A Hedonist in the Cellar_ Adventures in Wine - Jay McInerney [67]
Bouchard’s vineyard holdings have long been concentrated in the Côte de Beaune, the southern half of the Côte d’Or, home of Burgundy’s great whites, including 2.2 acres of Le Montrachet. I was a little disappointed when I first laid eyes on this gently sloping (five-degree) hillside vineyard, the holiest of holies for Chardonnay drinkers. I think I expected it to resemble the Matterhorn. But my sense of awe was restored later when I tasted the ′99 Bouchard Montrachet in their cellars. Montrachet is never the fattest or fruitiest Chardonnay on the block, but at its best it has a stony purity that resonates and lingers on the palate as a tuning fork does on the eardrum. And it can develop for decades. I recently had a ′61 Bouchard Montrachet at the Manhattan restaurant of the same name; it was incredibly fresh and vibrant and, according to the note I made at the time, reminded me somehow of the prose of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River.” An authentic, more affordable version of the Montrachet experience— for those of us who balk at spending three hundred dollars and up for a bottle of wine—can be found in Bouchard’s Mersaults and Puligny-Montrachets, which come from neighboring vineyards.
For many years Bouchard’s signature red wine has been the Beaune Grèves La Vigne de L’Enfant Jésus, a premier cru said by the nuns who once owned the vineyard to produce wine as smooth as the baby Jesus in velvet pants—about as weird an analogy as I’ve encountered even in the overheated field of wine descriptors. As a former student of Raymond Carver’s, let me just add: I like it a lot. Among the best values in Burgundy year in and year out is another Bouchard Beaune—the Clos-de-La-Mousse. Henriot extended the firm’s portfolio with the purchase of prime vineyards in the more northerly Côtes de Nuits, home of Burgundy’s most prestigious reds. The grand cru Bonnes-Mares and the Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cailles are among the standouts of recent vintages.
Bouchard also bottles wines made from purchased grapes, but it is the estate wines, in which the words Bouchard Pére et Fib appear in script on top above the vintage, that are the most exciting, coming from Bouchard’s own vineyards. The winemaking, supervised by the genial Phillipe Prost, is impeccable. (Note that Bouchard Aîné is another firm entirely.) I hesitate to recommend Burgundy to the general public, but if you’re willing to risk your peace of mind in pursuit of one of the most exciting sensory experiences available inside the law and outside of bed, you could do worse than to check in with my old Hollywood friends at Bouchard Père et Fils.
STRICTLY KOSHER
My first buzz was strictly kosher, courtesy of a bottle of Manischewitz Concord grape wine, filched from my neighbor Danny Besser’s parents in Chappaqua, New York. It struck me as a wonderful beverage at the time. I fell into a pond but otherwise emerged from the experience unscathed—even exhilarated. Since then I’ve sampled a few more bottles at seders, and it’s one of those guilty pleasures, like Big Macs, that shouldn’t necessarily arouse our grown-up derision. But as a wine drinker I’ve moved on, and so has kosher wine.
Wine has played an important role in Jewish ritual and was produced for thousands of years in Palestine until the Muslim conquest of A.D. 636. “Wine was the constant thread through Jewish festivals,” according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, “since it is sipped as the Sabbath starts (kiddush) and again when it ends (habdalah) with the blessing ‘Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.’”
Of course, other religions used wine in their rituals, so the Jews distinguished theirs by developing the tradition