Wine talk
By Mark Criden
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As the holiday binge recedes in the rear-view mirror, the only thing lighter is our wallet. No wonder America’s retailers discount their wares so heavily after January 1: we’re all low on scratch. Not all markdowns, though, are created equal. Pillowcases and DVD players, maybe; luxury goods, not so much. But while I can’t offer you vicuna coats on clearance or half off a BMW 750i, I can point you to the most spectacular red wine bargain of the century.
But first, I’m going to torture you with some context. Steve Edmunds, America’s greatest—and perhaps least appreciated—winemaker, has been making delicious wines at California’s unprepossessing Edmunds St. John winery for two decades. Eschewing the cabernet and chardonnay sweepstakes that normally crown Golden State winners, Steve focuses on great varietals of France’s Rhone Valley, like Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, and Viognier.Edmunds St. John is the epitome of a shoestring operation—what the French currently celebrate as “garagistes.” Edmunds doesn’t believe in spending money on the little things—like vineyards. So homespun is this operation that Steve, a former postman, musician, and retail buyer, presses his grapes and bottles his wine in a Berkeley warehouse.
Naturally, Edmunds (a former home winemaker) is entirely self-taught. No years of apprenticeship under sun-wizened grape-growers. No fancy Oenology degree from the University of California at Davis. Instead, Steve modestly attributes his success to “intuition and blind luck.” (Believe that and I have some offshore real estate I’d like to talk to you about.)The truth is Steve Edmunds has prodigious native talent and is probably America’s greatest selector of grapes. Up and down the California coast he travels, finding great, unheralded vineyards growing grapes that can become wines expressive of their origins, wines through which “the earth can speak” in a clear and strong voice. These wines are distinctly old worldish in style: discreet, refined, balanced and elegant, displaying little of the slick vanilla hootchiness that’s a la mode.
A true artisan, Edmunds produces only a few thousand cases each year, rarely more than a few hundred of any given bottling. There’s a full range of delectable whites, from single-varietal Viognier ($24) and Roussane ($30) to Rhone-style blends like the Los Robles Viejos ($24), Shell and Bone ($20) and Blonk! ($14). His reds are uniformly wonderful, from the exuberant “Bone-Jolly” Gamay ($17) to the Rocks and Gravel blend ($18), a dead ringer for a soulful Cotes du Rhone.But the real star is the Syrah. Steve has produced numerous bottlings over the past twenty years, including fabulous examples from the Durrell, Bassetti, and Wylie-Fenaughty vineyards. These great reds, all priced between $25 and $40, are capable of standing tall with the great Syrahs of Hermitage and Cote Rotie. Given the latter’s tariffs ($50 to upwards of $200 per bottle), the ESJ Syrahs are always astonishing bargains.But you ain’t seen nothing yet.
In 2002, a year of weird weather extremes in California, Steve couldn’t figure out what to do with his thirty tons of Syrah. As he explains it, “Syrah from some of the best, most well-regarded Syrah sites in California, were blended together, and put into a big tank, where they stayed. For a long time. Languishing in the shadows.This blend was like some big, awkward kid that can’t quite seem to do anything right, and so you just don’t put any pressure on him, you just give him some space, give him plenty of time to just hang out. Check back in with him every now and again, and just let him know he’s welcome to stick around until he’s ready to do something else.”
In June of 2006, ESJ bottled 2000 cases of this wine and called it The Shadow. It’s smoky, peppery, earthy, silky, and spicy, with sweet tannins on the finish. Did I mention that it’s complex, sensual, stuffed with bright fruit flavors, elegant, fresh, and brilliant? Did I forget to say utterly, joyously delicious?
Did I point out that it costs $11.50 a bottle?
This is not a typo.
Buy as much as you can, either from your retailer or directly from Steve Edmunds. E-mail him at edmundsstj@comcast.net or check out his website at www.edmundsstjohn.com. It’ll help you have a very happy new year.
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For several years now, wine apologists have extolled the healthful benefits of a daily glass. Whether you’re concerned about heart disease, cancer, or just being French, wine—red in particular—has been touted as being among the most beneficial of drinks.
And now through the miracle of wine-related science, even the zaftig can have their cake and eat it too. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging report that the compound resveratrol, naturally found in red wine, not only offsets the bad effects of a high-calorie diet in mice, but significantly extends their lifespan.The researchers fed one group of middle-aged mice a diet in which sixty percent of calories came from fat. The mice soon developed ill health, enlarged livers, and started to die much sooner than mice fed a standard diet. Another group of mice was fed the same high-fat diet but with a large daily dose of resveratrol. The resveratrol did not stop them from putting on weight, but it averted diabetes, and kept the mice’s livers normal size. Even better, the substance sharply extended the quality and length of the mice’s lifetimes. Those fed resveratrol remained healthy and died at the same rate as mice on a standard healthy diet.
As with all science, there are a couple of caveats. First, we’re not mice. Although resveratrol has previously shown benefits to yeast and earthworms, human trials are not yet formally underway. Second, the resveratrol was administered to the mice in hefty doses, twenty-four milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Red wine has about one and a half to three milligrams of resveratrol per liter, so a 150-pound person would need to drink hundreds of glasses of red wine a day to get the right dose. Kids: Don’t try this at home.
Scientists are working on synthesizing resveratrol in mega-doses for humans. “For now, we counsel patience,” Matt Kaeberlein and Peter S. Rabinovitch of the University of Washington wrote in an article accompanying the study. “Just sit back and relax with a glass of red wine .... If you must have a Big Mac, fries and apple pie, we may soon know if you should supersize that resveratrol shake.”
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Remember how, when you were a kid, you’d ask some fatuous grown-up a question, and he’d tell you, “Look it up!” You’d want to smack him, since the process of “looking it up” usually involved a tortured path through volumes of eye-numbing prose.
The wine world’s no different. Most wine writers have their PhD’s in “Bo-ring.” There are exceptions, though, foremost among them the popular and erudite Master of Wine Jancis Robinson, whose latest tome, the third edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine, is described by the Washington Post as “the greatest wine book ever published.” The OCW is stupendous in every sense of the word. Aided by a remarkable roster of wine experts, Robinson has produced the definitive wineopedia, a third of which she wrote herself. Weighing in at more than 800 pages, the OCW is the crowning victory for Robinson who has become the reigning doyenne of British wine journalism. (True groupies can subscribe to her web site, www.jancisrobinson.com.)
No wine book comes close to matching the breadth and depth of the OCW. Every wine-related topic imaginable is covered in erudite, meticulous detail.
At $65 retail, the OCW prices out at the same as a few bottles of very good wine, but make the sacrifice. You’ll enjoy those bottles that much more with Jancis at your side.
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I’ve received several letters about my November piece, which was highly critical of Cayuga Lake wineries. These ranged from whistling-through-the-graveyard pleas (“Don’t give up on us!”) to clear-eyed jingoism (“shameful and an absolute disgrace”).
As much as being a critic is fun, being a critical critic is not such fun. As much as it pains a reader to scan poisonous prose, that experience pales next to the misfortune of tasting poisonous wine.
It’s easy to understand why the one who throws himself on a grenade is unloved. No one wants to be told what he or she is selling, or buying, is mediocre. And in fact our society has shunted off negative criticism—like a crazy uncle—to a dark, locked attic room. While no one beats our White House for questioning the intentions or credibility of critics, the notion of stay-positive-or-stay-quiet permeates all aspects of our society. How many mediocrities—movies, food chains, jobholders—survive because no one is encouraged to notice that the emperor has no clothes?
This is not Mother Theresa we’re talking about here, where only the most outlandishly churlish would question motives or outcomes. Wine is a commercial product that’s sold to you—backed up by whatever hooey the producer wants to claim. If you don’t like my opinion, then please, please, try the product yourself. But to suggest that calling a commercial producer to task is beyond the bounds of fairness or civility is only to ensure the triumph of mediocrity. And that would surely diminish the efforts of the great.
*In Becket’s Waiting for Godot, this word, uttered by Estragon to Vladimir, is the ultimate pejorative.
Mark Criden (mcriden@yahoo.com) is a non-profit executive and the former chair of the Buffalo Branch of the International Wine & Food Society.
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