Beautiful dinner with some perfect weeknight wines. VRAC Macon ($11) and Gerbino Rosso ($13) pair wonderfully with whatever your in-house chef whips up. (at Dandelion Wine)

Domaine de Montbourgeau L’Étoile 2008

“Another great deal from the Jura, this is largely chardonnay with perhaps a little savagnin thrown in. Nicole Dériaux of Montbourgeau, from the L’Étoile appellation, is one of my favorite Jura producers. Usually I choose her savagnin, made in the sous-voile style, under the veil of a sherry-style yeast, which gives the wines nutty, fino-like flavors. The chardonnay is tangy, dry and persistent. It has the twang of sous-voile, and though less severe than the savagnin, it still suggests the mystery and depth of the best Jura cuvées.”

- Eric Asimov, NYTimes, October 22, 2012

A favorite of ours for years… this is the perfect time of year to enjoy this wine.  Pairs beautifully with roasted root vegetables or butternut squash soup… YUM.

Yesterday was the first day of FALL—so I had a summer BBQ to celebrate!  While I chopped the potatoes and marinated the pork, I sipped on our new Austrian Chardonnay, Werlitsch Morillon 2008.  I LOVED it.  Tons of bright acidity and mouth-drying minerality but with a long, round finish of stone fruit and citrus.  I didn’t want to share any it was so good… but I did, and everyone else loved it too!  Why didn’t I bring 2 bottles home???  All you Gruner fans should give this guy a try and see why Chardonnay is one of the noblest grapes of all. 

Once dinner was on the table, we cracked another new addition to Dandelion, Bebame Red 2011.  A natural wine from California that is made from 93% Cabernet Franc and 7% Gamay.  An unusual, but successful blend!  A very expressive, pleasantly light red that was easy drinking.  Even my Pinot Noir-loving-wine-snob dad loved it!  ”Tastes like a great Pinot!”, he said.  Yeah, sort of.  It’s delicate with very subtle red fruit and earth notes.  Delicious.  What a great way to say ‘Adios!’ to the summer of 2012.

-Lily

WERLITSCH MORILLON 2008 VOM OPOK Certified Organic Austria $23

BEBAME RED 2011 Natural Wine from California $21

Exciting News! CHANNING DAUGHTERS AT DANDY!

Meg took a trip to the winery a weekend or 2 ago and fell in love with so many of their wines, and today we got 3 of them. Meg will fill you in on her trip sometime soon, and we may get more of these local gems later on, but in the meantime, here is some info on what we’ve got!

L’Enfant Sauvage Chardonnay $36
L’Enfant Sauvage is made from 100% Chardonnay grapes hand-harvested from our Brick Kiln and Sculpture Garden vineyards here in Bridgehampton. The grapes are gently whole cluster-pressed, the juice settled overnight and racked into new French and Slovenian oak barrels and filled to the top. The ambient/wild/spontaneous (whatever you want to call them) yeast kick in and the wine ferments. The secondary malo-lactic fermentation also happens spontaneously and we leave the wine on its lees until blending and bottling. In the past L’Enfant has spent 13-14 months in oak….beginning with the 2008 and now again with the 2009 vintage the wine spends 18 months in barrel. This way it has a chance to live through two winters in barrel and as the Burgundians’ say “then able to stand on its own two feet”. So, how is the wine? Delicious, rich, elegant, satisfying, juicy and complex! Our 2009 L’Enfant Sauvage is a beautiful clear gold color and possesses clean, youthful flavors and aromas of golden apples, lemon curd, pears, just-baked brioche, pineapple, brown baking spices and salty minerals. The wine is dry, full bodied, has balanced acidity and alcohol…and a long, complex, persistent finish. The aromas and flavors are fairly intense and long-lasting yet there is restraint, elegance and finesse balancing the rich, barrel-fermented style. The wine is just plain yummy and easily competes with the big names from California and Burgundy. One of the very rewarding aspects of L’Enfant is how approachable it is in its youth yet it really is a wine meant for 5-10 years of aging in bottle. It is thrilling to see the wine develop beautifully and still offer remarkable freshness, aliveness and potential for further development at six or eight or ten years of age. As always L’Enfant is a great match for lobster, scallops, truffles, roast chicken, goose, salmon, artic char and mushroom dishes. On April 26, 2011 a mere 177 cases were bottled by gravity. -The Winery

2011 Rosato di Refosco -Home Farm Vineyard $21
Wonderfully surprising rosato…Classic pink color, sweet red and black fruit character, pronounced aromatics…rich, robust, exuberant and most importantly fun! Crisp, balanced rosato…alpine wild strawberries (fraise des bois), ripe blackberries, black raspberries and other bramble fruit…also floral, citrus and mineral notes…lengthy finish. Match with prosciutto and melon, fricos, fish salads or tacos, pastas, porchetta and poultry. 275 cases made. All eight of the Rosati were made from hand-harvested fruit that was whole cluster-pressed and fermented in stainless steel tanks. All of the Rosati are dry, balanced and delicious and the color comes only from the 3-4 hours in the press. This is red fruit selected specially for pink wine production that is processed like we were making white wine. -The Winery

2010 Blaufränkisch - Sylvanus Vineyard $29
Over the years this variety has proven its affinity with our climate and we love to use it both as a blending grape and as a varietal bottling. Our 2010 Sylvanus Vineyard Blaufränkisch is comprised of 80% Blaufränkisch and 20% Dornfelder. We feel Dornfelder is a great match as a blending grape with its darker color, and briary, bramble and spice fruit character. The 2010 wine has a dark ruby-red colored rim with purple inflections and a translucent core. The aromas and flavors are full of lilacs, iris’, raspberries, black raspberries, plums, boysenberries, violets, brown spice and black pepper. This is a dry, supple, sexy wine with Burgundian texture and great concentration. These Blaufränkisch grapes were simply picked, placed in bins and the wine completed fermentation with ambient yeast. The alcohol is on the light side of moderate at only 11.6%, the acids juicy and balanced, the tannins are present but soft, and the wine offers a great deal of pleasure and a long delicious finish. All the fruit was hand-picked from our Sylvanus vineyard here in Bridgehampton on the South Fork, de-stemmed, crushed by foot and punched down by hand in small one ton bins. The wine spent 16 months in five hogsheads and three puncheons of old French and Slovenian oak. The wine was bottled by gravity without fining or filtration on February 14th, 2012. Our 2010 Blaufränkisch Sylvanus Vineyard is a great match with venison, pork roasts, meatballs, duck, game birds, veal chops, hard mountain and washed rind cheeses as well as earthy grain and squash based dishes. This wine would also be a great choice for richer fish preparations. 328 cases produced -The Winery

We’re loving the 2009 Petit Chablis from Domaine des Marronniers, paired with my new Wu Tang album!  Unoaked Chardonnay from the North end of the Burgundy region, winemaker Bernard Legland thanks the natural terroir for the wine’s racy acidity and bracing minerality. “Why would we want to hide what we get from our soil?”, he exclaims! We agree, whole heartedly.

A French website we translated with the help of Google says:

Marie-Claude Bernard and Legland settled in 1976 in Préhy, south of the appellation. Leading today twenty hectares, they offer a small-windfall from vines fifteen years, a perfect typicality. Behind the pale gold color, the nose opens into the flower and fruit. An elegant minerality underlines the mouth rich, full and fruity, long and narrow. To drink without waiting until the fun is already there.

Huh, how about that.

Cheers!

xoxo- The Tuesday Girls

(Meg and Claire)

Speaking of popular rosés, we had a visitor from the South Fork today — Roman Roth, the winemaker of Wolffer Estates stopped by with a bagful of wine.  We tasted the new and outstanding vintage of Wolffer Rosé 2011 and also fell in love with his Classic White 2011 (a blend of Chardonnay, Riesling, and Gewurztraminer) and last but certainly not least, his award-winning Ice Wine — “Diosa” Late Harvest Chardonnay… it was so good, we even got Emma, the matriarch of 153 Franklin, to try it.  It was the very first time (in the 4+ years I’ve been tasting wine in her building) that she ever took a sip.  Needless to say, all 3 wines will be arriving sometime next week…  Yay Spring!

ps- Roman is a very cool guy… you should go out and visit him at the winery sometime.

New Wine Alert!  South Africa in the house, yo.

DMZ CHARDONNAY 2011:

DMZ wines are produced by De Morgenzon winery which is situated in the upper reaches of the Stellenboschkloof in Stellenbosch, South Africa.  Terraced hillside vineyards and exquisite gardens are complemented by beautiful vistas of rugged mountains and sweeping views of both the Indian and Atlantic oceans.  Alluring citrus and tropical fruit aromas lead into a lush, concentrated palate.  Ripe flavors of peach, pineapple, and citrus are tinged with delicate hints of vanilla, toast and spice, all backed by bright acidity and a beautiful mineral-ly edge.  $13.50

KEN FORRESTER PETIT PINOTAGE 2010:

Ken Forrester’s vineyards are located on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain, in the heart of South Africa’s most famous wine region Stellenbosch.  This Pinotage is crafted in a soft, juicy, fruit-driven style.  This easy-going red displays classic Pinotage aromas and flavors of spicy raspberries, plums and cherries, supported by smoky bacon nuances.  Brambly, rustic, and chug-able at $11.

KANONKOP KADETTE 2010:

Also from Stellenbosch, Kanonkop means “Canon Hill” and is derived from the days when cannons were fired to signal the arrival of Dutch trade ships into Cape Town Harbour.  This succulent blend of Pinotage (44%), Cabernet Sauvignon (41%), Merlot (9%), and Cabernet Franc (6%) displays ripe juicy flavors of cranberry, blackberry and plum interlaced with a pleasant herbal and spice notes.  A distinctive smoky, earthy character makes this full-bodied red the ultimate BBQ wine.  $14

We recently tasted (and subsequently ordered) a new Chardonnay from the notoriously funky Jura region in France.  It’s rich, minerall-y and full-bodied, with mouth-watering acidity and enough weight to handle it- all the things we love about the best whites of the region. 

Jean Rijckaert, “an unassuming man with Jean-Paul Sartre eyes who makes some of the most elegant, precisely crafted white wines on this planet” (according to the importer), immigrated from his native Holland in 1990.  He trained under some of the toughest, most traditional winemakers in the area before buying his own plots of land in the Maconnais and the Jura and furthering developing relationships with other vineyards from which to source additional fruit. 

What sets his Chardonnay apart from many of his neighbors’ wines is a lack of oxidation before bottling.  He relies instead on more Burgundian winemaking techniques to bring out the best qualities of the grapes… meaning all grapes are handpicked, slowly pressed, and fermented in old French oak barrels.

This is an excellent fall-into-winter white that pairs well with a lot of different things- the acidity is nice with richer, fattier fish and the richness a good match to squash or heartier greens.  One description I came across said it’s like “eating a big meal and not feeling full afterwards”.  What more could you ask of a wine?