This news of January did not get my attention till yesterday when I opened its printed version in a glossy quarterly wine magazine mysteriously showing up in our mail box.
It is a significant one in my opinion. The famed French pinot noir (from Burgundy) finally is going to open an overseas branch in our backyard.
The French pinot noir is lighter than its California cousin’s (shall we say siblings soon?) Actually, French wines, in general, taste subtler than the California ones.
“California wines lack the old continent’s sophistication”, one hard-nosed friend of a friend from Chicago made such comments after she flew to Burgundy and spent a fortune to take a month-long wine tasting training class. She is obviously brain-and-tongue-washed, first of all, and secondly, she hardly drinks as much Californian wine as we do.
Me and my California wine loving friends felt mildly offended.
“The best way to taste good wine is from the place where it was made, as the chemistry in a bottle of wine is so subtle and delicate and sensitive to the temperature. Any airborne or nautical trip without great effort to preserve the proper temperature and air pressure would destroy the taste greatly.” My chemist brother told me. So he always drinks a lot of French wine while he is on business trips there, but rarely brings any back home.
This is why even the $6.99 on-sale red wine we bought from local Costco which were shipped directly from the vineyards less than a hundred miles away taste so good and fresh, full of aroma and the earthy sun and moon and sea fog of California.
Then I forgave the Chicago sommelier-wannabe friend. She drank the California wine from Burgundy, in a training class. How good those California wines could be over there?
The same rule may apply to the $20-$40 per bottle French,Italy, Australia, or Argentina wines we occasionally ventured. We should not try them until we set our foot on these vineyards over there.
So all in all, I welcome this news.
vive le pinot noir!
