This is not always a glamorous job. Those red spots everywhere are not spilled wine, but spit from folks who either missed the bucket or made its contents splash out.
Today was the Louis/Dressner portfolio tasting and even though they were strict with the RSVP list, there was still plenty of pushing, prodding and spit bucket mishaps.
Fortunately, their wines were good enough to distract me from the occasional elbow or splash back. Some highlights: Jean-Paul Brun, Terres Dorées (if you think Beaujolais wines are silly, you haven’t had any made by this man), Matthieu Baudry (stellar wines from Chinon in the Loire Valley), Eric Texier (Rhône Valley wines, including a Côte-du-Rhône made with 80% grenache and 20% white grapes – look for this by the glass soon at L’Ecole).
The wines that blew my mind, however, were from Radikon. Located in Friuli, close to Slovenia, they vinify their white grapes as if they were making red wine; over 90 days of skin maceration and a minimum of 3 years aging in large Slavonian oak. Their current releases for their white wines are from 2004. My tasting companion summed it up by saying that the whites tasted like a salami sandwich. Meaty, rich, round and salty; I had to agree.
A Thirsty Spirit 