The 2002 Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rose presents what I believe is the greatest vintage rose Champagne deal that I've seen in my 20+ years of collecting. This wine is packed with incredibly rich and mineral-nuanced Pinot Noir fruit while exuding an energy that makes it feel almost weightless.

This wine has become a downright obsession here at Crush and though the results are "unofficial," this must be considered our Champagne of the Year given the bottle's vintage, quality, rarity and price.

If the past couple of years have been all about the great vintage releases of Burgundy, Champagne and the Piedmont, 2008 has been different (that's probably an understatement). There have been few "golden vintages," aside from 2007 in Germany, and so I've been spending a lot of time going through the cellar and revisiting some back-vintage favorites. With my eye on value as well as terroir, I found myself repeatedly standing in the Chablis section of my cellar.

Within this calm mental framework, my Wine of the Year was a surprisingly easy decision. I simply have not come across a greater, more etched and transparent wine at the under-$100 - Grand Cru Burgundy in every way, shape and form - that remains true to everything I am passionate about in wine: A clarity that speaks of the vineyard from which it came, a purity and concentration of flavor that flaunts rigorous vineyard- and cellar-work and a finesse and balance that can perhaps only be matched by the great Champagnes to the north and the fine Burgundies to the south.

William Fevre's 2004 Chablis Grand Cru Vaudesir is my Wine of the Year. Today, due to some luck and the very savvy buying of my Fine & Rare Director Ian McFadden, I am able to offer this Grand Cru Burgundy at an unbelievably low price!

I'm biased. What can I say, for me red Burgundy represents the holy grail.

I believe it's the most ethereal, most elegant, most beguiling wine out there. There's a twisted part of my soul (or is it the good part of my soul?) that only, only wants to drink red Burgundy and shudders anytime anything else is opened up.

So this year, as I thumbed through my memories of the greatest wines of the past 12 months, I was essentially traveling up and down the Cote d'Or. But what a place to explore. The Cote d'Or contains some of the most hallowed villages in wine: Gevrey-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée and Chambolle-Musigny to name but a few. Given this prestigious landscape, perhaps it's a bit surprising that I've chosen a wine from Savigny-les-Beaune, the "little village that could" in the southern part of the Côte d'Or.

The methods I use to determine my "Wine of the Year" have nothing to do with point scores or detailed comparisons of every wine I've tasted over the last 12 months. No, my metrics are much more simple and visceral! Previously I've used the "Gulp-ability Factor" and the "Lemonhead Effect." This year, however, I feel a bit less, well, silly, and a little bit more serious.

Maybe it's "the market" or just that I've begun to mellow with age, but it seems more than ever that wine has become "productized" by the mainstream. It's become a magic formula of point scores, marketing hype and quick shortcuts to get to that place where wines are bought and sold simply as investments.

Ingredients

- 3/4lb of fresh morels or 3oz. of dried morels
- 1 Chicken cut up or 4 drumsticks and 4 thighs
- 1 oz. butter
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 cup Vin Jaune (the Macle Côtes du Jura would work)
- 1 pint of cream
- lemon juice

Directions
If using dried morels, boil water then let cool for a couple minutes and add to a bowl containing the morels. Soak for 15-20minutes. Pass the soaking liquid through cheese cloth and reserve a tablespoon to add to the sauce.

Add butter and olive oil to a heavy pot on medium heat. Be careful not to brown butter. Salt and pepper chicken and brown in pot. Once brown remove chicken and place it on a plate. Add Vin Jaune or Macle Côtes du Jura and stir with a spoon to dislodge anything stuck to the pot. Add the morels (and a tablespoon of soaking liquid if you've reserved some). Reduce wine by half. Add cream.

Return chicken to the pot. Turn pot to low heat and cover. Stirring and flipping the chicken occasionally, cook for approximately 45 minutes. The sauce should coat the back of the spoon. Feel free to add an additional tablespoon or so of wine. Add lemon to taste. Serve with rice and pour a big old glass of Macle's Côtes du Jura.
(Serves 4 people.)

You should be both alarmed and invigorated by the fact that the bottle(s) Joe and I picked as our "Wines of the Year" are unquestionably some of the strangest, most curious and unforgettable wines you will ever put in your mouth, period.

No, you probably didn't see this coming but our 2008 picks for the best of the best are the 2004 and 2005 Jean Macle Cotes du Jura! (We couldn't decide between one vintage or the other, so we picked both. Complete notes on each bottle below.)

How's this for a tasting note: Lemon pith, green apple skin, bright marmalade, orange rind, mushrooms, fresh green moss and pine needles, moist dark earth, pulverized cooking spices and a complex mountain stream medley of rocks, stones and pebbles all energized by a blow-horn-like citrus acidity that will send shivers down your spine and electrical pulses across your palate. (As wild as these wines are, they are *made* for food, check out this recipe.)

"The charm of the Jura and its wines come from the sense that time has grown genuinely mossy and amnesiac here. Small vineyards, old vines, curious grape varieties seen and tasted nowhere else, vinification methods that would be regarded as obtuse or mad by the oenological conformists who pass judgment at international wine shows. If you are one of those people who long to escape from the shallowness and tedium of wine fashion, then the Jura is for you." Andrew Jefford, The New France

France's Jura is truly one of the final frontiers of wine. You may be 50 miles east of the Cote d'Or, the beating heart of Burgundy (near the border with Switzerland), but you might as well be in a galaxy far, far away from modern wine tastes. If today a handful of grapes hold nearly despotic sway over people's palates and the world's wine styles all seem to be marching, lemming like, off a cliff into some homogeneous ocean where everything looks and tastes the same, well, the wines of the Jura are absurd and eccentric, unique and invigorating and extraordinary values in the context of the long-lived complex wines that they are.

When national publications name their "Wines of the Year," they are limited by many factors - the biggest of which is the wine's availability. It doesn't make sense for them to drive the public into a frenzy over a bottle of wine that is hardly available.

As a small independent retailer, we have more freedom!

Granted, we also use a different set of criteria. We want outrageous quality for the money, of course, but we also seek respectful winemaking, a wine that speaks of where it comes from and what we call the x-factor - that inexplicable, inexpressible, toe-curling sense of something extraordinary.

Stay tuned this week as we reveal the 2008 Crush Wines of the Year!

Monday: Stephen & Joe's Pick - 2004 & 2005 Macle Cotes de Jura
Tuesday: Tom's Pick - 2005 Palari Faro
Wednesday: Ian's Pick - 2006 Simon Bize Savigny-les-Beaunes Aux Vergelesses
Thursday: Robert's Pick - 2004 Fevre Chablis Grand Cru Vaudésir
Friday: 2006 Ponsot Clos de la Roche VV