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| Dominique Gruhier Crémant de Bourgogne Brut Nature 2020 Monemvasia Winery Tsimbidis “Topaz” Asprouda Field Blend 2024 Vigneti Vecchio “Sciare Vive” Etna Rosato 2025 Olivier Cotes “Orange Star” Vin de France 2025 Massaretti Rosses Riviera Ligure di Ponente 2025 |
| At the northern limits of the Burgundy wine region lies a small appellation named Irancy, with a little under eight hundred acres under cultivation. It lies southwest of Chablis and, like Chablis, has limestone soils peppered with ancient marine fossils, but unlike Chablis, Irancy allows both red and white grapes. During the Middle Ages, Irancy growers sent their wines downriver from the Yonne to the Seine, supplying vast quantities of wine to thirty Parisians, an appreciative audience that found much to like in the region’s wines. Many other parts of France had no easy route to reach the Parisian market, but, over time, this hydraulic advantage was eroded, first by the completion of the Canal de Briare in the mid-17th century, which connected the Loire to the Seine and opened the Parisian wine market to wines from the Loire, Burgundy, as well as wines from the south of France; eventually, railroads eroded the market for Irancy wines even further. The phylloxera plague of the 19th century nearly upended winegrowing there, and today, while it is certainly diminished in area (there is no reliable vine census data from the 11th century, when archaic, evocative terms such as jugerum—the area an oxen team might plow in one day—rather than the modern “hectare”), it has become one of the dirty little secrets in French wine, where you can regularly find bottles that deliver Burgundian pleasure at a fraction of the price of the Côte d’Or. As I type these words, I feel embarrassed, as the sentiment feels akin to a pitch from a carnival huckster, but that does not mean it is inaccurate. We stock a fair amount of Irancy wine: we adore wines from the Côte d’Or, but not the price they currently fetch, and stylistically, Irancy fits the vivacious, lean profile of red wines we prefer to work with.
As a case study, we are starting this week’s tasting with an intensely mineral, brut nature (zero added sugar) sparkling wine from Irancy, because we all need a mid-week, slap-in-the-brain psychic reset from this grueling heat. Again, the huckster anxiety rears its ugly head: “made identically to Champagne, but at a fraction of the price!” We’ll then taste a complex traditional asprouda (a mixed co-plantation of various white varieties) from the southeast coastal mainland of Greece—I looked at my hastily scribbled tasting notes for this wine, and all I can make out is an inarticulate grunt: “fuck!” so you’ll have to take my word for it. Then, we’re tasting two light, refreshing wines, one a rosato from the north slope of our favorite, active volcano, Mt. Etna, mostly nerello mascalese but also containing other rare varieties traditionally cultivated in the region; the other a light, savory, non-douchey orange wine, short-macerated Muscat, aromatic, and with zero sugar. And to finish, the new release of Massaretti’s rossese, a light-to-medium-bodied red we will serve chilled. Low in tannin, but not so much of an adult juice-box wine that we love pretty much all year and mourn the moment we exhaust the vintage. |