(Sometimes.)

Seriously, you should really watch The Wire. But back to our scheduled programming…

I am a fan of wine from France. It’s true. Much of it is inexpensive, it’s made in traditional methods that bring out the natural expression of the grapes’ environment, and a lot of it is very good. One of the specific things that I love about a lot of inexpensive French wine is that it’s not afraid to…speak frankly about the farms and vineyards that it was raised in. What does that mean? It’s a kind of taste profile that brings to mind things that one wouldn’t ordinarily assume a grape could mimic, like dirt, sweaty leather, mushrooms, “barnyard smells,” etc. Some of these taste patterns can be linked to a substance folks that call “brett” (short for brettanomyces, a naturally occuring yeast that can appear during fermentation, and that can create many curious smell and taste factors). Some call the characteristics of brett “rustic.” Some call it “disgusting.” I’m kind of fascinated by it, so in most cases, I end up calling it good. For whatever reason, at the times that I have detected a barnyard smell in a wine, I haven’t been bothered by it. Not quite sure what choices I made in my life that lead me to that, but the point is that there’s no going back. I like-a the brett.

What I didn’t know until tonight was that I like-a the brett only up to a point. Early in the evening, I opened a bottle of 2004 Les Traverses des Fontanes that I’d picked up from Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant when I was in the Bay Area. This is a Vin de Pays from the Pic St. Loup region in the Languedoc. It carries the Vin de Pays name because it uses a single grape variety (cabernet sauvignon) that isn’t one of the elected grapes of the region, so it is forced to hide its shame on the back label. Of course, this excommunication from the church of Sanctified French Wine is part of the reason why I picked it up in the first place. Now there are many non-Bordeaux French Cabernet wines roaming around, and cabernet is a tricky grape to get right on the cheap, but KLWM rarely swings and misses, so I took a chance.

This wine came in a clear glass bottle, which was a little surprising - if you’re going to keep it for more than a few months, I guess you’d better make sure you keep it in the dark. In the glass, it was a deep, inky purple, enticingly thick. On the nose, it w-What the crap?! What is that? Smells like someone dumped a pot of stewed tomatoes on top of a pack mule. Yeesh! I don’t think it’s corked; there’s no cardboard-y odors on the nose or in the mouth. It’s not nearly as wacky on the palate; mainly some pepper and spicy notes, without much fruit or structure. That nose, though…too weird. Not for me. Not a bad table wine, necessarily; maybe its barnyardiness just reminded me of when I was a little kid and I was mildly scared of the goats at the petting zoo. But probably not a wine I will go back to willingly.

So I guess everything has its limits.

Just so I can prove myself totally wrong about everything, I’ll throw in a quick plug for a relatively inexpensive and very enjoyable Sonoma Pinot Noir. The 2005 Malm Cellars Pinot Noir, which is sourced from fruit in the Russian River Valley (unsure as to which vineyards), is made by Brendan Malm, who I think is still the assistant winemaker at Merriam Vineyards. Malm has been around for a few years, putting out mostly Rhone blends that were met with muted interest. His Pinot Noir, however, is only is its second vintage, and it is a very nice bottle of wine for around $20. Cherry red in the glass, with a kind of jewel-like clarity - very pretty. Nose of berries isn’t huge, but focused, and on the palate it leads with cherry and some vanilla mixed with a sort of smoky apple flavor. It’s not a huge, Central Coast-style Pinot, but it all comes together very nicely. I wish I could find more Sonoma Pinot at this price and quality. A good wine to look for - I bought my bottle at Silverlake Wine. Together with the 2004 Stangeland Pinot Noir and the 2005 Elizabeth Spencer, that’s three nice pinots at Silverlake for less than $30. Not bad! Maybe the world is worth saving after all.