American letter

California red

Geoffrey Wagner

pv.,e happy to seek out, where we could, the tkuts chtueaux still selling within $3-$4 a bot-s. For a while there was a lot of a good hortd,',,Brouilly was in cheap and good supply, dti'aferent French BrouillY when you can "let Oulin_a-Vent, however good, is still not _ue better New York clubs estimating the r.ssibilities of laying down liquids in rented e'at settle reason, Chdteau de Terrefort-Quaninadr.7t. We addicts began to ask: why drink lia --r titles, odd Graves and Pauillacs (like r, have to drink these wines soon. Their apparent after revaluation of the franc; budwith train driving through one's mouth. But t°'°.ur — deep brownish at best — is eloquent , le..8-,p'ner handlers seemed rich in certain tr tailley), to which I was glad to be Mof a-Pert, once described to me as the feeling the 1)ohart_milon, Lynch-Bages and the rest WeeVrielr names began to sky-rocket, too. A !axes have been applied. The result? I'm far +110 without extreme sensations of guilt. At Le.stirnony to American air-conditioning and "10-rise apartment heating. ,"o . only added to the general astronomy obth,c)La while Austin, Nichols, Excelsior, and drink ag° I got a '66 La Lagune (again really and until the past few years have found in America what the French call 'interesting' margaux for the same year $450 (though Prices are noW said to be dropping slightly Neru-Beaucafilou '66 $208, Palmer '64 $220 — To much of a petit bourgeois to be able to drink casually a bottle of wine costing around Mission-Haut-Brion of the same year (during with apparently millions of others I have always drunk and loved the wines of Bordeaux drink a bottle of claret I bought for around $3 a few years ago for less than five times the Price: Calon-Segur '64 $204 the case, all dealer prices, before his take and sundry The night before I wrote this note I pulled a: Cupboard for dinner. It was a Chdteau N6nin that is no doubt my fault for not keeping it for at least $25 each. They today appear on the wine lists of Select French restaurants downtown at $60 or so. Close on thirty Pounds. Not bad. Prices for them. A recent visit to a favourite revealed that American export is a mere morsel of the general production. I own no big six years ago for under $3 a bottle. Today a ease sells for $160 to the dealer. A case of Which it did well) is not even quoted in current Wine and Beverage Media. The sky's the limit. A case of '66 from this vineyard costs the dealer $203.20, before it reaches me. I could theoretically sell my last bottles of '64 noisseur and never have been. But in common bottle of claret from the rack in my wine: 1964. Nothing world-shaking, you say, and I agree. Perhaps it fades a little, in the glass, but better. The point is: I bought it in New York lanies. Lafite '66 is currently $534 a case, with J!.t,s and disused gymnasia. It didn't work, url3rIsing claret with just that sense of what ere). So today I find that I am unable to es of of blue-chip brokers could be seen about The inflation in prices of course became Lning. Most of us small-time eonophiles e same time, I have no cellar or garage and gociant on the Quai Martinique in Bordeaux

And here's the rub. I am not a great con I-teed; 1

able. if little-known) for a bargain price first-class US Gamay for less? of some cases of Giscours, to me a the fruity Chateou des Tours. But abut called Monbousquet, as also; have, for instance, just lapped up , .

of $120 a case — I refused a Brane-Cantenac, a Margaux, for the same year since it was another forty dollars on. Ttiis had to be crazy. was drinking French wines just to be drinking French wines. The time had come to light into the better American vineyards.

Naturally, no one drinking wine over here can be ignorant of the quality of ordinary American wines. Generic American jug wine,

marketed by ,Gallo, Masson, Christian Brothers, Krug, and the like is undoubtedly superior to comparably priced vitt du pays from France. Our students, whether they know it or not, are drinking better than theirs.

Californian generic wines (and it is a pity they , have to use Gallic nomenclature at all) travel well, are far more scrupulously produced than those aggressive red inks into which Algerian or Corsican wines are 'cut,' and have much more character. Everyone knows this. A newcomer called LaMont markets a jug Zinfandel and a jug Burgundy (forget the name, it has a Cabernet nose) that are excellent value for money. I even heard one lecturer on American wines assert that Federal authori

ties encourage improvement in the so-called 'wino' wines (Gallo et a/) because they curb

rather than increase alcoholism. In other words, if you can put genuine flavour into the bottle the Bowery bum raises to his mouth, he

is likely to unhook himself from rubbing alcohol; what Zola criticised in L'Assommoir was the production of unsupervised vins du pays of high toxicity. What, then, of the varietals in this well-worked field?

Frankly, I don't know how much of the production gets over to England, nor how well it might do there. I don't see a suburban London housewife forgoing a French label for an American Cabernet Sauvignon twice the price — and the Chappelet Cabernet, from

the Napa Valley, is on a 1970 vintage (or. ,$kable in 1985?) presently selling here for

$12.85. Parducci, Heitz and other small vine:,ards produce varietals in the same price range. This is atypical. I maintain that if you will try to ignore, as I have, the relationship between these grapes and their European originals you will be con siderably rewarded. Geographical appellations really don't apply in America as in a specialised wine country like France (the Boordy wines, for instance, a trifle acidulous for my taste, happen to come from Maryland). Alex Bespaloff well puts it: "Fifteen years ago it was still easier for a producer to sell a wine made from Cabernet Sauvignon as claret, rather than as a varietal. Today the situation

is completely reversed." Even for poundholders I still think excellent values obtain.

The new Beaulieu vintage Cabernet Sauvig non is going for under four dollars, while closer to a pound you find the really first-class Louis Martini Zinfandel, several Inglenook and Beringer reds and, above all, so far as I am concerned, the offerings from Robert Mondavi. At the moment I am drinking a 1972 Mondavi Gamay with a lovely deep colour that is both supple and rich. I personally find these Napa red wines decisive yet unpreten tious and I have booked a case of Cabernet from Mondavi from my dealer, for they are

strictly rationed, in America, at any rate (the merchant being compelled to take a whole slew of jug wines for a couple of cases of the erus bourgeois). My Mondavi costs me a little more than a pound. But these vineyards thrive on scarcity. I still have two bottles left of a Wente Brothers Riesling Spatlese vintage 1969 of which only 3,000 bottles were produced from a late picking; it was a gift from my dealer and now rates heirloom prices, at around $70 the bottle. All in all, it seems to me that Californian reds could be whole-heartedly enjoyed in "the dear land of my nativity" provided that they are not drunk as substitute claret.

Geoffrey Wagner is Professor of English and the Humanities at City College, New York