If Madeira wine seems to exist out of time, so too does it complicate our conventional thinking about space. The history of the wine is the history of travel, colonial expansion, and the dream of the Edenic return.

Madeira is first a product of the vast spaces in between the vineyard and the table; it is a product of the open sea. Indeed, the peculiar qualities of the wine were so elusive that it was long assumed that the ocean voyage itself created the maderized effect. Owing to this belief, barrels were sent on long voyages to the New World in preparation for their appearance in British drawing rooms; these were the so-called “vinho da roda” (round trip wines).

Eventually, more budget minded producers developed technologies to imitate the ocean voyage — mechanical contraptions used to loll the wine back and forth. We now know that the darkening, oxidative effects of maderization occur through exposure to air and heat, and the process, called the canteiro system, all happens on the island.

But even this edenic island seems set adrift, no place at all, floating like a ship between the Old and New Worlds.

Of course, Madeira’s origins are now clear enough, and the story of the wine begins with vines rooted in the islands’ complex and dramatic terroir, which plunges from cool mountain heights to more consistently warm plateaus along the sea. The soil on the island, rich in minerals like iron and phosphorous, gives the wine its characteristic acidity. It also gives rise to another of the island’s major draws as a tourist destination: abundant, exotic, and diverse flora and fauna.

Perhaps no one place is as important to Madeira wine as Blandy’s Wine Lodge in Funchal. When I arrived at the timeless lodge and stepped into a library of history’s best bottles of the wine, I knew I had found the heart, the main nerve. Read the rest of this entry »

Edward Comstock.

Wildly unhip — often associated with Old British People and men-in-suits-finishing-dinner at fussy steakhouses, or dismissed as “too sweet” by rubes that just don’t know any better — Madeira nevertheless possesses an unlikely combination of qualities revered by both trophy hunters and wine hipsters. Made from exotic varieties using time-honored, backwards-looking techniques, they are also rare, long-lived, and exceedingly collectable.

Madeira may well remain uncool for as long as these rich but elegant wines continue to be ignored by the critics and for as long as the hipsters remain fixated on what counts as “natural.”

Yet, at least here in Washington, DC, there seems to be a groundswell, a general rethinking of Madeira’s place in the wine world, evident at influential wine stores and restaurants around town.

My advice? Drink up, and be prepared for the pointy-people and tastemakers to follow suit.

In this two part post, I’ll introduce the often overlooked wines of Madeira, and the paradise island where they are made. Next I’ll detail my visit to the famed Blandy’s for an exclusive tour, interview, and tasting of the company’s recent and historic offerings.

PART 1: Channeling Churchill in Funchal

Perched at Reid’s Palaces’ timeless art deco bar, overlooking the steep volcanic cliffs off Funchal bay, twinkling and postcard-ready at sunset, I nursed a D’Oliiveiras 1907 Malvazia. The ancient wine, available by the glass, was exquisite. As it unfolded, I tried to imagine the tangle of merchant clippers and pirate ships that had darkened the port since Christopher Columbus called the island home. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find Reid’s most famous regular, Winston Churchill, joining me for an evening tipple.

My students are often confused when I tell them that time is not a real thing, that clocks don’t measure “something” out there. The wines of Madeira offer a lesson in the instability of our linear, all-to-human, concept of time.

Vintage Madeira exists between worlds — New and Old, now and then. It was the favorite wine of the founding fathers. It was there to toast the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It reddens the noses of both rouges and kings throughout Renaissance and colonial literature and lore.

And right now, you can drink vibrant Madeira from vintages before your grandparents were born. At the same time, the wines of Madeira are very much alive, and have a unique voice to lend to contemporary debates about quality.

Edward Comstock.

Want to taste what wine was like in the nineteenth century? Get a few friends together and the dream quickly becomes an affordable possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

Wikimedia Commons

Only a few hours away by plane from my home in Washington, DC, the snow-powder white beaches of Mexico have become my favorite quick getaway.

Exiting Cancun as quickly as possible, thank you very much, I’ll work my way down to Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, where you are far more likely to hear French or Italian than English (except, of course, around the pier when the cruise ships are in). You are also more likely to find the flavorful foams of molecular gastronomy than you are foam parties.

Sometimes it seems every hotshot chef in from Buenos Aires to Milan wants a crack at having their own restaurant in paradise, so — and I’m surprised how few East Coasters realize just how worldly, and how close,this paradise is — finding great Italian, French, Argentine, and Spanish food at great prices is a cinch along the Mayan coast.

But interesting wine for all of those interesting chefs delighting in interesting local ingredients?  Well, that’s a different story.

Sure, the Italians, for instance, bring some of the good stuff with them, including local specialties that you are unlikely to encounter in the States. And no doubt there are exceptions, such as the thoughtful cartade vinos at Posada Margarita in Tulum.

It’s also true that Mexico itself makes some wines worth exploration, especially if you lean towards jammy California style. But while Playa and Tulum have a vibrant restaurant scene with seemingly inexhaustible options, there’s little to make a real wine geeks’ heart pitter-patter.

To wit, a recent evening spent at the relatively new and unusually expensive (for Playa) Maiz De Mar — owned by Mexico’s most famous chef Enrique Olvera (whose flagship Pujol ranks 17th on the San Pellegrino List of the World’s Fifty Best Restaurants) — yielded a beverage list with cool cocktails and exotic flavored waters but not even one wine. Shame, too, because while Maiz De Mar features exquisitely fresh lomo de pescado dishes that commune with the ocean, even the most artisanal Margarita puts me right back on terra firma.

Worse still, for Playa-lovers and wine nerds alike, along with the disturbingly fast development of Playa have come some changes that threaten whatever little remainsof its once substantial fishing-village-quaint charm.These changes threaten to replace the small idiosyncratic businesses Playa has been known for with mall chains and superstores. Unlike the cycles of the Mayan calendar, the unfettered expansion of Playa seems endless.

On my early December visit, on what I’d come to know as a reliably romantic walk down 5^th Avenue, Playa’s promenade — with its gentle grades, tropical foliage, and twinkle-lit shops — I was shocked to encounter the decidedly unromantic ruins of the once beautiful Calle Corazon, Playa’s spatial and spiritual heart. I’m told the demolition took place sometime early last spring. And with the destruction of Calle Corazon comes the loss of Playa’s best wine destination, John Gray’s Place, which once sat squarely at the heart of the heart. Depending on who you ask — and my inquiries yielded more questions than answers — the area will soon be replaced by a massive Hilton resort, or a gaudy mall like the one that has opened just a few blocks up.

But with the bad of progress has come some good, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Everywhere I go, people are suggesting thoughtful wine and food pairings. But I’m rarely impressed.

Don’t get me wrong, wine is the clear choice to pair with food in general. Sorry, beer geeks — only the wine-food combination is capable of producing that magical, transcendent Gestalt, a new whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Beer, on the other hand, is too often like another meal.

That being said, this elusive transcendence is relatively rare and very difficult to predict or define. And yet, like the Supreme Court said about pornography, “you know it when you see it.”

Ultimately, I’d like to devise a practical technique to help onemake an educated guess about whether a wine has the potential to create a perfect pairing. But first, I want to make a semantic distinction between a technically correct pairing — where the beverage serves as a perfect accompaniment and elevates the dining experience — and a pairing that somehow intensifies both the food and the wine, creating an altogether different, elevated experience.

The former is common; the latter is rare.

While the experience is rare, we can begin to map out this secret world of taste transcendence through trial and error.

For instance, perhaps there is no more reliable source of this experience than oysters and Muscadet (preferably from superior wineries, like my personal favorite Domaine de la Pépière). While a crisp Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire will do in a pinch, I guess, nothing does the trick like a sublimely oceanic Muscadet — hands down the world’s most underrated wine.

By comparison, while it may be true that any decent Cabernet Sauvignon elevates a steak, and sometimes produces the more rarefied 1+1=3 experience, it doesn’t reliably produce this experience. As much as I might enjoy the occasional summertime combination of Napa Cab and grilled steak, an aged Bordeaux will more reliably produce this experience.

Of course, this is the same thing as saying Old World wines more reliably create symphonic wine-food pairings. And that’s the first principle. Don’t get me wrong, a Cab and a steak is always at least good — but we’re making a distinction here between good and correct and something more than that.

The fact that Old World wines pair better with food is only a principle and not a law — a broad principle at that, if reliability is the goal. For example, a savvy, technical pairing of a relatively robust Leitz German Riesling with David Chang’s mostly spicy-porky creations during a recent meal at Ssam Bar in New York was a disappointment. The pairing “worked,” of course, just fine. But that kind of yeoman’s wine/food experience wasn’t what I was after.

On the other hand, I was shocked when a cured chorizo sausage I brought back from an Andalusian mountain village dazzled with a totally unplanned sip of leftover, entry-level Trimbach Riesling. In retrospect, perhaps, I shouldn’t have been so shocked. After all, Alsace wines are known to have a certain affinity with pork.

(I don’t think any wine performs as well with food as consistently as does Trimbach. Can we call that the second principle?)

So outside of the fact that we are more likely to find it with Old World wines, what, really, do we know about this elusive perfect pairing? Although the science of taste provides a few clues about the conditions of this experience, I find this science mostly uncompelling; taste is opaque, after all, and any explanation of “it” will have to come from descriptions of the experience of “it.” I think we can better begin to develop knowledge about this experience through phenomenological investigation and first-hand accounts. So given that, here is what I think we know most: We know when we experience “it” because, suddenly, a sip of the wine perfectly recalls the food, even well after we’ve finished eating it. It turns out our palate has a perfect, photographic memory, and wine has the ability to continuously reactivate it. With each new sip, the flavors of the foodreturn to resonate and linger on the palate, sometimes even long after we’ve tasted the food.

Does that sound about right?

The science of taste does have something interesting to offer this discourse. Throughout history, lacking refrigeration, most food was preserved with salt, and wine was made with the expectation of food. Significantly, the science suggests that salt and acid occupy the same palate terrain, the same taste “pathway.”  That is, acid in wine works to, in effect, balance or cancel out the taste of salt, providing a platform to emphasize the other flavors. It’s no wonder that Old World wines are high in acid — they had the difficult task of making these dubious foods taste good.

On the other hand, fruit-forward wines, low in acid, are less likely to create this favorable palate environment where flavors shine. As with beer, the fruit flavors of the wine tend to compete with rather than showcase the flavors of the food.

Of course, the fact that sleek Old World wines excel with food is news to nobody. The point is rather that there is something practical to be extrapolated from the salt/acid dynamic: if you want to know if a wine is likely to offer that magical synergy with food, try a sip with a pinch of salt. You’ll notice that the flavors of the wine are enhanced — or not.

Ed Comstock loves to travel and discover new wines, often at the same time. When he’s not doing that, he teaches classes in the Department of Literature at American University in Washington, DC.

Kapnos’ James Horn.

The name Mike Isabella doesn’t mean much to me.

I know just enough to recognize that he’s one of those celebrity chefs manufactured by some show. So when his new restaurant, Kapnos, opened a couple blocks from my house — an ambitious neighborhood joint consistent with the rapid-fire restaurantification of Washington, DC’s 14^th St corridor — well, that didn’t mean a whole lot to me, either.

But I swung by one night on a lark, and I now believe I’ve seen the future of wine programs at hip urban restaurants.

If the “Isabella” name didn’t grab my attention, a long, by-the-glass list of aged Chateau Musar certainly did. Seeing the famed wines of Ghazir, Lebanon isn’t something I’m accustomed to seeing at the other restaurants in my neighborhood. I opted for a glass of the 2000 Musar; more profligate or eager wine geeks might splurge for a glass of the ’78, or any number of other vintages.

It was a perfect pairing.

Characteristically and purposefully desiccated — stylized “old world” — massive amounts of Brettanomyces and volatile acidity blasted out of the Musar. So why did I like it so much? And how was I able to afford it on my PBR budget?

Kapnos is able to serve Musar – together with a long list of other usually cost-prohibitive treasures, like a 2000 Chateau Palmer, a 1983 Spari Amaroni, and an 11-year-vertical of the Greek Skouras “Labyrinth” –because the restaurant uses a Coravin. (The Coravin was thoroughly explored earlier this week on Terroirist by Scott Claffee.)

I was giddy to see the Coravin in action — and even clapped like a wide-eyed kindergartener watching puppet theater. And I’m no gadget geek. Soon, I imagine, these things are going to pop up everywhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Hail damage in Vouvray.

My wife and I had made the appointments to visit our favorite wineries, Domaine Huet and François Pinon, well before the hail fell.

As big as chicken eggs, the hail strafed the vineyards of Vouvray early on the morning of June 17^th, devastating the just-budding vines. Some vineyard parcels were only partly damaged, but many were completely destroyed. This, on the heels of a very poor 2012 vintage. And it only took ten minutes.

So when we arrived in Chinon just over a week later on a long-planned vacation, I became apprehensive about making our way to Vouvray. The damaged vines will yield no wine this year. Huet lost around half its vines. Rumor had it that François Pinon, a small but revered wine producer, had lost his entire crop.

In Chinon, which also lost plenty of vines, the hail was on everyone’s minds; the sullen expressions and bleary, sleepless eyes made that clear enough. Still, it was high vacation season, and even those affected were doing their best to carry on as normally as possible.

But what would it be like in Vouvray?

I asked around at my other appointments across the Loire. Would François wish to accept guests during this difficult time? Certainly we would be a bother, right? On the other hand, if I were to call to cancel, would I just be adding to the insult?

In the end, old friends of François’ like Mathieu Baudry (Domaine Baudry) and Marc Ollivier (Domaine de la Peppiere) urged us to keep our appointment. The distraction, they assured me, would be good for him.

Frankly, I was nervous. 

My wife and I are really just a run-of-the-mill, if passionate, wine nerds — not industry players. We literally had no business there. But we set off for the Pinon property, fortified by a thrilling wine tasting at Huet that included a generous selection of library wines. As much as we wanted to try more beautiful Vouvray, we also wanted to see if we could help, in some minor way. 

On the way, we got lost in a massive maze of devastated vineyards. And when we finally pulled up to the Pinon winery, we were awed by its simplicity. The winery isn’t much more than the Pinon family’s historic home alongside a small tasting room built into a wall of the Loire’s characteristic chalky white tuffeau. It was modest and rustic and immensely charming. It took a bit of time to find François; he finally emerged once we began, as a near last resort, to shout “bounjour François!”  Read the rest of this entry »