Elden Wine

Based in Burgundy and specializing in small-production wines little known outside of France. Our services include:

• Elden Selections, a twice-yearly newsletter keeping you up-to-date with the complex world of Burgundy.
• Personal Importation We help you become the importer.
• The Burgundy Wine Institute, in collaboration with the BIVB Ecole des Vins, is a glass-in-hand exploration of the Burgundy vineyards.
• Past Issues of ‘Elden Selections’ back to 1996. With a Search function.
• Winemaker Profiles ‘Get to Know the Growers’.
• Ask the Winemakers We can put you in touch with the Producers… just ask!
• Tasting Notes from our regular cellar and in-house tastings.
• Members Forum Password access to special wines and older vintages, as well as our ‘Club House’ Forum.
• Elden France Introductory mixed sample cases for those of you living in Europe.
• At Home in Burgundy What’s great wine without great food? Recipes from Ellie’s book.

If you would like to receive a paper copy of ‘Elden Selections’, just send your mailing address to eldenwine@gmail.com

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Fall 2008

IT’S ONLY NATURAL
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Sometimes living in Burgundy is like being in a bubble. We’re an hour from Paris by TGV, but insulated from the ‘real world’. Our recent trip back to the US (it’s now the ‘old country’) was the usual culture shock. While we still speak the lingo and look the part, our fumbling at the gas pump and jarring ignorance of Starbuck’s jargon elicit sideways glances that say ‘did these guys just get out of prison?’. It’s been much the same with wine. The American wine world has changed dramatically since we left the States in 1983. And because of the Burgundy bubble, our perception of these changes is mostly intellectual: we read a lot, but rarely get a chance to taste. Besides, real Burgundians won’t even drink Bordeaux, let alone Russian River! Anyway, we set off to sell wine in the US with the dollar as weak as it’s been in a generation. A moratorium on euro-wine has left Burgundy stocks in most shops decimated. We were prepared for that, but shocked to see what’s filled the void. Not only is there an unbelievable range of US wine, aisle after aisle, rack upon rack, there’s also a mountain of stuff- with-logos, case-stacked head high on any remaining floor space. And the prices! We’ve been fighting for years to get the word out that good Burgundy doesn’t need to be expensive.  And here, even with an exchange rate that’s killing us, we find a bottle from one of our producers, a Bourgogne Chardonnay 05 from Pascal Borgeot, simple white Burgundy, structured and elegant. $14.99, it was. Across the aisle, dozens of wines at twice the price. You know the ones: same grape, over-oaked and too much California sun. Worse still, some special cuvée of Yellow Tail was going for $17.99, and flying off the shelf.  Then there was a Capitain-Gagnerot Bourgogne Pinot Noir 05, again a simple Burgundy from a great winemaker, deep and earthy, mouthwateringly fresh. Twenty bucks. Across the way— on display, mind you — West Coast Pinots going for $50 and up. Crafted, surely; but crafty too. And then there are those good value techno-reds coming up from the other hemisphere: correct, abundant and dead-end dull. But rather than bore you with more of our holiday snapshots, we’ll let one image speak for all our rummaging and rumination. Simple Burgundy vs. Napa Valley ego-wine vs. yellow-whatever: the old, the new, and the Brave New Worlds. Now, we know what we like; and you know what you like. And obviously there’s a wine for every palate (or is it a palate for every wine?) What direction is our precious wine culture headed?  They say that wine is a natural product. We’re not so sure what that means anymore. Read the rest of this newsletter >>

Posted by Dennis December 2007