Sorry for being AWOL, folks. Combining a move with a car wreck, a month-long trip to France (travel hell on the return, too) and then a week of covering golf does not lend itself to being a reliable blogger. I’ll do better going forward, I promise. A new blog with touts for Thanksgiving is coming over the weekend and updates on both my Dec. 7 fundraising event for the Alliance Francaise at the Hanover River Oaks and my tour of the South of France in late May/early June of 2023. Watch this space. Lot’s of good stuff happening!
And it’s an easy one to remember – December 7. Right, Pearl Harbor
Day. And, while we’re certain to raise a glass or several to America’s long-ago
fallen heroes that evening, the event I’m organizing will honor a different
anniversary. In 2023, Houston’s Alliance Française chapter celebrates its 100th
birthday and we’re going to have a splendid kickoff party to start raising
funds for a sprucing-up of our historic home on Lovett Blvd. in Montrose.
But, before I go further, I must offer a heartfelt merci bien! to Valerie Baraban, France’s consul general in Houston. Baraban is a little over a year into her four-year stay and wants to leave her mark on a city she and her husband have already come to love. It was 100-pecent her idea to help the Alliance and, as the board’s vice president, I delightedly accepted on our behalf.
This soiree will be our first in a long time — thanks to the pandemic — and it’s going to be extra fun. Yes, of course, wine will be front and center. Although many details remain to be sorted out, this much is certain: It will be 6-to-9 p.m. on the 7th in a gorgeous indoor-outdoor entertainment space in my new home, the Hanover River Oaks on Kirby Drive, across from Whole Foods (with complimentary valet parking).
The stars of the show will be a quartet of Houstonians who sell French wine:
Matthew Massey with his Madame Zéro champagne and Jeremy Hart with his Explicit Content Châteauneuf-du-Pape, plus two importers, Douglas Skopp, whose Dionysus Imports offers a splendid lineup from a variety of boutique producers, and Jean-François Bonneté, who owns BCI and is man behind the Liberation de Paris wines plus his new Bonneté lineup.
Heavy appetizers will accompany the tasting – chef announcement coming soon! – and we’re hoping to have live music. Attendance will be limited to 40 folks maximum and it will be a ticketed event with every dime of profit going to
the Alliance for capital improvements. Anyway, to quote Rachel Maddow, watch this space. I will be updating frequently as things come together.
Travels with me and Pablo
My late-May/early June tour of my favorite wine neighborhoods in
the South of France with Pablo Valqui is shaping up with only a couple spots
remaining, so don’t hesitate to get signed up. This is going to be a marvelous
adventure and will include a tasting-aperitif at my house in the off-the-beaten-path but magnificent Ubaye Valley in the Southern Alps. Chef Hubert Longeron, whose Refuge de la Pare in the Vallon de Maurin has been destination for adventurers since his father opened the doors in 1969, will take over my kitchen that afternoon.
Details can be found at gourmettours.biz or right here, at my sportywineguy.com
blog.
Sippin’ with Sporty
Coming in an update Sunday. But I know what I’ll be tasting tonight — the wines from Saint Pierre de Mejans in the Luberon — because I’ll be attending my first-ever live team handball match with Wendy and Jean-Marc Gobbi, who own both the winery and the team. Can’t wait for the game and after-party!
H-town happeningsA Taste of Darkness and Spirits — Camerata, Oct. 27-31. $40 each flight plus tax and gratuity. http://cameratahouston.comTexas Wine and Cheese Tasting — We Olive and Wine Bar, Sunday, Oct. 30. Noon. http://eventbrite.comKemah Fall Wine Fest — Kemah Boardwalk. Saturday, Nov. 19. From $60. http://eventbrite.comRaising a glass to . . . the Astros!
Six consecutive ALCS appearances? Really? The franchise went 4-for-52 years chasing spots in the NLCS. Speaking of which, only the Atlanta Braves have also gone six-for-six — a couple of those came at the Astros’ expense, too — but it’s worth noting that just once did Atlanta win a World Series during their ’90s glory days. These Astros are currently 1-for-4. Still, sweeping the Mariners and getting their boots quickly on the necks of the hated Yankees are well-worth celebrating. They’ve made October the most fun sports month of the year in H-town.
Pouring a bottle over the head of . . . Jack Easterby
What a con artist. But at least Cal McNair finally woke up to same. Sacking the preacher man won’t solve any of the Texans’ current problems, some direct biproducts of Easterby’s incompetence, but at least they’ve awakened from this nightmare. Addition by subtraction if ever there was such a thing. Hit the road, Jack.
I know. I’ve been missing in action for a few weeks now. Between moving, nearly getting killed in a car wreck and traveling to France — all of which happened in the the same week — I don’t know which way is up, down or sideways. It was probably a poor idea to schedule everything at once . . . except, of course, the wreck wasn’t my idea. (Nor was it my fault.) The good news is I’m still alive and typing.
This top of this post, however, is a rerun of a story that appeared in the Houston Chronicle last week and it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with wine. But those of you who also follow the Houston sports scene and don’t take the Chronicle (Shame on you!) will find it interesting.
Anyway, I celebrated a milestone anniversary last week, which explains why I wrote what follows. But note that my regular wine content has been tacked on at the end.
On Friday, Oct 6, 1972, I became a for-real professional journalist, having been hired as a 20-year-old sports copy editor at the Houston Post. On the previous Sunday, my final weekend as a “civilian” sports fan, I had forked over for-real money – albeit probably about 12 bucks – to watch the Oilers take on the New York Jets, quarterbacked by Joe Namath, my sports hero a couple years earlier in high school.
The Astrodome was maybe two-thirds full for the Oilers’ home opener. They hadn’t finished with a winning record in five seasons and were already 0-2 under the clueless Bill Peterson, giving up 64 points in road losses at Denver and Miami. Against the Dolphins, who were embarking upon their historic 17-0 season, they gained 167 total yards, 82 of which came on a single touchdown pass from second-year quarterback Dan Pastorini.
But somehow the Oilers beat Namath and the Jets 26-20, damn them. However, I took that as a good omen for the career path I’d chosen. Getting to work in a big-league sports city straight from the chute was the break of a lifetime.
Of course, at that juncture, Houston was “big-league” only in the sense that it had three teams playing in the big leagues. (A fourth, the Aeros, were starting their inaugural season in the upstart World Hockey Association.) That Oilers victory would be their last until Nov. 4, 1973 – 402 days later – and their last at home for nearly two years. In between, they would lose 23 of 24 games, including 13 in a row in the Dome. Not many were close, either.
The Astros? They were coming off the best finish of their first 11 years, going 84-69 in a strike-shortened season, yet they still finished only third in the National League West. And it would be another eight long years before they took the field for the franchise’s first playoff game in 1980, against the Philadelphia Phillies, then nearly another quarter of a century before they finally won a postseason series.
The Rockets? In the fall of 1972, having only recently abandoned San Diego, they were preparing for their second season in Houston following a forgettable 34-48 slog that saw them frequently play in front of crowds of a couple thousand at Hofheinz Pavilion while wandering as far-afield as El Paso for “home” games. Elvin Hayes, the Big E himself, had returned, but few seemed to care all that much. Hayes, ironically, was long gone when they finally made the playoffs three seasons later.
Ultimately, I would cash paychecks from the Post, which died in 1995, and the Chronicle for 46-plus years before hanging up my press pass in early 2019. In that nearly five-decade span, I got to write about all of three championship teams, the pair claimed consecutively by the Rockets in 1994-95 and the Astros’ scandal-tainted 2017 World Series triumph.
In stark contrast, my sports-writing colleagues in Boston have covered 12 championship teams in the 21st century alone. I’m not here to whine, though. Quite the contrary. Rather, my purpose is to provide context and perspective, to remind everyone that Houston’s sports scene today, certainly relative to the aforementioned wasteland, could be in far worse shape despite the Rockets’ failings and the Texans’ flailing of late.
Yes, thank you, Astros. If Justin Verlander return whole, there’s no reason to think they can’t reach their fourth World Series in six years, a feat bettered by only the 1996-2001 Yankees during the last six decades. They’re also finishing their fourth 100-win season in the last six, a milestone accomplished but once in the franchise’s first 55 seasons.
As for the Rockets, with an exciting core of elite young talent, they figure to rebound quickly, if perhaps not immediately, after winning all of 37 games the past two seasons.
Which leaves us with the Texans. True, it’s hard to have much optimism regarding their short-term prospects. Still, they’re at worst a mediocre team, not an historically awful one like the Oilers of 1972 and 1973. Peterson, who went 1-18 before being mercifually shown the door, was arguably the most hapless, malaprop prone head coach ever to preside over one of Houston’s pro teams, making even Hugh Campbell (13 wins total from 1984 through 1986) seem to be Hall-of-Fame material.
I asked former Chronicle sports writer Hal Lundgren, the paper’s beat reporter during those hard-scrabble times, how long it took the Oilers players and the media to figure out what a dud coach Pete was.
“Oh,” Lundgren said, “a couple practices and a press conference.”
At the introductory team meeting in his first training camp, Coach Pete had told the Oilers: “Men, I want to you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: ‘Super Bowl!’”
It went downhill from there.
A comically memorable moment in the midst of all the misery occurred on a Monday night in the Astrodome. Having gleaned neither inspiration nor confidence from their surprising victory over Namath’s Jets eight days earlier, the Oilers next got pummeled 34-0 by the Oakland Raiders. How bad was it? Dan Pastorini completed more passes to Raiders (four) than to Oilers (three) while finishing with a negative-1 passing yard. Kent Nix, sent out to save Pastorini from further embarrassment, completed one pass for no yards while throwing an obligatory pick of his own.
Late in the debacle, the ABC cameras honed in on a fan slumped in his seat in an otherwise empty upper-deck section of the Dome. The guy responded with a middle-finger salute. Don Meredith, of course, had a quip ready.
“That’s just his way of saying,” Dandy Don explained, “that his team is No. 1.”
The 1972 season ended with a five-turnover 61-17 Dome loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. In their lone victory in 1973, 31-27 at Baltimore, the Oilers still found a way to commit six turnovers. In that season’s penultimate game, a 33-7 trouncing in Pittsburgh, they gave the ball away nine times.
Over 22 starts in 1972-73, 21 of them ending in defeat, Pastorini threw 12 touchdown passes and 29 interceptions. And, remember, he had been the third player taken overall in the 1971 draft. Davis Mills, who was only a third-round pick, may be 2-11-1 as a starter and not yet showing any signs of becoming a franchise quarterback, but his 19-to-12 touchdowns-to-picks ratio is a respectable statistic.
So is the Texans’ defensive standing. Only 12 teams have given up fewer points. By comparison, no teams gave up fewer points than the 1972-73 Oilers.
In short, these are hardly the worst of times in H-town. It’s also important to remember that, five seasons later, Pastorini was under center in consecutive AFC Championship games, a place no Oilers or Texans quarterback has found himself since. Our boundless patience eventually got rewarded back when. No reason to think history won’t repeat.
Keep the faith, folks.
Cheers!
Sippin’ with Sporty
White
2020 Becker Texas Sauvignon Blanc — The 20-plus-year-old Becker Estate vines are in their prime, and their grapes get the royal treatment after harvest, spending time in both stainless steel and new French oak for nine months. The requisite flavors of tropical fruit, lime and apple are pronounced. It’s a remarkable value for $10.69 at http://heb.com
2019 Newsom Family Vineyards Pinot Grigio — A friend recently gifted me a case and it lasted maybe 10 days. This Texas High Plains gem is loaded with fruit and is way more full-bodied than most pinot grigios from elsewhere. You don’t see a lot of wine made from this Italian varietal in Texas, which may be smart. It would be damned hard to compete with the Newsoms. $22.95 at http://newsomvineyards.com
Red
2018 Duchman Family Montepulciano — Hey, it’s Texas Wine Month so I’m all in on our “local” producers. Duchman specializes in Italian varietals, making wines that never fail to please, and this is yet another example of winemaker Dave Reilly’s prowess working in tandem with the state’s formidable grape-growers, the Oswald family in this wine’s case. Reilly is proud of the wine’s “rich flavors of blackberry, black cherry and plum” and says it “fills the senses “with aromas of dried flowers, dark fruit and a delicate peppery spice.” $35 at duchmanwinery.com
A Taste of Legends with wines from France’s greatest regions — Saturday, Nov. 5. at Morton’s The Steakhouse Downtown. http://mortons.com $179 http://eventbrite.com
Jeremy Parzen (http://dobianchi.com) — My podcast partner in crime is on the road again, hosting tastings in New York Thursday and Dallas Oct. 27. In between, he’ll be back in Bra in Italy for a few days teaching at the Slow Food University. There’s going to be a lot to talk about the next time we get behind the mike and, yes, we will eventually post a new podcast.
Sandra Crittenden (http://winelifehouston.com) — Sandra examines the 2022 Texas Harvest in a piece she wrote for Galveston Monthly. Speaking of busy, she celebrated the marriage of her daughter, Morgan (both were regulars on my Chronicle tasting panel) this past weekend and will soon be headed off on a big adventure in Spain.
Russ Kane (http://vintagetexas.com) — The Texas Wineslinger may have put his gorgeous property in the Hill Country up for sale, but you can bet he’ll still be a frequent visitor to Fredericksburg as long as the Cabernet Grill (http://cabernetgrill.com), with its spectacular all-Texas wine list, keeps its doors open. That’s his latest blog topic.
Jeff Kralick (http://thedrunkencyclist.com) — Also in a traveling mode, Jefff is pedaling through Bordeaux, which, it seems, has been as rainy as my Alpine neck of the woods. But we cyclists live to suffer, don’t we?
Katrina Rene (http://thecorkscrewconcierge.com) — Kat hasn’t been quite as far a field of some of us, but she recently treated herself to a stay at the Carter Creek Winery Resort and Spa (http://cartercreek.com), also near Fredericksburg. Check out her report on same.
In case you missed it, the following ran in the Sept. 7 Flavor Section of the Houston Chronicle.
Galveston natives have an acronym that’s all their own. It’s BOI, which, of course, means “born on Island.” Matthew Massey is a BOI – Galveston Ball class of 2002, too – and also a local boy who made good. How good? Massey, at the age of 39, is the first Texan, never mind Galvestonian, to launch a for-real French champagne brand of his own.
The wine is called Madame Zéro, but don’t be fooled by that seemingly negative number, which only approximates its next-to-nothing sugar content (less than .05 grams per five-ounce pour). This is a big-league bottle of bubbles at every level, a serious wine conceived of and nurtured by a serious young man, that also represents exceptional value. At $56.99 – that’s Spec’s cash price – Massey’s sparkling lady way over-delivers.
OK, you’re probably rolling your eyes right now. Don’t. The obsessively detailed-oriented Massey left nothing to chance with his seemingly pie-in-the-sky project, saying, “I’m very hands-on with everything we’re doing. I have a passion for champagne and, to get it right, you can’t just go hire someone to take care of things. To carry out a vision, you have to understand every part of the process.”
His timing could have been better, what the COVID-19 pandemic which created unforeseen headaches every step of the way. In normal times, all systems would have been go by the end of 2020. But there proved to be a hidden blessing in the pandemic: He got to age his cuvée for an extra year, holding off the release until December of 2021.
“Not easy on cash flow,” he conceded. “Nothing about this project has been easy. We’ve had a lot of things we’ve had to mitigate, but it’s made us a lot stronger for when we do end up having easier times ahead.”
Even the famous houses have confronted huge challenges with the supply chain, from the bottles to the cages to the labels. Imagine what it was like for an upstart outsider without an iota of street cred when he first touched down in Champagne. But Massey wouldn’t take “non” for an answer.
Most importantly, after considerable homework and legwork trying to understand the myriad nuances of many of the 319 champagne villages, he found the right team, a grape-grower and a winemaker, in one of his favorite towns, Vertus, in the Côtes des Blancs. Vertus offers outstanding terroir for chardonnay – his favorite varietal – delivering fruit that hits squarely in his personal sweet spot, neither heavy nor austere.
Straight from the chute, his inaugural extra-aged Blanc de Blancs earned a silver medal in the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo’s Rodeo Uncorked! International Wine Competition. Already, aside from Spec’s, the wine can be found at MAD Houston – his first on-premise account – Brasserie 19, DaMarco, Mastro’s, 1751 Sea and Land and Stella’s Wine Bar in the Post Oak Hotel. He’s hardly finished, either. A rosé is coming in the fall and a vintage wine will follow sometime within the next 24 months.
But, to be sure, there was nothing predictable about Massey’s path to sparkling wine Nirvana. Conceding that his back story “is pretty wild,” he explained, “The beginning is really important. There was a ton of love but not a lot of money in my family. My dad was in the Navy. He was in port (in Galveston) and met my mom (also a BOI) through mutual friends. She followed him to Spain, to Florida, to a lot of other places. They wanted to make a life for themselves on the island, but neither of them had a college education.”
His father Dan, as blue collar and salt-of-the-earth as they come, “built our house with his bare hands,” Massey said proudly. “We didn’t even have carpet, or AC. Hey, he sold his Harley to pay for the kitchen cabinets. We were kind a roughing it in the early days. But as I got older, I really wanted to see the world, so I started working at the San Luis Hotel as a valet parker when I was still in high school. I was really into cars and was trying to buy my first one.”
Fortuitously, the ways things turned out, that job didn’t last long. It seems the actress Sandra Bullock pulled in one evening with a small entourage and he took their luggage upstairs. The group then asked the 18-year Massey to chauffeur them to where the action was. Naturally, he agreed. Wouldn’t you? Finding the keys to the hotel’s Bentley at the valet stand and with no manager on duty, he headed out, Bullock and friends happily in tow.
The hotel’s management wasn’t pleased, to say the least.
He next landed at Luigi’s, the popular Italian restaurant on Galveston’s strand. It was there, he said, “that I got really big into trying to understand wine. I was underage, but I tasted a lot of wine with the older guys.” A gig at Sullivan’s Steakhouse in the Galleria area and then Zula in downtown Houston further expanded his wine horizons. But . . .
“I told my best friend, Kelly Finn, ‘Dude, we’ve got to turn the chapter on restaurants,’” he said. “’We’ve never been anywhere. We’ve got to visit the great wine regions. We’ve got to find a way to travel.’”
Massey contemplated a career in wine distribution – until he found out how poorly entry-level positions paid.
“I had my ah-ha no moment,” he said, laughing.
Although his degree from the University of Houston was in marketing, Massey soon finagled what proved to be a lucrative position with a global oil-and-gas company, “doing sales, presentations, that kind of stuff. It helped fund my passion.”
In the end, it would be bubbles that captured his fancy because he saw a way forward to make his wine unique. Or to use his own hyphenated word, “non-conformist.” Aging a non-vintage champagne for a minimum of five years couldn’t be less conformist. Most rest for closer to 15 months, with up to 12 grams of sugar added during same. For a workout maven like Massey, a buffed 6-2, 195-pounder, that level of dosage was unfathomable.
“We had to get away from adding sugar,” he said, explaining that he wanted a champagne made in a style that spoke to his personal ethos. Also, he’s wont to say, “transparency is at the forefront of our brand.”
To wit, on Madame Zéro’s back label, you can find calories per five-ounce serving (100), the carbs (1.5 grams) and the fat content (0). Ditto protein (also 0). No matter. With the dearth of sugar, it’s practically a health drink.
And one that’s made, Massey insists, “with zero compromise.”
Raising a glass to . . . Del Harris
The new Hall-of-Famer coached the worst Rockets team in history (yes, even worse than the recent Rockets teams) back 1982-83. But that wasn’t his fault, believe me. He has positively impacted many of the greatest players of the modern era over half a century and he’s still in the game at the age of 85, serving as vice president of the Dallas Mavericks’ G-League team. Del was, and remains, a helluva nice guy, too. Cheers, coach!
And to . . . Casper Ruud
The young Norwegian, who reached his first ATP World Tour final at River Oaks in 2019, lost his second Grand Slam final of 2022 at the U.S. Open Sunday, but he made a lot of new fans with his sportsmanship when he gave back what proved to be crucial point early in the final against Carlos Alcaraz. It came on a double bounce the umpire missed. Alcaraz went on to claim his first major title and become tennis’ youngest top-ranked male player ever. Both guys should win multiple Slams going forward. A new age beckons.
Sippin’ With Sporty
Pink
2021 Acumen Napa Valley Mountainside — Philip Titus’ personal winemaking acumen, best expressed in Acumen’s excellent cabs over the past decade, led to his crafting a predictably compelling rose from the winery’s Atlas Peak fruit. I’d rather not pay so much for a pink wine, but I’ll make an exception for this gem. I loved the bright red fruit flavors. It’s just a beautiful, immensely satisfying wine. $35 at http://acumenwine.com
White
2020 Cuvaison Méthod Béton –– The name references the fact that this small-lot white fermented in concrete eggs. It’s a blend of two Dijon clones that delivers beautiful aromas with pronounced white peach citrus notes on the palate. It’s equal parts elegant and intensely flavored with white peach and citrus at the forefront. $50 at http://cuvaison.com
Red
2018 Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de la Tour Private Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon — One of Napa Valley’s reference standard cabs going back to the 1930s, it rarely disappoints. In awarding a 98-point score, Antonio Galloni called the wine “sensational,” praising it for the luscious red fruit layered with leather and licorice flavors. What he said! Well, what James Suckling and Jeb Dunnuck said, too. Their scores were 98 and a 97+ respectively.$150 at http://bvwines.com
H-Town Happenings
Indulge Your Palate: A Food, Beer & Wine Tasting Festival — The Health Museum. 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29. Starts at $30. http://eventbrite.com
There are no bad weeks in wine-blogger world. You’re meeting cool people and writing about stuff that gives us much pleasure. But some weeks are truly special and last week was one of them.
It started with a predictably spirited “Sporty Wine Guy” podcast recording session on Monday with Jeremy Parzen and ended with my first-ever visit to the far-field wilds of Tomball, where I found a quaint and lovely small town with an excellent wine bar and an outstanding BYOB – woo hoo!!! – Argentine steakhouse. But we’ll get to that in a moment because I’m going to recount my adventures in chronological order.
Wednesday brought visits from an old friend, Nicole Rolet, and a new one, Carlo Pagnin. Rolet was in town for a frenetic day of tasting the local wine community on her new Chène Bleu releases (chenebleu.com), which included a predictably compelling 2021 rosé. We met up for would be my first ever wine breakfast at the Colombe d’Or. Pourquoi pas, right? It was five o’clock somewhere, after all.
An American and a refugee from the corporate world, Nicole is a true force of nature, having transformed a crumbling monastery built in the Middle Ages into a state-of-the-art winery complex near the village of Crestet, in the shadow of Mont Ventoux, the towering hump that so routinely figures prominently in the Tour de France. We met back in 2010 when she put together the first-ever International Grenache Symposium at her place, bringing in luminaries from as far away as Australia to taste and compare notes on the great grape of France’s Southern Rhone Valley.
Husband Xavier, who is both a Frenchman and the former president of the London Stock Exchange, had purchased the property and surrounding vineyards that became Chène Bleu not long before they met. The sparks flew between them and the next thing Nicole knew, she had become a vintner with lofty expectations of creating a Grand Cru-caliber wine in a neighborhood not known for same. There have been hiccups, to be sure, but the Rolets have been relentless in their pursuit of excellence.
And unafraid to think outside the wine box. An example: Their “feminine” red Héloïse includes a bit of Chène Bleu’s high-altitude viognier blended in with the dominant syrah and some grenache, following the Côte Rotie model in the Northern Rhone. But, since that doesn’t conform to France’s strict AOC regulations, it must be sold as a Vin de Pays, albeit one of the best you’ll ever encounter. Héloïse’s “masculine” counterpart, Abélard, is mostly grenache (85 percent) with syrah making up the rest.
Héloïse and Abélard, of course, were the star-crossed lovers from Medieval times – she was his young student – whose “uncompromising commitment to each other through time,” Nicole writes on her website, “reflects our own convictions. We admire their ability to combine deep thinking, passion and tenacity.”
Unfortunately, Chène Bleu isn’t widely available in Houston, but fortuitously I had seen a double magnum of the rosé high on a shelf at Montrose Cheese & Wine. It became the biggest and most expensive ($219) bottle of rosé I’ve ever purchased, but I got Nicole to sign the label, then my wife and I and four others shamelessly polished the whole thing off a couple nights later at Porta’Vino. To repeat myself, Pourquoi pas?
Magnums of same are on the shelf at Houston Wine Merchant for $86.99. Pricey, to be sure, but worth it. This meticulously crafted age-worthy pink is Grand Cru-caliber by any measure.
Moving on . . . Lunch that happy day would be at Coppa, where Pagnin, the export manager, was showing his Muri-Gries wines (muri-gries.com) from Bolzano in the Südtirol/Alto Adige. We tasted two beautiful whites, a pinot grigio and a pinot bianco, and the winery’s flagship Lagrein, made from grapes that are grown in the center of Bolzano – literally – and are still tended to by Benedictine monks whose predecessors had moved from Muri in Switzerland to Bolzano in the mid-19th century. The bottles we sampled can all be purchased through AOC Selections (aocselections.com).
It has been 30 years since I visited Bolzano, but I promised Pagnin I would return next spring to tour the gorgeous monastery (seen here) and taste Muri-Gries’ many other wines. A special producer, this one.
Thursday’s lunch took place at Roegels Barbeque, where Jonathan Honefenger was holding court. At one time or another, any serious Houston wine consumer had surely encountered Honefenger, considering he held down jobs in every sector of the industry here until he up and moved to Oregon with his fiancee (and soon to be wife) Madeline just as the pandemic was hitting. Madeline, it seems, had bought a Peruvian vineyard once owned by her grandfather not long before she and Honefinger first met, so they readily had something in common to discuss.
Jonathan Honefenger
Although she at first didn’t want to date him, he’s a persuasive fellow. Now, they’re ensconced in Portland and have just introduced the Wild Child lineup of wines (wildchildwinecompany.com), which include a reisling, a gamay and a pinot noir. The reds paired splendidly with Roegels’ reference-standard barbeque and all three will soon be on the shelf at Houston Wine Merchant.
That’s the short version of Honefenger’s fascinating story. It will be continued in much greater detail in the near future.
On Friday night, I finally met up with Casey Barber, the self-made fortysomething entrepreneur from Dallas who, despite raising three children as a single mother, founded the Rose Gold Rosé (rosegold.com), possibly the best-selling French rosé in Texas right now. It’s under $20 in retail – I most frequently scoop up my bottles at the West Gray Kroger – and it spirits you straight to the lovely hinterlands above St. Tropez, where the grapes are grown and the wine gets made.
In just five years, Rose Gold production has exploded from 1,000 cases to 12,000 and Barber’s hoping to double that next year. This all happened because of a memorable tasting experience in Provence on her honeymoon. The marriage may have ended, but it seems safe to say that Casey’s career in wine is only starting.
We convened at Ruggles Black because she and owner Neera Parador are friends. That proved wonderfully serendipitous because I’d suggested to the chef, Bruce Molzan, that he put Rose Gold on his list without knowing Casey and Neera knew each other.
Then on Saturday night . . . Road trip! The Newsom Family Vineyards tasting room occupies part of The Empty Glass wine bar (theemptyglass.com) in Tomball and the man behind the bar doing the pouring was Pablo Valqui, with whom I’m partnering on a food-and-wine tour in the South of France next spring. (Details can be found in my previous post and at gourmettours.biz.)
Newsom, of course, was already one of Texas’ premier grape-growers before he decided to release his own label and the juice is just as good as the fruit. In fact, the 2015 Newsom Merlot is the best example of that varietal I’ve run across in 2022 and it sells for a mere $29.95. A five-wine tasting in the cozy Newsom space goes for $18 and five reserve wines can be sampled for $28.
Our next stop would be the nearby Che Gaucho steakhouse to actually drink the wines, and what a splendid experience that proved to be. The beef and empanadas were top-drawer authentic – the family hails from Argentina – and the BYOB aspect was too good to be true. Tomball has not seen the last of me, whatever the price of gas might be. (chegauchorestaurant.com)
Despite all the sipping and kibbitzing, I still found time to knock out my first piece for the Chronicle in a few months. It’s about Matthew Massey, the Madame Zéro champagne producer (madamezero.commadamezero.com) who, improbably, hails from Galveston. You’ll read that story in this space, too, after it appears in the Chron. He and Barber would obviously have many notes to compare, were they to meet, which I hope I can make happen soon.
Alas, the one thing I didn’t do was attend the Cuvée Collective’s grand opening (cuveecollective.com) thanks to an emergency plumbing issue that had to be dealt with, dammit. Located near the Beltway and I-10 on the west side, it’s our newest upscale wine-storage/tasting venue and I’m told by those who have visited that it’s off-the-charts gorgeous with multiple venues within the warehouse for hosting events and an expansive list of storage options.
Hearty congratulations are in order for the founder, Ginny Endecott, who, like Barber and Massey, had the vision, the determination and the know-how to pull things together during a very difficult period in all of our lives. Ginny used to sit on my Chronicle tasting panel and happens to be even nicer than she is knowledgeable.
You’ll notice there are no wine touts from me this week. Instead, I’m expecting you to explore all of the aforementioned.
H-Town Happenings
* Night in Santiago – Camerata, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 6-8 p.m. Free admission. 713-522-8466 or cameratahouston.com
* Cheers for Charity benefitting Second Chances — Red Oak Ballroom at Norris Conference Centers at CityCentre. 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10. eventbrite.com
* Crack Open the Case night: Exploring Wagner Family Wines — JMP Tasting Room, Humble. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, September 15. Starts at $50. eventbrite.com
* Indulge Your Palate: A Food, Beer & Wine Tasting Festival — The Health Museum. 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29. Starts at $30. eventbrite.com
Jonathan Honefenger
The Sporty Wine Guy 