you can be the success story instead of the poor follow looking for the French wine with the house on the label.

Real Life Example: That Customer #4.6 – The Success Story:

So in this example, Customer #4.6 calls us. He’s looking for a wine he had the other night. He knows it was sparkling, had Dolce in the name, and was from somewhere in Italy. He thinks the producer was Donati and most importantly…he’s taken a picture of the label!

He emails it to us and yes, it’s dark and blurry and obviously taken at the end of a late night in a dark bar, but it’s enough that we can put everything together and confirm he wanted the Donati Camillo Malvasia Dolce Frizzante 2007

So we special ordered him a case and the story ended happily!

But that’s not the end of it…I was intrigued enough by his description to order an extra case for the store. Clearly, this was the rare…

Wine I Never Knew I Needed

Now I don’t usually order wine sight-unseen (well, bottle-un-tasted) but this bottle had several things going for it.


1) Customer #4.6 described it as a cross between cider, wheat beer, and cream soda, a funky combination I found oddly irresistible.

2) It’s part of the Louis/Dressner portfolio which is filled with oddly irresistible wines and one of a handful of importers from whom I’ll buy the occasional case without sampling.

3) I hadn’t been able to try it at the recent Louis/Dressner trade tasting because by the time I arrived (I always seem to arrive later than I’d like) it had already been drained by the sipping masses. While disappointing, this is usually a good sign.

4) It’s from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, home to many delightful fizzy wines (including Lambruco) which the perfect companions to salty snacks. And I’m always looking for companions to salty snacks.

So I decided to make a leap of faith and bring in an extra case for the store. And it is indeed tasty. It’s not the easiest wine to sell – the cider/beer/cream soda description scares off a lot of people, as does the fact that it’s slightly sweet. But those who have tried it (me, my mother, a group of people in Indiana who keep ordering bottles of it) really like it.

It’s weird, but good. And we all need a little of that in our lives.

That Customer #4.5: The Unreliable Witness (Part 2)

Originally published on June 1, 2010.

In an earlier That Customer #4 post, I set out some of the reasons why it may be difficult to find that great white wine you had last week at a restaurant that was from Italy or maybe Spain with a blue heart on the label or maybe it was a fish but you’ll know it when you’ll see it.

Even if you remember the country, you’re still going to have difficulties remember the wine. Especially if it’s from France.  The following real life example is especially instructive. It’s also amusing, but let’s just assume I’m sharing it because it’s instructive.

Real Life Example: That Customer #4.5:

So That Customer #4.5 comes in. He’s just getting into wine and he’s super excited because he had something the other night that he really enjoyed. It was the first red he’d ever had that he actually liked and he wanted to get another bottle or two.

What he remembered:

The wine was from France.
And it had a fancy house on the label.
And he’d know it when he saw it.

So he walks over to the France section. And he sees a bottle with a fancy house on the label. Chateau something-or-other.

That’s it! (Major excitement! Huge!)

And then he looks at the bottle next to it. Which is also called Chateau something-or-other. And has a fancy house on it.

Or maybe it’s that one. (A little less excitement.)

And then he looks to the bottle next to that one. Another fancy house. Same as the next one. And the next one. And the one above it. And below it.

Now he’s bummed. And we’re bummed because he’s bummed. The excitement has rapidly drained away.

This is because about 45.65% of the bottles from France have fancy houses on the label. Another 32.14% feature some sort of clever drawing and obscure French-language pun. And the remaining 22.21% have no defining features whatsoever*.

So as much as we wanted to help him, there wasn’t much we could do. Well, there was plenty we could do – we had him describe the wine as best he could and gave him something we thought he would like. But if we knew the specific wine (or grape, or region) he was looking for, we would have had a very helpful reference point.

There is a moral to the story:

The next time you taste something you like, just write it down or take a picture. Chances are even if you’re carrying around some last-generation mobile phone, you have a camera or some sort of memo function. This little step will save you from being a bummed out That Customer #4.5.

Instead, you can be That Customer #4.6, who emailed us a photo of a bottle he was trying to track down. We looked it up, found the distributor, placed an order and voile – Customer #4.6 was soon the proud owner of a case of his heart’s desire. (Which did NOT have a house on the label.)

* This numbers are 100% fictitious (at least as far as I know.)  Please don’t tell me you took them seriously.

Never Underestimate What Your Customers Can Handle

Originally published on April 26, 2010.

Jura Whites – they’re not the easiest whites to love on first sip. Reds from this region – a totally different story. Leaving aside those hankering for big, extracted monster-truck wines, many Jura reds can easily please both wine geeks and regular-ole-wine-drinkers (like my mom.)
The whites, not so much. Here are some of the typical descriptors:

  • Jura twang
  • Oxidative Sherry kick
  • Rancid walnut
  • Walnut polish
  • Raging acidity
  • Burnt sugar
  • Briney / salty
  • Stinky

These are not words that send most people racing out to buy a bottle.

So as you can imagine, these wines need to be sold very, very carefully. If you bring a bottle up to the counter, we’ll likely ask you if you’ve had a Jura white before. If you haven’t, we’ll mention the distinctive “Jura twang” (credit for this phrase goes to my Rosenthal rep, Clarke.) If that doesn’t scare you off, we’ll sell you the bottle with a warning to open it well before you want to drink it. Like maybe a day before you want to drink it.

But they are wonderful wines that are distinctive, thought-provoking and go blissfully well with Comte cheese, fondue, and anything earthy and creamy and rich. And we had just gotten in the latest arrivals from Jacques Puffeney – his Melon Queue Rouge, Cuvee Sacha, and Savagnin. And we wanted to open them. So we did – at last week’s Thursday tasting.

Now I fully expected lots of wrinkled noses at first Sherry-scented whiff. Like I said, these are not easy wines. And an in-store tasting, even with a hunk of Comte cheese on offer, is a brutal setting in which to first encounter them. But…people liked them! They really liked them! Some were thrilled to find a white wine they really enjoyed. Many started off unsure about what they were tasting and smelling, but worked their way through the three wines, increasingly intrigued by the unusual textures and tastes. Everyone seemed to appreciate the opportunity to try something different and unusual and relatively rare. (I’d say no one spit the wines out, but that’s not much of an indicator because no one ever spits anything out at a store tasting.)

These Jura whites rank up there with the Lopez de Heredia Rosado, Dard et Ribo St. Joseph, and Foundry Viognier for most surprisingly well-received warning-label-required wines. More proof that it’s best not to underestimate what your customers might like.

Hmmmm…perhaps it may be time to break out the Americano.

Things You Need to Know: How to Remove Those Pesky Slow Pours

Originally published on April 8, 2010.

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This trick still blows my mind.

Apparently my Things You Need to Know series is actually quite useful. The first one, How to Count Out a Cash Drawer, seemed to fill a big, gaping void in retail how-tos. Who knew there were so many people Googling this very topic?
This one is a little more wine-centric. It involves slow pours, the handy tool of the trade that allows you to, you know, pour slowly. Now in the real world, there’s no real reason why you would want your wine to pour slowly. But at a formal tasting, where you have many, many people tasting and just a few bottles for pouring, you can understand the need to pour the wine s-l-o-w-l-y. But it’s more difficult to pour wine slowly than you might think. And when you try to do it, you can look a little stingy. Slow pours solve this problem. You can dramatically tilt the bottle over the glass, hold it nearly vertical, and still, the wine…..pours……s-l-o-w-l-y.  Without giving you the appearance of a stingy, wine-hoarding miser.

Slow pours are extremely simple to use. You just pop them into the top of a bottle. They even come with handy covers which make the wine easier to put into your purse and sneak out of the tasting.

Now these slow pours don’t cost much, maybe $0.50 per unit. But for some reason, everyone is loath to throw them out with the empty bottle. We like to take them with us, wash them out, and reuse them. But they’re tough to get out of the bottle. Fingernails don’t work. The edge of the blade on the corkscrew doesn’t work. Or it slices your finger. They’re pesky little devils.

But I learned a trick at a recent trade tasting. One of those tricks that is so painfully obvious you want to smack yourself on the head for not coming up with it on your own. It’s so obvious even a 5-year old could do it. (I know this because that’s my 5-year old’s hand in the picture below.)

It’s simple:

So, here’s the scoop on How to Remove Those Pesky Slow Pours (So You Can Wash Them Out and Reuse Them Because You’re Too Cheap Too Lose the $0.50)

1. Grab corkscrew

2. Insert back end into slow pour

3. Pull out slow pour

4. Smile smugly as the person at the pouring station next to you breaks a nail trying to do the same.

Or be nice and share the trick. Because good wine karma makes the world go round.