“I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs.”
- Marcel Proust, À La Recherche du Temps Perdu
Like Proust’s madeleine and lime-flower tea (or Ego’s fateful taste of ratatouille in Pixar’s film, for a more modern analog), wine has the uncanny ability to rip us from the present, launching us headlong into a memory with a mere sniff or sip. Proust’s narrator attempts to recreate the shock of that first taste – to claw back the details of the memory – but is rebuffed. With each successive bite, the tea-dipped cake tastes more like the present. The wormhole to the past has closed, and the full meaning of the memory is obscured until much later in the story.
When we taste wine, we are often searching for a memory, trying to claw back the experience of tasting some iconic bottle – that teaspoon-sized taste of 1978 Cros Parantoux or 1949 La Tâche. But I find more often I’m reaching for a more personal memory, less glamorous but somehow far more vivid. When I think of red Burgundy I think of a casual tasting around the table at Camus, by no means the most exclusive address in the region, where a 2010 Charmes-Chambertin was served that made me feel as if I had woken up for the first time. I looked around the table and it seemed to me that everyone else was still asleep, tasting yet another wine in a long line of wine tastings. I wanted to shake their shoulders, stare into their eyes and pull them up out of their slumber – “Can you believe this? Are you tasting this?” I’ve never tasted that bottle since. Maybe I’ve grown past it, or maybe it’s still singing – who can say?
These days when I’m reaching for that first great experience of red Burgundy, I’m often looking outside of Burgundy, or even outside of Pinot Noir. It’s not just that the prices of red Burgundy have become an obstacle (though perhaps that is reason enough), but also that the recent string of hot vintages in Burgundy have been unkind to the style of Pinot Noir I remember in that 2010 Charmes – fruity and inviting, yes, but red-fruited, and with a nervy edge of acidity that spoke of balance and elegance more than voluptuous hedonism. Modern Burgundy is often delicious and powerful – charming qualities, to be sure, but not the ethereal siren’s song that first drew me towards the rocks.
But where should one look for that red-fruited dancer on tiptoe? If you find them, be sure to let me know. Here’s where I’m hunting these days:
German Pinot Noir
Germany seems an obvious place to search for Burgundy’s past. Its cooler climate and established Pinot Noir presence (thanks to pioneers like the late Bernhard Huber in Baden) have positioned it perfectly to sate the global hunger for lean, age-worthy Pinot Noir as Burgundy’s top vineyards continue to get riper. There is no shortage of ambitious producers across the country, but apart from a few, already iconic names (Keller, for example), the jury is still out on who will become the kings and queens of Spätburgunder.
The buzz around Rudolf Fürst continues to grow (I’d recommend getting in before these wines get any more expensive), with already-top-notch scores that seem to be steadily climbing, vintage after vintage. The GG Hundsrück is of particular note, but all three of the top sites are highly recommended. Of course, if you can track down any pre-2014 Bernhard Huber, you should pull the trigger (Huber lost his battle with cancer in June of that year), but those bottles are getting rarer. The wines of autodidact Daniel Twardowski are also showing excellent promise.
Etna Rosso
Sure, Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio have more natural tannin than Pinot Noir, but the level in most of the best wines is comparable to more structured producers in the Côte d’Or (you don’t even need to go to the ever-tannic DRC – someone like Henri Gouges in Nuits-Saint-Georges is example enough). The farming and winemaking quality has skyrocketed on the slopes of Mount Etna in the last three decades, and while pricing has inflated somewhat, the top wines are still a steal for their level of quality.
Most of the well-known names can be bought with abandon here, and with less pickiness about vintage than in Burgundy – Terre Nere’s complex Prephylloxera and layered San Lorenzo, Benanti’s phenomenal Rovitello and Serra della Contessa Riservas. But don’t miss out on the second-tier line from Benanti either – the single-vineyard Calderara Sottana and Dafara Galluzzo are fantastic wines that will repay cellar age far better than other wines in their price point.
Modern Grenache
For pure red fruit, it’s hard to beat Grenache. But it takes just the right site and producer to rein in Grenache’s penchant for elevated alcohol and baked-fruit quality. Châteauneuf still has its place, but it’s no Burgundy replacement. Grenache’s need for a long ripening season makes it harder to grow in more northerly climes, so higher-elevation regions in hotter climates provide the perfect balance – long growing seasons and plenty of sunshine, while cooler air temperatures and higher diurnal temperature swings retain the fresh fruit and acidity.
By now the word is out on the inimitable Comando G in Spain’s Sierra de Gredos, but pricing is still quite reasonable outside of the powerful Rumbo al Norte and spiced El Tamboril (which themselves are still bargains compared to the Grands Crus of Burgundy). Completely forgotten by most US-based collectors, Australia may well be the place to watch for top-tier Grenache moving forward. Swan Valley’s Vino Volta is well worth seeking out, as are the textured examples from McLaren Vale’s Aphelion.
Most days you’ll still find me hunting down deals on top-tier red Burgundy like a degenerate gambler (this month’s wine club featured a stunning 1er Cru Morey-Saint-Denis from 2010, for instance). But when it comes to impeccably balanced, red-fruited wines, we ignore the rest of the world at our (and our wallets’) peril.