We think one reason so many people are uncomfortable about their knowledge of wine is that they’ve heard too many geeks over the years who pretend to know everything there is to know about wine. We’re here to tell you: Wine is a journey, not a destination, which means that all of us, no matter how much we know, are on the same road, just at different mile markers. If we ever felt we knew everything about wine, we’d move on to stamp collecting – OK, not stamp collecting, but some other hobby. To us, one of the most thrilling aspects of wine is discovering something new to our experience. Like Irancy.
We were at a restaurant in New York City called Bar Boulud that prides itself on its extensive list of Burgundy and Rhone wines. As we have said so often, good restaurants often offer wines that you’ll rarely see in stores, which makes the meal more interesting and also avoids the whole issue of the dreaded ”markup,” because if you can’t buy the wine at any price at the store down the street, the markup becomes far less relevant. On the list, we saw this red Burgundy: Ghislaine & Jean-Hugues Goisot Irancy ”Les Mazelots” 2005. We had never seen Irancy before. It was $59.
The wine arrived in a bottle that was somewhat oddly shaped, with a flowery label. When we asked the friendly sommelier where the heck Irancy was, he wasn’t sure himself, but he thought it was in the northern part of Burgundy. The wine was lovely – a fruity, fragrant and quite light Pinot Noir. It was an informal wine, one that might do well with a slight chill, and John felt the only thing he’d tasted that was similar was another obscure wine from Burgundy called Passetoutgrains, which is a blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay. The meal was lovely, but the wine made it special.
As soon as we got home, we ran to our books to look up Irancy. It is indeed an obscure wine that only received its own, official appellation in 1999. There are just 300 acres or so planted that produce maybe 70,000 cases of wine and it’s rarely exported. It is indeed in the northern part of Burgundy, near Chablis – and you can imagine how odd it is to be making red wine in Chablis country. While Irancy wines are primarily made from Pinot Noir, winemakers can add up to 10 percent Cesar and if you’ve never heard of that grape, either, you’re not alone. It’s an obscure and somewhat hearty-tasting grape often added to Irancy to give it some body.
The importer of our bottle, Polaner Selections of Mount Kisco, N.Y., said the winery makes only about 200 cases of the wine and exports just 15 cases to the U.S. The winery says its Irancy is 100 percent Pinot Noir.
Any Irancy is just about impossible to buy in the U.S., but we decided to try. Taking our own advice, we looked for it through four online sites: wine-searcher.com, wineaccess.com, winezap.com and winefetch.com. We didn’t find a single Irancy in the U.S. on wineaccess.com or winezap.com, but we found one in California on wine-searcher.com and one in New York on winefetch.com. When we called the store in New York, they’d sold out, but we bought two bottles of the Goisot Irancy, for $34.99 each, in California.
Wine, to us, is all about geography, history, sociology, discovery and adventure – as well as good flavors. Don’t be embarrassed about what you don’t know; consider it a gift that you have so many new wines to explore.
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