Luckily for those who give-and those who receive-spirits as holiday presents, each year brings new versions of old favorites as well as new labels and related products to provide an ever ample range of selections.
This year, for instance, Schieffelin & Somerset has come up with an item that the man/woman who has everything almost certainly still doesn’t have-a sturdy wooden back bar display rack that’s designed to hold the wine company’s six “classic malts” scotch brands.
The six brands, a natural for comparative tastings, consist of a single-malt from each of the Scotland’s traditional distilling regions: a 10-year-old Talisker from Skye, a 14-year-old Oban from the West Highlands, Islay’s 16-year-old Lagavulin, a 10-year-old Glenkinchie from the Lowlands, a 15-year-old Dalwhinnie from the Highlands and a 12-year-old Cragganmore from Speyside.
To obtain the rack, call 214-638-9090 for a credit-card purchase or write The Classic Malts Society, P.O. Box 224524, Dallas, Texas. 75222. The $55 price includes shipping and handling. To fill the rack with the six brands would take an additional $200 at a local liquor store. Should that expense seem somewhat steep, a sampler pack of .75 ml miniatures is available for a suggested retail price of $19.99 and could be presented with the rack as a “starter set.”
Across the Irish Sea from Scotland, the marketers at Bushmills, which considers itself “the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery,” haven’t been asleep at the still. They are offering shares in “millennium malt,” a single-malt whiskey created in 1975 that will be bottled to mark the arrival of the 21st Century. The gimmick here is the size of each share. What is being sold are casks, 350 of them, each one priced at $5,000. (For those who would subdivide their cask among friends, it will yield 228 bottles.) Only residents of Illinois, New York and California are eligible. For further information about millennium malt and orders, call 1-800-428-7464-557.
America’s bourbon producers have responded to the successful niche marketing of single-malt scotch by introducing several single-barrel and superpremium products. Jim Beam brands, for example, has four on the market. A comparative tasting of Basil Hayden’s, Baker’s, Booker’s and Knob Creek left me in awe of Booker’s and in love with Knob Creek. Booker’s, uncut after six to eight years in cask and weighing in at 125 proof, is both remarkably strong and full of nuance-truly a sipping whiskey. (At $50, you’ll want to sip it to make the bottle last longer.) At a mere 100 proof, the 9-year-old, $25-a-bottle Knob Creek has a more subtle smell, with hints of vanilla and oak, and is deceptively easy to swallow.
Despite all the curiosity about single-malts, blended whiskey is the core of the Scotch industry. One of the finest examples-if not the finest-of this genre is the classy brand called Usquaebach. Owned and passionately promoted by an American, Stanley J. Stankiwicz, the “Baron of Pittsburgh,” this whiskey is remarkably attractive to smell and very smooth to taste. But the $70 price tag on the original blend, which is sold in a porcelain flagon, limited its sales. Now two other grades of Usquaebach are available in traditional bottles, the “reserve” at about $25 and the “special” at about $18.
As for wine, it’s a buyer’s market this year. Bargains include:
A good example of the well-made, reasonably priced wines coming from around the world is the Conde de Valdemar Rioja wines from the Spanish firm of Martinez Bujanda. A good gift would be the 1987 Conde de Valdemar Reserva. Aged more than four years in barrel and bottle, it has been bred for current consumption. The suggested retail price is $12.
For chardonnay, look to California’s Santa Barbara County, where they tend to be sunny and buttery but with a crisp acid underpinning. Among others, consider the 1991 Meridian (about $10) and the 1991 Davis Bynum (about $14).
Champagne prices are so competitive this holiday season that buying a case should be considered. For the real thing, from France’s Champagne region, the non-vintage Mumm Cordon Rouge (suggested retail $23) is a good choice. A pleasant-tasting non-champagne French sparkler is Charles de Fere brut tradition imported by Boisset ($9).
Closer to home, three prestige cuvees from California show the impressive strides being made by winemakers there. Schramsberg has released the second vintage of its top-of-the-line J. Schram, made in 1988. It’s a creamy, long-lasting, nuance-filled wine priced at about $50. (Don’t ignore the rich and refreshing 1986 Schramsberg blanc de noirs, $23, either.) Roederer Estate’s Michel Salgues is justifiably proud of his new 1989 L’Ermitage. From its tiny bubbles to the lingering but subtle aftertaste, this is an elegant, sophisticated wine. Only 4,500 cases were produced, with a suggested retail price of $35 per bottle.
For label shoppers, some stunning-looking bottles with wines of substance inside them make up Benzinger’s Imagery Series, which are very limited bottlings of wines from California and abroad. Released earlier this year were a splendid 1989 petite sirah, along with a very good 1989 cabernet franc and 1990 syrah. All three wines carry a suggested retail of $16. The bottle labeled “International Imagery” ($28) is a blend of wines from four nations.
This year the wine world’s comeback kid is zinfandel. Consumers are gradually realizing that this wine can be-and should be-red and that it provides some real taste treats at prices between $8 and $12. Some notable examples: Rosenblum 1991 (winner of “World Champion Inexpensive Red Wine” in Beverage Tasting Institute’s World Wine Championship) and 1990 Benzinger of Glen Ellen, 1991 Limerick Lane; 1991 Navarro; 1992 Perry Creek Vineyards; 1991 Saucelito Canyon Vineyard; 1991 Seghesio Winery; 1990 V. Satttui Winery; Suzanne’s Vineyard-all gold medal winners at the 1993 Reno wine competition.
Perhaps the most significant symbol of zinfandel’s new status is the introduction of a zinfandel glass by the peripatetic George Riedel. Designed in cooperation with a quartet of winemakers, it has a tulip shape with a “slightly angular bowl,” a 14-ounce capacity and a suggested retail price of $19.50. This glass will help emphasize the ripe-berry-and-spice qualities of the wine while downplaying its tannin.
A number of comparative tastings have convinced me that wines truly do taste better in glasses made by the Riedel Crystal firm, based in Austria, than they do in other glasses. Riedel has also created special glasses for cognac, single-malt scotch and port. Riedel stemware comes in three series: handblown “sommelier” ($40 to $80 a glass), 24 percent crystal “vinum” ($20 to $25 a glass) and “ouverture” (about $8 a glass). For information on Riedel glasses in the Chicago area, call 1-800-642-1859. The International Wine Accessories catelog offers the full range of Riedel glasses. To order, call 1-800-527-4072.
Glass can play another role in enhancing the prestige of wine and spirits. Perhaps the most intriguing rags-to-riches story in the world of spirits is the emergence of grappa as a brandy of style and distinction. Once distilled from leftover grapes and stems after the wine crush, grappa was a coarse, harsh drink-the Italian version of white lightning. Now glassmakers are commissioned to produce masterpiece bottles to hold grappas that are produced with the tenderness and care awarded great still wines and are sold at astonishing prices. One of the best for giftgiving is the wood-aged grappa di blange, distilled in Piedmont by the very stylish Ceretto brothers from the white Arneis grape. The grappa is smooth and the packaging superb: a triangular-shaped black glass bottle designed by Giacomo Bersanetti of Milan. It is meant to suggest “a 19th Century noblewoman wearing a narrow-waisted dress with a long flowing skirt.” All for a mere $90 a bottle.
