Tuta's Wine

We almost lost the Arneis grape.  It is a white wine grape, grown in the Piedmont in northern Italy. Arneis means “Little Rascal.”   The wine is  difficult to grow:  low yield, susceptible to mildew, and generally inconstant.  (In contrast, Dolcetto — the little sweet one — gets its name for being the goody-two-shoes of [...]

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We have lined up two white Burgundies on the counter, both from Mâcon.  One of us knew which glass was which — the other tried the two wines blind.  One is a Macon-Villages at about $12; the other is Macon-Charnay “Le Clos Saint-Pierre” at $21.  Both are made by the  respected producer Verget. Mâcon lies [...]

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How shall we think about Burgundy?  The Burgundians were Germanic people,  mostly Swedes in origin, who crossed the Rhine in 411 and established their kingdom in central France, east of the Loire and north of the Rhône.  Their success was short-lived.  Burgundy was defeated by the Franks in 534 and  later passed into the Holy [...]

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Here is a rarity:  a sparkling rosé from Bugey-Cerdon — a tiny wine-producing region in the French Alps, west of Savoy and halfway to Geneva.  This wine is made by Patrick Bottex.  He mixes Gamay (the grape of Beaujolais) with a local grape called Poulsand.  He calls it “La Cueille,” a noun drain from the [...]

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For three centuries the great port wine houses which stand along the Douro River in northern Portugal  have shipped vintage port across the English-speaking world.   The region has always produced table wine as well from the same grapes — but these wines stayed at home.  This has changed — we can now find very [...]

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2005 Château Fonguillion L’Enclos. Here is a straight-from-the-shoulder Bordeaux. It is a merlot-based wine, frank and unadorned. It is made in AOC Montagne-St-Emilion which is the largest satellite of the august St. Emilion region. L’Enclos smells of leather and brass. The taste is dark with a tannic undertow. It is pleasantly rough around the edges. [...]

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Where do wine and history connect? The change of grapes into wine, year in and year out, stands apart from the tumult of great events. Can we taste the hopes of a people in their wine? If the intensity of struggle and identity appears in any wine, it must surely be in the wines of [...]

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