Little White Wine Lies

One of the truths of wine is that it’s layered with lies. We’ve all heard them and desperately wanted to believe them: “Vintages don’t matter.” “This wine is just as good as the more famous one but half the price.” “Any wine from this district is good.”

Most of these lies are well-meant, semi-respectable efforts to shield the newcomer from wine’s daunting complexity. They’re told with a tacit acknowledgment on the part of buyer and seller that the subject is too complicated for quick explanation.

The complication of wine also suggests that there really is a hidden deal somewhere, a just-as-good-at-half-the-price bargain. Like Gold Rush prospectors, we keep digging for a wine El Dorado.

But the hard truths of effective wine buying are these: It isn’t easy, it does take time, you do need some knowledge and just-as-good-at-half-the-price bargains are about as common as leprechauns.

Let’s say you go into a wine shop and say, “I’d like to get a good Chardonnay.”

Well, there are hundreds of good Chardonnays. So the merchant says, “How much would you like to spend?”

“Twenty dollars,” you reply. Great. That narrows the choices down to . . . hundreds of Chardonnays.

So what should you say? You stand a much better chance of getting something really interesting, even rare, by saying that you’re looking for an unusually good dry white wine somewhere between $10 and $30 a bottle. “I like Chardonnay,” you say, “but I’m much more interested in a wine that’s really distinctive and fine. I’m open-minded. And I don’t care where the wine comes from.”

This is music to a merchant’s ears. Not because you’re a sucker, quite the opposite. The suckers stride in and demand some heavily advertised brand. Instead, what the merchant hears is a customer who’s adventurous yet demanding. Someone willing to take advice but thoughtful enough to know that what’s really important about wine is distinctiveness. Everything else is mere detail. The merchant can supply that.

But this brings us to one of the biggest lies (however well-meaning) 90of all: Every good wine can be appreciated by all drinkers. Not so. Some wines, like some music, take a bit of effort.

It’s a rare red-wine lover who doesn’t fall at first sip for a good Pinot Noir, but that same person may puzzle over the quite different beauty of an equally good Barolo. Made from the high-acid, tannic Nebbiolo grape, Barolo can be something of an acquired taste, a Stravinsky to Pinot Noir’s Johann Strauss.

In the meantime, we all keep plugging, and I include myself here. I still struggle to grasp the beauty of some Australian wines that others swoon over, such as the $110 Penfold’s Grange, a Shiraz (Syrah) that many consider Australia’s greatest red wine; I find that it reeks of oak and winemaking tricks.

These wines escape me, but I’m curious all the same. Too many good tasters are excited about them for me to think they’re all wrong (although it’s endlessly tempting).

In the meantime, I can only suggest that you try the following wines. I know them to be authentic--in the best sense of that word--as well as genuinely good deals.

Are they just-as-good-at-half-the-price bargains? Nah; they’re justly priced. But I will say this much: You could spend twice as much and get half as good a wine. So maybe they are bargains.

* 1995 Daniel Bocquenet Nuits-Saint-Georges “Aux Saint Julien” ($37.95): This is a bargain? At $37.95? Actually, I’m pleased to be able to recommend this red Burgundy.

The problem in tipping people off to red Burgundy is not price (which ranges from painful to preposterous) but availability. Supplies of the really good stuff are tiny; demand for great vintages such as 1995 is intense. A bargain Burgundy is like a hot salmon stream that will be all fished out by the time the general public hears about it. In a few vintages, this wine, too, will be an insider’s special; right now, it’s an exception.

This wine is today’s classic Burgundy saga. Daniel Bocquenet is a young producer who has taken over the family property in Nuits-Saint-Georges, a village famed for creating long-lived, robust red Burgundies capable of aging for 20 years or more. Few Burgundians are making such wines anymore, though, because that kind of durability demands low yields. Daniel Bocquenet is doing it, and he’s making extraordinary wines.

For me, this is his best wine, although he makes more expensive ones. It comes from a 14-acre vineyard called Aux Saint Julien, of which Bocquenet owns only a small slice. But the slice he owns has extremely old vines, more than 60 years old. Such old vines produce very few clusters with tiny berries, resulting in extremely low yields.

The concentration is such that Bocquenet is able to age this wine in 100% new oak. The fruit is rich and intense enough, especially in a vintage as good as ‘95, to withstand the considerable flavor impact.

This is an extraordinary red Burgundy, a real insider’s wine. It’s a special lot brought in by North Berkeley Wine, a Bay Area retailer and importer that has become one of America’s supreme sources for great Burgundy. North Berkeley ([800] 266-6585), which also sells direct, distributes its wines to several Los Angeles-area retailers, including Hi-Times Wine Cellars ([800] 331-3005), Northridge Hills Liquor and Wine Warehouse ([800] 678-9463) and the Wine House ([800] 626-9463).

* 1995 Selvapiana Chianti Rufina ($12.95): As has been reported in this space, the 1995 vintage was exceptional throughout Europe. Indeed, in the Chianti district ’95 was the best year since the great 1990 vintage.

Among Chianti fans, the estate called Fattoria Selvapiana is an increasingly less well-kept secret. The Chianti country is divided into six subdistricts, all bearing the Chianti name, of which Chianti Classico is the most famous. Less well known, and arguably as good, is Chianti Rufina (pronounced ROO-fee-nah), which is only 10 miles east of Florence. It is an ancient district, truffled with aristocratic Renaissance villas from Florence’s ancient elite. Needless to say, they planted vineyards.

Today, though Selvapiana ranks as the leading producer in Chianti Rufina, its wines are still being discovered. This brand-new ’95 bottling will win it yet more followers.

Right now, the ’95 is tight, a bit closed and slightly tart because the intense fruit is so withdrawn. But give it six months or so and it will flower beautifully, offering the characteristic dusty, berryish scent of Sangiovese. Look for a street price as low as $9.95, which makes this wine a flat-out steal.