In recent months there has been a concerted and even somewhat organized effort to petition critics, retailers, and wine buyers to stop using wine scores. The argument essentially is that scores demean good wine because people that use them don’t read the actual tasting notes, which is allegedly where the ‘real’ information lies. In other words you should rely on tasting notes and not scores. Of course I have a number of issues with this position.

Like for every season, I recently received my spring 2012 catalog from Sherry-Lehmann in New York and this retailer, by the way, is truly one of the several best and trusted wine merchants in the country. In the catalog are printed comments from major critics (Parker, Wine Spectator, Tanzer, Suckling, Meadows) but presumably in an effort to not ruffle feathers of the opponents of wine scores, they do not publish scores but only excerpts from critic’s tasting notes. I can respect their position and find my own scores. Here are two examples of their excerpts from this catalog, both from the ubiquitous Wine Advocate (Robert Parker and friends):

“Plenty of sweet fruitcake, blackcurrant, kirsch, forest floor and earthy characteristics" 

Pretty specific tasting note, yes? But honestly, how many times have you actually tasted more than one or two of those elements described above in the one wine, any wine?

Next:

“a Mediterranean sea-breeze-like character that is difficult to articulate”

Wow, a third grader could have written that, assuming she knew what the word ‘articulate’ means. Anyone could write that a wine is difficult to articulate, and mean it. But is this really helpful? Does a reader really get a sense of what this wine is or what its quality is? Or only what the tasting profile is according to Mr. Parker et al? Such tasting notes go on, and on and on, not just here but everywhere with prose so mind-bendingly whacky that it simply seems like a game of thrones anymore.

One of the biggest problems with tasting notes today is that rather than use mundane, repetitive notes (let’s face it, wine can only vary so much) critics are running out of adjectives so often it just seems that they’re making stuff up on the fly with as many obscure descriptors as they can pull out of their, um . . . hats. There are a huge number of seriously convoluted, completely risible tasting notes that have not a thing to do with the wine or wine borne flavors but rather, a competitive attempt to sound more intelligent and cultured than other critics writing about the same wine. It’s a contest of sorts but the looser is always you and I, the reader.

Are tasting notes helpful to us? Does it really matter if my nose takes in aromas of pain grillé (toasted bread) if the quality of the wine doesn’t meet my expectation? Except for sharing descriptions with other people that are sitting at a table with me drinking the same wine at that moment, I generally could care less about what someone else tastes or what aromas are observed because I’m probably not going to taste or describe it the same way anyone else would.

It’s not that I lack descriptors or imagination but I guess I have never tasted stewed black cherry and only blue Fruit Loops with a hint of East Hoboken mint and brown shoe polish, all finishing with layers of charred and boiled mystery meat poured over lava rocks crushed in a blender. It seems to me like tasting notes have become this extreme and obtuse. There are far too many variables for published tasting notes to be considered trustworthy information, not the least of which, most fine wine continually evolves and can be at a different stage of development by the time you or I drink it. In other words there is a complete disconnect between a critic that is trying to out-write his colleagues and what you and I actually taste or observe. More than anything tasting notes to me are personal (but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share them) because no one else will experience the same wine (or food, or music, or fill in the blank) exactly the way you do. It’s how we’re wired.

What matters to me: does this wine exact the quality that I expected? Does it measure up to my standards compared to the critic that assessed its quality? I can determine what it tastes like for myself, which may be similar or may be very different from a critic’s taste. But the number is where the value is for me. In fact it’s certainly possible to have similar taste and aroma profiles (read: tasting notes) for a wine that’s 82 points and another wine that’s 94 points, obviously because there are so many common elements found in wine. However, any number gives me instant qualitative data and granted, it still comes back to the person that issued the score, but professional critics are truly in a great position to compare quality. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cool guy in New Hampshire critiquing wine or an internationally recognized critic. To me, there is value in the score as long as I understand how a particular critic scores wine and I can assimilate that critic’s scores with my own experience. I don’t deny that there’s room for improvement in the 100 point scoring system but it’s still the best we have.

It’s easy, popular, and possibly even fun to play ‘punch-the-critic’ but ask yourself how many wines you taste in a year? 50? 100? 365? These men and women with renown (along with the uncelebrated) taste thousands of wines each year and have for decades, and you and I can’t even get close to those numbers. I can tell you from experience that when you have a wall of wine to taste through for days, weeks, or months at a time, even the least experienced palate will eventually be able to pick out the best wines. Critics have a very difficult job and then get bashed for it.

But like it or not, I don’t see them going by the wayside, regardless of attempts to overthrow the kingdoms that move markets. They may change and become much more electronic-media savvy but there will always be a place for someone to educate and provide a source of reliable information. Sites like CellarTracker certainly have their place and can sometimes provide useable information but that’s assuming you can find people whose palates and experience you trust, out of 200,000 + bona fide wine critic wannabes. Although the internet gives some modicum of power to the people, and I’m all for it, often such socially-driven websites have extremes of love/hate that when averaged, it all ultimately falls or ascends to the middle. To me this is not useful information, whether it’s about hotels, restaurants, wine, music, or whatever.

Wine collectors use scores, investors use them, retailers love them because scores sell wine, wineries that receive good scores love them, and it seems the faction that whines the most about scores are estates that don’t produce very good wine, as estimated by people that tastes thousands of wines critically each year. I don’t see this scoring system ending anytime soon and in terms of reliable and useful information, scores really have measured up to its potential.

David Boyer

Photo: cover of the Sherry-Lehmann Spring Catalog, which is copyrighted, which means maybe I'll get a ‘take-down’ order.

With the sharpness of a French sabre, in one swift groundbreaking move, Bordeaux First Growth Château Latour obliterates decades of tradition. And I for one am extremely pleased, while others are clearly not. What’s the big deal?

First of all I should let you in on the issue if you haven’t already heard. A few weeks ago before the 2011 vintage futures prices were to be released, Château Latour announced that 2011 will be the last vintage they will sell en primeur (as a future). Wine futures is wine that is purchased by, and allocated to, buyers before the wine is even bottled and for red wine it can be generally three years or more into the future before this wine begins to appear on store shelves. When conditions are favorable, buying futures in wine is like buying futures in oil, pork bellies, or any other commodity and there is money to be made. If the demand goes up, so will prices, and with wine we know there is a finite amount of it produced each year so supply is a known factor. Conversely, if wine is bought en primeur and market demand is not there later to support it, the buyer of course looses money on the deal. Contrary to what many believe, this practice of selling wine futures has only been going on in Bordeaux since the early ‘70s but is definitely considered a tradition nonetheless.

One of the most valuable wine estates in the world, Latour, expanded its intent even further. Not only would it discontinue the practice of selling wine futures but it also will not sell or release any of its wine until the château deems it to be ready to drink. This is a radical and bold move for any château to make and a number of parties are not at all buoyant about the announcement, most of which consist of those who will lose the most, to wit, Bordeaux négociants and merchants.

At the center of the issue for Château Latour is this single fact: their wines are sold and consumed too young, which makes for a less than pleasant wine experience for the consumer and that in turn, tarnishes Latour’s image. I can’t argue with that. All too often I see wine appear on upscale restaurant wine lists offering newly released First Growth Bordeaux. Not only are the prices jacked through the roof but also the wines are very far away from entering their window of drinkability. It’s actually offensive and appalling to me to see any restaurant offer and serve these wines that they know full well shouldn’t generally be touched for at least fifteen years from its vintage date. Not everyone knows better or knows wine, and when someone has a bad experience with it, it's easy to imagine that person telling many others about the disappointment they experienced, especially with a $1000+ bottle that is supposed to be fantastic.

The château has every right, and even a responsibility, to protect its image and its own future. The entities that may feel some pain financially are not just the négociants that sell these wines but those that engage in the practice of buying up large allocations of these coveted wines en primeur, and then warehousing them for years to release them to the secondary market years later. The wines are properly stored over the years and cost significant amounts to support such an operation (most of these merchants are UK based) but when you look at the most extreme examples, profits can be stratospheric. With Latour pulling the plug on this possibility, well, that’s just how it goes. How can anyone not support a business that wants to control its own future?

Detractors are saying that it is the château that will make handsome profits by releasing wines when they want, effectively controlling supply based on market demand. So what? They made the wine and they are entitled to the profits generated. Is this not the goal of any business? Why should Latour have to share the huge gains in the secondary markets when it adds to the bottom line and they can control the wines themselves? Plus the fact that secondary gains for the producer in this case, do not ring true anyhow – look at this example:

1982 $1500 99 points WS*

1990 $750 100 points WS

2009 $1600 99 points WS

* scores from Wine Spectator

These are current prices for two great vintages of Château Latour and the en primeur price for the great ’09 vintage. I can buy a great wine today that doesn’t require any wait time, for less than I can buy a current release that needs at least fifteen years of bottle age before I can drink it. In 1982 this wine probably was released at around $35 per bottle but if the château had stored the wine in perfect condition for thirty years without ever getting paid for it, they should receive whatever the market is willing to pay for it; it’s just how free enterprise works.

Yes, the château could create a shortage in supply by releasing only small quantities into the market, thereby increasing demand and cost for their wine but what would be the point? To delay getting paid for their product just to earn a few more dollars? It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think the intent is for Château Latour to alienate their base of loyal customers whatsoever but rather to ensure they will have a better wine experience. I acknowledge that this issue could certainly be explored and discussed on a much deeper level but it’s outside the purview of this post. Ultimately though, it is my position that Latour is certainly entitled to control their products just like any company, in any other industry. 

It would be great if every wine producer did the same but few have the pockets deep enough to pull this off. Latour says depending on the vintage, it expects to release its First Growth within ten to twelve years, its second label, Les Forts de Latour, around seven years, and third label Pauillac de Château Latour, will be released several years after the vintage. When they are released, it is expected that négociants will be selling these wines, just as they have been. In the meantime it is contemplated that the estate will release more of their older vintages into the market that they have been storing for some years.

I don’t see how the remaining four First Growths cannot do the same. After all, in 2027 would you rather pay $3000 for a bottle of Lafite that you have to wait fifteen years to drink, or for about the same price, a bottle of Château Latour that comes with guaranteed perfect provenance and is ready to drink the same day you buy it? Not since Château Haut Brion opened its own tavern in mid-seventeenth century London has a First Growth château seized such an innovative and game-changing opportunity. Huge admiration and esteem must be awarded to Château Latour, whose wines will always be sought out and loved the world over.

David Boyer

In our final installment, Susan Thomas reveals what wines light her fire and other germane thoughts about the industry. Considering her demanding business and travel schedule, I feel fortunate to have had time with her and appreciate her generosity in sharing her wisdom about a subject we collectively so love.

Tell me about your favorite wine regions.

I like Côte de Nuits. I like red Burgundy from Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny, Vosne-Romanée, and Morey Saint-Denis. So that’s number one. Burgundy is a challenging region to navigate so I think Gary Glass is right when it comes to figuring out what’s best: go with producer, vineyard, and vintage, in that order. I pretty much think every Grand Cru vineyard deserves to be a Grand Cru. For reds there are 28 Grand Cru vineyards and over 500 Premier Cru vineyards.

Okay - second region. I like the very greatest Piemonte [known as Piedmont in America, located in the northwest area of Italy] and I much prefer Barolo to Barbaresco.

What about Barolo compared to Brunello [di Montalcino]?

I don’t like Sangiovese as much compared to Nebbiolo. For me, Piemonte Barolo and Barbaresco are the closest thing in the world to really great Burgundy.

What’s the connection between Piemonte and Burgundy?

They are both very terroir driven and they soften and give all these secondary flavors and aromas with age. But like Château Pavie in Bordeaux, there are some producers in Piemonte that have realized that they can’t sell their wine that well if it’s not going to be drinkable for 30 years, so they fatten them up. And then it’s wrong because when you fatten Nebbiolo it still has tannins so there’s this big fight between all this fruit and the tannins and it’s just not very good. But really great and old Barolo is fantastic from producers going back to the 60s and 70s. They mellow out and get more like Burgundy [we also discussed a 1947 Barolo that we both drank at a Brian Owens wine event – amazing and drinking so well even today]. I used to like Super Tuscan and Brunello the best but in the pantheon of grapes, now I wouldn’t put Sangiovese in the top group.

And I like Chardonnay from everywhere. To me, a really great Marcassin Chardonnay is one of the best wines in the world even though they’re totally different than Burgundy. And there’s the Leeuwin Art Series Chardonnay [Margaret River Australia], which is great – there’s a lot of terrific Chardonnay. But there are a lot of really bad ones too. I also like some categories of white wines from Venezia Gialla north of Venice, and things like Tocai and Malvasia; some of those wines are really, really cool.  Italian Merlot at the top end like, Le Macchiole Messorio, Masseto, and Redigaffi, those are my favorite Merlots and honestly I’d rather drink those than Château Pétrus.

Well some wines like Pétrus might get hyped a lot by critics and then there are some that just have such small production and availability that they’re difficult to find and very expensive, like Château Le Pin or DRC/DRC [Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from its monopole vineyard of the same name].

But there are certainly wine estates with smaller output than DRC/DRC. Leroy Richebourg and Romanée St Vivant have tiny production and are much harder to get. If you wanted Leroy Richebourg in a certain vintage, it can be almost impossible to find. So they have a certain amount of ‘Hermes Birkin Bag’ in them, like DRC, right?

And then there’s Champagne. I didn’t always like Champagne and only started to like it in the last couple of years. Now I think it’s good with so much food and there’s a lot to it. I generally like the Blanc de Blanc [made with 100% Chardonnay] better than Pinot Noir based or Rosé Champagne and I probably should get more into it as a collector.

I guess that’s it . . .Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, and Chardonnay are my three favorite grapes.

There are a number of women in wine that have made contributions to winemaking. Do you find anything influential there or do you particularly seek out wine made by women?

Well in general, I’ve noticed there aren’t very many women into collecting wine the way I am. However women love wine just as much as men and there are certainly a lot of fantastic female wine makers.

I think between men and women there is something biological about the ability to detect or prefer different chemicals in different quantities. Women hear higher frequencies better than men so why not analogous differences with olfactory senses? There are some great women winemakers but I don’t think women will eclipse men in winemaking just because I think literally, men and women don’t exactly like the same kinds of wine. I think women will make the kind of wine they like best and will intellectually say, ‘I know I need to make it a little less soft and a little more robust’ and men will say, ‘I can’t push these bass notes so much, I need to move it over here’ and that’s sort of the magic about it. Still I don’t think of them as being rock stars.

Is food an important element to have with wine?

Sometimes you can sit and drink wine like we are now and they’re really great by themselves but of course when you hit the right combination of food and wine, it brings it all up to another level. What’s interesting is, let’s take foie gras – it’s a food I’ve had that’s exceptionally awesome with a relatively non-fruity Pinot Noir. And then you can have foie gras with Sauternes and it’s just over the top. What’s so interesting is that wines with such different characteristics can bring out different positive aspects of food.

Honestly, I start with wine and then add food around it; I don’t start with food and see what I have that might go with it. We are so blessed that we have this confluence of people that like wine and all of these incredible chefs in Austin, and many are friends of ours. We’re very lucky. 

Is there any one thing you would fix about the wine industry if you could wave a wand?

Oh lord! First and foremost I would fix the problem of wine distributors making a bunch of money and giving it to politicians, just so they can protect and preserve their market with all sorts of restrictions to everyone else. That’s criminal. It’s a joke! If you don’t think we have a plutocracy or an oligarchy in America you’re kidding yourself. What we really need is to have access to all wine, and to have different people that make different wine in different places be able to get it to us at a reasonable price. But that’s not how it is. So that’s number one.

Number two is wine critics. There’s too much reliance on them.

What do we replace that with?

We are gradually replacing reliance on “experts” with the social networking “I like it” approach. I’m not sure how this will evolve but kids these days that are brought up in the social networking environment are hard wired differently. It’s natural selection and the tempo has really picked up but we’ll see how it goes. CellarTracker is a good start down the path of  “group criticism” but I still think that there is a place, albeit a diminished one, for qualified people that are really good at looking at something and narrowing down what’s quality and what’s not. Humans are extraordinarily subjective and also we can’t be on our game all the time. Furthermore, wine critics can be likened to athletes in the sense that they have only a window of competency.

There are so many wine choices today and how do you cut through it all to find good wine? It used to be you could go to your neighborhood shop and the guy there would tell you what was really good. Now, when you or I walk into a shop the person giving us advice doesn’t have a fraction of the knowledge needed so we go elsewhere. Additionally, because wine has become so popular in our culture there’s just way too much wine that’s the same, so do you want there to be a winnowing out process?

Yes I do. Right now it’s estimated that there are over 200,000 wines available to buy in the world at any given moment and that’s a conservative estimate. The wine wall is so huge these days and I have no idea why anyone would want to make even larger by opening a winery.

Ego?!?! ‘Hi. I’m Joe Montana. I’m a famous quarterback. I like wine. I have the money. What the hell? People love me - they’ll buy my wine.’ (laughing).

Last question. Three people living or not, and you could have dinner with them. Who would it be? 

Well, I think I would choose Edward O. Wilson. He’s an expert in natural selection and a socio-biologist. He’s basically an entomologist but his studies and work have looked at how we got to where we are from an evolutionary point of view. Then I’d have to choose some religious figure to come at the question another way like Gautama, the Buddha.

So you want to start a fight at your dinner?

No! I think science is also a kind of religion. Put another way, all of science is built on mathematics and all mathematics is based on us using our brains to help figure out some model or metaphor for the way things work. Religion creates a metaphor, so do philosophy and science. In my opinion we have no idea what’s going on. Okay number three . . . Teddy Roosevelt. Back in his day people had a whole different way of approaching the world. He seemed capable of doing anything, and what was it that drove him to be an incredible naturalist and a military leader and then President? What makes somebody have that amount of energy?

**********

Thank you Susan, for letting us have a glimpse into your life and for sharing your wealth of wine knowledge and experience. These interviews are very valuable to me because they can often illuminate things I hadn’t thought of, or provide a substantive case for thinking about something in a different way. Ultimately learning wine, I would argue, is probably more about experience than book knowledge although I certainly don’t want to denigrate the value of understanding wine from an academic perspective. During the great journey though, it is experience that counts.

Photo: Susan Thomas at Austin Wine Salon event

We can read all of the textbooks and access a plethora of resources but the experience of collectors provides a remarkable and essential backdrop for deepening our understanding of wine. Collectors don’t just fall from the sky of course, but rather like most of us, we develop our interests, usually alone, until we have occasion to find like-minded comrades. If we stay with it, then over time we naturally gravitate toward experiencing wine on a profound level to eventually become learned. I think most collectors agree with the now thinly worn adage: So much wine, so little time! Indeed, we are surrounded by a huge sea of wine.

It is my hope to introduce you to wine connoisseurs that have something to offer all of us with their astute insights and experiences, people that generously provide us with an expanded sphere of knowledge and a reliable core of expertise. Susan Thomas is surely one such person so, without further chatter, Susan Thomas, Part 2: 

Do you remember the very first wine that cemented the deal between you and wine, where you said to yourself, ‘Okay, I’m in, I want to move forward with this’?

It was ’64 Lafite Rothschild, it wasn’t that great of a year, but even then they were trumping the vintage as being better than ’63 or ‘62. On and on right [referring to almost every year being ‘the best vintage ever’]? And I had I think six bottles of ’61 Lafite [truly one of the greatest vintages of the century] and I wasn’t going to drink them because I wanted to hold on to them for a while but they disappeared during the tumultuous years. 

You’re a world traveler and it seems that you’ve been almost everywhere. I know you’ve been to Italy and I haven’t, but what I understand is that even Italian house wines or simple table wines are almost always excellent. Has that been your experience?

Well, I have traveled a lot to the Far East recently but haven’t been traveling to Old World wine regions for a long time. Back in the day I went to Europe a lot but not recently. Back then they would have table wine everywhere. I remember being in Orvieto up in the hills, sitting outside, and it’s gorgeous and the food is terrific, and they brought the house wine out in a fish shaped pitcher and the wine comes out of the fish’s mouth when they pour it (laughing). But the reason I got so deeply into Italian wine is first, I really, really like Masseto [Tenuta Dell’Ornellaia, Toscana – very, very expensive Merlot] and so I started drinking Italian wine from all of the appellations. And then I did that Italian white wine project where I wanted to find as many interesting whites as possible and a lot of them are unknown here or are impossible to get locally. When I started that, I really began to learn all about the different regions and their food, wine, and geography.

When I was twenty, my parents took my sister and me to Italy, we spent a month there, and we drove all the way up to Switzerland and all the way down to Campania, south of Naples. We covered just about the whole country, ate at all these different places and it was fantastic. So I got to see that the food is really great everywhere and that was such a contrast to the US at that time.

In terms of other wine regions, what experiences have you had?

I’ve made a lot of trips to the west coast of the US, and one other trip was a cruise from Istanbul to Venice and that’s what turned me on to Greek wines. There are some very good Greek wines that don’t get exposed much here like white wines from Santorini, or from Cypress or Crete. Even Eastern Europe, Georgia, Bulgaria, and nearby regions produce some very good wines.

But you really can’t find much of it here right?

Some of them you can. For example from Santorini there’s this grape called Assyrtiko and you would love it – it’s very minerally, full-bodied, with a long finish and you can get them here in the US. Gaia [not the winery in downtown Indianapolis but the one in Greece] and Sigalas both make great Assyrtiko and they’re not expensive.

You always have great wines and bring something interesting to the table.

Well you have to try stuff. I was in Vancouver this summer and discovered that we can’t really get a lot of Canadian wine here and I think it has something to do with taxation or some sort of import restrictions. They have some great Chenin Banc and especially Chardonnay and because of where they are, they’re a lot more Burgundian in style than US wines. Their Pinot Noir is terrific and they also have Bordeaux blends. 

I went to a restaurant that’s supposed to have one of the best British Columbia wine lists in town and we ordered up three different bottles to try them and it was like ‘Wow, these are awesome! Tell me where I can buy these’. So I found a couple of stores and I fully knew I’d have to pack them in my suitcase but I couldn’t fit them all in. My friend went off to look at killer whales and I decided to walk around Vancouver so I stuck one of those bottles in my purse and just walked around town drinking (laughter). It was good. But that’s the most fun, when you unexpectedly find great wines. 

Do you consider yourself New World or Old World wine it comes to wine? 

Old World, not even a close contest, although I’ll drink wine from New World regions if they’re made in the Old World style.  

I have a theory: when you sit down in front of four glasses of wine, you’re tasting them and talking about them at a table with a bunch of people, invariably things become subconscious and you might intellectually say, ‘This is the wine I like best’ but if you look at what you’ve drunk, the glass with the lowest level of wine left is the one you really like. People don’t generally drink the wines they like the least and save the best for last. We might think we can do that easily but I generally fail. It’s very revealing. Likewise when you look at your own wine collection and you see that you own X number of French wines and Italy is maybe a smaller number and the rest of the world is even a much smaller number, it just tells you everything you need to know about your own taste in wine. Duh! 

Oregon Pinot Noir keeps trying to be like Burgundy and they’re not there yet but they’re getting closer. When I look at California Pinot Noir versus Oregon Pinot Noir, California Pinot is just a freak-bomb – I don’t like it. There is so much more California Pinot available but I have a lot more Oregon. And I like Oregon and Washington Chardonnay. 

So you like the cooler climate wines that aren’t as ripe, extracted, and alcoholic? 

All of the above. I’d like to collect more German wine because I don’t have that much of it and I haven’t studied the region enough to know what’s good to buy, plus I don’t really eat much food that goes with German wine. But when you taste some of the great ones, you realize they’re really profound. Then thinking turns into, ‘okay, I’ll find something I can eat with this, maybe schnitzel, because I should be able to find a lot of dishes I could eat with German Riesling.’ 

Then, the next frontier is Alsace and Austria. What’s happening with global warming is that some of these grapes that are now great in France are getting much better further north so Switzerland, Austria, and even Germany are starting to make some decent Pinot Noir, and I think that is going to continue. And I don’t think I’d buy real estate in Napa. I think everything is starting to move north a bit. I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir from Egly-Ouriet, do you know who that is?

No.

They’re a small producer of ‘grower Champagne’ and some people really like them but to me they’re somewhat dry for the most part. They started making a still Pinot Noir, way up there in Champagne, and they’re starting to show everyone that it can be done and be high quality.

So Old World is definitely for you.

They’ve been doing it a long time; they know where the vineyards are and what should be planted there. The quality has won out, instead of some dot com person coming in and buying up a property, setting up a winery, and labeling it eponymously, just to end up with a smaller bank account. Instead, in 1311 someone said, ‘that is a really good bunch of grapes that are growing over there. Let’s develop it to its best potential’ – it’s an entirely different thing than being strictly motivated by profit or ego like so many are today.

It seems that the more experience we have with wine, the more difficult it is to discover new wines that please us. How difficult is it for you to find a wine that makes you ask ‘ where have you been all my life? – I love this!’

It’s exceedingly difficult because you might find other wines from other places and they’re surprisingly good, and they’re interesting and different, but they’re still not as good as the great wines we know and love. The only reason you go out and try to discover new wine is because you get tired of the same thing, no matter how great it is. It’s like if you have an original Rembrandt drawing hanging in your bedroom, after a while you wouldn’t really notice it. We have an inherent need to search for something new and different. The hunt is fun but no, you don’t go back to Central Otago or some other place in New Zealand and find this super producer of Pinot Noir and think, ‘Wow, this is better than Chambertin’. You don’t do that! 

What happens when you hit the wall and there’s nothing great left to discover? 

It’s hard isn’t it? But let me be clear: there’s a lot of great wine in the world I haven’t had. It isn’t like you can span the globe and claim to know everything. For example, there’s a Pinot Noir produced by the Australian winery, Bass Phillip and it sells for $250 to $300 a bottle. They have these tastings in Hong Kong where Bass Philip often beats La Tache and some of the other greats Burgundies and I went online and tried to find it but it’s not available here in the US. So there are some of these legendary wines that are outliers and few persons here have ever had them. It can be hard to find new things. 

As a collector, I know you collect numerous things other than just wine, but did you intend to collect wine by design or did it just happen organically? 

Yeah, well I think it’s probably genetic. My dad collects cars, my mom collects jewelry, and I collect a lot of stuff. But it’s the learning that comes with collecting. There are very few people that are experts in whatever genre, that don’t collect whatever they’re experts in. They have a love of the object and they’re after the learning experience, right? So people that love cars have garages built for them and rooms with all of the operational manuals and decals and accessories. My friends that are art museum curators have collections of art. It’s curiosity and wanting to learn something about it. For me, there’s a button that got pushed, where really wanting to learn about it and get deep into it, being attracted to it, and collecting it, all go together. And that’s an expensive neural-connection that I wish I had less of. 

So the goal with collecting wine was for you to gain knowledge? 

Yes, and I have enjoyed the experience but now I mainly buy Grand Cru Burgundy. I don’t buy any more Bordeaux; the last that I bought was 2005. And really the main reason I’m still buying Burgundy is for the extra financial hedge. Quite bluntly, the Chinese are beginning to come around to Burgundy now and the supply is relatively low. 

So it’s an investment for you. 

Well, that’s my rationale. But it’s nice to have them. 

NOTE: As we took a break, Susan opens the third wine of the evening, the first being an Egon Müller Spätlese Riesling, a gorgeous high-end and delicious wine, the second a white Bordeaux (Graves) and then, a 1970 Château Gruaud Larose (there was leftover wine, of course, as we did not pound down three bottles between us but, I suppose given enough time the wines were certainly good enough to enjoy to the last drop). We just put the glass of Gruaud Larose to our nose . . . 

Okay, this is what wine is about – we open up a 1970 Bordeaux, you have no idea what it’s going to be like, the cork is ‘iffy’, you finally get it open and the nose hits you and you say, ‘Okay, this is why I do this!’ 

This is remarkably good wine, which is even more amazing because it comes from a very difficult vintage. 

I know. I bought a 1970 Château Latour [First Growth Bordeaux] at a charity auction so I put into this thing for a wine dinner and it ended up getting selected. The sommeliers are saying, ‘I don’t know about this, ’70 wasn’t a great year’ and it ended up being exquisite, I mean stunning [and Susan of all people knows stunning and exquisite wine]! It just shows you about how predictions can be about certain years; you can’t always hold on to what critics say. 

So maybe a vintage was difficult because the weather was unkind to the vineyard that year and, especially back then, there was much less intervention in winemaking and fewer things that a winemaker could do to fix it. However, generations of winemakers at Classified Bordeaux estates have been at it for centuries and they know how to do it. It’s not like they suddenly had a bad year in the vineyard – they have them all the time because weather is so completely unpredictable. 

You look through the list of Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Growth Bordeaux and some of them honestly I’ve never heard of, or ever seen for sale. Like Kodak or Pan Am - it’s hard to stay on top but some of these chateaus have been there for hundreds of years. 

Yes, sadly some of the Classified Bordeaux châteaux have changed hands over the years, some have been bought by insurance companies or other types of investors and they don’t really care about the history or the property that much. Once it leaves the family  . . . 

But some of them have been bought with the idea of resurrecting them and bringing them back to their former glory and there have been some really great success stories with that. 

Speaking of great estates, have you ever considered owning a winery? 

You know, we have a family ranch in Fredericksburg [part of the AVA in the Texas wine country] and it’s at a high altitude, close to the highest point in Gillespie County, and we have soil surveys and all sorts of different possibilities for sun exposure. I talked with John Roenigk seriously about putting a vineyard in there but the more wines I tasted from Fredericksburg and Texas and the hotter our weather has become led me to just nix the whole idea. I don’t think it cools down enough after the sun goes down to produce anything great. So that’s the closest I got. And I’d rather go taste everything in the wine world; I’m much more of a lazy dilettante and I wouldn’t want to get locked into having a role where I had to hawk my wines constantly, ‘Look, try this! It’s really good and I have to get rid of it’. I just can’t do it. 

I was in Oregon in 2009 and 2010 and we went to this restaurant that I’ve been to before where they have verticals of older Oregon wines and they’re very expensive. If you want like a 1998 Beaux Frères, it would be over a hundred dollars. There was a wine named Thomas and it was expensive so I asked them to tell me about the wine. They said, ‘This guy’s crazy! He only makes a tiny bit of wine and he’s trying to make a Musigny or Chambolle-Musigny type of wine [Grand Cru and Premier Cru Burgundy respectively] and every year he drops off whatever he allocates to the restaurant, like a case or something, and then he’s gone and they don’t see him until a year later’. So I tried this wine and was fantastic. Fortunately there are places that still support people that are craftsmen and artisans. They don’t have that much money but they have a piece of property and just obsess over it. 

I loved this wine (you know it’s got my last name on it so there’s some kinship there too) and I asked the restaurant where I could buy it and they sent me to the sommelier at the hotel where I was staying. I talked to this guy and he said, ‘Oh no way, I can’t get this wine but try this retailer in Portland’. I went to that place and said I really love this wine and he said, ‘Okay, here’s one bottle’ and I got on his mailing list and I’d buy some wine from him here and there and one day he said, ‘I’m going to get you some of the Thomas’ so now I have a case of it coming. You’ll have to try it and judge for yourself but there are people in the New World that are making facsimiles of Old World wine and sometimes they get pretty close.

But even if they’re close, they won’t be exact, so there is something about terroir that’s just undeniable, do you agree?

Absolutely. You can only do so much with what you have to work with. But there is surprisingly little scientific evidence that the roots of vines take up and deliver minerals from the soil to manifest them into the flavor of the wine. It’s very interesting. And then there’s biodynamic and organic viticulture. There are two sides to it: one is that it’s a good idea to be green and not use tons of pesticides or run tractors all the time that compact the soil around the vines. But the other side of it is, it’s like yoga. Or voodoo. There’s no evidence that some of that stuff makes sense but the wine estates swear that it makes better wine. There are some scientific aspects to it that indicate it could be working but not all of it - it’s hard to say. 

In the end though the wonderful thing is, and this is coming from my experience on the ranch, that there’s just some sort of mysterious aspect to it where you just can’t control everything, we don’t understand everything that’s going on, and there can be this magical thing that happens, and that’s what makes it so fun. There’s this Bordeaux estate, Château Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarosse, that traditionally doesn’t make great wine, but in 1990 they just hit the mark with like a 100 points from everybody and it’s just sensational. Sometimes the planets just align. 

There is indeed mystery to all of this in some sense. I’m struck by how relatively little we know about the whole grape growing and winemaking process. It seems that only within the last twenty-five years or so, we’re beginning to understand.

Yes, but then you have Parker. Think about how many people have wasted so much money and have these wines sitting in their cellars that have these big Parker scores because that’s one way you think you’re going to learn about wine when you’re going through stages of development and you defer to the expert, ‘it must be good, let me try it’, and . . . not so much.

That’s true. I think Parker is at the end of an era.

Well it’s the whole social network thing. People aren’t going to tune into the nightly news on a television network or listen so much to some big wine critic. People get information from wherever they want and listen to people they trust.

Part 3 of 3 coming soon. Don’t miss it! 

It is always a great pleasure to connect with people that are able to provide illumination about wine on a deep level, what their experiences have been, both common and unique, and compare that information with our own experience and knowledge. With many of the people I am so privileged to share wine with, I can’t help but feel my knowledge is derisory by comparison but I personally like it that way. I wouldn’t learn much new if I didn’t have people with greater experience and knowledge around to learn from so this arrangement works fine for me.

In this series I interview Susan Thomas, whose knowledge and depth can be thought of as a roundabout in city like Rome or Paris: a large and busy intersection that comes at you from all directions, surrounds you, but always makes perfect sense. Susan is a successful business executive with a degree in engineering that doesn’t really relate to what she does, but rather amplifies her own diversity and understanding of many things in the world. She is well traveled throughout the globe, is a collector of fine art, fine cars, and fine wine, amongst other things.

She is gifted in her knowledge of wine but she also did the work to become such an accomplished oenophile – such expertise does not, of course, just get handed to people. Susan is impressive and as effusive as she is generous. Forget about the fact that there are few women that could be her peer because there are just as few men. Susan just shines with down to earth goodness, superior intellect, and a truly great sense of humor. Dear readers, this is Susan Thomas:

You were born and raised in Texas, yes?

Houston.

Were you around any kind of wine influence in your younger years?

Not a chance. I spent part of my life in West Houston, the ritzy Memorial Drive area, and then part of my life on a ranch near Corsicana Texas so I had this kind of dual background. My summers were spent ranching, driving tractors, and stuff like that. The exposure I had to alcohol was from my mom having martinis and my dad having brandy milk punch.

Brandy milk punch. Is that a Texas thing?

I think it’s a New Orleans or at least a southern thing and it’s strictly a cocktail. No one in my family drank wine. My first wine was Cold Duck at the Oklahoma - Texas game. And that was not a good experience. And then wine coolers – it’s kind of a gateway thing where you start to inch your way in. But I have a friend, Kyle Britt, that was very precocious with wine. He’s worked in the profession for a long, long time, representing smaller distributers that were bringing in a lot of quality wines from smaller producers as opposed to the big guys.  Then, wouldn’t you know it, the big guys bought out his company - I love lobbying – anyway he was into quality wine when he was in college. Shortly after that we each got married, we all started hanging out together, and he would always bring really good wine. I remember saying, ‘Wow! This is really excellent!’

Also there were a couple of restaurants in Houston that were ahead of their time, haut cuisine French restaurants, and they had wonderful wine lists and the wine was so cheap then. You could drink First Growth Bordeaux for $35 a bottle. So I started buying a little bit and the first things I bought were Bordeaux and Sauternes – straight to that.

So you started buying these wines because you had tasted them and knew that was what you wanted to buy?

Yeah. I didn’t have the other experience of tasting all the California wines. I wish I had tasted Inglenook or other early classics then but thanks to our generous friends we still get to taste some of those. But I just went straight to Bordeaux. I remember going to a restaurant in Albuquerque and they had ’66 Lafite [Rothschild, First Growth Bordeaux] and ’75 d’Yquem [Premier First Growth Sauternes] and the Lafite was $40 and the d’Yquem was $50. Everybody else was asking, ‘what are you doing? Are you crazy?’ That was a lot of money for wine at that time but pretty much, that’s the way I live my life. I might go for a week and not spend really any money on anything, and then go out spend whatever to get the experience.

Bordeaux went really well with food and I was experimenting. You know I was at a certain age, making some money, life was good, Houston was not a tiny place, and people were making a ton of money in the oil business so some of these bigger restaurants came in and opened up these fancy places. Suddenly you’re eating all kinds of different food, not just steak with a big California wine. As for Burgundy, until 2001 or 2002, I couldn’t even go there – the region was too difficult but my last ten years have been pretty much about that.

There’s a whole back-story: I got married in ’73 and in the early ‘80’s I realized my ex was having personal issues with handling alcohol so I kind of stopped drinking much wine. I had a wine cellar that had a lot of First Growths and other good stuff but it was a tumultuous few years.  When it was time to go through my divorce settlement process and I went to the storage locker that cellared my wine – it was all gone! So my ex had drunk Sainte Genevieve white wine out of gallon jugs and then apparently ’61 Lafite. So the thing is that I didn’t drink much wine, I didn’t drink much of anything, until about 2000.

That was when a client flew a bunch of us out to Las Vegas and I’m not really a gambler so I had a lot of time to kill. I heard about this restaurant in the Venetian and I ordered Bordeaux, I think it was a ’90 Clinet, and I’m thinking ‘hey, I’m not spending any money at the tables so I may as well enjoy something’ and sitting out there with the canals, the gondolas going by, and the Vegas lights, that’s when I started to think, ‘okay, let’s start enjoying life again’. This wine was unbelievable and in that same week I went to Areole and I bought this wine there, Masseto, and it was Merlot, and I just fell in love with this wine. It was spectacular! I couldn’t drink it all so I took it back to the room and drank it out of a cup that comes with the room, even two days later. It was like in the movie “Sideways” only the Merlot was better.

So I’m saying, ‘okay, okay,’ giving in to these great wines, but the problem was that the wines I originally loved were, by then, very expensive and getting difficult to find. So my friend Kyle started bringing me wines that he distributed and I started to relearn wine through him - I owe him really for everything. Then I also started going to The Austin Wine Merchant and I would meet people there and we’d start hanging together. Whatever it is that you like, you kind of find other people that like the same things and that’s certainly true of wine too. 

I took about a dozen years off from drinking and a lot happened during that time. A lot of my friends would say, ‘Oh the ’86 Groth Reserve or ’91 Dalla Valle Maya (or whatever) was so spectacular!’ and I would act enthused - but I’m really thinking to myself  ‘oh great, I missed it!’

Well, so many of those wines can still be found if you wanted to find them.

Exactly, and that’s one of the things I’m spending a little money on right now. I have a lot of wine but they’re not quite ready to drink. In maybe five years I’ll be able to start trying all this stuff.

You have a lot of wine knowledge Susan. Did you acquire it experientially, immerse yourself into reading, get formal education, or what?

I was interested in wine a long time ago and I learned a little about it then. But I’d say that most of the wine knowledge I have was acquired from the last ten years, and yes, I read about it, I go to events, and I go to the wine country and try a lot of wines, so mainly experiential. But I read something about wine every day. 

One of the real eye opening things for me was going to the Wine Spectator Experience in Chicago – it’s a wonderful event. I haven’t been to one in years but there are hundreds of producers there all pouring some of their best wines. One pouring was a vertical of Shafer Hillside Select going back to 1978 and it was interesting because John and Doug Shafer were both there [father and son] explaining how the style has evolved over the years and you got to taste what they were talking about.

And then Corinne Mentzelopoulos from Château Margaux [First Growth Bordeaux] and her winemaker were there and we had a vertical of ’82, ’83, ’88, ’89, ‘90, ‘95, ’96, and 2000, so wow! Those are the kinds of things worth going there for. But then you taste the Spectator’s Top 10 wines of the year and they’re of course all super young. Because prices have increased a lot since then, I’m not sure they pour up such expensive wines as they did before but there’s some equivalent for it so I’d say it’s really a worthwhile experience. When I was there, I had this leather jacket on because it was cold but I ended up draping it on the chair next to me. When they came by and poured wine, they thought there was someone sitting there so they poured up Margaux for this empty chair (laughing) and we all were like, ‘yeah she’ll be right back, don’t’ worry’. They kept pouring.

Amazing! Some people are just lucky that way. What sources do you use for information?

I go to the usual websites like CellarTracker, Wine Spectator, Stephen Tanzer, Allen Meadows [Burghound], John Gilman, not Parker anymore, but a lot of blogs too. When I see a wine I’m interested in, I Google it and look at a lot of different opinions to see what they think. Tanzer doesn’t try to predict a drinking window, which is good because everyone’s predictions can be really off. I bought some small production Shiraz from this Australian winery named Hill of Grace, and on their website the winemaker actually made a statement that the perfect year to drink this wine is 2011. I’m, thinking how in the world can he say that? But CellarTracker is the only thing I know of, and it’s highly imperfect, but people there are always making notes on wine they open. There is enough of a range there for me to determine if it’s too early to be drinking any particular wine. That’s what I’m looking for – is it too early to open this bottle? In all of it, there is a lot of ego to deal with, whether it’s James Laube and Parker, or someone posting tasting notes on CellarTracker.

I think it’s a tough job to be a wine critic but these guys that hold up their reviews and scores as the ultimate professional opinion and insist they’re right, even if no one else thinks so, well, that’s just unsupportable.

I have this theory about Parker. When someone drinks a whole lot of wine over a period of many years, they can lose taste perception and it desensitizes everything so one needs bigger, stronger flavors, plus one can’t pick up on the alcohol as much. If you consider his physiological palate between 1985 and now, I’ll bet they’re very different. There are a number of scientific papers and studies about this but now I’m thinking that I probably should have consulted an attorney before going off on Parker.  

I think you have to be young to train to be a sommelier. I admire all these young people that are going after their Master of Wine and they can pick up a glass, taste it blind and identify it, but I have no interest in doing that, nor the ability. We’re fortunate enough to have a lot of sharing people around us so that we know good wine from not good wine, and we understand QPR, and we generally really know what we like. You’ll see people that are into Burgundy and someone will say, ‘I like Gevrey-Chambertin but I don’t like Chambolle-Musigny’ or someone else will say, ‘I like Beaune’ or, ‘I like Nuits’ and they’re very specific and clearly know how to express what they like.

I love that there are so many different possibilities and it’s what make the world go ‘round but I’m able to stretch out to almost any wine region or appellation these days.

I think that’s where I am now too. Besides Burgundy, which I think is a region that no one will ever be able to master completely, I just want to try anything from everywhere. Like that Pinot Noir class that Mark Patterson and I did, I wanted to try what Pinot Noir from Spain tasted like and it was a bizarre wine but that’s how you learn.

Brian Owens’ Wine Salon is an amazing forum and it really does so much for the wine community and sommeliers. Like he so eloquently puts it, ‘it gives back to the sommeliers that would never otherwise have a chance to taste some of the world’s greatest wines’. We’re able to bring in wines that are difficult to find, they’re older, and usually expensive so it really does educate people in the trade.  For me I love going to Wine Salon and it’s interesting to taste the wines but I’m not able to linger over them and figure out exactly what is great about a wine. It’s just too much for me. I might remember something about some of them or what I really liked, but what I would prefer to do is try it on a smaller scale with maybe six people or so. Each event would have its own theme so you might have something like ‘top Italian Merlot’ and we’d bring in six or eight of the finest Italian Merlot to this tasting. Everything would be tasted blind first, everybody writes their notes, then you un-bag the wines and talk about it and leave it at that, rather than move on to another group of wines. So it’s kind of like a wine graduate school. We have enough friends to do unbelievable events like that.

I really enjoy those kinds of things. You and I have been to a few of them, one of them that you very graciously hosted, and we all go to these things for the same reason: we say ‘hi’ and it’s the only personal thing we say to each other for the next five hours. It’s all about the wine.

Yeah. And we really talk about it in depth and I really like that. I don’t go to as many public wine events as I used to because often people just get plastered and it’s no longer about the wine or learning about wine at that point.

Were there any other mentors that helped your wine knowledge other than Kyle?

Well I’d have to start with John Roenigk and Greg Soechting [co-owners of The Austin Wine Merchant]. Also Mark Patterson, Brian Owens and Gary Glass were a part of my wine education too. Getting invited to tastings was important, plus there were probably another twenty very generous people along the way. And back in the 80s I used to go to Dan’s [in Austin - no longer in business] and he was kind of a mentor for a lot of people; he had the best selection of European wine. But honestly, tasting a lot of wine and doing a lot of reading contributed extensively to my base of knowledge.

Part 2 of 3 coming soon!

David Boyer

Those of you that know me or read this blog on occasion know that I am all about French wine. I really do appreciate wines from every wine region in the world but appreciation doesn’t always extend to fondness. It’s difficult to imagine a world without French wine because virtually every other region on the planet, at one time or another, attempted to emulate French wine and even today winemakers from many ‘new world’ regions do their best to create wines that have the same qualities and profiles as their French counterparts.

At a recent trade tasting for Loire Valley wines, I was again reminded of why this is the case and fell in love with Loire wines all over again. I have always enjoyed these wines but in my life they have often taken a back seat to Bordeaux, Rhone, and to a much lesser extent, Burgundy (I love Burgundy but have intentionally kept the region at arms length). This back seat thing has come to a sudden end.

Apart from being host to many of France’s most spectacular castles, the Loire River runs some 300 miles from approximately the center of the country all the way out to the Atlantic, with vineyards planted on both banks of this beautiful estuary. Some of the more important appellations of Loire whites include Vouvray, Anjou, Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, Muscadet, and Quarts de Chaume. Although you may like Loire reds they’re not my personal favorites but I do have to admit that some of them would make very good everyday table wines to have with a meal, especially Cabernet Franc from Touraine.

In terms of wine styles, almost anything goes from crisp, dry, thirst-quenching whites to multi-dimensional mind-blowing dessert wines, from still to sparkling, and earthy reds to dry and off-dry rosé. Really something for everyone! In terms of grape varieties whites tend to be predominantly Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc, which I consider to be amongst the best expression of these grapes anywhere, with Muscadet being made with Melon de Bourgogne (considered generally to be of lower quality by some, but I still think they’re very good). Red grapes consist mostly of Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir with a bit of Gamay and a few other obscure varietals planted.

A couple of things really came to light from this tasting. First and foremost, these wines are just downright delicious, have great character and expression without being necessarily complex. As with great music, great wine demands your attention, meaning that if you are going to have a conversation, it better be about the wine you’re drinking and hopefully sharing. Otherwise you’ll miss all of the greatness the wine is serving up to you. In other words it would be tragic to be drinking First Growth mature Bordeaux and have to talk about sport scores, the weather, how work is going, or virtually anything other than how great the wine is. All of the wine’s complexity would be lost if the senses are not allowed to focus. With Loire wines, I can take a sip, acknowledge, if only to myself, how good it is and carry on normally. It likes your attention but doesn’t demand it.

Secondly, these wines are honest. They are made with human care and attention, often with little technology or intervention. If the region has a bad vintage, they just hope the next one will be better rather than bring in reverse osmosis, micro-oxygenation, spinning cones and other technical ploys commonly used to manipulate wine. And you know what? You can taste a difference. There is more purity of fruit, greater expression of terroir, that sense of place, and flavors that are more natural and not always found in new world wine.

Beyond this is the remarkable value. Everyone complains about French wine being too expensive but pretty much only a few percent of France’s wine output qualifies as ‘expensive’. There are some amazing wines from the Loire region that are under $30 retail, many of which can be found for less. Here are a few to look for with appellations noted in bold:

• Château de Montfort Vouvray Old Vine 2009 - $12
• Vincent Vatan Pouilly-Fumé Silex 2009 - $17
• Château de l’Oiseliniere Muscadet Sévre-et-Maine 2009 - $10
• Jean Vincent Sancerre 2009 - $18
• Domaine Cherrier Sancerre 2010 - $20
• Domaine Pichot Vouvray 2010 - $12
• Domaines Guy Saget Pouilly-Fumé 2009 - $12
• Domaine François Cazin Cour-Cheverny 2009 - $20
• Château de la Roulerie Coteaux du Layon 2010 - $20 (dessert wine)
• Domaine Huet Vouvray Sec Le Haut-Lieu 2010 -$26 (might benefit with a couple years in the cellar) 

About the multi-dimensional mind-blowing dessert wine? Domain des Baumard Quarts de Chaume 2005 - $70 (also at about $35 per half bottle) is probably one of the most expensive wines from the whole Loire region but is truly a great wine (Wine Spectator rated it 98 points) with comparable quality rarely to be found at this price. Made in a tiny appellation where botrytis occurs, just like in the Sauternes region of Bordeaux, this dessert wine is made with Chenin Blanc and from good vintages will age for 25 to 30 years easily, all the while developing complexity with bottle age. At a small fraction of the price of Château d’Yquem, you’d be surprised how close these wines are to that level of quality, although grapes and styles between them are different.

There is much more depth of information at this website, which I encourage you to check out at www.loirevalleywine.com. This post has barely even scratched the surface of this grand region but it’s worth noting that Loire wine is what the French drink. These are on every table, in every restaurant, in every home, in every cellar. Everyday fantastic wines: expressive, dimensional, beautiful, honest. That’s what I mean by title: More French!

David Boyer

Illustration: Loire Valley Wine Region, used with implied permission but not real permission.