In my humble opinion, our chef friends who contribute to our wine clubs come up with their best material in the fall. While summer asks us to whip up a dish as quickly as possible so we can spend more time outside, autumn calls us back inside, to chop away while we listen to music, stir a simmering pot, check on a roast, and bask in a warm, glowing kitchen. Maybe it’s just me who does my best cooking in the fall, but either way, I am excited to dig into the four recipes included in this sampler, created for past autumn wine clubs.
     Gougères are the quintessential apéro snack for the coming months, and Tanya Holland’s secret is to pair them with Seyssel’s exuberant sparkling “Petit Royal.” Inspired by a fall trip to Tuscany, Gary Podesto created a colder-weather version of pappa al pomodoro, perfectly suited to Sangiovese. There is no autumn without risotto, and Christopher Lee adorned his with meaty chanterelles and Bayonne ham: a match made in heaven with Kuentz-Bas’ bright and food-friendly Pinot Noir. And in one of my all-time favorite club recipes, Georgeanne Brennan prepared a chicken in a hearty mustard sauce and served it with Valentin Montanet’s joyous, soul-warming Bourgogne rouge.
     This month’s sampler includes a booklet of these four recipes and twelve fall-friendly wines for you to pursue your own inspired pairings at the table.

One of the first tips I received when I started at KLWM twenty years ago was from Bruce Neyers, our legendary and now-retired national sales manager, who told me to buy a case of Vieux Télégraphe and tuck it away in the cellar, year in and year out. He had gotten the advice years before from Kermit, who had written in 1992 that “no domaine comes close to Vieux Télégraphe’s record in terms of consistency, typicity, and aging potential.” Sage advice indeed, as before long, you’ll have a VT for any occasion, be it younger, older, darker, brighter, bolder, subtler—whatever floats your boat. The only thing needed to consider each vintage is whether that case should be in bottles or magnums, or, in Bruce’s case, both.
     Rest assured that if the Brunier family ever had even a hint of doubt that their epic plateau of La Crau, with old vines swimming in its famed sea of stones, did not give remarkable fruit, there simply wouldn’t be any Vieux Télégraphe made that vintage. That phenomenon remains extremely rare, the last occurrence being when a full-blown tornado tore through the vines in the middle of the growing season!
     September has come, and with it, as always, the arrival of the new release of VT, freshly racked from large, French oak casks after a two-year slumber, bottled unfiltered, and shipped to our shores.
     This year’s arrival, the 2024 vintage, is an essential piece to have in one’s VT collection. It is a wine of precision, balance, elegance, and silken texture—a vintage perfectly adapted for moderate and deft use of whole clusters, which is rare, Nicolas Brunier tells me. With a warm growing season, never once reaching heat-wave levels, each variety reached a clear and ideal expression in the blend: the Grenache shows restrained power, licorice notes, and supple tannins, the Mourvèdre gives its southern accent of wild black cherry and garrigue, while the Syrah adds that wonderful touch of crushed black pepper on top. The big news for this vintage is the first-ever addition of a parcel of Cinsault from La Crau, which graduated from the Télégramme cuvée to the mothership VT blend, adding a bit of a fresh strawberry lift.

During the heat wave in Europe a few months ago, I was bopping around Corsica with a couple of colleagues and a sunburn. I imagine the rugged, maquis-laden landscape always has an arid feel to it in the summer, but we were unprepared for the scorcher we experienced (we ran out of sunscreen on day two). For the seasoned vignerons we visited, it was business as usual. When we arrived at the Leccias’, we found Yves and his son, Orsu, outside the cellar working doggedly on some sort of tractor engine repair. Yves’ wife, Sandrine, agreed to show us the vineyards, and we piled into a 4×4 utility van—no AC, in case you were wondering. But from up in the vines, we could see all the way to the sea, and the amphitheater in which we stood seemed to be funneling a gentle breeze from the coast. Nearby stood an old, overgrown stone building sporting Corsican flag tapestries inside. Sandrine told us, “This is Orsu’s bar. During Covid, it was his secret hangout.” I could picture it, the then-teen holing up in the shade to take respite with a chilled bottle pulled from the cooler. It sounded heavenly just then, as the sun beat down on us relentlessly—Bar Leccia, a perfect spot to escape the trials and tribulations of our ever-changing world! Tasting through their new arrivals, each distinctly vivid and sea-kissed, it’s easy to be transported there.