“John, Table 10 doesn’t like the half bottle of Burgundy.” Argh. For the second time this month and the third time this year, a customer isn’t thrilled with this bottle that we love so well. Wines like these from the Burgundian appellation of Mercurey are often not as easy to drink as Pinot Noir from California or Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Compared to a West Coast pinot, this bottle from Domaine Meix-Foulot is lean and dry and lacks the richness and intensely sweet fruit of many of its New World cousins.
What it does have in spades is restraint—an Old World earthiness and austerity, and an uncanny ability to pair with most of our food. It’s usually our only half bottle of pinot noir, so folks order it expecting (hoping?) that it’ll be more generous. Some, like the nice couple at Table 10, are disappointed.
The wine list at Rose Water has always been a reflection of our personal taste, with only minor accommodations made to popular trends, and even then it’s on our terms. Instead of a fruit bomb malbec from South America, for example, we offer a more balanced and food friendly Cahors from southwestern France: Clos Siguier, which is a blend of malbec and tannat, has rich, dark fruit that’s not overly sweet and has balancing acidity with smooth, firm tannins that enhance the flavor and cut the fat of meats like roasted duck and grilled beef. As a general rule, our US/New World selections are chosen for their relative balance and food friendliness. We seek out wines that are both natural (sustainably-raised fruit and non-interventionist cellar practices) and restrained. We define restraint as an approach to winemaking that favors nuance and a sense of place above overripe fruit, high alcohol, and a manipulated polish.
Our friends Jennifer Munro Clark and Andrew Scott at Eminence Road Farm Winery live and work on a small farm in Long Eddy, NY in the lower Catskills near the Delaware River and the PA border. They purchase sustainable grapes from excellent growers in the Finger Lakes and truck them back to their farm to make wine that is very much in the “natural” style that we favor—a low intervention, hands-off approach that produces wines of character and honesty. It’s a less equals more philosophy. Hands-off winemaking starts with fruit grown with as little chemical intervention as possible, hand harvesting before the fruit is overripe, gentle crushing (usually by foot), fermentation by wild indigenous yeast, aging in old flavor-neutral barrels, little or no additives, little or no fining or filtering, and as little sulphur as possible, usually applied in very small amounts at bottling. Their homemade labels list the ingredients in each bottle (e.g. grapes, sulfites), and feature the words, “Bottled Alive.”
Eminence Road has just released a 2014 Seneca Lake Riesling in a clear bottle with a crown cap (similar to a beer bottle cap) that epitomizes everything we love about their work—it has just a hint of sweetness, great acidity, and varietal character. It’s fresh, lively and fabulous with food. Many Finger Lakes Rieslings these days are dry, but theirs is really lean. Andrew explains, “In the field we try to pick on the early side to preserve natural acidity and to avoid overt fruitiness in flavor and aroma. For the 2014 riesling, I would like to take credit for its delicacy and drinkability, but we did the same thing we always do, save for picking extra early—some would say those grapes were under ripe—and bottling when the fermentation stopped as opposed to when it was finished.”
Andrew takes his unusual approach a step further with this wine in that he hopes that it will develop a little fizz over time, something a more conventional winemaker would go out of his way to avoid. “We decided on a crown cap for the ’14 because there is a very slight amount of unfermented sugar left in the wine which may one day lead to a continuation of the fermentation. The crown cap is there so we don’t end up with pushed, leaking corks. Bottled alive, indeed.”
So, what about that half bottle of Mercurey at Table 10? Agnès Dewé de Launay is not your typical Burgundian winemaker. Very tall, soft-spoken and unassuming, she’s delightfully frank about her approach; her goal is to produce wine that lets the earth speak of place and time, expressing the character of the soil, climate, and especially the vintage—the growing season from spring flowering to autumn harvest. As such, her wines vary a great deal from year to year. Some vintages are light and tight, others can be more powerful, but they always have high acidity (great for food) and express a beautiful earthiness and nuance. There’s an austerity to these wines that has very little in common with their American cousins. Agnès likes to compare her holistic, non-interventionist approach to winemaking, and specifically to her vines, to that of parenting: “If your child is not sporty, you do not push them to play the sports, you know?”
We convinced the couple at Table 10 to sit with the wine a bit, let it open up in the glass and taste it with food, and if they still didn’t like it we’d happily find them something more to their taste. After ten minutes—and some gnocchi with mushrooms—they were smitten. Given a little time and reflection, restraint usually wins the day.
Eminence Road Farm Winery Riesling “Seneca Lake” 2014. Available at Rose Water, direct from the winery, and at Uva Wines and Spirits, 199 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn. $22
Domaine du Meix-Foulot Mercurey 1er Cru 2011. Available at RW and at Mr. Wright Fine Wine, 1593 Third Ave, NYC. Half bottle $18