April 2023 House Cru Quarterly Reds 6-pack
I had a total and thorough geek out moment while visiting with David Siozard in Bordeaux last year. I've spent many a week in Bordeaux over the last decade, most of it scratching my head trying to figure out why the region and its wines are still so popular. I find most of it boring, uninteresting, traditional, and tired.
Over the last six years we have really been sold on a wide lineup of wines made by twin brothers Laurent and David Siozard. What I receive from those guys from their 2 different properties--Chateau Lapinesse, and Domaine du Claouset, is just extraordinary. And through the power of direct importing we've been able to hand select their wines, right from the winery's front door, and bring them directly to our warehouse, just for you. Quite frankly, I find that pretty exciting.
Laurent and David had a new idea a few years ago, bottling a lineup of pure single variety wines (normally unheard of in Bordeaux, a blending capital). They call this lineup IPSUM--a shout out to the latin "new document" placeholder Lorem Ipsum which means "pain itself". But on its own, Ipsum simply means "itself" or "yourself"--as in, here are five bordeaux grape varieties, unusually, bottled on their own.
I've wrapped all five different of the Siozard IPSUM bottles into a tidy little 6-pack (you get two of the Malbec, because it's that good) for this quarter's mixed red 6-pack so you can try them out--maybe even side by side by side with friends if you want to geek out a little bit. Here they are:
- IPSUM Pur Cabernet Sauvignon 2020--a thoroughly delicious pure Cabernet, with dark color and an ample mouthfeel from a bit of tannin.
- IPSUM Pur Petit Verdot 2020--The smallest production of the Pur lineup with just a few thousand bottles produced. Purple, almost teeth-staining and loaded with blackberry fruit.
- IPSUM Pur Merlot 2020--Lovely aromatics of red fruits with an unmistakable forest floor aroma--fresh white mushrooms and a touch smoky. The Siozard's only "sans souffre" wine--no sulfur added!
- IPSUM Carmenere 2021--Probably the most popular year over year--rich, concentrated and chewy Bordeaux red but oh-so elegant and blousy
- IPSUM Malbec 2020--As noted above, you'll get two bottles of this one. I found it to be the most unique of the five with a blue/black fruit makeup, a fine dusty tannin, and a juicy teeth-staining quality. Just delcious.
And now I'm off on a rant....
Did you know that 1 in 3 people living in and around Bordeaux work directly in the wine business? That's out of a metropolis of 3 million! In other words, there's a LOT of Bordeaux wine in the market, much of it nameless, faceless, boring, and uninteresting. It could be that we don't sell or work with Bordeaux as much as we could. Sifting through the monolithic mountain of choices is daunting. And then, one can't even be sure that what they're getting comes from an actual estate winery. Lots of bottles are 'designed' by cooperatives and marketers with all sense of place long gone.
But now I think I've found a better way to buy Bordeaux. The best wines from the region are made in almost homeopathic quantities. Those tiny wineries and their minuscule productions generally sell their entire bottling to the big Bordeaux marketplace merchants, wipe their hands, and run to the bank. That same Bordeaux marketing machine sucks up all the well-known brands, then sells them off as a package to huge importers and distributors. At the end of the day, all that's left are the dregs. Mass-produced industrial junk that is, frankly, not interesting.
For a micro-importer like us, it's impossible to do business this way. First, we're not big enough to buy full containers (1100 cases) a year ahead of time, and second, the big brands are everywhere. Who wants to play that game? Me, no. But I do like to do, and bet a lot of you would to, is to pull up outside the door of a great small winery, get to know the owner, taste his wines, and drive away with a few cases. I bet, no, I KNOW, you would do that after a visit with David and Laurent.
This quarter's red 6-pack points the way.
Enjoy!