Dorothy J. Gaiter & John Brecher

We hopped the M10 to attend a tasting in Harlem recently. We had no idea the bus would transport us to a different time. We were on our way to sample wines from Chile. Among the wineries represented, one named Santa Rosa de Lavaderos, from the Maule Valley in central Chile, was offering a vertical – 2018, 2020, 2022 – of its País. País? We rushed over.

Meet Ross Burtwell, executive chef and owner of Cabernet Grill in Fredericksburg, Texas, and the grill’s wine director, Elizabeth Rodriguez  Burtwell and his wife, Mariana, bought the Cabernet Grill in 2002 and, just four years later, decided to replace the international wine menu with an all-Texas list.

We were at the Association of African American Vintners’ 20th anniversary celebration in Oakland, Napa and Sonoma. Twenty years ago, three vintners – Edward Lee “Mac” McDonald, Vance Sharp and Dr. Ernest Bates – came together as the first members of an audacious undertaking, an association of Black winemakers. Audacious because at the time, Black faces were rare throughout the global wine industry. Although the number of Black people in the wine world is growing, from vineyard workers to those who make it and who sell it, of the more than 11,000 wineries in the U.S., fewer than one percent are owned by Black people or have a Black winemaker. 

Iris Duplantier Rideau is a legend and, at 85 years old, is finally getting the attention she deserves. She is Creole, born in New Orleans of mixed cultures and race; became a prominent businesswoman and social activist in Los Angeles; and then opened Rideau Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara, becoming the first Black woman to own a commercial winery in the U.S.

We toured Texas Wine Country for a few days and here are some brief impressions from first-time visitors.

--Texas’s signature red will be Tempranillo and white will be Viognier – or not. We’re starting with this because it’s marvelously controversial. Texas is so large that many in the industry don’t think it needs or can have a signature. We’d argue that wine regions require one or two to cut through the noise: New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Malbec from Argentina, and even New Mexico sparkling wine, for instance. “You do want to be known for something,” said Patrick Connelly, general manager of highly respected Becker Vineyard...

We almost didn’t write this column. We were approaching a special wedding anniversary -- which ones aren’t special? -- and we thought we’d return to Napa and Sonoma Wine Country to celebrate. We’d simply drive around to see the places that had sowed some of the seeds of who we’ve become, personally and professionally, since our first visit in 1975.

Sometimes you just fall in love with a wine, right? If it’s a magnum and it’s a Burgundy, that helps, but we’d guess most wine lovers remember a bottle – or two, or three – that they simply fell for, regardless of price or pedigree. That happened to us recently and here’s the story, which, like any good love story, has some angst in the middle but ultimately a happy ending.

A couple questions intrigued us in 2000 about the lack of progress in figuring out why some people suffered headaches after drinking wine. We were told then that there are dedicated opponents to alcohol consumption, no matter how moderate the consumption, inside and outside government. Modern prohibitionists are mounting efforts right now to further flag wine and other beverage alcohol as injurious to your health. 

In January, Pedroncelli Winery in Sonoma was surprised to receive a bottle of its own wine in the mail. It was their 1974 Cabernet Sauvignon. The man who sent it, Daniel Nasman, 88, from Port Townsend, Wash., explained that he had bought the bottle at the winery many years ago, but radiation therapy for cancer had significantly impaired his ability to taste. So he asked the Pedroncellis if they would like to try it instead.

Julie Pedroncelli St. John said she knew right away she wanted to save the wine for Open That Bottle Night. So on Saturday, Feb. 26 – at 3 p.m., so the entire staff could be there – she and her father, Jim, carefully opened it, toasted Nasman and let the memories flow.

We created OTBN in 1999 because so many of us have that one bottle that is always too special to open. It’s celebrated on the last Saturday in February. This year, it seemed like even more people than usual opened that bottle, from El Salvador to the Italian Alps to San Francisco.

We were concerned about the timing of OTBN this year. It took place just as Russia invaded Ukraine. But this horror seemed to make all of us even more aware how important it is to hold loved ones close and to support those in need. In Eagle, Colo., the Assembly Eagle restaurant donated a portion of all wine sales on OTBN to World Central Kitchen and Ukrainian refugees. Palmer Station in Antarctica combined its 16th OTBN with an art show, where Zenobia Evans, a longtime OTBN celebrant, painted a sunflower for Ukraine. In Me...

We had an interesting journey recently that took us back in time and to a future, we hope, when there are more ageable white wines on shelves.

We are often asked when a wine will be at its best, but that question is usually about red wines. There’s an assumption that whites won’t go the distance. In our case, we love white wines with some age. We came to that honestly: Throughout the 1980s, we bought and drank German Rieslings from the 1971, 1975 and 1976 vintages. They were not popular even back then, which meant we could afford them.

Over the years, some of our most remarkable experiences have been with older white wines, not just Riesling but others, such as well-cared-for Muscadet. In 1987, we visited a winery in Napa that was selling a decade-old Gewürztraminer from its library collection. We opened it right there at cellar temperature, shared it with the tasting room staff, and it was delicious.

Whites with some age can be hard to find. One of many reasons we enjoy Crabtree’s Kittle House Restaurant & Inn in Chappaqua, N.Y., is the collection of carefully cellared older white wines at reasonable prices on its list. Those wines are often once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like the delicious Alain Coche-Bizouard Meursault “l’Ormeau” 1994 that we enjoyed about two years ago for $85.

“Over the last year I have been tasting and assessing the quality of a lot of our older white Burgundies and others and am happy to say that there are many jewels in the cellar for those who can truly appreciate the unique qualities of gently aged, beautifully crafted wines,” owner John Crabtree wrote us when we inquired about the older whites he carried. His famous wine list is 155 pages long and has 5,000 selections for a total of 45,000 bottles.

All of this came to mind because of a small tasting the two of us had that we really didn’t expect to take us on this journey. A while back, a representative of Domäne Wachau, the famed Austrian co-op, sent us some samples when we couldn’t do a Zoom session. We have been fans of the winery for a very long time. Its wines are thoughtful, focused and often excellent values. The samples included Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Ried Achleiten 2019 ($46.00) and the 1999, fully 20 years older from the same vineyard but before regulations required that Ried, denoting a single vineyard, precede the vineyard’s name. On a ripeness scale for white wines from the Wachau, Smaragd is the ripest and must have an alcohol level of at least 12.5 percent. They are known for being long-lived.

We kept them for a few weeks to try them side by side, waiting for the right moment. We were sure the young wine would be tasty. We had high hopes for the 1999, but we also thought it might be more interesting than good, a bottle we’d enjoy drinking because of its history but lacking intensity and life at this point.

We were so wrong. Here are our notes, how we talk about w...