A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [46]
Lardière can seem alternately—and even at the same time—like a mad scientist and an overstimulated poet; his alter ego at Jadot is Pierre-Henri Gagey, who was preceded in the post by his father, André, and who comes across as the most urbane and polished of French diplomats, although he too is a true believer. “Burgundy is a place of great spirituality,” he tells me over a glass of honeyed, minerally ′76 Chevalier-Montrachet at his home in Beaune. “Pinot Noir was here in a wild stage when the monks came in the eleventh century. The key of Burgundy is the mutation of Pinot Noir to the environment.”
Connoisseurs are pretty unanimous in their praise of Jadot’s top whites; in recent years, as I have tasted more and more of the older reds, I’ve become a devotee. They are darker and slower to blossom than some of their peers because of their long stay in vats and their high fermentation temperature, but they evolve and improve for decades. The ′59 Chambertin that Gagey poured with dinner was still brimming with sweet red fruit and hauntingly complex, somehow reminding me of a Valéry sonnet. (Gagey is a bibliophile and we’d been discussing favorite authors.) “It’s a very emotional wine,” Gagey says—not a bad description. He opened it in part to provide a context for imagining the future development of the 2003 vintage—′59 being a similarly hot and dry year.
The 2003 Jadots were released this past fall—later than most of their neighbors—and I can’t recommend them highly enough, especially the reds. The summer was the hottest on record, and while many growers freaked out and picked as early as August 16, when the grapes were technically ripe in terms of sugar content but deficient in flavor development, Lardière and company waited until August 28 and got amazingly ripe and complex flavors. As great as Jadot’s 2002s were across the board, some of these will be even better and will be more generous in their youth; yet I already envy the lucky few who will drink the ′03 Chambertin Clos-de-Bèze forty or fifty years from now.
VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
Willy Frank and the Finger Lakes
I usually start yawning when wine people talk about stuff like yeast and sulfur, but Willy Frank gets my attention when he explains, “Sulfur gives wild yeast a headache so they don’t go into an orgy.”
Like most voices in the wilderness, Willy Frank’s is colorful and more than a little strident. “I can prove every word I say” is one of his favorite sentences. His father proved that fine wines can be made in New York State’s Finger Lakes region, but the message hasn’t really gone wide yet, in spite of periodic encomiums to Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars in the wine press. Nevertheless, the parking lot of the ramshackle winery and tasting-room complex, overlooking riverine Keuka Lake, is jammed with tourists—bikers with antlers mounted on their helmets and parents in matching polo shirts loading up the minivan with cases of wine.
“This region is much better for classic Champagne varieties than Champagne,” the highly caffeinated Willy declares within moments of meeting me in the jam-packed tasting room one Saturday afternoon in July. The spry, birdlike seventy-eight-year-old looks like a cheery version of Junior Soprano. “What Champagnes do you like … Krug? Bollinger? We can beat them. The grapes never ripen in Champagne.” As someone whose parents used to serve Great Western “Champagne,” formerly the best-known product of this region, I am skeptical, but Willy never stops talking long enough for me to demur. He reels off a list of gold medals and awards. And