Thursday, April 13, 2006

Pouilly Fuisse

Some readers may recall that I do enjoy a glass of vino now and then. And as my spending totals proved, it tends to be cheapo plonk. Wine is one of those funny things where the prices range from quite inexpensive to astronomical, and most people have no idea whether spending the extra money would really make it more enjoyable. I am probably one of those people, but as I have yet to taste a wine that cost more than $75 a bottle, I can't say for sure. Sometimes I suspect that the exact qualities I enjoy in my favorite wines would be Robert Parker's main complaints about them. Other times I am quite sure that I am a born connoisseur, who would be so transported by the ecstasy of such consumption that normal daily life with its mundane beverages would never again satisfy me and I'd waste away in some kind of oenophilic malaise...
But one thing I do know about wine is that I tend to enjoy Pouilly Fuisse, but it is always about twice the price of what I am usually willing to spend on a bottle of wine. But tonight, since I had been teetotaling it since last Wednesday... no wait, since Saturday night... ok, somewhat less than 120 hours... long enough, anyway, that I decided to give myself a little treat and buy a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse to accompany the fish I would be cooking for dinner. I happened to be buying my groceries across the street from a nice little wine shop, one where they have half bottles. Even though a half bottle of wine is probably always more expensive than half the price of a full bottle, I like my treats to come in small doses, so I paid $13 for a half-bottle of 2003 Domaine des Maillettes, which I am rattling off as if it means something, but for all I know may be the crappiest Pouilly Fuisse ever bottled.
In any case, I thought it was tasty... and well worth the time it took me to figure out how to make the proper accent aigu on my Mac...and then trying to figure out why Blogger wouldn't publish the post with them in it. So for all you sticklers out there, hey, I tried.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I adore Pouilly-Fuisse too! Usually anything from Maison Louis Jadot makes me smile, so consider it when making your next foray to the wine shop. As an aside, I've read your blog for a while, but am a first-time commenter here - thank you for being a literate, intellectual voice in the PF blogosphere. It's wonderful to hear someone address ideas and consider the bigger picture - kudos!

QuarterSaver said...

Hi Madame X,

I enjoy your blog very much. I'm a big wino, too, and will eventually do some wine recs on my site. But until that getting-down-to-brass-tacks post, I'd like to make a suggestion: Chardonnay from somewhere other than Pouilly-Fuissé, in a full-sized, screwcapped bottle (try some from New Zealand and Australia). I'm guessing that you go for the halves because it takes you a few days to get through a whole bottle? The wine is less likely to oxidize if you buy a screwcapped bottle and keep it in the fridge. Cheers, fellow wine lover!

Anonymous said...

Once the hype for the new NY Trader Joe's dies down, try Charles Shaw cabernet sold exclusively there. It cost only a couple of bucks and is perfect as an "everyday" wine.

http://www.traderjoes.com/new/chuckshaw.asp

Madame X said...

Thanks for the tips, all! I tend to only buy half bottles when I want to exceed my usual price range. Otherwise I buy whole bottles and save what I don't drink in the saved empty half-size bottles.

The other day I passed Trader Joe's and for the first time, there was no line... but it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. From what I hear it is still a zoo the rest of the time!

Dwight said...

Pouilly-Fuisse and other wines from the Macon region are nice alternatives to the expensive Burgundy wines from nearby. I'm not a huge Chardonnay fan, but all those areas usually in a style I like.

You might also like Pouilly-Fume, which is sauvignon blanc from the Loire region (the closeness in names tends to confuse people at first, but very different wines).

But the two most important words you need to know in tasting wine are "yum" and "yuck." If you like them, great!

Caitlin said...

you can get the accent aigu by using the html markup symbol to generate it it's ampersand followed by "e" (the letter you want to "accent") and then "acute" the style of accent followed by a semi-colon (which typically "closes" this type of markup symbol) -- all with no spaces like so: é (view source to see the html)

I'm no stickler but you seemed curious ;)