Some friends who run the local Thai restaurants recruited me to help
them choose wines for their BTG program. This consisted of tasting 4
different Chardonnays with 16 different Thai dishes and choosing the one
that went best with them. Given that Chardonnay would be one of the last
wines I'd serve with Thai food, this was a pretty thankless task (there
were also two Aussie Shirazes that we evaluated as well, with even more
dire results) with the eventual "winner" being a 2011 Coppola
"Director's Cut" Chardonnay that drew many of the dishes to a draw and
actually went surprisingly well with Tom Kha Gai. (The 2011 Drouhin St.
Veran, by contrast, went miserably with the food, despite being all of
our favorite on its own).

Having taken one for the team, I then opened a couple of wines that I'd
lugged along for just this reason:

2009 Frantz Saumon Montlouis 'Mineral +' was absolutely beguiling, lithe
and mineral (duh!) and bearing no imprint of the year with racy acidity
and no sense of ripeness. It went fabulously with the food and
disappeared instantly.

2010 Dashe Zinfandel L'Enfant Terrible McFadden Farms was also quite
splendid, despite the leaky cork it sported. I'd brought this along as a
red wine likely to go with Thai food, and the assembled tasters agreed.
It was quite lush yet restrained with a nicely acidic spine. I thought
that it showed significantly better than it had last year, too. The
fruit was still on the red side of the spectrum but with enough plummy
character to convince you that it might indeed be Zinfandel. The
restrained alcohol was evident in its ability to pair with some
seriously spicy food.

Last night with leftovers, I opened my first bottle of 2011 Marcel
Lapierre Morgon (sulfured) and was impressed with its lightness and red
fruited character. Lush yet light on its feet, this hit the perfect
balance between structure and accessibility, though no doubt it'll age
another 5-10 years. Jean and I both felt that it was the most pleasant
edition of this wine for perhaps the last decade. Jean's reaction ("Buy
a case!") is indicative of the enthusiasm generated.

Mark Lipton