The $30 Cult Wine from Klaus-Peter Keller
2009 Keller Riesling "Von der Fels"
JUST ARRIVED - One Parcel Only!

This is the one and only parcel we'll be getting.

All this to say act sooner rather than later!

We started fielding calls and emails for Klaus-Peter Keller's wines in March and it's only gotten more intense. We expect this small tranche to disappear quickly.

Punching Above Its Weight Class
2007 Fèvre Chablis 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre
Sporting Grand Cru Weight and Depth, But Not Price

"...rich, full, concentrated and almost painfully intense flavors that explode like a vinous bomb on the balanced and gorgeously long finish." - Burghound

Meadows is right: Fèvre's 07 MDT is explosive and gorgeous, and it punches way above its weight class.

The price today, though, sits much lower than you'd expect: down to $39.50 a bottle on the four-pack - well below the lowest price in the nation.

It seems like 2009 may be the year that Beaujolais overcomes its perennial image problems and finally gets some of its due respect.

Indeed, from our vantage point, real Cru Beaujolais is at the tipping point. While the top wines have been sought out by wine geeks for years, this spring has marked the first time we've received so many inquiries from top Burgundy collectors who seem to have 2009 Beaujolais on their radar right alongside the impending 2009 red Burgs.

Burgundy Collectors Take Notice: Part II
2009 Jean-Paul Brun Moulin-à-Vent
The "King of Beaujolais" in the Grandeur of 2009

My second visit was with Jean-Paul Brun. The understated Brun simply said: "This is the best quality I've ever seen... nearly perfect."

Across the board, Jean-Paul Brun has crafted a simply superb line-up in 2009: The wines are concentrated, structured, pure and precise.

The gem of the collection, however, is without a doubt the majestic Moulin-à-Vent. This is the wine that marries perfectly the greatest attributes of the vintage, the site and Brun's unique winemaking style. Even after a week of tasting the greatest wines from this seriously undervalued region, this bottle stayed with me.

Finding Jean-Paul Brun wasn’t easy.

I was at Pierre Chermette just prior. I typed “Charnay, Crière” into the GPS, and fifteen minutes later, Voilà! I was in Crière. There are maybe a dozen and a half homes in the hamlet. I then spent twenty-five minutes trying to find Brun.

After a couple of phone calls, Brun finally pitied me and agreed to meet me in front of Eric Texier’s up the road. Once at Brun’s, I realize that I had missed the sign, which is handwritten and - at best - 2' x 1.5’.

Once there, though, the quality of Brun’s 2009 line-up was simply incredible. Brun says that the 09 Beaujolais vintage is the best quality he’s ever seen. The wines showed a level of concentration and breed that I’ve yet to encounter in Brun’s wines. And trust me, with Brun the bar is set pretty high.

The Real St-Joseph, Please Stand Up
2007 Jean-Louis Chave St-Joseph
The Complement to Hermitage,
Less Than a Third of the Price

Except, of course, in his own case.

No big surprise, really, that Jean-Louis stated it flat-out to Wine Spectator last fall... most will agree that the appellation, sadly, has sprawled too far, hasn't maintained enough specificity.

Not in the case of Chave. Here is the region's benchmark, the beau ideal, the "O.G." if you like.

This is head-turning, terroir-screaming, reference point St-Joseph Syrah from one of the exemplars of the Northern Rhone. Today we offer this super-allocated St-Joseph at $53.40 a bottle.

Silver Anniversary, Gold Standard
1985 Domaine Huet Vouvray
Le Mont & Clos du Bourg Moelleux
Blue-Chip Vouvray, Ready to Drink Today...
$50 Below the Lowest Price in the World

In The New France, Andrew Jefford writes that Chenin at its best is "among the finest white wines on earth, rivaled only for longevity, and for the beauty of its cellar metamorphoses, by Riesling."

Some of you may remember our 02 and 85 Le Mont Demi-Sec offerings this spring - small parcels that sold out in near record time...

Today we turn up the volume with a parcel of Huet's 1985 Le Mont and Clos de Bourg Moelleux - these are wines with a quarter-century of development, perfectly stored in the cellars of the domaine itself.

Insert Dog Joke Here

It’s not uncommon to finish off an eight-course Italian meal with a little glass of grappa. With all that garlic, onions, tomato, and cheese kicking around, and the copious red wine to wash it down, sometimes you need the bulldozing effect of a pure, high-alcohol content digestif to put an exclamation point at the end of your gastrointestinal death sentence. But what if you swapped out the pasta for hush puppies, traded tomatoes for Pimientos de Padrón, and eschewed osso bucco in favor of seared diver scallops? Wouldn’t you still want a digestif? Mightn’t you need one?

The Greatest Briords?
2009 Pépière Clos des Briords MAGNUMS
Concentration, Vigor, Complexity

Word on the street is that Marc Ollivier believes that the 09 Clos des Briords may be his best to date. Given this legendary Muscadet's ability to age and the nearly obscene value that it represents, buying these magnums seemed compulsory.

It did to us, at least. This is the benchmark Muscadet, a seriously cult geek wine with a clarity, a mineral-and-lime-zest luminosity that is simply unrivaled in Muscadet. There are certainly bigger Muscadets, there are certainly more elegant Muscadets - there are none as transparent, as brutally, as beautifully, honest.

The Rarest Wine in Germany?
TRUE German Kabinett
Willi Schaefer 2008 Kabinett DEAL

What's truly rare? The delicate, whistling Kabinett.

The misunderstood 2008 German vintage (almost without fail an obsession of wine geeks and terroir fanatics) has very likely given us some of the last of a dying breed: TRUE Kabinett.*

The TRUE Kabinett is NOT about power, or depth, or accolades and hype. These are wines that charm you, wines whose human, intimate proportions are meant for enjoyment, for drinking, for refreshment.