The Social World

Tag: Wine

  • Cheers to corkscrews!

    Cheers to corkscrews!

    For the first 50 years of the corked bottle, there was no easy way to get into it. The combination of cork and a strong glass bottle came together around 1630, but the first mention of a device to open the bloody thing wasn’t until 1681. Cavalier get-togethers must have resembled the teenage parties I attended, with everyone desperately trying to open bottles using keys, pens, knives etc. Or using that technique where you bang the bottle against a wall with the heel of a shoe. Halcyon days. More likely the Cavaliers would have just taken the top off cleanly with a swift blow from a saber.

    Early devices for extracting corks were called “bottle screws.” According to wine writer Hugh Johnson, the word “corkscrew” was first used in 1720. From there, this handy little piece of equipment has conquered the world, from early versions which were simply a piece of metal with a wooden handle to the full nerdery of the $130 Screwpull – beloved by wine bores of a certain vintage. The most common one when I was taking my first steps as a wine drinker was the metal man with his hands up, which usually just drilled a hole in the cork rather than removing it. As someone who has opened thousands of bottles of wine, I can safely say that the best corkscrew is a good quality waiter’s friend. I never leave home without one.

    If you want to see the sheer imagination and thought humans have put in to removing a bit of tree bark from a glass receptacle, I’d highly recommend visiting the corkscrew museum (yes, there really is one, I literally have the T-shirt) at Domaine Gerovassiliou near Thessaloniki in Greece. There are corkscrews with winged demons on, others that look like medieval torture devices and some that fit into the top of walking canes, so a gentleman need never be without one.

    But at some point, will this essential piece of drinker’s kit be seen only in a museum? A report from kitchenware retailer Lakeland says just over a quarter of British 18- to 24-year-olds own a corkscrew – compared with 81 percent of over-65s. I’m not entirely sure this is the killer statistic everyone thinks it is, though. One in four youngsters having a corkscrew means you’re in with a good chance of finding one in shared accommodation. We didn’t all have corkscrews when I was in my early twenties. But I did. I was a budding wine bore.

    There’s no doubt, however, that the traditional cork is dying out, thanks to the ubiquitous screw cap. This has gone from being seen only on the cheapest wines to an entirely respectable way to close a bottle, especially in the Antipodes. Something like 70 percent of Australian and 95 percent of New Zealand wines are sealed this way. Screw caps are more reliable, too. It’s estimated that between 3 and 8 percent of  corks are tainted with a compound called TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) which produces the characteristic “corked” smell of damp basements. Extremely annoying when you’ve been keeping a bottle for a special occasion.

    And yet for all its occasional unreliability, I’ll miss the cork when it finally disappears. A large part of the appeal of wine is the ritual of opening the bottle, the satisfying pop followed by the gurgle of the pour. It all builds anticipation. Now, where did I put my corkscrew?

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Why bother banning US booze in Canada?

    Why bother banning US booze in Canada?

    You know what they say about America: beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. But its fruited plains – specifically its vineyards – and amber waves of grain aren’t doing her neighbor to the north much good at the moment – at least not in the beverage department.

    In the Loyalist province of Ontario, just as in la belle province of Québec, no California wines have graced the store shelves for more than half a year. American tipple is out. As far as eastern Canada is concerned, the minions of Francis Ford Coppola crush grapes in vain, all is quiet along the Yakima and it matters not whether pinot noir still reigns supreme in the Willamette Valley. Ask not for whom the Napa flows; it’s not for thee.

    Last spring, as part of a pushback against Trump’s tariffs, a number of provinces, including Ontario, Québec, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, put a ban on the sale of American alcoholic beverages. The move didn’t soften the Trumpian heart, nor did it weaken his resolve. But it did leave Canadian consumers scratching their heads, wondering why all the rum was gone from the Kraken shelf.

    It had, as it turned out, been strong-armed off the displays, along with California wine and Tennessee whiskey. It was not, as in Pirates of the Caribbean, used to build a massive distress-signal fire, but packed sternly away into warehouses on pallets, sealed in layers of plastic wrap and red tape. Shops weren’t even allowed to sell off the stock already imported.

    Alberta, growing into its future role as the voice of Canadian common sense, soon rescinded the ban, but others – notably Ontario, whose short-sighted premier Doug Ford came up with the plan in the first place, and Québec – stayed stuck on the program.

    How times change. Once, America was the country dumping tea into the harbor, prohibiting alcohol, pouring Champagne down the drain and generally playing havoc with the nation’s drinking supply. Back then, Canada sat cheerfully up north, light-hearted and reasonable, sipping on tea, whiskey, bubbly and anything else it fancied, while happily expanding its national economic activity to bootlegging and the manufacture of ginger ale.

    Indeed, if it weren’t for the American temperance movement, Canada Dry might never have gotten off the ground. Its ginger ale sold well in Prohibition-era America, because the extra sugar in ginger ale was just the thing to cover up the taste of bathtub gin.

    Canadians are just as easygoing as they used to be, but it’s now their leaders’ turn to launch into political theatrics, loudly banning American drinks until morale improves. As most Americans don’t worry a huge amount about Canada, let alone what people drink here, the main audience for this little bit of performative whimsy is, sadly, the citizens of Canada. It’s a virtue-signal, intended to make Canadians feel – every time they go grocery shopping – that Something is Being Done, however pointless.

    If you try to buy American products online from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (the Crown corporation that controls the import and distribution of alcoholic beverages) you’re told, rather sanctimoniously, “This US product is no longer available in response to US tariffs on Canadian goods. Check out our recommended Canadian alternatives.”

    Supporting Canadian winemakers and distilleries (and there are some very good ones, such as Grey Monk in BC or Eau Claire Distillery in Alberta) is not the problem. It’s the hypocritical pretense that the government is helping Canadians, when actually, it’s capitalizing on one more petty method of controlling them. As the Jack Daniel’s man said, why not simply impose a counter-tariff?

    Still, they can go ahead and ban it if they want to. The Canadian smuggling tradition is too good to lose. Canadian author Farley Mowat recounts in The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float, published in the 1960s, how he was invited to participate in a smuggling venture running alcohol between Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and Newfoundland. As Mowat was, in his own words, in favor of anything that takes the mickey out of duly constituted authority whenever that authority intrudes on the freedom of the individual, and (also in his own words) in favor of inexpensive booze, he agreed.

    The local lads on Saint-Pierre helped him prepare his craft: on the sailboat deck, they installed wooden troughs to hold the crates – hinged, so that with the simple pull of a rope, the cargo could be jettisoned in case of visitation by the coast guard.

    In the dark of night, the crates were delivered to the boat and installed in the troughs, each one lashed to a heavy sack. The practice was to tie bags of fisherman’s salt, known as “insurance,” to the smuggled goods. If the crates were thrown overboard, the heavy bags of salt would drag them down to the bottom of the sea. In 15 to 24 hours, depending on the size of the bag, the salt would dissolve and the crates would pop back up to the surface, ready to be collected by any boat that happened to be lingering in the area.

    Out they sailed toward the shore of Newfoundland, ill-gotten goods lashed to the hinged contraptions on deck, keeping a weather eye out for the cops. Sure enough, the RCMP boat roared down upon them in the fog, siren wailing horribly. Mowat and his pal hurled themselves upon the ropes, tossing everything into the sea.

    They were greeted with self-satisfied smiles from the constabulary, who noted that not only had they tossed their cargo unnecessarily, having made it safely into international waters, but that they, the fuzz, were on to the salt bag game and intended to lie in wait on that very spot until each and every crate floated back up. “And we’ll sink every last one of them!” they promised.

    Mowat and crew headed off despondently to the shores of Selby’s Cove, where they were greeted with wild enthusiasm. As it turns out, their operation was only a decoy, and the jettisoned cargo consisted of rocks, attached to sacks not of salt, but of sand. The real operation arrived on shore a few hours later: three boats packed to the gunwales with kegs and cases of smuggled alcohol.

    In the subsequent rejoicings, it is hard to say if anyone spared a thought for the poor coast guard officers, eyeing the waters that never give up their dead.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • What doesn’t kill Egly-Ouriet makes it stronger

    What doesn’t kill Egly-Ouriet makes it stronger

    In recent columns, we have visited some lesser known spots in Burgundy – Saint-Romain, Maranges, Ladoix – where the wines are good and the prices reassuring.  This time, I’d like to travel to Champagne to introduce you to one of my most exciting recent discoveries, the wines of Egly-Ouriet. You know about Dom Pérignon, Krug, Bollinger and Taittinger. They can be very good. Egly-Ouriet is something else.

    Remember that Champagne occupies the northernmost precinct of French wine production. The northeastern bit of the area borders Belgium. It’s chilly up there, and damp. Nietzsche famously declared that, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” That may not be true of people. I am pretty sure it is not. But the observation has a certain application to wine. Difficult conditions make the grapes try harder.

    This is something that Champagne makers understand instinctively. It is said the Egly family and its ancestors have been growing grapes in and around the eastern valley of Montagne de Reims since the 18th century. The vineyards around Ambonnay, Bouzy and Verzenay are their epicenter. At first, Egly-Ouriet sold most of its fruit to other winemakers. But in the mid-20th century, the family began marketing its own wine. After Francis Egly took over the business in the 1980s, the winery developed a cult following. Today, it makes some of the most complex and sumptuous Champagne in the world.

    A word one often sees in connection with Egly-Ouriet is “precise.” In some ways that is curious, because Egly’s approach to winemaking can also be described as laissez-faire or “minimalist.” His spots of dirt offer some of the choicest grand cru and premier cru terroir in Champagne. Some of his grand cru vines in Ambonnay date from 1946. Planted on shallow chalk soils with only about a foot of topsoil, they make, in Egly’s hands, some remarkable wines.

    Egly takes great pains to let nature do the talking. He uses local yeasts and minimal pressing. He listens hard to the weather, the “unheard melodies” of the land that he is blessed to cultivate. Galileo said that wine is sunlight caught in water. Francis Egly makes the sunlight sparkle. Time equals money. One reason Champagne is expensive is that it requires a lot of time to make. By law, nonvintage Champagne must age for a minimum of 15 months, vintage for 36 months. Some of Egly-Ouriet’s offerings age for 60 months, some of its grand crus age for 84 months, a few for an astonishing 96 months, eight years, in the barrel and sur-lattes. Look for the initials “V.P.,” which stands for “vieillissement prolongé,” or “prolonged aging.”

    So what does all this time and cultivation cost? Some of Egly-Ouriet’s Champagnes are expensive. Vintage Grand Cru Brut Millesime and Extra-Brut Blanc de Noirs Les Crayères are dear. Bring along five or six Benjamins for a recent vintage, more for older ones. But some of its wines are, as these things go, veritable bargains. Its premier cru Brut Les Vigne de Bisseuil, for example, can be yours for about $100. Its Les Prémices is about $70. They are all delicious, with that bread-like yeastiness and blooming, succulent mouthfeel that most of the best Champagnes feature.

    I have had several bottles of Champagne from Egly-Ouriet in the last few years. After a gala event in Washington at the end of last month, I repaired with some friends to Butterworth’s, DC’s trendy and most politically mature refectory (at 319 Pennsylvania Avenue SE) with a bottle of the Rosé Grand Cru Extra Brut. The cuvée was from vineyards in Ambonnay, Bouzy and Verzenay – 70 percent pinot noir, 30 percent chardonnay, tinctured with 5 percent still red wine from Ambonnay. It was nonvintage, but on a base of 2019 grapes, disgorged in October 2024; the wine had lingered 48 months on the lees.

    We were in a mood to be appreciative, but even with an appropriate discount for what (in another context) Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance,” we all agreed that the wine was spectacular. It started with an intense nose, redolent of a pâtisserie, proceeded with a kaleidoscope of shifting tones and flavors and adumbrations, and finished long, with that bright intensity that all good Champagne deploys. This wine is not cheap, but neither is it exorbitant. A bottle can be yours for about $200.

    I will end by noting the Egly-Ouriet also makes an excellent still pinot noir called Coteaux Champenois Rouge. It comes from vines that are 60 years old or older in a single south-facing vineyard in Ambonnay directly below the Les Crayères chalk pit. We followed the Champagne with a bottle of the 2022. It was unlike any Burgundy pinot noir I have had. Intense yet balanced, full-fruited yet reticent, severe yet coaxable. Bottled by hand directly from the barrel, it is a wine that had a pampered yet strenuous upbringing. It is usually about $300 a bottle. Definitely vaut le voyage, as Baedeker would say.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Revisiting the Devin Nunes winery

    Revisiting the Devin Nunes winery

    Anyone who writes about wine for a while finds himself coming back to old friends as the years go by. This wine here was actually fuller and more sumptuous in that vintage five years ago, while that wine over there really came into its own in the most recently released vintage.

    Just as with people, some wines with early promise somehow go astray and never amount to much, while others that were disorganized and introverted when young suddenly blossom and turn outward as they age, the magic sunflowers of viticulture.

    Most writers about wine will have similar stories. It’s a bit rarer for most of us, however, to get in on the ground floor and stand by while a new vineyard, fawn-like, is born, manages to stand up on its own and then goes trotting off. I have been privileged to do that with the Devin Nunes winery on California’s Central Coast, which brought its first vintage to the world just two years ago and is now on the threshold of introducing its third vintage, the 2023, to market.

    Longtime readers will recall that I wrote about these wines a couple of years ago and peeked in briefly last year with an update. I have just been able to taste two 2023 wines pre-release and also went back to check on how the 2021 is coming along.

    Nunes, a former congressman, teamed up with Mike Sinor, the founding winemaker at the storied Ancient Peaks Winery in Santa Margarita, to make two types of red. One is a cabernet called Patriot (there is also a Patriot Reserve), which is a solid, food-friendly cab that is forthright, well-structured and unapologetic. It’s a serious but unfussy wine that blooms and opens in the glass. You can get it direct from the winery for $50 ($120 for the reserve).

    I like the Nunes cab. But the winery’s most distinctive wines are blends of Portuguese grapes – predominantly Touriga Nacional, Tinta Cão and Sezão – grown in the Paso Robles hills and the valleys beneath. These are some of the grapes used to make Port wine in Portugal, but the Nunes reds are nothing like Port. They are big, hot, fruity wines that seem a little shy at first but repay patience. I will wager you’ve never had anything quite like them. We opened the 2023 Hidden JEM (Cute! The initials represent the names of Nunes’s daughters) and the 2023 Reserve about four hours before tasting. We should have given them six or more. They were robust but taciturn at first but became more gregarious with the beef stew. We corked what we didn’t drink and found that they continued to blossom overnight and were even brighter and more complex the next day, with no perceptible loss of finesse or finish.

    Does that mean that these wines will age well? It is too early to say. Check back with me in ten years. An encouraging sign is that the 2021 Central Coast (the precursor to Hidden JEM, which has a more complex cépage) is maturing nicely. I wrote about it two years ago, liked it, and was pleased to see that it had gained in complexity.

    Nunes has been gradually increasing production, but the quantities of all his wines remain small: fewer than 500 cases. As I noted in a previous column, this is one reason that you will not be able to stroll down to your local wine emporium and pick up a bottle. Your best bet is look up the winery online and take a peek at its website. There, you can order the wines or, even better, become a member of the Devin Nunes wine club, which will guarantee you both a discount and a case or more of his delicious bottles every year.

    I turn now to the public service I began last month with my introduction of Maranges and Saint-Romain, two small regions in Burgundy where the wines are delicious yet (for Burgundy) affordable.

    Today, let me tell you about Ladoix, on the northern edge of the Côtes de Beaune, and Bachelet-Monnot, a wine that comes from vineyards within the Puligny and Chassagne communes, but which sells for a fraction of its close cousins with the fancier names. You will find both pinot noir and chardonnay in Ladoix. We had the 2023 Les Marnes Blanches from Domaine Faiveley, an elegant, aromatic chardonnay full (as the winery notes) of “subtle brioche and citrus flavors.” It can be yours for about $45.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • The best bargain burgundies

    The best bargain burgundies

    Apropos the subject of this column, videlicet, wine, a friend told me an arresting story about the once-famous British theater critic and playwright Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980). Sometime in the 1960s, when the prickly Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled Egypt, Tynan went sailing on the Nile. One night, he came ashore to enjoy dinner at the Luxor Hotel. The wine list was impressive. He ordered a famous bottle that cost practically nothing. The head waiter swept over to tell him, so sorry, they’d drunk the wine out. Tynan manfully looked again at the list and asked for the second best bottle. Alas, the waiter replied, that wine, too, had been exhausted. “Well, what do you recommend?” Tynan asked. To which the answer was: “We have no wine of any kind.”

    That hasn’t happened to me yet. But it is a truth universally acknowledged that a lover of Burgundy must be in want of a bargain. The storied vineyards and famous names are eye-wateringly expensive. Take a step down from the Montrachets and Romanée-Contis and you are still talking about serious pelf, a solid three figures usually. So I set myself the task of performing a public service and finding some burgundies that were both delicious and easy, or at least easier, on the wallet.

    Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold (and red),/ And many goodly bottles drunk. Two realms in particular I wish to bring into what Keats might call your “ken,” Saint-Romain and Maranges. Have you heard of either? Although still little-known here, these villages on the Côte de Beaune are fast becoming trendissimus. Santenay lies southwest and Saint-Aubin to the north.

    The hip winemaker Nicolas Potel, son of the famous vintner Gerard Potel, died in a car accident at 56 in June. But he left behind a great winery called Domaine de Bellene.  Created in 2005, the house is quietly organic, features old vines and makes a suite of chardonnays, aligotés and pinot noirs. (Did you know that aligoté, which names both a grape and an appellation, is the second-most widely planted white varietal in Burgundy after chardonnay? Nor did I.)

    Potel actually dropped his prices by 10 percent a couple of years ago. A 2022 Saint-Romain chardonnay “vieilles vignes,” can be yours for about $60, not bargain basement, but still a bargain. It is fresh yet succulent, full in the mouth and bristling with minerally afterthoughts and adumbrations.

    Close by in Saint-Romain is Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson. The Buisson family has been padding about the area for a millennium. In days of yore they were farmers, mostly, selling to négociants. In 1947, Henri and Marguerite began bottling wine and established the domaine. Their son Gilles took over, and his sons run the house today. Robert Parker has high praise for their 2021 Saint-Romain pinot noir “Sous Roche,” “a medium- to full-bodied, fleshy and supple wine evocative of plums, raspberries and rose petals.” Another commentator notes that the vines average about 50 years old and feature low, highly concentrated yields. “There is great purity to this organically grown fruit and the ultimate wine is somewhat rustic in nature with notes of wild red fruits in the nose and flavors.” A bottle can be yours for about $70.

    One more Saint-Romain, the 2022 “Les Cinq Climats” chardonnay from Alain Gras, one of the most celebrated vintners in this until-recently uncelebrated spot. Tasters have discerned a hint of hazelnut, toast and vanilla pod in the wine. I concur and will add the five climats that contributed grapes to the wine merge in a harmonious, well balanced and food-friendly ensemble. Expect to pay between $45 and $60 a bottle for this excellent wine.

    Let’s head over to Maranges, which is nestled between the Côte-d’Or and the Saône-et-Loire. It is home to seven premiers crus climats, devoted almost exclusively to pinot noir and chardonnay. Red wines from the appellation may also claim the title Côte de Beaune-Villages.

    Domaine Maurice Charleux et Fils – the fils in question being Vincent, who now runs the house – dates from 1894 and covers less than ten hectares (about 25 acres), predominantly limestone streaked with clay. Their production is small: fewer than 3,500 cases per year. The 2023 Bourgogne Rouge, about $33, is berry-bright and floral. The 2022 Premier Cru pinot noir “La Fussière” comes from 35- to 50-year-old vines. It, too, is well-balanced and boasts added layers of complexity sumptuousness. It is a steal at about $42.

    Charleux also makes an inviting chardonnay. I had a bottle of the 2022 vintage with a plank of hearty grilled salmon au poivre and asparagus. It was the perfect clean accompaniment to the food, tartly ripe in the mouth, fruit and acid in salubrious harmony. Another steal at $34 – if you can find it. Tynan would have been happy to have snagged a bottle for his ultimately abstemious meal on the banks of the Nile.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.