Category: Wine (Buying) History

Another 3-Pack: Mediterranean Sparklers

Originally published on July 7, 2009.

Call us crazy, but we think nothing says summertime like a cold bottle of something sparkling. And since sparklers (the firecracker kind) are all the rage for Independence Day, we’re proudly declaring July Sparkling Wine Month at Frankly Wines. At the store, we’ll be doing sparkling-oriented tastings every Wednesday and Friday from 5.30pm – 7.30pm.

For those not lucky enough to be in downtown Manhattan during the summer months (the garbage smells lovely when it finally heats up) you can still get in the fun with our latest 3-Pack featuring three nicely-priced sparkling wines from two Mediterranean-minded countries – Italy and Spain. All three are crisp and refreshing, but each is distinctly different. It’s a great way to explore the diversity that bottles of bubbles can offer.

AltheaProsecco di Valdobbiadene NV (Veneto, Italy): Produced in the tank method, most Proseccos are lighter and fresher than their Champagne cousins. The Althea is no exception – it shows notes of crisp, green apples, peaches, pears and hints of citrus. It’s great on it’s own or paired with Sunday brunch. Bellini’s anyone?

Cantina Del Taburno Falanghina Spumante NV (Campanga, Italy): Like nothing you’ve ever tasted – we promise. Falanghina is a white grape indigenous to southern Italy, usually used in the production of non-bubbly wine. A sparkling version is a rare treat – so rare we didn’t know it even existed until a few weeks ago. The nose offers up apples and honey, but the palate is dry and refreshing, with the tell-tale smoky notes of a good Falanghina. Bitter lemon zest on the finish will make your mouth pucker for more. A bit more full-bodied than Prosecco, it’s great on its own, with a nice seafood dish, or with an Italian cheese plate.

Bodegas 1+1=3 Cava Brut NV (Penedes, Spain): This delicious little gem from Spain is produced in the Methode Champenoise, the same method used to make Champagne. It boasts aromas of apple, grapefruit, lemon zest, minerals, nuts and honey. Very fresh, dry and brisk, with lively citrus flavors and a Prosecco-like frothiness (and who doesn’t like a little froth). It’s a light, refreshing style that’s meant to be drunk early and often.

And of course, you can buy one at the fancy Frankly Wines web site for just $44.99, more than a 10% discount off the regular combined prices.

Sparkling Wine Month at Frankly Wines

Originally published on July 3, 2009.

It’s Sparkling Wine month at Frankly Wines! If Hallmark can whip up a holiday whenever it feels like it, so can I. But it’s much more fun to get a bottle of something than a card – especially if you’re buying it for yourself.

Back in my corporate life, I spent a lot of time watching Champagne brand managers obsess over getting people beyond thinking that bubbles were only for New Years and a few other Special Occasions such as Weddings, Birthdays, and Anniversaries. And possibly Superbowl Victories. I think the statistic was average Champagne consumption in the US was barely a 1/2 bottle of Champagne per person per year. (The number could be wrong, but it was very very low.)

That statistic was for Champagne only – it didn’t take into consideration the many other sparkling wines that don’t come specifically from the (not so little) part of France called “Champagne”. To a Champagne brand manager, the distinction mattered. As a store owner, I could care less. I just like to have bubbles on hand for people who want to celebrate Holidays, Occasions, or simply enjoy a nice glass of something that happens to sparkle.

So back to Sparkling Wine Month. It’s July – it kicks off with sparklers of the fireworks kind. So we decided to just run with that theme and feature sparklers of the liquid kind. Everything from Prosecco, to Cava, to Lambrusco to Cremant d’This, Cremant d’That, Cerdon-Bugey, Sekt, Lambrusco, Asti spumante or frizzante – and even actual Champagne.

Check out our full schedule of tastings. These are all free, stop-in-for-a-sip-or-two sort of tastings. Nothing formal or fancy – we’ll get to that later. But if you’re in the neighborhood, or looking for an excuse to get to the neighborhood, we’re happy to provide one. And we’re happy to let you stand around, sip, and gab about sparkling wine as long as you like.

And just in case you can’t kick the habit of thinking of bubbles as a gift – we’ll even stuff some tissue paper into your bag to make it look festive.

Wine You Never Knew You Needed: Frappato

A NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Light, fresh, delightful reds as weird? Fast forward ten years and chillable, smashable, chuggable reds have almost officially be a category unto themselves.

Originally published on June 30, 2009.

Frappato is one of those grapes you’ve probably never heard of. We hadn’t until last summer when one of our sales reps came by with the winemaker and an open bottle of Valle dell’Acate “Il Frappato” 2008 (Sicilia, Italy). Given that the wine is a red from Sicily, we were expecting something big, full-bodied, typical of a hot island climate. But no – this Frappato was absolutely charming. Light red (but not quite into rose territory) with notes of bright fresh red berries and roses. It’s perfect for summer days and can be drunk just a little bit chilled.

The several times we’ve had it open at the store, the overwhelming consensus has been “it’s weird, but I really like it!” It’s not really weird, it’s just that most of us aren’t used to drinking reds that are so light, fresh, and really, delightful. A red doesn’t have to hit you over the head to be good.

So if you’re in the mood for something different – give this a try – we all need a little weird yet likable in our lives. Price: $18.99

The Paying of Bills

Originally published on June 19, 2009.

One of my daily chores is to pay my distributor bills. This involves sitting down with a big check book, writing actual checks (today’s are $26.68, $45.00, and $400), addressing actual envelopes, and affixing them with actual stamps. Then the challenge is remembering to take them out of my bag and put them in an actual mailbox at some point during the day (because this is New York and no one has an actual mailbox of their own to put letters in for postpeople to pick up.)

Now I can already hear some of you asking, “Why don’t you just do this electronically. It seems a little silly to be wasting real checks and real stamps when you can just pay your bills electronically.”

And I would answer that yes, it’s a little silly, but that’s just the way it is in the wild world of New York wine.

“Why’s that?” you ask. (Even if you don’t ask, I’m going to tell you.)

In New York, as everywhere, wine sales are highly regulated by the state. In the case of payment terms, every retailer and restaurateur is given 30 day terms. So if the wine is delivered on June 1st, the distributor has to get your check for that delivery by July 1st. If they don’t get it by that day, there’s a 5 day grace period and then the distributor has to report you to the State. (The “State” being the State Liquor Authority, aka the SLA). Not unlike in high school, you’re put on the delinquent list. And detention takes the form of COD status – Cash on Delivery.

COD status means big, busy truck drivers will stand in your store, tapping their feet, waiting for you to write a check before giving you your wine. (Or something like that…I’ve never actually given one of them a check.) And you’re not on COD status for just the one distributor. You’re on COD status for EVERYONE!

This is a very bad thing because paying for your wine the day it’s delivered is a much different situation that paying for it 30 days later (when you’ve had an entire month to sell it and get the cash to pay for it.) So nobody likes to be on COD.

But nobody wants to pay their bills before they have to. I don’t want the distributor to get my cash one day before it’s due. In some cases I don’t have it the day before it’s due, but generally, I’m just inclined to want to keep my money in the bank as long as possible.

So back to why I’m still using checks, stamps, envelopes rather than a snazzy electronic payment system.

Well, only 1 of the approximately 50 distributors I work with offers any sort of automated payment system. And it’s not really automated – I have to call the customer service line, listen to at least 5 minutes of inane music and canned liquor commercials, give them a check number, invoice number, and check amount.

But I can still use my bank’s automated payment system right? Which I started to do once I had started to build a little bit of cash in the bank. It was great – I’d just go online, set everything up and revel in no more stamps! No more envelopes! No more last minute treks to the post office because it took me 3 days to remember to take the envelopes out of my purse! Great!!!!

Not so much. Almost immediately, I started getting calls from my distributors asking where my usually timely checks were. I was about to become a delinquent!

With a little investigation, I learned that the automated payment process isn’t so automated. I was really just “automatically” asking my bank to have someone stick a check in an envelope and mail it from somewhere else. And this somewhere else was in Nebraska. And sometimes it could take up to 5 days to get the check into an envelope. And then another 5 days for the envelope to get to the distributor in New York. So 10 days total. And of course, the bank takes the money out of my account the day I process the payment, 10 days earlier.

Bottom line, I would have to pay my bills at least 10 days before their due date, hope nothing goes wrong in Nebraska (mad cow stampede?), and still could possibly wind up reported as a delinquent to every distributor in the state. And even worse – I would be a delinquent for non-payment of money that had already been removed from my account!!

I think I’ll stick to stamps.

Scooping the New York Times: Vaona Valpolicella

Originally published on May 27, 2009.

Apparently, I never actually published this. Bummer – such a waste of a good scoop! As I type, we have indeed moved into the 2008 vintage, but rest assured, it’s still good wine and well worth a try.

Follow me while we go back in time, to May, when it was still raining, just like today:

In this week’s “Wines of the Times” column, Eric Asimov and Co. chose the Vaona Valpolicella Classico as their #1 pick out of 25 different Valpolicellas.

We’ve had this wine on the Frankly Wine shelves since February, when one of our sales reps brought a bottle, winemaker in tow, for us to taste. I remember it was a cold, natsy day, but the wine was fresh and vibrant, medium-bodied, but full of flavor – berries, floral notes, minerality, It wasn’t trying to be an Amarone or anything particularly “serious.” It was just a really well-made, very enjoyable, highly drinkable wine – exactly what a Valopolicella should be.

As often seems to be the case, the article specifically mentions one vintage….just as a new one is about to arrive. As I type, we have 6 bottles of the 2007 left and the new 2008 is on a boat about to dock at a port somewhere in New Jersey. So buy the 2007 now, wait for the 2008 later, or forever hold your peace! Read more about the Vaona in the New York Times piece or in Eric Asimov’s blog, The Pour.

Back to the present….buy the 2008 right here. Price: $18.99

Chateau La Lagune 1998: The Informercial

Originally published on May 8, 2009

For those of you that read this blog that don’t subscribe to the newsletter (could such people really exist?) I wanted to let you in on our La Lagune offer.

Mention this blog, and you’ll get 10% off any purchase of Chateau La Lagune 1998, even if it’s just 1 bottle. Buy an entire case and you’ll get 15% off (we generally offer only 10%)….if you mention this blog, or the newsletter, or the twitter feed. That sounds so infomercial-ish, but what can we say…there are so many ways to make an offer that involves a certain amount of dollars off a purchase. At least we’re not hauling in a bunch of fading pop stars for “before and after” pictures (hello Proactive!)

Now usually when I see these sorts of offers, I always wonder how many cases a retailer is sitting on. In this case, we have three cases. I thought this was all that was left in New York, period. Then yesterday, my distributor rep lets me know she’s found another 3 cases. So in total, there are 6 cases left in the New York City area which really isn’t much for a city of 8 million people.

Onto the wine on offer – Chateau La Lagune 1998 (Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux, France): It’s not inexpensive, but for a classified growth with some age on it, it’s a great value at regular price = $52.99. It may not be one of the biggest names of Bordeaux, and it may not drive master-Bordeaux critic Robert Parker wild with point-slinging desire, but among certain Bordeaux fans, La Lagune is considered to consistently play above its third growth station. (For those who are wondering what these “growths” are, check out this summary by the Wine Doctor.)

One of our sales reps introduced us to this particular vintage before heading off to Scotland to open a fancy hotel. He had tasted through all the older stock the distributor had squirreled away and told us this one was worth a purchase. We tasted it and agreed and have slowly been draining the distributor’s stock down to zero, or more specifically, draining it down to the 3 cases my new rep just dug up.

At 11 years of age, the wine still has wonderfully ripe, pure red fruit as well as the cedary, tobacco notes so typical of aged Bordeaux. It has a really lovely, silky, almost creamy texture, which combined with the lovely fruit and almost exotic spice notes, make this wine a great example of an elegant, old-school Bordeaux. Drinking beautifully right now, it doesn’t have the structure to go on forever, but you could probably eek another 5 years out of it. Maybe 10 if you like a really developed wine style. If you ‘ve ever wanted to buy a few bottles of something and see how it ages, this is a great one for that.

Intrigued? Like I wrote above, come into the store and mention this post and you’ll get your discount. I’ll go even more high tech….order on-line, mention this blog in the comments section at check out, and we’ll credit your final amount with the 10% (or 15% if you get 12 bottles) discount.

What We Drank Tonight at Frankly Wines….

Originally published on April 25, 2009.

….”drank” isn’t the correct term. In the state of New York, you can’t legally drink in a wine store because the specific license only allows for the sale of wine to be consumed off the premises. This is the origin of the fancy, industry term “off-premise account” which is the opposite of an “on-premise account” where you can only sell wine to be consumed (are you ready for it….) on the premises. The non-fancy industry terms for on-premise accounts are “bar” and “restaurant”.

So no one was drinking. But there was some tasting going on, as there always is on Saturday afternoons and evenings.

Today’s selection was our newest Soave, the Il Selese from I Stefanini, a small family winery in the Veneto region of Italy. We’ve been stocking the line since Dominico Selections began importing it less than 6 months ago. When Terry first pulled it out of his bag, I had no intention of stocking it. The Soave region has a bit of a bad rap due to the many bottles of plonky, utterly forgettable wine it produces and I didn’t really expect this to be much of an exception.

Surprise! The wines were really good.

So good, I bought several cases of the Monte de Toni, the winery’s mid-priced offering. It was winter at that point, and that particular wine had a wonderful hazelnut/almond note and a rich texture that was a good match for cold winter days. It was $16.99 which is a nice price for people willing to take a chance on something a little different.

But now it’s getting warmer, so I decided to swap in the Il Selese, the winery’s entry-level offering. It’s perfect for summer with lovely, pure, juicy, almost nectarine-like fruit notes and just a touch of the nuttiness you find in the Monte de Toni. And at $12.99, it’s particularly easy to love.

So back to the tasting (not drinking!) The wine was indeed a perfect match for today’s bright, sunny weather. If you always like your wines bone crushingly dry, extremely minerally or lemon-rind citrusy, this probably isn’t the wine for you. But if you’re up for a bottle that pairs sunny, happy fruit with a little extra nutty complexity all wrapped up in a very easy-drinking package, the Il Selese is worth a try – and of course, it’s available at Frankly Wines!

Another 3-Pack: Rah Rah Riesling!

Originally published on April 20, 2009.

Wine geeks love Riesling. Perhaps because this grape reflects the specific site it’s from in a way that drives wine geeks crazy with wine geek glee.

But you don’t have to be a wine geek to enjoy a good Riesling. At Frankly Wines, we’ve put together a 3-Pack to introduce you to three from around the world. And because we don’t want fear of sweetness to scare anyone off, there’s not a sweet one in the bunch. All three are dry, dry, dry.

Van Voxlem Saar Riesling 2007 (Mosel, Germany): Heir to a massive beer-related fortune, Roman Niewodniczanski takes a “no expense spared” approach to his wines. He tracks down and purchases fabulously old vineyard sites that have been neglected and brings them back to their former glory. His single vineyard wines show all the complexity, concentration, and site-specific nuance that drive Riesling lovers mad. This bottle, from fruit sourced throughout the Saar shows off stunning minerality, bracing acidity, and notes of citrus and green apples. It’s one of those wines that is even better on the third day than the first, so drink it slowly, if you can! And if you don’t find this one dry enough, you may want to consider drinking sand with you next meal.

Torlesse Riesling 2007 (Waipara, New Zealand): NZ Rieslings may not be as well-known as Sauvignon Blanc, so consider it your little secret. Cool temperatures + dazzling sunlight result in a wine with zippy acidity, stony minerality and a bright, focused note of refreshing lime. This one, like many from NZ (and Australia) show an early hint of petrol character that German Rieslings tend to only get with age. Yes, petrol, oil, kerosene…just a touch of it is considered a good thing.

Ravines Dry Riesling 2007 (Finger Lakes, New York): A little bit closer to home – the Finger Lakes. Riesling likes a cool climate and it’s definitely cool up there. This one is the most floral of the bunch, with lime and mineral notes to spare. If you think Finger Lakes = sweet, this Riesling should change your mind.

PRICING: $49.99 (regular price $54.97).

Hammer Time! : What I Won at the Auction

Originally published on April 19, 2009.

Even if it was a little less than exciting, the auction was a success.

Managed to pick up:

  • Chateau Plince 2003 (Pomerol, Bordeaux): a replacement for my Bad Boy Bordeaux which is down to 4 bottles and counting.
  • Chateau Lafon-Roche 1985 (St Estephe, Bordeaux): a replacement for my La Lagune 1998 which is down to almost 2 cases. The La Lagune was my go-to recommendation for classic Bordeaux with some age on it. This one will also be in the $50 – $60 range which seems the sweet spot for this wine of this age that’s showing nicely but not too “namey”.
  • 1978 Dom Perignon, because, really why not. I got it for $150, which is practically wholesale for a bottle of the frighteningly young 2000. There was some 1998 and 1996 DP available as well, which wound up going for around wholesale cost, but it was at the end of the auction and I was feeling poor.

What I didn’t pick up that I wanted:

  • A mixed case of FX Pichler Rieslings and Gruners
  • A mixed case of Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape
  • Various lots of Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin’s which I thought would just sit there for the savvy buyer to snatch. Not so much – this best kept secret doesn’t seem to be so secret anymore.

Now all of those wines that I wanted went for what I consider extremely reasonable prices. If I were buying for myself, or was watching cash and margins just a little less carefully, I would have snatched them up. But in the early days of a retail store, especially in this environment, knowing that I’ll sell it “someday” to “someone” isn’t good enough. Especially since I have to pay for the wines when I pick them up….no credit cards allowed!

But…if you’re interested in doing a little auction shopping, I’m very quick with a spreadsheet and would happy to engage in a little auction action on your behalf! (Seriously, very seriously. Contact me if you’re interested!)