Wine List Pick: The Ryland Inn (Whitehouse Station, New Jersey)

Date: 10 February 2013
Wine: Domaine Confuron-Cotetidot 1996 Nuits-Saint-Georges
Cuisine: Modern American Farm-to-Table

Wine List: Value and splurge coexist in this deep collection, so peruse if you have the time. The Ryland Inn presumably inherited the cellar of the restaurant formerly inhabiting its space, accounting for its nice smattering of back vintages, including from regions other than you usually expect – namely Burgundy and Bordeaux.

Pick: Immediately, the well-priced Salon Champagne popped off the menu. Enticing. Then, I noticed the occasional vintage, producer or region missing on line items. I began mentally collecting questions then culled them to a few. The most important was, “What is the vintage of the Confuron-Cotetidot Nuits-Saint-George?”

A bottle was pulled to verify. The manager returned with a wine from the 1996 vintage, making my decision easy and quick. Bearing a price tag of approximately $140, my guess had been the bottle was a slightly aggressively priced 2008 or 2009, but I would have happily chosen the former. (The 2009s need some time to loose their baby fat.) A 16-year-old wine worked much better! I figured this village level wine from a good, but not fine, vintage should be into its core, more mature years. It drank beautifully, seemingly insisting it still has a good way to go.