There’s another wine importer in town, and they’ll cut a dash in your wine fridge. Joining companies like LDM, Jose Pastor Selections, Jenny & Francois, and Mosel Wine Merchants – just a few of the tireless importers in search of real wine – comes Selection Massale, run by Cory Cartright and Guilhaume Gerard. Cartright is known for his natural wine slanted blog, Saignee and for 31 and 32 Days of Natural Wine (a guest-appearance blog featuring contributions from heavyweights such as Joe Dressner and Eric Texier). Gerard used to work at Terroir in San Francisco; he’s got good taste in music and he causes havoc on social media.
German Riesling guru, Lyle Fass, had purchased a bunch of their wines last fall and in Lyle’s generous fashion, he invited the CSW crew to taste. The most memorable moments of the evening had to be the taste of a certain southern Burgundy (more on that later), and as the night progressed to the sounds of Diplo’s remixes of Baile Funk, Lyle ridiculed long skin contact white wines coming out of Italy, “Italian white wine is so bad they had to make that shit orange.” Classic Lyle.
A few weeks later, on a chilly afternoon in December, Guilhaume Gerard came into Chambers Street and littered our sales desk with opened bottles of wine. We gathered around to taste. The Macon wines of Céline and Laurent Tripoz popped up again, and my initial feelings were echoed. Their wines were incredible, some of the best (next to Julien Guillot) I’ve tasted. The 2009 Macon-Loché was crazy mineral (think more red soil minerals than chalky) and the acidity was razor sharp.
Most folks buy Macon or Pouilly-Fuisse Chardonnays because they want something fairly simple, innocuous even, but why not give them a wine that’ll blow their mind? Must a wine always speak of “typicity?” This wine seems to tell us more about plot, Tripoz’ biodynamic farming and laissez-faire winemaking, but if you want a wine that won’t stump you at a blind tasting Cyril Alonso’s P-U-R wines from Beaujolais (also available from SM) make beautiful wines that taste like Gamay all the way. Thanks Guilhaume and Cory.
Here’s a piece on Céline and Laurent Tripoz from Selection Massale’s website.
