Crush: Commentary

Wednesday Lunch

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:29:24 -0500

Eat THIS, Midtown Lunch!

The Wednesday trek to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza greenmarket brought back…

Wait for it…

Waaaaiit for it…

Huîtres!

Shallot and sherry vinegar mignonette, too. Yep, just standard Crush tasting room lunch fare for you.

Then we ate a cool, fat bowl of cucumber and rainbow cherry, grape and pear tomatoes dashed with sherry vinaigrette.

Now, where's that Pépière??

White Dog

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:23:49 -0500

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?

VDP Luncheon at Le Bernardin

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:43:04 -0500

Welcome to the first ever Crush Riesling Media Spectacular. To experience the full intensity of this Media Spectacular, click "play" on the classic 1990 romantic ballad performed by Nuno Bettencourt and Gary Cherone of the funk metal band Extreme. Once this song is in play, once the intense emotional experience has begun, scroll gently through the pictures of classic Rieslings from 1921 to 1953. This is our tribute to the exceptional luncheon commemorating the 100th anniversary of the VDP held June 10th, 2010 at Le Bernardin in New York City.

Price v Power

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:10:16 -0500

How many BTUs for your air conditioner does a full, delicious case of 2008 Trimbach Riesling Reserve equal? We decided to find out and employed our occasionally-useful statistics mastery to create the equation. Et voila! The price of one case of the Riesling gets you precisely 8,812 BTUs in your living room. We choose the Riesling.

Bike to Work

Thu, 20 May 2010 12:01:31 -0500

Friday, May 21st is National Bike to Work Day!

To celebrate, Crush is happy to offer a 20% discount* to cyclists who bring their helmet into Crush. That's right, just flash your dome piece at the cash register and we'll knock 20% off any still wine under $55 that's not already discounted!

*Discount does not apply to sparkling wines, liquors, sake, or NET-priced items.

Check out photos from Stephen's bike ride to work today!

A. J. Adam

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:19:24 -0500

AJ Adam’s great-great-great-great Grandfather (or maybe just great-great-great?) was a shoemaker, responsible for the combat boots of the mounted soldiers of Wilhelm the Great. Thus we have what has to be one of the most bizarre crests you’ll ever see on a bottle of wine.

A tribute to army boots stamped into the cork and capsule of a bottle of Riesling? Suuuuure! A.J. Adam seems to do whatever the hell he wants, even though he’s young, new to the scene, largely unknown and obsessed with a vineyard even more obscure than he is.

It takes some cojones to yank a site out of anonymity and demand from it greatness. But that’s what he’s doing and greatness is – undeniably - what he’s getting.

Adam’s 2005s were good; the 2006s a bit too gooey for me but undeniably Baroque and beautiful. The 2007s made my head explode and it took all the Crush staff and all the King’s men to put it back together again. I knew I had to meet this guy.

And so it was that I found myself in April on A.J.’s back porch in Dhron, slowly going through his 2008 lineup. While the 08 vintage in Germany is a purist’s delight, the wines (especially from the Mosel) can be bracing – a bit brutal even. A.J. somehow spun this tricky vintage into a wicked, nasty-awesome masterpiece. His 2008s have a maniacal electricity to them, a live-wire of lime and citrus that just rips through their core. They are ruthless, forceful, stern as a Catholic school nun and, for lack of anything smarter to say, just exquisitely beautiful.

While the Spätlese and even the Auslese are superb in 08, I’m a Kabinett kind of guy. I buy the whole “less is more” way of interacting with the world. The botrytis-inflected, fleshy opera singer BAs and TBAs (even their rot is called “noble”) get all the attention – and the 100-point accolades. For me, though, perfection shouldn’t overwhelm the senses, it should bring us to our senses. For me, the 2008 Adam Kabinett is about as close to this idea of perfection as it gets. It smells like spring water and rocks with an extra helping of rocks - a microscopic lightning storm of fruit, mineral and acidity.

Someone go tell Robert Parker: I hereby nominate Adam’s 2008 Dhroner Hofberg Kabinett as the first 100-point Kabinett.

Palmberg-Terrassen: A Photo Journey

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:45:41 -0500

The Palmberg Terrassen is a completely unknown, roughly 5-hectare vineyard that is more than farmed by the Stein family; it is loved by the family. There's a devotion here, a connection to the land that is humbling. Ulli Stein's 87-year-old father has been making wine here since the early 1960s and he still visits the site almost daily, tending to his vines and drinking the wines of the vineyard as often as he can. Ulli Stein's 2008 Palmberg-Terrassen is dense and saturating, darn-near glossy with extract - lime zest, razor-sharp citrus, wild green herbs. The 2008 Stein Palmberg-Terrassen is likely the greatest Riesling value on earth.
Click the button below to see our real-time online inventory of Stein's 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg Terrassen Spatlese Trocken: Roses dot the vineyard here and small sheds provide respite. Due to the severity of the incline, obviously working this site is extremely difficult and tiring. Many acres of the site have gone fallow, overrun by the wilderness. At this point, to the best of our knowledge, the Steins are the only serious producers within the vineyard, farming 1.3 hectares of the site and producing a scant 2 Füders worth of juice - that's only about 230 cases. The 2007 is THE FIRST bottling to be imported into the U.S.! The shrine that Ulli Stein's father built within the vineyard. To this day, at 87-years-old, Herr Stein still visits his vineyard almost daily. In this picture you also see the "Terrassen," or terraces, that largely define the landscape of the Lower Mosel. Here you get a real sense of just how very steep this vineyard is. Another, slightly more panoramic view of the Palmberg-Terrassen vineyard. Click the button below to see our real-time online inventory of Stein's 2008 St. Aldegunder Palmberg Terrassen Spatlese Trocken:

Invite: MADCrush Wine Bar Returns!

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:49:47 -0500

MADCrush Special Encore Presentation THURSDAY - SEPTEMBER 17TH 6:00 - 10:30 pm @ the Museum of Arts and Design Crush pairs wines to dishes from NYCs top chefs!

Next Thursday evening, we're excited to revive our MADCrush "pop-up" wine bar for a special encore presentation. The full details (along with some surprises) to come, but we have confirmed that Daniel Boulud's rising star chef, Damian Sansonetti, Executive Chef of Bar Boulud, will be in house! Please join us as we continue to showcase our award-winning selections, as well as some of our favorite 'off the beaten path' favorites by the taste, glass, and bottle in recyclable govino glasses.

Our selections are chosen specifically to accompany menus of small plates from a roster of New York’s best chefs. Past chefs have included Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Scott Conant of Scarpetta, George Mendes of Aldea, and Cesare Casella of Salumeria Rossi.

Niederberg Helden Vineyard

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:36:36 -0500

Get to know the Niederberg Helden Vineyard in the village of Lieser, courtesy of your friends at Crush.

Why did Thomas Haag, the eldest son and scion to the Fritz Haag estate, pack up his bags, leave the family estate and invest himself completely, pocketbooks, elbow grease, soul and all, into the crumbling Schloss Lieser (castle of Lieser) estate?

When I asked Thomas this last March over lunch (see schnitzel, below), he sort of just shrugged his shoulders. If I had to guess, I'd say one thing: Potential.

2008 Germany - A Very "Important" Vintage

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:38:45 -0500

Do you just want to read about the individual growers and their wines? Scroll down... It's a ludicrous title for a vintage report, I know. Still, I'm sticking with this title because it's stuck with me, ever since I shook Oliver Haag's hand goodbye and left my first tasting appointment of the 2008 vintage in Germany. (That was, by the way, April 18th, 2009, just to give you some context). Let me try and explain what I mean by the word "important." The 2008 vintage presents, for the first time in some years, an authentic snapshot of what we used to mean by the words "Kabinett" and "Spatlese." If the last few years have turned the stage over to the Baroque masterpieces, the epics with layer after dripping layer, in 2008 we find something more intimate, smaller...2008 is less Wagnerian Opera and more Chamber music. Less the expansiveness of Jackson Pollock and more the detailed, tight, etched spaces of Albrecht Durer. For those of you who know sports, enter some sports analogy here. 2008 is concise and sharp.

Knebel: Lower Mosel Speaks

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:30:23 -0500

Weingut Knebel is situated in what is considered the Lower Mosel's best village, Winningen. It is also happens to be one of the warmest areas in the Mosel and therefore the style at Knebel (especially for the dry wines) is muscular and powerful, while (almost miraculously) elegant. Knebel's dry wines are made by Gernot Kollman, the former winemaker at Van Volxem. The noble sweet wines, also held in the highest regard, are made by Beatte Knebel. Gernot works in a hands-off manner with indigenous yeasts while also using ambitious methods to extract profound aromatics and concentration from the grapes: pre-fermentation oxidation, extended skin contact and high fermentation temperatures.

Ulli Stein: Rebel of the Mosel

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:17:00 -0500

The steeply terraced and visually stunning vineyards of the Lower Mosel don't offer an easy life to those who tend them. They are laborious and costly to work and their obscurity means the grapes they produce often fetch a low price. More work, less pay. This cruel formula often results in two contrasting issues - one good, one bad.

Van Volxem Dinner - Random Thoughts and Tasting Notes

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:58:27 -0500

Joe and I were pretty excited to host a dinner last Sunday at Hearth in NYC starring none other than Van Volxem's owner: Roman Niewodniczanski. Pretty much everything you've heard about him is true. He is very tall and he is very opinionated. He's not shy. And he's also making some of the most serious dry Rieslings in the Saar Valley. As an heir to the Bitburger beer fortune he's applied a "spare no expense" philosophy to his estate: Manic vineyard work, crazy-low yields sourced from some of the top sites of the Saar: Scharzhofberger, Altenberg and Gottesfuss to name a few. This was the first tasting of his 2007 single-vineyard wines, so it was sort of a treat to be the first in the U.S. to taste these dry Rieslings.

Didier Dagueneau Dies at Age 52

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:17:39 -0500

Didier Dagueneau was one of the most formidable and talented winemakers in France. He died on Wednesday, September 17th in the morning, after the ultralight plane he was piloting apparently stalled soon after takeoff. He was 52 years old. With really only Edmond Vatan as his inspiration, he demanded a severity and a purity of his wines that was matched only by the severity of his personality. He raced motorcycles, was an avid dogsled racer and later took up flying as a part of his in-your-face, daredevil personality. As a winemaker, he was no less outspoken and he criticized, loudly, those winemakers he saw cutting corners, or not living up to the potential of their vineyards. While he was controversial, he was also greatly respected and his wines undeniably given a sort of "Grand Cru" status in the Loire region. Click here to read Eric Asimov's official obituary, published on Thursday in the New York Times.

2007 German Vintage Report: Purity, Depth and Concentration Manifest

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:11:38 -0500

A View from the Cellar. Could it get any better than that? Yes, it can because the great 2007ers of Germany are classics with just epic wines at the Kabinett and Spatlesen level while the Auslesen are good to very, very good. And unlike 2006 (not to mention 2005 and 2003) which produced opulent Auslesen and above at the expense of the featherweight Kabinetts, 2007 has it all. Shimmering Kabinetts, absolutely profound Spatlesen, Auslesens that are clean and sleek... Wow.