Max Hauser wrote:

> Ogier Côte-Rôtie
>
> Even with California's wine accomplishments, highlighted at Copia, US
> consumers can get wines of many countries and need not limit themselves. So
> too with the long wine list in a popular restaurant at dinner in nearby
> Yountville (whose chef was especially kind to my friend with the birthday).
> As designated wine geek at this dinner, I checked the list and marked
> prospects with the wooden clothespins lying around (they had been napkin
> holders). As I discussed wines for the meal, the sommelier too was
> enthusiastic about the 1995 Ogier Côte-Rôtie. And with reason, we all saw
> later. The nose was amazing even for a good Côte-Rôtie. Lush with wild
> raspberries, surprisingly Burgundian anise, and complexity. A wine to match
> the one in Rouff's _Passionate Epicure_ that "blew into the soul like a good
> ocean wind into a sail, all the sunshine it had stolen, all the fervour of
> that baked earth of the Rhone Valley, its spiritual mother-country, and
> which, in waves of enlaced tannin and raspberry, brought to the brain a
> marvellous lucidity." I bought the 1997 of this wine when it was current in
> the market; how I wish I'd bought the 95 too. Mark Lipton has long
> advocated this producer here on alt.food.wine also.

Nice notes, Max. Given your apparent Burgundian tilt, I am not at all
surprised that you responded well to an Ogier Côte-Rôtie. IMO, the
perfume of a good C-R is one of the closest things to the nose of a good
Burgundy, unless of course you're drinking one of Guigal's quercophilic
single vineyard offerings. In all honesty, one reason for my praise for
Ogier concerns his pricing. I also like the C-R's of a number of other
producers (Gaillard, for instance) but the cost is often prohibitive.

Mark Lipton