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Cigare Blanc - Cloud of Ignorance Unveiled

Why I Love Cigare Blanc - by Randall Grahm

2008 & 2004 in stock; inquire about 2006 & 2007 vintages

There has always been a received wisdom in the wine business about various "third rails," i.e. wines, no matter how great, the commercial prospects for which are believed to be essentially impossible. Alsatian white wines are generally believed to fall into this category (and their reds, well, hello!)  And then there are white Rhônes, of the homegrown or expatriate ilk. Even the greats, the very greats - Chave, Chapoutier, Château Grillet, were believed to be largely unsaleable for many years. Against this backdrop and with the extreme predilection for lost but noble causes, we began making Le Cigare Blanc in 2003. On the one hand, it seemed to make perfect sense. We would use the principle grapes of white Châteauneuf-du-Pape - Roussanne and Grenache Blanc and create a companion bottling for our flagship, Le Cigare Volant. The first years were tough going, truth be told. The wines were generally not so prepossessing in their youth. (Roussanne has a fairly astringent skin - it is a russeted grape - and the young wine can be slightly tannic.) But we eventually got the hang of things.  More intervention in the vineyard to get the two sides of the grape to ripen more evenly, better restriction of yield. I persuaded the grower of Beeswax Vineyard - the most aptly named vineyard from whence Cigare Blanc derives (there is an unmistakable beeswax character to the wine with a little bit of bottle age), to adopt an unorthodox irrigation style that promotes very deep and wide ranging root-system development. (That practice plus the use of biodynamic sprays and compost has really helped to accentuate the wonderful mineral aspect of the wine.)

 

The winemaking got better - very careful pressing to avoid astringency - and the wines, whether by chance or design, received some good bottle ageing. And then suddenly I found that I no longer needed to shuffle my feet and vaguely apologize for the wine, but found that it was now blowing minds and thoroughly delighting palates. And most extraordinarily, it was selling, especially in fine dining restaurants with the capability of doing wine pairings. (I am told that white Rhônes in general as a category, are now seriously fashionable.) For Cigare Blanc is a gastronomic wine par excellence, a great foil to dishes with a little bit of fat - butter and cream sauces, even the generalized richness one finds in a lobster. There is a wonderful suggestion of autumnal fruit in Cigare Blanc - quince and perhaps Asian pear - the skin of the pear to be precise, possessing a most haunting fragrance. There is a lovely herbal, almost minty note - spearmint(?), a beautiful foil to the ripe succulent pome fruit aspect. I can't say that Cigare Blanc pairs with everything, but I did have it recently with sushi rolls served with fresh wasabi, and everyone at the table just went nuts with the felicity of the pairing.  If you have the opportunity to find a bottle of Cigare Blanc with several years of age, you will be thrilled with its great complexity, and thankful for the cloud of ignorance that has surrounded this wine (and those of its ilk) for so many years.