Two Delicate Favorites Return
April 12th, 2020
It's a bright April Saturday.
As I sit at my desk, the brisk, fresh air gently breezes in my window. For the last two weeks, I've been hearing birds, loudly and clearly, all day long - the same bird calls I used to hear as a kid in NJ.
Despite the horrible situation I know the people down the block at the emergency room are dealing with, it's hard not to get lost in what a peaceful place the Village has become. The combination of a bright, brisk day, the fresh breeze, the birds - the nostalgia is thick with early Spring memories.
- The first Baseball practices of the year, where the infield dirt is still wet and dense, and sticks to the ball and your glove and your pants...the sting of the bat even more pronounced by the cool temperature.
- Arriving at a family Easter celebration, after the full-length Mass, where you had to sit, for an extra long time, in clothes you didn't want to wear, and promptly soil with grass stains in a moment of defiance, before running to find the candy.
- Wearing shorts as a teenager when it's 46 degrees in an attempt to will Spring warmth into existence... (okay, yes, I still do that...)
Anyway, the point is that seasonal change, even when it happens in times like these, is something to cherish, and Spring is always very special.
While I'm still using this 'stay at home' time as an opportunity to cram in as many 'comfort' recipes as possible, I can feel my palate starting to long for more whites and light, vibrant reds to drink around foods packed with freshly available ingredients.
Today's two wines, a Pinot Noir and a Gamay, are exactly that - fresh, aromatic, transparent and wildly versatile.
Oh, and of course...delicious...
The first one, from the young Späburgunder expert Benedikt Baltes, should look familiar to most of you, since we sold a ton of his higher-end Spätburgunder Klingenberg Alte Reben 'R' 2015 this time last year. It was a big hit to say the least.
Today, I have the last of his Spätburgunder Großheubach Alte Reben 2015 and it's drinking gorgeously right now. Like the 'R', it's super-fresh, blazingly bright and energetic beyond words, but here the fruit is perhaps a half-a-shade darker, with a juicier, more textured profile. While it's certainly more cheerful and friendly when compared to the high-minded coolness of the 'R', this is no 'simple' wine.
Underneath all the exuberance, is a subtle, stony complexity that teases at first, but opens up nicely as the bottle progresses. As German Pinot Noir continues to make a name for itself on the world stage, Baltes is, for me, a producer to watch very closely.
Then we have the newest iteration of a wine that, in just its 4th release, has become about as celebrated a label (pun intended) as anything we sell - Bethany Kimmel's The Color Collector.
Yes, we usually get it in the Fall and, as wonderful a wine as it is as the weather's cooling, I'm really excited to have it now, while the weather's warming.
This 2018, for the second straight year, is 100% Gamay hailing from the Van Duzer AVA in the Willamette Valley. And, for the fourth straight year, it's flat-out brilliant...
...and I mean that in both the ways one can use 'brilliant'...i.e. Bethany is a brilliant winemaker, and also that the wine has a brilliance to it that's hard to put into words...even for a 'brilliant' writer like me.
(I hope the tongue-in-cheek-ness translates there...)
Anyway, what I always love about this wine is the way it so deftly takes the deep, dark, earthy profile, so characteristic of the Willamette (the 'Oregon taste', as I like to say), and expresses it through such a lifted, polychromatic (or brilliant, if you will) lens.
When you consider the fact that it's a Gamay, which is already more 'grounded' in nature, the beauty becomes even more apparent.
There's so much length to the delicately fragrant nuance as it expands across the palate, from dark/mineral all the way to perfumed/vigorous, hitting every note in the key of 'Highly-Expressive, Transparent Red Wine' along the way.
It's beautiful, as always and, as always, there's not very much of it. These cases are everything we'll get until the next release...and all of the time in between when we sell the last bottle of this, until that new release arrives, will mostly be spent having to give a disappointing answer to the question, 'Hey, do you have any more of that Gamay with the beautiful label?'
So, while we should all keep being concerned and vigilant, and we should all keep cheering out our windows every night at 7pm...we should also all be taking the time to revel in the new beginning that Spring affords us...and have some lively, spunky reds along with it.
Benedikt Baltes Spätburgunder Großheubach Alte Reben 2015
The Color Collector Gamay Noir 2018
You may order by emailing info@mcf-rarewine.com or calling 212.255.8870.
Matt Franco
MCF Rare Wine, Ltd
249 West 13th Street NYC 10011
212.255.8870
WARNING: DRINKING DISTILLED SPIRITS, BEER, COOLERS, WINE AND OTHER ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES MAY INCREASE CANCER RISK, AND, DURING PREGNANCY, CAN CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS.