12 LITTLE-KNOWN WINES TO DAZZLE YOUR GUESTS
By BRUCE SCHOENFELD

(MONEY Magazine) – As a wine writer, I should have known better.

I'd spent weeks reporting magazine stories at wineries and fine restaurants in California, Europe and beyond, drinking many exceptional, little-known wines. But when a municipal judge back home in Boulder called last fall inviting me to a bring-your-own-bottle tasting with eight other oenophiles, I reached for the familiar. Can't beat Bordeaux, I figured. So I pulled two $50 bottles of the stunning 1990 vintage from the bottom of my kitchen closet.

I'd never met a wine connoisseur who didn't love a good Bordeaux, especially if he or she wasn't paying for it. Sure enough, I heard cooing when the group saw the labels. But when I tasted the $28 1993 Evesham Wood Pinot Noir Cuvee "J" that one of the group had brought, I knew that my contributions wouldn't be the best of the evening. That Pinot Noir (from Oregon, of all places) not only blew away my proud Bordeaux, it outshone the classy California Cabernet Sauvignon, the $50 Barolo and the half-dozen other bottles on the table that night.

In bringing my unadventurous Bordeaux, I'd made the mistake of ignoring the changes that have lately been sweeping the wine world. For years, a consumer needed little more than his trusty Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays and a passing familiarity with Bordeaux and Burgundy to seem up to speed. No longer. We Americans finally acknowledged that our own Napa Valley can make wines that are every bit as good as those from France, and that belated epiphany has opened up the world. If California can, why not Oregon...or South Africa...or underpublicized regions of Italy and Spain?

The world's wineries have responded by shipping international-quality products to the new, open-minded American market. The happy result: Wine from everywhere on the map is, on the whole, better than it has been in generations. Small vintners across Europe and beyond are making compelling and unusual wines, and much of it is now available here in significant amounts. These days, a wine lover can't consider himself a true connoisseur without a solid knowledge of the best of them.

So I undertook a task at this magazine's behest: to re-assemble that group of oenophiles and this time to dazzle them with a case's worth of great, unheralded wines. The bottles I chose (see the table on page B19) had to reach beyond the most popular grapes of the decade--meaning no Merlots, no Cabernet Sauvignons, no Chardonnays. They couldn't originate from the usual European locales, either: no Bordeaux, no Burgundy, no Tuscany, Rioja or Rhine. Finally, the wines had to be available through major U.S. wine shops or, at the very least, on the wine lists of some top-shelf restaurants across the country.

This time, I acted on my research:

--Stick mostly to small wineries. In general, great wine can't be mass-produced. (An exception: Bertani's rich, raisiny Amarones from Italy's Valpolicella, a distinctive $30 product that is a brand builder for the winery's bulk lines.) You want grapes that have been hand-picked, not harvested by a machine that can damage the vines. And I prefer winemakers that grow their grapes themselves. That way they control the quality of both their final product and their raw materials.

In France's Champagne region, almost every big-name winery is a negociant--a firm that may grow some grapes but purchases the majority from outside farmers. But I've found an exception: Tarlant, a family-run operation that grows its grapes in the rolling hills of the Marne Valley. Champagne Tarlant ($46) impresses like Dom Perignon--but with its taste, not its price tag.

Importer Chris Daniele specializes in similar boutique-style wines, but from Australia. His $38 Dalwhinnie Shiraz 1994, carefully made from the grape the rest of the world calls Syrah, hit the U.S. market last year, and elite wineshops can't get enough. Josh Jensen puts just as much attention into his estate-grown Calera Viognier Mount Harlan 1995, an elegant $30 white wine from remote San Benito County, 90 miles south of San Francisco. And so does Austrian Toni Bodenstein, with the stately single-vineyard Prager Rieslings ($36) he makes for his father-in-law, Franz Prager, along the steep, terraced banks of the Danube.

--Search out overlooked varietals. While Americans are still drinking more mass-produced Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay than anything else, a growing number of inspired winemakers have started specializing in overlooked varietals. Much of the credit for lifting deep-purple Zinfandel from the shadows of its illegitimate cousin, the pink-tinged white Zinfandel, goes to Napa Valley's Turley Wine Cellars. Its $26 Black-Sears Vineyard Howell Mountain Zinfandel is hard to find in stores but is sold by mail. Write to Turley Wine Cellars, 3358 St. Helena Hwy., St. Helena, Calif. 94574.

I've already mentioned one Syrah, the Dalwhinnie Shiraz. This majestic grape, dark as ink and filled with fruit, is making terrific wine on several continents and could be the next serious grape to hit the American consciousness, now that the Merlot fad has peaked. In the region where Syrahs originated, France's Cotes-du-Rhone, Michel Chapoutier makes wines his great-grandfather's way, paying strict attention to soil and sunlight. His long-lived M. Chapoutier Hermitage 1994, Monier de la Sizeranne ($51), is considered among the world's finest. One of the best American Syrahs is the Neyers 1995 Hudson Vineyards ($30) from Napa, made by 30-year-old Ehren Jordan, the same winemaker responsible for Turley's Zinfandel.

A grape can hardly be more obscure than Spain's Albarino, which has scarcely been grown since the 1920s. But the area known as the Rias Baixas, just north of Portugal in Galicia, now produces crisp Riesling-style Albarino varietals. A handful of them, including the clean, flinty Fillaboa ($15), have made their way to North America.

--Keep tabs on unsung wine regions. Not so many years ago, Australia's wines were fodder for a Monty Python gag. ("[This wine] is particularly heavy," went one faux review, "and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.") But these days, the country's varied wine-growing regions turn out not only those forceful reds but also a genuine rival to the legendary French dessert wine Sauternes. Noble One ($26 a half-bottle) comes not from a boutique vineyard but--surprisingly--from DeBortoli, one of the largest agricultural firms on the continent.

My favorite Spanish wine isn't from Rioja, though it's made from the same Tempranillo grape. The powerfully tannic Pesquera 1990 Gran Reserva ($70), from the underrated Ribera del Duero region, is strikingly Bordeaux-like in lifespan and structure.

Still impressed by the 1993 Evesham Wood of that earlier wine tasting, I figured my assignment couldn't be finished until I had sought out the new Pinot Noirs of Oregon. When I toured the region in 1992, I'd found them thin and uninteresting. That didn't surprise me, considering that the Pinot Noir grape presents a challenge beyond most winemakers and most regions. Red Burgundy is made entirely from Pinot Noir grapes, and conventional wisdom held that nowhere else could they make a comparable wine. Almost nobody believes that now, and Oregon's rainy, chilly climate, so much like that of Burgundy's Cote d'Or, is the reason why. I've sampled several '93 and '94 Oregon Pinots that are worthy of mention, but I chose Dick Ponzi's '94 Willamette Valley Reserve ($35).

My shopping complete, I reconvened the tasting group at Laudisio's Restaurant in Boulder recently to gain my redemption. I poured the seven reds, three whites and one dessert wine I'd assembled (the Tarlant champagne was unavailable) and watched eyes light up.

"These are some of the best wines I've ever tasted," said an old friend, who works at a local wineshop. Almost everyone loved the $70 Pesquera, though few seemed ready to buy it at that price. Ehren Jordan's two wines placed next: the $30 Neyers Syrah and the Turley Zinfandel, which at $26 was the least expensive red on the table. Among the whites, all agreed that the Calera Viognier was complex, enjoyable and well worth the $30 investment. And several tasters commented on how much the Albarino tasted like a Riesling. "You can't tell me this is Spanish!" one said. When I stressed that none of the wines contained a drop of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Chardonnay, there were gasps. "I keep drinking the same wines," one woman said, "because I didn't know that these were out there."

Now she does--as do you. If you ask for a wine from the table on page B19, you'll surely impress your friends. More important, of course, you'll get a terrific bottle of wine.