Description
En Tirage, “Recently Disgorged” Blanc de Blancs
A unicorn wine?! To be clear, today’s spectacular bottling is not a “unicorn wine” in the truest sense of the phrase. As in, it’s not a Ridge “Eisele” Cabernet, Leflaive Montrachet, or an old Gentaz-Dervieux. It’s also not thousands upon thousands of dollars. What it is, though, is an extremely special, seldomly/sparingly produced sparkling wine that’s only seen three releases in the last 33 vintages: 1990, 1992, and 2010. A rarity of this magnitude makes Champagne Salon look like a mass-produced label! So where in Champagne, exactly, are we? We’re not. We’re not even in France—or Europe. We’re in Napa Valley’s Carneros, practically my backyard. Shocked yet? So were we once tasting this stunningly rich and long-aged “En Tirage” blanc de blancs!
Assuming you can get hands on one, these fascinating cuvées have fetched comparisons to Bollinger’s $300 “R.D.” bottling, and have also been heavily poured at The French Laundry, Napa Valley’s very own three-Michelin-star restaurant. Roughly 300 cases of today’s 2010 Blanc de Blancs were produced, and it lives up to its “Recently Disgorged” moniker: After spending the last 11 years on lees, it was fitted with a cork at the beginning of this year. Don’t miss out on this $49 scarcity or else you may be left waiting 10-20 years before the next release…or perhaps there won’t ever be another. Nobody really knows! Up to six bottles per person.
If you were to list the top vineyards of Burgundy, Grand Cru Corton-Charlemagne would be among them. So imagine, if you can, an unorthodox domaine going out of their way to craft a long-aged blanc de blancs from this exorbitantly priced real estate. Now keep that in mind while I take you across the globe to Napa Valley, and then apply the same logic to a producer fortunate enough to own premium “Las Amigas” fruit, one of Beckstoffer’s legendary vineyards. Although many estates that source here charge $50-$100 for their bottlings, Don Baumhefner of “En Tirage” decided to vigorously shake up the wine world. Not only did he make the singular decision to produce a méthode champenoise sparkling wine from this prime real estate, he then allowed today’s cuvée to mature 132 months on lees before disgorgement. And, amazingly, you get to experience this superbly long-aged, deeply integrated, richly layered stunner for $49. What would the price be if replicated in Burgundy? I shudder at the thought.
Don Baumhefner is not your typical California winemaker: Although he first started producing sparkling wine in the early 1980s, it wasn’t until 1990 when he decided to keep aging his bottles sur lie. Just like Bollinger R.D., which has since become his favorite Champagne label, he wanted to push aging to the extreme, so he kept cellaring and cellaring—and didn’t debut his ’90 vintage until 2010 (his ’92 was released in 2011). As you can probably deduce, this is not a savvy way to make any sort of profit, so he pumped the brakes on his “En Tirage” passion project between 1993-2009. However, in 2010, as he was disgorging his 1990, he once agan felt inspired to make another vintage bottling.
Today’s “Recently Disgorged” 2010 are the fruits of his labor and patience. Culled entirely from Beckstoffer’s “Las Amigas” vineyard in Carneros, this blanc de blancs is predominantly Chardonnay with a splash of Pinot Noir that spent 11 years aging on lees until disgorgement in January of 2021. It was given a light dosage of four grams.
This spills into an all-purpose stem with a deep yellow hue and lively mousse that needs 10-15 seconds to settle. The nose is intoxicating and rich with baked yellow and red apple, ripe Bosc pear, pineapple core, marzipan, crushed hazelnuts, brioche, honeysuckle, lemon curd, citrus blossoms, and wet stone. The palate is medium-bodied, complex, and wonderfully savory with a hint of smoky minerality trailing the sweeping core of mouthwatering orchard fruits. It can be thoroughly enjoyed now and over the next 5-7 years without losing any steam.
