The Juice Read Online Free PDF Page A

find regional as well as varietal characteristics. And I’m sorry to say we had more misses than hits, although the latter gave us hope and a few wines to put into rotation on our drinking cards. We were hard-pressed to find any flavor at all in the 2009 Santa Margherita, maybe the merest hint of lemon drop? But flavor abounded in the 2009 Palmina, the winemaker Steve Clifton’s Cali-Itali project. Or is that Itali-Cali? Whichever—he grows Italian varietals in Santa Barbara, and his Pinot Grigio is really impressive, especially at $20 a bottle.
    “I tasted some great Pinot Grigios in Friuli,” he says, “and I wanted to make one that wasn’t just a water substitute. It has to be grown on a good site that expresses minerality, but at its best it’s a bridge between Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. Pinot Grigio hits the middle for seafood dishes that are too delicate for Chardonnay.”
    A certain stony element characterized the PGs Davar and I liked the best—and sometimes stone fruits like peaches—most of them from the Collio region of Friuli. The standouts were three successive vintages of Movia’s Pinot Grigio, the 2005–2007, the latter being a spectacular wine with a nose suggestive of a young red Burgundy, reminding us that PG is indeed a relative of that noble grape. “You can drink Pinot Grigio as a thirst quencher on a terrace,” Davar said afterward. “Then there are a few wines like these, which are on a level with the great whites of France.”
    Anyone who’s ever had a Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris will believe that nobility is possible with this grape. The best Italian examples come from small, deeply committed producers in Friuli around the Collio region and Alto Adige, and at $20 to $25 theyrepresent real value. I’m going to seek out Pinot Grigios by Schiopetto, Lis Neris, Lageder, Jermann, Vie di Romans, and Long Island’s Channing Daughters, the sneers of my peers be damned. But I don’t recommend that anyone undertake this course lightly. One of the scents I sometimes imagined in nosing certain Pinot Grigios was hay, which brings to mind the all too apposite maxim about the needle in the you-know-what.

Pop Pop, Fizz Fizz
                                Champagne don’t hurt me baby
                                Cocaine don’t drive me crazy
—Eric von Schmidt
    You might imagine that the recession would have killed the Champagne market, especially the superpremium brands, the so-called Têtes des Cuvées, all priced above $100. If so, you’ll be surprised to discover that just a year after Lehman tanked, arguably the finest house of all, Krug, released the second vintage of a single-vineyard cuvée at around $3,500 a pop. Fortunately, a lot of great Champagne is available for double digits, and those prices have softened over the past year. In fact, thanks to the explosion of small growers and good weather, there’s probably never been a better time to drink Champagne.
    Do I need to explain that by Champagne, I mean the sparkling wine from the eponymous region north of Paris? Many places around the world produce good sparkling wines, but they are not Champagne, and you’ll have to read about them elsewhere. Champagne is the product of a uniquely marginal climate, which in an average year just barely ripens the grapes, and a set of soils based on limestone. The large houses blend wines from different vineyards and grapes, including Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay, to create a relatively uniform product year in and year out, and you can hardly go wrong with the nonvintage bottlings from Veuve Clicquot, Pol Roger, Bollinger, Moët, and Perrier-Jouët,although only by tasting will you learn which style most appeals to you. For instance, Bollinger, beloved of the Brits, tends to be heavier and heartier than the more citrusy Perrier-Jouët.
    While blending smooths out the deficiencies of inferior vintages and helps maintain a