The UnCorker

Weird Wine of The Week: Eric Chevalier’s Fie Gris

August 26, 2009 | In WINE REVIEWS | 1 Comment

Can a wine made with the heirloom savignon blanc ancestor “Fie Gris” take on a world class Sancerre?  What would happen if you took one of uber-importer Kermit Lynch’s more off-the-wall discoveries and faced it off against a classic, famous appellation wine in the same price range?   Does it hold up?  Is there any compelling evidence that a wine-drinker – when given the choice – should choose to go weird?

Well, in general we think so.  That’s why we spend so much time flirting around the edges of what’s available in the US wine market – partly out of boredom, but also because there is a lot of value lurking off in the shadows.

Fie Gris vines were discovered in Tourraine and eslewhere in the southern Loire and are believed to be the ancestors – the pre-Phylloxera ancestors! – of savignon blanc.  This sounds so promising right from the get-go.   After all, it was Phylloxera that wiped out so many strains of heirloom grapes throughout Europe and forced growers onto mostly the same rootstocks and clone varieties.

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Weird Wine of the Week: Dan Ackroyd 2007 Pinot Noir, Ontario

August 4, 2009 | In WINE REVIEWS | 1 Comment

When you’re drinking the weird stuff and it happens to be of a classic varietal, it’s important to have benchmark bottles on which to rest your comparisons – ideally, consumed at the same time. But when it comes to Canadian Pinot Noir, it feels unfair to compare it to Old World (Burgundy, Loire, Germany), Warm Weather New World (California, Australia, Chile), or evenCool Weather New World (other parts of California, New Zealand, & Oregon). I mean, c’mon… it’s Canada. I guess we could have opened a bottle of something from New York State’s Finger Lakes region- the closest semi-major producing region of Pinot Noir – but, hey, why start now? So we didn’t compare it with anything. We just popped this sucker – which, yes, is produced at the eponymous winery of that Dan Ackroyd – and took a big, great white sniff and taste. Fresh delicous smelling fruit, loamy soft tannins, and decent extraction. On the palate, we’re missing some acidity which would have livened things up but overall this isn’t bad at all! And guess what – it’s $14 Canadian at the duty-free shop. For a varietal that we’ve almost completely sworn off if we encounter a bottle under $20 any more.

Continue reading Weird Wine of the Week: Dan Ackroyd 2007 Pinot Noir, Ontario…