3CUPS Blog

Gianfranco Alessandria Barolo
Piemonte, Italy
2004
$34.99 ($31.49 this weekend)
The past has returned, briefly. Recession has granted us a temporary return to days when high-quality small-grower Barolo was occasionally available to Italian wine fans for moderate prices. The 20th Century is back (at least for the weekend), but we get to keep our iPhones and snowboarding gold medals. What, you guys didn't get one? Maybe it's in the mail....

Nothing makes me look forward to coming into the shop as much as the promise of great, affordable Barolo waiting by the wine counter to greet me. Not as chipper as a Wal-Mart greeter, but more likely to let you eat all the osso bucco and wild mushrooms on toast you could possibly want in peace, without giving you a stare of reproach and concern. Stop by Friday and Saturday to taste this amazing red. Happy days are here again....

The Man... We have talented Piedmontese wine grower Mauro Veglio to thank for the existence of this wine. Veglio was able to convince Gianfranco Alessandria, his cousin, to begin estate-bottling fruit from his 5.5 hectares of vines. Gianfranco’s father had expanded this estate, founded by his grandfather in the 1940s, but both men had sold its fruit to other producers. Alessandria followed his father’s example until the late 1980s, when he began experimenting with bottling small quantities of wine. His first major release was in 1991. A 1993 Alessandria Barolo received Tre Bicchiere from Gambero Rosso, the prominent Italian food and wine publication. He was on the right path. The rest is history.

The Estate... Alessandria farms in Monforte, one of the hilltop villages of the Barolo D.O.C.G. This is the heart of the Italian Piedmont, a region considered by many in the wine community to make the best red wine in all of Italy. In 1996 Gianfranco completed an expansion and modernization of the winery’s cellars, upping production to a whopping 35,000 bottles annually.

Gayo
Indonesia
Sumatra
$15.99/lb.

The Coffee... Sumatra is one of the classic coffee origins: deep, velvet-bodied, earthy notes with hints of dry cocoa and spice swirl in each sip. Sumatran coffees are renowned for their sweetness and lack of acidity; the perfect afternoon or late night coffee! This coffee, from the northern Sumatran region of Aceh, is shade-grown by a cooperative of small producers dedicated to shade-growing on small, family-owned farms.

The coffees from Gayo are wondrous. Deep, chocolatey, and velvety, they manage to achieve a very rare thing in coffee: they are earthy without being dirty, they have a long, sweet aftertaste that is never cloying, and their sweet, syrupy body make a strong cup of Gayo like drinking molten dark chocolate.

The Region... Aceh, as the region on the northernmost tip of the island of Sumatra is called, is a fascinating and complicated place. Aceh has been troubled by political instability for years.  You might remember Aceh as the place where the tsunami in 2005 had a devastating effect.

The Cooperative... The Gayo cooperative, named after the indigenous Gayo people, is an island of stability in an ocean of chaos. A diverse and democratic group, the Gayo co-op includes Acehnese, Gayo, and Javanese in its numbers, and 20 percent of the producers in the co-op are women! This cooperative, formed in 1997, produces coffees of a unique quality: organic and shade grown, with a level of consistency and quality that is relatively unknown in Sumatra.

MARCH 3BOTTLES: BORDEAUX, $55

Bordeaux = Money. Everyone looks to get paid, but the Bordeaux trade is garishly capitalist in a way that unsettles me. I have a vague and silly notion about the product I sell, but it's how I feel so you all are stuck with my naivete. I find wine evocative of people and harmony with the nature they live in to be essentially worthwhile, and beautiful. It is hard to view Bordeaux using that romantic notion. The way that it is traded, and in many instances farmed (organic wine is a rarity in the region), the structure of Bordeaux estates, and the type of commerce they feed leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I buy the (scant few) bottles of Francois Raveneau Chablis that I will purchase every vintage, I never discuss or even think about the future value of this wine, because I am going to drink it. Its quality lies in bringing an evening of happiness to me and my family, or even maybe friends, assuming one day I make some. By the way, it's easy to make friends with Francois Raveneau on your table.... With Bordeaux of a similar price, the wine is generally discussed in terms of future dollar value, a logical flaw which has led to the blast off from sanity of the prices of the top 150 or so Bordeaux wines. They are lost in the stratosphere of extravagant luxury, a bottle to sip in your penthouse, admiring your newly acquired Basquiat, considering the merits of various small Pacific islands to purchase as a location for your next vacation retreat. They have become hard to justify, and even more painfully, they have become inaccessible to much of the wine loving public.

But millions of bottles of good, decent Bordeaux at sound prices are made every year. Some of this wine is the result of proud men and women unwilling to abandon the traditional type of wine that was made in the region for generations. Occasionally, more natural farming practices are being employed. So there is hope: Bordeaux for the rest of us is being made, and we are dedicated to finding and drinking it with the many foods that it complements and improves.  

This month's set includes Lex's version of the recipe for Gigot de Sept Heures, or Seven-Hour Lamb.  Yum.

Call (919 968 8993) or email me (jmurrie@3cups.net) to reserve your set.

March 1 - 6, 2010

Coastal Wines - Flight of 3 - $8
Dom. de la Pepiere Muscadet - $6/gl - $12.99/btl
Caruso Inzolia - $6/gl - $14.99/btl
Valle dell' Acate Frappato - $7/gl - $16.99/btl
Domaine de la Patience Merlot - $6/gl - $12.99/btl

We believe the retail wine price where you get the best wine for your money is $12-$20….sure, we stock wines less expensive and many which cost more, but we focus on $12-$20. Wine tastes better when you underpay for it and we pride ourselves in finding wines that taste more expensive than they are!

Folks who are shopping for wine often have two things in mind… the color, red or white… and about how much they want to spend. The more confidence customers have in the store's selection, the more they will spend.  In retail, conventional wisdom says: what sells is either the cheapest or what is considered the best and therefore is expensive.  Most of our wines fall in the middle, between $10 and $25.  Here's why…

1.  $5.99-$8.99… In the trade this is where most retailers focus, where the bulk of the sales are.  This is the magical price point where customers will happily, impulsively pick up a bottle and sometimes a case.  Brands like Yellow Tail, Smoking Loon, Toasted Head, and Turning Leaf are all professionally conceived brands where marketing firms concoct "cool" labels and branding to enhance the popularity of these inexpensive choices.  If you do the math, and I have, in order to achieve $7.99 on the retail shelf the actual juice, the wine, has to cost almost nothing.  Often these wines are made using the popular corporate mantra of "better living through modern chemistry" to achieve the low price point.  Wine does not require an ingredient panel or any disclosure about how the grapes made their way to wine.  These wines are to wine what particleboard is to wood… they fulfill a function, but the aesthetic leaves a bit to be desired.

2.  $35.00 and up… Famous,expensive, and prestigious wines are in demand, highly sought after and collected. They sell well.Not as well as they did in 2007. These wines are famous and collected… Silver Oak Cabernet, Chateau Latour, and Chateau de Beaucastel, to name a few.  Because they are popular, they are written up and evaluated in the monthly wine journals and cellared by wine enthusiasts.

3.  The "Sweetspot" $12-$20... These are the wines we are selling and promoting.  This is how much you have to pay in order to experience authentic flavor, the "sweet spot" where you can buy wines that taste complex and alive.  Some folks have called the wines we have at 3CUPS "invisible" because they fly underneath the radar screen of the wine press and because of the authentic nature of the farming, cannot slip under the magical price point of ten bucks!  Our wines include obscure grape varieties like Counoise, Albarino, or Frappato… or hail from little-acclaimed regions such as Bizkaiko Txakolina. 

Chateau Moulin de Tricot
Haut-Medoc 2006
$27.99, $25.19 this weekend

The wine... Utterly traditional Bordeaux from a vintage that was a great success at this estate. This wine is pure Margaux in character, a concentrated Cabernet-based red that on the palate seems both full and finely tuned. Consider picking up additional bottles for ageing, as wines of this traditional class are rare, particularly so at sane prices. I would recommend it with duck confit, potato gratin, haricots verts. Also simple grilled meats and stews, roasts and game meats would be a perfect match.

The estate... Bruno Rey is the proprietor of Chateau Moulin de Tricot in Margaux, a family estate that has been passed down generation-to-generation since the 19th century. Rey is a believer in old-style Margaux wines. His methods are honest and effective in creating the wines of the character and longevity that made his homeland famous. High-density vine plantings yield naturally low yields of flavorful fruit from his vines. He avoids chemical herbicides, favoring more natural and traditional farming practices. The grapes are harvested entirely by hand to allow poor-quality clusters to be left on the vine, and to avoid damage to the pristine fruit that would occur if they harvested using machines.

Shakisso Natural Sun-Dried

Ethiopia
Sidamo
$14.99/lb.

The Coffee... Shakisso is dried on wooden tables in the sun, resulting dried cherry flavors above dark chocolate and nuts.

The Legend... In the south of Ethiopia, in the region of Sidamo, sits the town of Shakisso. Surrounding Shakisso are mountains covered with forest, so dense that it appears almost black when viewed from above. This mysterious, dense tropical forest has been the source of speculation and wonder for thousands of years. This forest is said to conceal King Solomon's legendary gold mines, mythical animals and satyrs, and fierce warriors. From the forest also comes coffee, growing in the wild just as it has for eons.