Author: lgsjr

Great Experience; So-So Wine

It is Power Tasting’s policy not to give bad reviews of any wineries.  We feel that there are so many wonderful wines and so many owners who do their best to make their visitors feel welcome that there is no need for negativism.  If we feel that a particular winery makes poor wine, the less said the better.  But Power Tasting is about the experience of wine tasting as a whole: the architecture, ambiance, scenery and décor as well as the wines themselves.

We are not arrogant enough to think that we have the last word on the quality of wines; if a winery is in business, someone must like what they sell.  There are some wineries where we are not crazy about the wines but find the overall experience to be pleasurable.

If we had all the time in the world to go wine tasting and an infinite capacity to imbibe alcohol, we could just visit tasting room after tasting room without a care.  But our time in Wine Country is limited and precious and, as with everyone, we need to be cautious about how much we drink, even if we are only sipping.  So it becomes a question of how we treat those establishments where we don’t appreciate the wines but do enjoy all the rest.

Certain places come to mind, although we will not mention names.  There is one in Napa Valley decorated with fine antiques, with a large fireplace and comfortable sofas and chairs.  It would be the library of our dreams, the kind of place where we would sit with a vin de méditation and read great literature.  But we don’t like the wine.

There is another in the southwest of France, high up on a hill with a grand castle and magnificent views over the valley.  It is out of the way and hard to find, so it is never busy.  We could easily fantasize that it was ours, where we would host grand dinners in the garden, overlooking the vines.  But we don’t like the wine.

Another example is a fine old Long Island mansion with “good bones” as the realtors would have it.  It is quite historic in the North Fork’s brief history.  There seem to be concerts and weddings there every weekend.  But we don’t like the wine.

So what to say about these places?  We know about them because we visited them without having any idea of what we would find.  Even though we were disappointed in the wines we tasted, we took some enjoyment from our visits.  We often urge visitors in a section of Wine Country they have never visited to do their homework and learn about the better wineries before they go, but it’s not a bad idea to take a chance every once in a while.  We have made some great discoveries that way.

Even if you are not enjoying the wine you’re being served, take advantage of the aspects of the building and the tasting room that you do like.  Carry your glass with you and look around and soak up the pleasures that that winery offers you.  There’s a great chance you’ll never pass this way again, so enjoy it while you’re there.

How Not to Get Lost in the Languedoc

We Americans like our driving to be easy.  We like highways and when we go wine tasting, we like there to be a few main roads that take us to all the wineries.  In Napa Valley it’s Route 29 and the Silverado Trail.  In Sonoma County it’s Route 101.  In some parts of Europe they feel the same way.  The main roads are the D2 in the Médoc and the Route des Grands Crus in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or.

The Languedoc is much older than these regions, wilder, more spread out and frankly, poorer.  Each appellation is somewhat self-contained covering a wide swath without much of a center point.  The vineyards and wineries are often on small, single-lane roads quite removed from the major roads.  These “major roads” are themselves two lanes wide and often twist through villages and turn around precipices.

The village of Minerve, for which the Minervois is named

Of course, you can use a GPS, as we did.  We named the voice of our guide Fifi and in fairness she always seemed to know the shortest route.  But the shortest is often (in fact, usually) not the best and we spent way too much time in a car that was narrower by two inches on either side than the paved road, following a tractor that was going ten miles an hour.  Passing was out of the question.

So if you’re going to go wine tasting in the Languedoc – and we hope you do – here are a few tips for getting around.

  • Don’t just rely on Fifi.  Check out the roads on the Internet before you set out.  If Google Maps says you should go the D11 to the D612 to the D909 and Fifi tries to take you on some tiny road, ignore her.  If despite that you do get lost, she can bail you out…eventually.
  • Get a good map.  Presumably, the French know where they’re going but you don’t.  So when you’re driving, say, to the Minervois, you want to go in the direction of Narbonne, until you don’t.  The map will let you pick off the names of towns and villages that are along your route so you can tell the difference between making headway and getting lost.  Particularly in the Languedoc, the names of towns can be confusing.  Murveil-les-Beziers is not the same place as Beziers, nor is Cazouls-les-Beziers.  You’ll get to Poilhes before you can learn to pronounce it.

The view from the walls of Beziers

  • Watch the signs closely.  The French are quite good at marking their roads.  If you keep a sharp eye, you’ll see the major destination on a green field at the top of road signs with several of the next villages listed below.  In the major winemaking areas, you will see signs pointing to châteaux and domaines with just barely enough time to take the indicated exit.  Then just keep going; eventually there will be another sign telling you where the winery is.

This sort of advice is useful in the Languedoc, but it’s also applicable in other less traveled areas of Wine Country.  So if you blunder about a bit, don’t worry.  Just enjoy the scenery.  You will get somewhere, if not always where you expected to go.

Château Grézan

There are so many French wines called Château This and Château That that it’s a surprise to find out, when you visit, that the chateau is little more than a farm house, if that.  Château is the French word for a castle and you would expect that the building on the premises of the vineyard would be at least a great house, if not a palace.

In California, the desire for such grandeur is reflected in some of the wineries’ names, such as Chateau Saint Jean and Chateau Montelena.  (To be fair, the winery at Chateau Montelena is quite grand.)  You can visit Castello Amoroso in Calistoga and see a recreated Tuscan castle, but remember this is the Disney version and all of it is fake.

Or you could go to the Languedoc, in Faugères region, and visit Château Grézan.  From the main road you will see a sign pointing towards the winery and if you look quickly, you’ll see the tops of a few towers.  You’ll drive up a long lane and then, suddenly, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are just before you.  This is the real deal, a castle.  You’ll drive through the large stone gate and park and someone will come to welcome you to taste the wines of Château Grézan (http://chateaugrezan-famillecrospujol.com/).

You’ll have a chance for what the French call a degustation and we call a wine tasting, of which more later.  But first a few words about the chateau.  There has been an edifice here since the 14th century.  In fact, the Cros-Pujol family, owners of the chateau and the vineyards, say that this has been a crossroads since Roman times.  It was a stopping place for pilgrims going to Compostela and it was an important regional base for the Knights Templar during the Crusades.  However, the castle fell into disrepair.  What you see now was reconstructed in 1824, inspired by the romantic vision of the Middle Ages that was rampant at the time.  Okay, Château Grézan is not an 800 year old chateau, but nearly 200 years is good enough for us.

You can sip Château Grézan’s wines in a stone-walled tasting room that is somewhat reminiscent of those in Napa Valley or Sonoma County.  There’s a bar and a table featuring giftware and there’s a rack of t-shirts.  The wines you can taste are red, white and rosé and they come in four categories: Les Icones (icons), La Collection, Les Appellations and Les Secrets de Famille.

The soil of Faugères is rather poor and stony, with schist being the predominant factor.  It gives the wines a spicy finish and they tend to be big round wines in this region.  Château Grézan’s top wine in the Faugères appellation (at least in price) is Les Schistes Dorés.  Oddly enough, we preferred their least expensive wine, the Grezan Rouge, which is a bit softer and more approachable.

There is one wine in the Family Secrets category, called Seculaire, that is 100% Carignan.  It is an unquestionable power hitter and should be aged for eight to ten years before drinking.  It cannot be marketed as a Faugères, since the appellation requires all wines to be blends.

The prices are a shock to Americans.  The Les Schistes Dorés is 25 euros ($29.50) and our favorite, the Grezan Rouge, is only nine euros ($10.60).  All that and a castle too!  How can you pass it by?

The Canal du Midi

Back in 1666, when Louis XIV was 28 years old and not yet the Sun King, he and his ministers decided to actualize a long-held dream: to connect Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea via a canal running through the Midi, a familiar name for the Southwest of France.  The engineering work fell to Pierre-Paul Riquet, who is still celebrated in that region, and it was completed by 1681.  All of which is mildly interesting history, except for the fact that you can boat, live and walk or bike along the Canal du Midi today.  If you are visiting Languedoc for wine tasting, leave yourself some time to enjoy the canal as well.

For the most part, the canal wends its way through shady glades and lovely little villages.  Life does not go very fast along the Canal du Midi.  It is 240 km. long but only 10 meters wide, just enough for two rather narrow boats to pass by.  You couldn’t go fast if you wanted to, unless you wanted to smash your boat against one that is anchored on the side, drown in a lock or take your head off passing under a low stone bridge.  So you are forced to slow down your inner clock, take it easy and enjoy the scenery.

Sometimes the best part of that scenery is the willows and reeds along the banks.  On others, it’s the pretty small villages along the canal and also the glimpse of castles and cathedrals off in the distance.  And if you’re walking or biking along the banks rather than boating, there are pleasant pathways that give way to breathtaking vistas especially, so we have found, as sunset approaches.  Both the boaters and the walkers seem to enjoy a friendly wave as they pass one another.

Our personal experience has been to take a tour from just outside Toulouse to a turning point half way to Carcassonne.  It’s only 30 or so kilometers and can be driven in a half an hour, but it took us all day.  There are other, similar tours all up and down the canal.  Make sure you find one that goes further than just around the sections that are in urban areas.  Nothing against cities, but the joy of the canal is the French countryside as you glide by. We have also spent time in a house along the canal, which was wonderful.

Another idea is to make the Canal du Midi the vacation itself.  We haven’t done it ourselves, but we know that you can rent a boat (called a péniche) and pilot yourself along the canal.  There are dinky little boats available as well as large cruisers that sleep up to 10 people, although we mostly have seen parties of six or fewer.  From what we can see from the banks, the most popular rental agency is the unimaginatively named company, Le Boat (www.leboat.com).

There are numerous places along the canal where you can pull up and spend the night or a few days.  If you are next to a village, you can pick up groceries or have your meals in cafés or serious French restaurants that line the shores.  It’s the best fun you’ll ever have in the 17th century.

Tasting in the Languedoc

Languedoc is in the southwest of France.  Until the 13th century, it was considered as a separate entity, Occitania, home of the troubadours, easy living and rich food.  There are no more troubadours, but the rest remains.  It is today the part of France with the greatest production of wine grapes.  The wine producing area is very large, stretching along the Mediterranean coast from the west of the Côtes du Rhône to the Spanish border and inland, at its furthest extreme, beyond Carcassonne.

Wine has been made here since this area was colonized by the Greeks.  Today, for the most part, the grapes grown here are of the Rhône variety: Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Cinsault and Carignan in red; Marsanne, Rousanne and Viognier in white.  There are more than 30 sub-regions recognized as AOCs (Appellations d’Origine Contrôlée), which are much the same as AVAs in the United States.  There are even more sub-sub-regions, called Indications Géographique Protégée, which are not quite as well recognized but may still make some excellent wines.

Sadly there was a time, not that long ago, when wines from the Languedoc were rough, alcoholic, sour and for some people, better used for cooking than drinking.  We are pleased to say that this is no longer the case.  The reason, as we see it, is the advent of organic winemaking in the last 10 to 15 years.  Referred to as bio by the French, it has sparked a revolution in Languedoc wines.  It may be attention to detail, more intense vinification techniques, stainless steel tanks or just plain cleanliness but the wines of the Languedoc today have little to do with the past.

Now, so we have found, there are many excellent wines to be had in red, white and pink.  And the prices are not to be believed.  For example, we have been drinking a rosé that Lucie in particular has enjoyed (Domaine l’Espinel) that costs less than five euros ($6).  There are some really interesting reds and whites for which the top  price we have seen is around 25 euros ($30).  Perhaps none of them are enough to make the great Chateauneuf du Papes worry, but they are really fine wines, full of complexity and depth and ready to drink now.  We think they will age well, but they may in fact be at their peak in a few years after harvest.

The wine tasting experience is a revelation.  The wineries are not crowded.  In fact in September, at the time of our visits, there have been no others sharing the tasting rooms with us.  And every winery seems to make eight to ten wines and the server wants you to try them all.  It does help to speak French, but we have found that all the servers are eager to try out their English.  Plus, most of them do not charge for tasting.

The Languedoc is sunbaked and can be quite warm, especially in the summer months.  Of course, this produces wines that are particularly flavorsome.  It is not California, with wineries lined up on highways.  No, on the contrary, you may have to drive around, get a little lost, and find wineries spaced out rather distant from each other even within AOC regions.  On the other hand, you are likely to make discoveries that you will remember warmly and search for in wine stores for years to come.  We have found that, for the most part, only the lowest quality wines on any vineyard’s list are the ones exported to North America so a wine tasting trip is likely to open your eyes – and your nose and tongue – to some delightful new experiences.

Plumpjack Winery

If you want to visit a winery with some serious clout, go to Plumpjack (www.plumpjackwinery.com) in Oakville in Napa Valley.  It is owned by Gavin Newsome (currently Lt. Governor of California and if the polls are to be believed, soon to be the Governor) and Gordon Getty (yes, that Getty family).  All of which has no meaning whatsoever with regard to the wine tasting experience when you go there.  Plumpjack is laid back, casual and definitely focused on the wine.

A word about the name.  Plumpjack refers to Sir John Falstaff, a character in several of Shakespeare’s historical plays.  He was a hearty, hard-drinking rogue and evidently that was the image that the owners wanted to give their winery.

The building housing the tasting room is no Napa palace, though clearly the owners could have afforded to build an architectural masterpiece if they had wanted to.  The fact that it is a quiet farmhouse (or so it seems) nestled within their vineyards says a lot about their approach to their wines: solid, approachable, focused on what’s in the glass and not on all the extraneous fol-de-rol that typifies some wine tasting experiences in Napa Valley.

And what’s in the glass is of very high quality.  They do make Merlots and Syrahs, but Plumpjack’s specialty (and the reason to taste there) is Cabernet Sauvignon.  The rating numbers given by the trade magazines don’t mean everything, but consistent high 90’s and a scattering of 100’s does mean something.  It tells the visitor that almost every harvest produces wines that are well worth tasting.

Plumpjack’s tasting room

The atmosphere of a tasting at Plumpjack is very important.  Even when the tasting room gets crowded (primarily on weekends) you don’t feel rushed or pressured.  The basic tasting charge of $40, while not out of line with other top-tier wineries, does keep down the size of the crowd.  You can stand up by the bar or take your glass outside to the porch or under the vines that grow alongside the building.  The views out over the vineyards add enormously to the pleasure of your tasting.

In addition to the tasting room, Plumpjack offers seated tastings.  One to consider, especially on weekends when you might want to avoid jammed tasting rooms, is Plumpjack’s hilltop tasting.  There’s a small hill on the property and they have a table at the top where the combination of wine and view are matchless.

The view from Plumpjack’s hill

Plumpjack is a “by appointment only” winery.  It’s always a good idea to have an appointment and on weekends it’s fairly necessary, but our experience has been that if you arrive and they’re not full, they’ll make room for you.

Worth noting is that Plumpjack also owns two other wineries, Odette in Stags Leap and Cade on Howell Mountain.  Your tasting at Plumpjack is likely to include some wines from these properties as well.

If your idea of a wine tasting experience is to party in fancy digs, Plumpjack isn’t for you.  But if you like serious wine in relaxed circumstances, make your way to Plumpjack on the Oakville Cross just off the Silverado Trail.  You’ll be happy there.

Winery Tours, Part 1: For Beginners

If you enjoy wine tasting and you’ve never taken a tour of a winery, you really ought to do it.  Wine making is one part farming, one part artistry and one part industry.  When we open bottles at home, we can see the artistry, how winemakers have induced humble grapes to tempt the eye, nose and tongue.  There’s a little bit of the industrial side as well, if you count the marketing that goes into the labels.

When you are actually there at a winery all three parts are right in front of you: the vineyards, the gleaming bottles and glasses at the bar and that factory right behind the tasting room.  Skipping that last part is to willfully ignore some of the mystery that ends when you swallow but begins in the field.  You really ought to gain an understanding of how the wine got from that vineyard to your mouth.

What follows is a word picture of a winery tour.  Keep in mind that this is a generalization, as each winery does more than a few things its own way.

Destemming at Saintsbury in Carneros

The grapes arrive at the winery in huge bins, packed to overflowing.  The stems and everything that isn’t grapes are removed and then the grapes are pressed.  (No, they don’t use feet anymore.)  The juice is transferred to vats and yeast is added to turn the sugar into alcohol.  Once that occurs and all the scummy stuff is removed, the juice is transferred to even larger vats where they are blended to get the mix that will eventually be wine.  From there the soon-to-be-wine is stored in barrels for months.  Finally it is pumped into bottles and the bottles are put in boxes to be sent to wine stores near you.

The barrel room at Donnafugata in Sicily

So now that we’ve told you how it’s done, why bother going?

  • There’s nothing like seeing it yourself.  It’s the same reason you go to a museum rather than looking at pictures on your cell phone.  There is the pleasure of knowing what the process actually looks like.  It’s not just bragging rights with your friends; it’s the internal satisfaction of having been there.
  • It may be a part of the tasting.  Quite a few wineries, particularly some of the best ones, are proud of the way they make wine and include a tour in the tasting and in fact you can’t taste without touring.  A few wineries that come to mind are Chappelet, Jordan and Cain in the US, almost all of the major châteaux in Bordeaux, and Biondi-Santi in Tuscany.
  • You get a sense of how difficult winemaking is.  Particularly if you have a chance to visit during the press, you’ll see how labor intensive the process of making wine can be, how much an investment needs to be made in equipment and personnel and how long the time is before the winery can make any money from the work that is done. So the next time you shell out some serious bucks at the wine store, you can say to yourself, “Yeah, I get it.  I know why it costs so much.”  Okay, maybe it still costs too much, but you’ll understand where the costs come from.

Impressions of South African Wine Tasting

Only one of us has been wine tasting in South Africa and Steve was only there briefly, so we can’t offer much in the way of recommendations or meaningful reviews.  So this will be about the experience, rather than the wines, which is what Power Tasting is all about.

Steve was in Cape Town on business and gave himself the weekend to overcome the jet lag.  He found himself alone, 8,000 miles from home and that Sunday was his birthday.  So to shake the blues he went wine tasting.

Fortunately, the best known winemaking areas in South Africa are quite near to Cape Town.  Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek are less than an hour’s drive from downtown.  Unfortunately, Steve had no car, no idea of where to go and besides they drive on the wrong side of the road there.  Then and now, the American dollar goes pretty far in South Africa, so Steve found a taxi and hired it for the day.

Nederburg Winery, with dining tables outside.  Photo courtesy of Spice4Life.

The taxi driver was no wine enthusiast and had no particular idea where he was going, either.  Steve had read up on South African wines and had a few wineries in mind for a visit.  He was lucky that they were fairly close to one another: Meerlust, Nederburg and Spier were on his list.  Amazingly quickly, Steve was seeing grape vines out the taxi window and in a half an hour he had arrived at Spier.

One thing he quickly learned was that they don’t call them vineyards but rather “wine farms” which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense.  The second thing he learned is that South Africa has a significant wine history.  In the 19th century, it was a world-class producer; the Constantia wine estate grew one of the world’s most coveted dessert wines.  (You can still get a sense of it with Klein Constantia Vin de Constance, but according to the historians it’s not the same thing.)  Next, Steve learned that many of the better wine farms have top-notch restaurants.  Steve’s lunch was local lamb chops and a bottle Nederburg’s best Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Drakenstein Mountains.  Photo courtesy of SA-Venues.com.

One of Steve’s best memories of his visit was the beauty of the vineyards at the foot of the Drakenstein (“Dragon’s Stone”) Mountains.  Of course there are many vineyard areas in Wine Country with vines and mountains, Napa Valley not the least.  But the views in Paarl and Franschhoek are particularly striking.

Most of the wines in South Africa are from familiar grapes but there is a sort of wine that is unique.  Called Pinotage, it is from grapes cross-bred between Pinot Noir and Cinsault, beginning in the 1920’s.  It doesn’t taste quite like anything else and frankly, we’re not big fans of Pinotage.  But it does add a certain local flavor to a visit to South Africa, where there are a few rather excellent wines, from better known grapes, to taste.

State Liquor Stores

Here’s a place to visit that you can’t visit anymore, and thank goodness for it.  But there is  some kind of nostalgia involved anyway.

In many US states and Canadian provinces, sales of alcoholic beverages are restricted to the government.  That’s all right because these stores are indistinguishable from the private wine and liquor stores in other states.  You walk down aisles with shelves stocked with wines, locally made and from around the world.  Just because it’s an SAQ store (Société des Alcools du Québec) or one run by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board makes no difference.  Do you really care if the profits go to the government instead of a private owner?

But it wasn’t always this.  Just because Prohibition ended in the United States in 1933 and in 1920 in Canada (a wartime provision) didn’t mean that drinking alcoholic beverages was universally accepted.  In fact, in many places it was considered to be a sin.  Therefore, various jurisdictions reached the rather contradictory conclusion that if the state or province was opposed to sin it should nonetheless profit from the sinners.  But they needed to be well aware that they were sinning.  Hence, the state stores were born.

Photo courtesy of virginiaplaces.org

There were no aisles to wander.  There were no gaily decorated bottles to see.  There was no one to ask for a recommendation of what to serve with dinner that night.  What there was was a counter, some civil servants and racks of bottles behind the counter, “unauthorized entry prohibited”.  There was a price list of the products for sale in a plastic folder on the counter and you asked one of the civil servants to get you a bottle of whatever you intended to buy.  These individuals were there to serve you, but it definitely wasn’t service with a smile.

It became a rite of passage for a teenage boy to enter a state store with a driver’s license clenched in his fist and ask for…what?  Something.  Anything.  Just to prove that he could do it.  Drinking from that bottle was almost an afterthought and it was surely not going to be a fine wine from the vineyards of Bordeaux (he probably couldn’t pronounce it, much less spell it).  More likely he said, in a tremulous voice, “I’ll have a bottle of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, please”. Thus were the wages of sin paid.

Note that we refer to teenage boys.  Legally speaking, girls were allowed but that just wasn’t done in those times.  In fact, it was a brave grown woman who entered a state store.  Moms looked askance if Dads even took their little children into a state store with them.  Lucie’s Dad took her and she still remembers her Mom’s comments when they got home.

The whole point was that you were supposed to feel guilty.  Guilt was the cement that bound the drinker with society, and it was guilt that washed the sin away from the state or provincial coffers.  The underlying schizophrenia of such a system had to become unsupportable over time.  Eventually, the governments came to realize that they could make more money from sin if they made it seem attractive rather than reprehensible.  And so the stores became as they were and still are in their less restrictive neighboring states.

For those of us who enjoy tasting and drinking wine responsibly, it is hard to think back on these benighted times.  But it’s good to do so from time to time, if only to put our pleasant avocation in context of our times…and those gone by.

Château Portier

Beaujolais is a section of Wine Country just north of the French city of Lyon.  It is  well known for  the Beaujolais Nouveau released each November.  In Beaujolais, it is the celebration of the end of the harvest, without any pretention.  It’s a great marketing gimmick and is the inspiration for parties all over the French-speaking world, but these wines obscure the quality of some excellent wines made from the Gamay grape in this region.

A slightly chilled Beaujolais Villages goes well with a barbecue on a warm summer evening, but these wines aren’t very memorable, either.  The best of Beaujolais comes from the crus, 10 appellations in the northern end of the region.  All of them are named after villages (Chenas, Julienas, Morgon, Brouilly, etc.)  Well, all but one: Moulin à Vent, which means windmill.  And not just any windmill, but a specific one that became the emblem of this cru when the appellation was established in 1936. As noted, these folks have a flair for marketing.

The famous windmill of Moulin à Vent.

The windmill in question sits on a hill overlooking a wide valley, full of vineyards, in the town of Romanèch-Thorins.  Right across the road from the windmill is Château Portier, whose wines will provide a good introduction to this well-regarded region of Beaujolais.  (Because it is the closest to the windmill, the owners of Château Portier are the official custodians of the landmark.)

One of the outbuildings at Chateau Portier.

The proprietor is Denis Chastel-Sauzet, who is the president of the Moulin à Vent vintners association.  We’re not sure what the President’s duties entail, but it is a good indication that the other winemakers hold M. Chastel-Sauzet in high regard.  The building that houses the winery is from the 19th century, with extensions that were there in the 16th and 17th centuries.  You can walk around the grounds, which offer pleasant views of these older buildings and of the valley.

The tasting room will remind no one of a Napa palace.  It’s a bit dank but it is functional.  And Château Portier bottles wines from all around the Beaujolais crus, in addition to several from Moulin à Vent.  It’s a better introduction to the quality wines of the region than in the Caveau de Moulin à Vent (the local winemakers’ cooperative) just down the road.

Many critics would say that the finest Beaujolais wines come from Moulin à Vent.  While we appreciate other crus, especially Morgon, we would be inclined to agree.  There is a richness in the mouthfeel in these wines that make them much more interesting than the easy-going Beaujolais Villages and certainly more so than Beaujolais Nouveau.  Top end Beaujolais wines deserve to be in any collector’s cellar and the best of them are age-worthy and can accompany many meals, from steak to salmon.  This is not to say that Château Portier is among the best of the region, but this winery is a worthy destination for a visitor who wants to see the famous moulin à vent (the windmill) and learn about the wines.