The 2009 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen wrapped up this past Sunday, but I figured I'd blog about one or two highlights from it anyway. One of them, not to blow my own horn, was the slightly crazy blind-burger-pairing-old-world-vs.-new-world-wine-smackdown that I ran as one of my seminars on Friday. 

What I did was pick three pairs of wines, one from Europe and one from the U.S. in each case, and pair them with a series of mini-burgers prepared by Ryan Hardy, the immensely talented young chef at Montagna at the Little Nell. The audience—more than 120 people; the room was jammed—tasted each pair of wines with the appropriate burger, then voted on which wine worked best. It was a hoot, unsurprisingly, helped along substantially by the insanely good burgers.

The winners? With a crabcake slider served with a tarragon aioli, the fave wine was from Italy: the 2007 Nino Negri Ca'Brione ($35), a lightly honeyed, spicy, richly citrusy blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Incrocia Manzoni (a hybrid of Pinot Blanc and Riesling), and, even weirder, a small proportion of Nebbiolo fermented without its skins so the juice remains white. White Nebbiolo, you bet. Regardless, it was a lovely wine, and if you happen to be serving crabcakes with a tarragon aioli, go for it.

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Last week, I attended a dinner at Bouley, where winemaker Axel Heinz presented four vintages of Tenuta dell’Ornellaia’s Masseto (the highly acclaimed Merlot-based Super Tuscan), including the not-yet-released 2006 as well as the 2005, 2001 and 1997. Heinz invited everyone who attended to bring a bottle—one they felt was iconic in some way, from a producer who had “stood the test of time.” Unfortunately, I have no cellar to pull such a wine from, so instead I opted for the 1998 López de Heredia Viña Gravonia ($28, find this wine), a white Rioja from a traditional producer who holds wines at the estate for years—even decades, for its top wines—before releasing them. (1998 is the current vintage of this wine.)

As the sommelier poured me some 1988 Dom Pérignon, he set my bottle down next to a 1970 Château Margaux and a 1990 Ridge Geyersville, which made me feel more than a little sheepish. Thankfully, my humble bottle—one that at eleven years old tastes fresh and, in some ways, even too young to drink—provoked a great discussion about López de Heredia’s iconic status. I said I chose the wine because I admired the producer for sticking to its traditional-winemaking guns. In Rioja, many producers have embraced a more international style of wine: The whites are aged in stainless steel (instead of old oak barrels) and are often crisp but unmemorable. The reds are highly extracted and aged in new oak barrels for a richer, more polished style. Everyone agreed that López—with its elegant reds that age wonderfully and its extraordinary whites that often last even longer—has become an icon, but some people at the table wondered if it's simply because the López is the "last man standing" in a sea of producers who have modernized. Whatever the answer, I was happy it that it paired beautifully with Bouley’s porcini “flan,” an egg white–thickened dashi broth studded with meaty chunks of Dungeness crab. Better than the '06 Masseto, I must say.

And what about the Massetos? I found it fascinating to taste how all of the vintages had a distinctive (and wonderful) combination of mouth-filling fruit, terrific structure and a luxuriously long finish. The 2006 was much more opulent than the 2005, which was a tougher year in Tuscany; the ’05 seemed a bit closed. The sexy 2001 and 1997 were both noticeably silkier, thanks to their softening tannins, but had little in terms of secondary notes; I imagine more will start to develop as they continue to age. These wines have a lot of extraction, yes, but their balance across the board was impressive. In summary, the wines were correct—impeccable, even. It was hard to find a flaw. But does being flawless make something inspiring? Does flawlessness make a wine an icon? Perhaps. But is it worth paying upwards of $250 for that?

I'm not so sure. But I'm grateful to have tried them, and if you ever get the chance to taste Masseto, I would say definitely do. —Kristin Donnelly

Despite the dreary weather here in NYC, it is Spring, so I'm going to operate under the delusion that if wine glasses are filled with lively springtime wine, then the sun will emerge, birds will chirp, fluffy clouds will drift in the cerulean sky, and all that sort of pastoral folderol will mark our days for weeks to come.

To that end, I'd suggest going out en masse and depleting stores of their stocks of the 2007 Loimer Lois Grüner Veltliner ($14, find this wine). It's a bright, vibrant white, with the pea tendril-pepperiness that Grüner often has, fresh grapefruit acidity, and a briskly herbal finish. Loimer makes a variety of higher-end estate Grüners that are impressive as well, but for the cash, this one's a no-brainer. —R.I.

Starting this time of year through the fall, New York City's eternally crowded scenester restaurant, Balthazar, goes through something like a billion cases of Sancerre a week. This minerally French Sauvignon Blanc is intensely refreshing on a hot day, but thanks to its popularity, good, cheap Sancerre is a rarity. So I was thrilled to find another, equally satisfying Sauvignon Blanc from France's Loire Valley: the gulpable 2008 Domaine du Salvard Cheverny ($15). It's got that telltale Sauvignon grassiness along with ripe yet tart apple flavors. There's a slight richness (thanks to the touch of Chardonnay in the blend) along with plenty of snappy acidity and clean minerality. In other words, tough wine not to like... — Kristin R. Donnelly

This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend Taste Washington, an extravaganza of Washington State wines put on in a few places around the country every year. I was at the mothership incarnation of the thing, in Seattle, a mighty cool town (like you need me to tell you). For me, festivities started off with a seminar I led, in which three of our former F&W Best New Chefs—Johnathan Sundstrom of Lark, Jason Wilson of Crush, and Ethan Stowell of Union (and Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, and the new Anchovies & Olives)—chose some of their favorite Washington wines to pair with recipes made with some of their favorite Washington foodstuffs. 

I left it to the chefs to do most of the talking, meanwhile enjoying the heck out of the pairings they'd come up with. First up, Ethan Stowell produced a local mussels-fennel-citrus salad—details forthcoming, as I was too busy moderating to take notes—to go with the 2007 Mark Ryan Klipsun Vineyard Viognier ($29) from Red Mountain. Along with the other Viogniers I tasted throughout the weekend, it made a strong case for Washington as an impressive source for New World Viogniers that can balance the grape's natural lushness against a good spine of acidity.

Wilson, next up, brought an intensely luscious stinging nettle vichyssoise with grilled shigoku oysters—I'm going to see if he'd be game to run the recipe for this here, because it was pretty insanely delicious—to go along with a 2007 O’Shea Scarborough Klipsun Vignoble Semillon ($20), also from the Klipsun Vineyard on Red Mountain. It was a sort of oddball but appealing wine whose floral-herbal notes went strangely well with the chlorophyll-herby taste of the nettles.

Finally, Sundstrom paired his pork rillettes with fleur de sel butter—no sadness there—with a dry Riesling from the Lake Chelan region (headed toward an AVA designation later this year, apparently). The wine, the 2006 Vin du Lac Lehm Dry Riesling ($45), was flinty and focused, its crisp acidity and green apple fruit an ideal foil to the rillettes' porky richness. The ultra-local butter, by the way, came from a two-cow dairy on Vashon Island, whose young proprietor cooks a couple of days a week at Lark. 

I'll mention a few other highlights from the event in my next blog, along with the red wines that we poured at the seminar just for the fun of it, but this was a mighty nice way to start the weekend. 

So I was on the Today Show this morning, telling Hoda & Kathie Lee some of my go-to springtime wines. Check out the video here if you're interested!

Domestic Viognier—actually, make that Viognier in general—is often a disappointing grape variety, partly because when it's good, it's so seductive. Good Viognier has a floral silkiness, a kind of summertime peach ripeness and not-quite-oily texture, controlled by just the right touch of acidity, that makes it pretty irresistible (albeit in a slightly decadent way). Bad Viognier, on the other hand, is like Pamela Anderson turned into wine.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad Viognier out there. If Pinot Noir is the heartbreak grape, Viognier is the bad-date grape: You take one sip, think in that sinking, bad-date way, "oy—another loser!" and then sit there, stuck for the next hour or two with the rest of the bottle. But all is not lost.

Here are a few Viogniers I've tasted recently that are actually pretty darn good. It's enough to restore your faith in the whole silly process.

2008 Yalumba Eden Valley Viognier ($18) The soft, silky texture of this wine holds a lot of savory spice notes as well as ripe white peach fruit (note: this will be released in six weeks or so). Yalumba was the first Australian winery to commercially plant Viognier, by the by, and Robert Hill Smith of Yalumba was by our office the other day, which was convenient timing for this blog entry. About Viognier he says, "It's a naturally opulent fruit style, so the challenge is constraining it a bit."

2007 Novelty Hill Viognier ($22) Washington winemaker Mike Januik splits his time between Novelty Hill and his own Januik label, producing impressive wines for both. The Novelty Hill wines mostly come from the winery's Stillwater Creek vineyard in Columbia Valley; this Viognier is fragrant with spice-gumdrop, beeswax and melon notes, and keeps its abundantly juicy, melon fruit bound up with appealing acidity.

2007 K Vintners Viognier ($27) From a single vineyard, made with native yeast fermentation and neutral barrels, this reminds me of good Condrieu as much as any New World Viognier I've had recently. It's fragrant and lightly honeyed and just a flat-out sexy wine. "Winner winner chicken dinner," as the K Vintners website rightly says.

2006 Kunin Wines Stolpman Vineyard Viognier ($28) Creamy and substantial, with lots of peach and lemon curd, this has a voluptuous character that walks close to being too much but pulls back just in time. I liked it despite my typical inclinations toward lean, mineral, sharp-tempered whites. It's sourced from the Stolpman Vineyard (which also makes a terrific Roussanne called L'Avion under its own label).

As always, one good way to track down these wines is wine-searcher.com.

Having just finished a column on unoaked Chardonnay (which will be out in our May issue), it's been refreshing to turn around and taste some very good California Chardonnays that do use oak. After all, oak is hardly a black-and-white question—like butter, or salt, it can be used to fantastic effect or to dismal effect, depending on the skill and the sensibility of the chef, or winemaker.

The 2007 Shafer Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay ($48, find this wine), for instance, is impeccably balanced—a full-bodied white with lemon and mandarin orange notes, zingy acidity, a hint of caramel (that'd be the wood) and a long, focused, refreshing finish. It gets no malolactic fermentation, and is made in 50% new oak barrels, 25% old oak, and 25% stainless steel barrels. Doug Shafer told me as we were tasting it that he'd pulled back on the oak in this wine starting in 2005, because he got tired of his Chardonnays falling apart after a few years. If this vintage is characteristic of his new style for Red Shoulder, I'm all for it. Note that this vintage was just released, so the link above goes to stores that stock the 2006; one would hope they'll end up bringing in the '07 as well.

I also recently tasted three new wines from a less well known but superb California Chardonnay producers, Varner. Bob and Jim Varner farm a chunk of vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains appellation, oddly enough not too far above the retirement community where my grandmother used to live (oddly for me, at least). I'm a fan of their Foxglove line of affordable wines, which I think offer some of the best wine deals in the market. Their higher end offerings under their own name are terrific, too. (Note that these are not going to be released for another six weeks or so; contact the winery if you're interested.) The 2007 Varner Amphitheater Chardonnay ($38, find this wine) comes from a two-acre block of own-rooted, 28-year-old vines and is aged in 30% new French oak on its lees until bottling. It shows aromatic notes of honeysuckle, oak spice and lemon, and flavors of lemon and pear with a graceful, minerally finish. The 2007 Varner Home Block Chardonnay ($40, find this wine), also own-rooted, is more tightly coiled right now, with kind of clockspring tension to its acidity and structure. The aroma leans more toward apple and a touch of apricot with similar oak spice, the flavors towards apple, pear, vanilla and spice. Finally, the 2007 Varner Bee Block Chardonnay ($40, find this wine) is the most luscious of the three of these, more open and expansive right now. From a three and a half acre block that Jim Varner says is always the last to ripen, and that always gives the ripest fruit, it's a lovely, creamy Chardonnay that has an almost Carneros-like lemon curd note, rich lemony fruit with notes of marzipan and honey, and a firm line of acidity that lifts it right up. At the moment it's my favorite of the three.

If you want no-holds-barred, embrace-you-and-smooch-you Chardonnay that actually manages to be balanced, too, though, head for the 2006 Newton Vineyard Unfiltered Chardonnay ($60, find this wine). This is a real guilty-pleasure white, with creamy peach and apricot aromas, a full-bodied, luscious texture, and juicy apricot, red apple, caramel and vanilla flavors. At the same time, it has great acidity and what felt like a light touch of tannin on the end, which keeps the whole package from being blob-like. The wine only sees 30% new oak—albeit with 16 months in barrel and weekly lees stirring—so the oak doesn't dominate, which is part of its appeal. I normally don't have much use for this style of wine, but this is the sort of Chardonnay that could make me eat those words... 

Maybe it's the odd juxtaposition of snow and the beginning of Spring, but somehow the idea of an off-dry (lightly sweet) white wine seems like the ideal thing today. Maybe it's the thought that if Spring were actually acting like Spring is supposed to, I might be able to sit on a porch and sip one with some prosciutto & melon, instead of staring out a window at snowflakes. Regardless, here are three that caught my attention lately:

2007 Grove Mill Riesling ($17, find this wine) As often seems to be the case with New Zealand Rieslings, a little sweetness seems only to intensify and focus the flavors of lime zest and pear in this wine; it's got a nice floral note on the nose, too. 

2008 Ca’ del Solo Muscat ($20, find this wine) Randall Grahm's Ca’ del Solo wines come from his estate vineyard in Monterey County, which is farmed biodynamically (and is mostly composed of Chualar and Danville Sandy Clay Loams, if you want to really geek out about it). This vintage of his Muscat is wildly aromatic, all spice-gumdrop, melon and tangerine, and manages to be full-bodied in texture without actually being particularly heavy or high in alcohol (it's 12.5%). Moreover, it's made from Moscato Giallo—an semi-obscure muscat clone from Italy's Alto Adige—with 12% Loureiro, an even more obscure Portuguese white variety typically used in Vinho Verde. Regardless, it's a mighty tasty wine that sure makes me wish it were summer...

2007 Abbazia di Novacella Gewürztraminer ($25, find this wine) I tasted this a few months back when I was zooming through the Alto Adige on my way to Slovenia for a story, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. Intensely spicy, with a kind of spiced bosc pear character and lots of flavor, this comes off slightly sweeter than it actually is. The winemaker told me that there's only three grams per liter of sugar here, and that the perceived sweetness is mostly glycerin; he also told me that it was grown on calcareous soil, though the importer's website says, contrarily, "gravely sand of moronic origin." What sand of moronic origin might be I don't know, but I sort of love it.