David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

Il Popolo del Sangiovese

Posted on 20/04/2017 by dccrossley

A group of us get together for occasional Tuscan lunches, usually based on Sangiovese reds with a few token Tuscan whites. I’m sure you’ve read about them on my Blog. There’s always a theme, but when you’ve run from Chianti Classico Normale to Brunello Riservas, something different is called for. So yesterday’s theme began as “Tuscan grape varieties from outside Tuscany”. As no one managed to find any Greek Vernaccia, nor Slovenian Trebbiano, it was agreed that we’d relax the whites. Someone also brought an Umbrian red grape, but we are not a spiteful bunch.

Lunch was at Popolo, in Rivington Street, close to Old Street Station, London, where Jon Lawson (who spent five years with Theo Randall) is head chef. It was my first visit to this tiny Shoreditch restaurant with an Italian flavour and a hint of Spain. The food was excellent. I started on Piquillo Pepper croquetas (too hungry to remember to photograph them), then lamb’s cheek pasta parcels (for me, the highlight, they were just so good). Then everyone shared bavette steaks and pigeon (not enough pigeon to go round all of us), before finishing with a cheese platter, including a Taleggio of exceptional quality. The service was friendly and we felt a genuine welcome. A great place.

One word on this lunch. You might get the impression from the notes on individual wines below that they were not all of stunning quality, that some were not very exciting, and that one or two were faulty. It is true that, for example, the wines were not of the same consistent quality as those at the last of these Tuscan lunches I went to – at The Glasshouse in Kew. But that would be misleading as to the success of the lunch.

Apart from the very good food at Popolo, and of course the company of good friends, it was the trying of these wines from such diverse sources, and with such diverse flavours, which made this lunch both satisfying and such fun. Exploration is surely as big a part of enjoying wine as a procession of fine vintages, where in fact quality can be drowned by the next wine which is just that tiny bit better.

We began with three whites. Hans Family Vineyards 2013 Marlborough Arneis (Herzog) was very attractive. Richer than the majority of bottles of the Piemontese version perhaps, but it still had a chalky texture with pear and peach stone, accompanying a floral nose. I managed to guess the grape, but went for Australia rather than New Zealand.

Montevecchio Vermentino 2016, Chalmers, Heathcote, Victoria was a clearskin wine, brought along by one of our friends at OW Loeb. It is a wine under consideration for their keg programme. Montevecchio is a second label of Chalmers, used for more experimental wines. This is a one-off as it was used to season some new botti which are now to be used for Sagrantino, so I understand. Lighter than the Arneis, in fact it hardly tasted like a warm climate wine, yet it does have real flavour. I’d have thought it would do well in keg. Very refreshing.

Timorasso “Fausto” 2012, Marina Coppi, Colli Tortonesi comes from the hills at the southeastern edge of Piemonte, beyond Alessandria and Tortona. Marina dedicates this wine, made from the rare but rather good Timorasso grape, to her grandfather, the great Italian cyclist, Fausto Coppi. It’s lovely, rather richer than the version of Timorasso I know best (Walter Massa, at Monleale), coming in at 14.5% abv. There’s a little skin contact for richness and texture, and it wears the alcohol well, with freshness to balance. It also developed whilst in the glass.

Sangiovese “1492”, 2012, Christobal, Mendoza, Argentina kicked off the reds. It’s a pretty commercial wine, but nevertheless very pleasant. There’s actually a good bit of Sangiovese in the country and I’d say that it has potential if taken seriously. This wine is, unashamedly, a fairly cheap quaffer, but not bad.

“Venustas”, Mark’s Vineyard Lot 1, 2012, Ambyth, Paso Robles was a nice foray into California. It’s actually a blend of Sangiovese and Tempranillo, made biodynamically. The Sangiovese makes up the larger part of the blend (54%), but the wine was quite oaky. We felt that perhaps the Tempranillo had soaked up a lot of oak, making it dominate a little. The 12.4% alcohol should have been seen as refreshingly low, but perhaps there was not enoughbody for the oak. A smooth and rich red, though, even if it was without very much evident Sangiovese character.

Australia is just starting to get better known outside of wine geek circles for its Italian varietals, though she has been making them for many years. A lot of the work has been done in Victoria (many of you will have come across the Gary Crittenden range), and that’s where we were for our first Aussie, Sangiovese 2014, Dal Zotto, King Valley. This was very true to the variety. Perhaps the higher elevation of the King Valley helps. Not too dark, with a certain lightness, smooth but with a nice lick of acidity. Someone remarked that it was quite like a Chianti Classico, which (having taken this wine) was exactly how I’d hoped it would be received. Red Squirrel have chosen well here, as this is no warm climate Sangiovese with no connection to its roots. Quite lip-smacking.

Sangiovese 2013, Payten & Jones, Yarra Valley hails from a producer I’d never come across before. They are based in the Valley’s wine centre, Healesville, and the vines for this wine are in the Yarra sub-region of Gruyere (sic). Payten & Jones are wedded to as little intervention as possible, and they joke on their web site that this wine makes itself, bar a quick look over the top of the newspaper every day. Quite grainy in texture, I got raspberries, and a touch of herbiness, but missed the juniper the producer describes. This was, once more, a decent wine, but it didn’t have the varietal definition of the Dal Zotto.

Grotte di Sole Patrimonio 2012, Antoine Arena, Corsica. Arena is Corsica’s best known producer, and Patrimonio one of its best known wines (up in the north of the island, close to Bastia). Arena make “natural wines”, and in fact they were one of the first few natural wine producers whose wines I tried. In fact they may have been the first whose wines didn’t taste volatile. Niellucciu (also sometimes Niellucio) is the synonym for Sangiovese in Corsica, although modern ampelography casts doubt on whether they are in fact the same variety.

This has masses of acidity and texture on the tongue, and some volatile acidity. It tasted super dry, and our resident Champagne expert suggested it may have undergone a slight second fermentation at some point whilst in bottle. It tasted to him like a fizz-free Sparkling Shiraz! So possibly a faulty bottle?

Back to Italy for the last two dry reds, and to that other bastion of Sangiovese production, Romagna. Romagna Sangiovese Superiore Riserva 2013 “Avi”, San Patrignano is a lovely wine made by a very special community, which gives hope and work to people who are recovering from addiction. They are a large foundation, with around 350 employees and more than 1,300 guests, who pay no fee for their rehabilitation therapy. Wine is but one part of the work experience available.

The group of people who attend these lunches often go on an annual trip to Tuscany, and it was on one of these trips that one of them was accosted in a quiet Florentine Piazza and lured to tasting these wines. When a good cause combines with good wine, there’s nothing to lose. The wine is rich, with plummy fruit and spices (nutmeg, cloves), making this a complex Riserva, capable of ageing, but showing its quality now. I found this wine very impressive.

Sangiovese di Romagna Riserva “Pruno” 2009, Drei Donà ought to have been the star of the day. Drei Donà is a well known producer whose Tenuta La Palazza estate lies inland between Ravenna and Rimini, north of San Marino, and close to the town of Forli. “Pruno” is their flagship wine, a single 3.2 hectare site of 100% Sangiovese, which at Riserva level sees 18 months in a mix of 500 litre and 250 litre French oak, plus a year in bottle before release. And we had a 2009 on the table. I was looking forward to this so much, but it was well and truly corked.

We finished off with two sweet wines, which were both, in their own way, off-topic. But they were also delicious, so we didn’t grumble. I guessed the grape variety in the blind red, Sagrantino Appassimento 2013, Chalmers, Heathcote. Another wine from Chalmers. Although Jasper Hill and other estates around Heathcote (inland in the State of Victoria) gained a name for Nebbiolo in the 1990s and 2000s, Chalmers has pioneered Italian varieties there, and has acted as a nursery for many vines planted by others in the region.

This dried grape wine has 13% alcohol, with hints of chocolate and spice, very sweet, but also “like grown up fruit juice” as someone put it. It did actually taste like the sweet Sagrantino wines I’ve tried in Italy, although the alcohol here didn’t appear out of balance, or too heady.

Our final wine was purchased off the list at Popolo, in order to have a second wine with the cheese course. Dominio del Urogallo Flor del Narcea Moscatel, Nicolas Marcos was stunningly good. Marcos was born in Spain’s Toro region, but left to make wine in Asturias. He worked for a while under Alain Graillot (of Crozes-Hermitage fame), whom he credits with changing his life. He believes in minimal intervention winemaking, and in wines which are low in alcohol, and which will partner food.

There is no doubt that this hard to describe Moscatel, complex and sweet but at the same time totally gulpable, is wonderful stuff, even taking into account the propensity to eulogise dessert wines after a (very) heavy alcohol intake over a three-and-a-half-hour lunch. But this really was good, and a producer I’d never tried, having missed him at the RAW WINE Fair in March.

Thanks for the delicious loquat, Ian. This fruit is native to China, but is now grown in Italy and Spain. A large bag of these came from Borough Market, and some were generously distributed after lunch.

Posted in Dining, Italian Wine, Wine | Tagged Ambyth Mark's Vineyard, Antoine Arena Niellucciu, Argentinian Sangiovese, Australian Italian Grape Varieties, Chalmers Heathcote Sagrantino Appassimento, Chalmers Montevecchio Vermentino, Christobal 1492 Sangiovese Mendoza, Christobal 1492 Sangiovesi Mendoza, Colli Tortonesi, Dal Zotto King Valley Sangiovese, Dominio del Urogallo Moscatel, Drei Dona Sangiovese Pruno, Grotte di Sole Patrimonio, Hans Family Arneis, Heathcote Vermentino, Herzog Marlborough Arneis, Marina Coppi Fausto, Nicolas Marcos, Nielluccio Patrimonio Arena, Paso Robles Sangiovese, Popolo Shoreditch, San Patrignano Sangiovese Avi, Sangiovese di Romagna, Timorasso, Tuscan Raiders Lunches | 5 Comments

Savoie Fare

Posted on 17/04/2017 by dccrossley

This article is really a bit of a plea for your help, though it’s not for myself that I ask it.

I’ve been drinking the wines of Savoie for even longer than I’ve been drinking Jura, but back in the day it was a different proposition. Whilst there were genuine discoveries in smarter ski resort wine shops, or in Annecy (often wines made by people called Quenard), the wines were mostly the co-operative type of fare, served up to uncomplaining skiers, to wash down the fondue. Yet there was always that feeling which suggested great potential in the whites, if only they could tap that alpine purity. And didn’t the red variety of the region, Mondeuse, have some sappy, brambly, appeal to it?

As time wore on, I began to find some of the qualities I was looking for, mainly among an older generation of small farmers who took pride in their wines. Occasionally an English merchant such as Yapp Brothers, Tanners, or The Wine Society, would bring in some wines of real interest and value (Yapp’s Domaine de L’Idylle comes to mind). At the same time, through local friends, I was introduced to the very obscure wines of Bugey, especially those, like the frothy pink Bugey-Cerdon made by the Méthode Ancestrale, which predate the popular pétillant naturel wines we drink today.

A very short introduction to French Alpine Wines

The wider wine region of Savoie stretches from the southern shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) in the east, via a spine of viticulture running down both sides of Lac du Bourget, to the most intensely farmed area of vines south of Chambéry. This is known as the Combe de Savoie, variously depicted in outline on a map as an object which some may see as a mallet, a hairdrier, a gamer’s joystick, or worse. Here, steep vineyards lining the slopes above the River Isère perhaps epitomise everything we imagine an alpine vineyard should be.

Savoie has many individual Crus, a product of the widespread nature of the vignoble. You will almost certainly come across Aprémont, Abymes, Chignin, Arbin and Cruet from the Combe, and perhaps Chautagne, Marestel and Jongieux, from near to Bourget, but there are others (16 in total).

To the northwest of Savoie lies Bugey, with disparate vineyards scattered in the alpine foothills around the southern edge of Jura (known as the Revermont), and into the Bresse plain. Within the Savoie region you will also find the Vins des Allobroges IGP, whilst some vineyards, increasingly of interest, stretch into the département of Isère. The most southerly vineyards which one might consider alpine are down towards the Drôme, way south of Grenoble. The Diois is generally best known for sparkling wines, Clairette and Crémant de Die, but still wines are also made here.

The alpine regions boast several of their own grape varieties. The vineyards in the east grow a lot of Chasselas, the same as their Swiss cousins on the lake’s north shore. It ranges from unexceptional (Marin) to worth trying (the richer Ripaille), to potentially fascinating (the lightly sparkling “Crépytant” wines of Crépy).

The main mountain vineyards of Savoie boast their own grape varieties: Jacquère, and Altesse (sometimes under the AOC of Roussette de Savoie), for whites, and Mondeuse for red, the latter being either fruity and light-ish, or occasionally with more structure and tannins providing potential for longevity. Additionally, you will find the Rhône’s Roussanne, and Burgundy’s Pinot Noir and Gamay.

There are several ancient varieties which are equally worth discovering, the best of these in my view being Gringet, made famous by perhaps Savoie’s finest producer, Domaine Belluard, who are based over in the tiny enclave of Ayze, just east of the valley of the River Arve, and of Bonneville (a town all lovers of Triumph motorcycles will hold dear to their heart).

Bugey grows a number of grape varieties. You will increasingly find interesting Pinot Noir, doing well alongside Mondeuse and Gamay. Savoie’s white grapes are joined by those of Burgundy, and even Jura. There has also been a real revival in the aforementioned méthode ancestrale sparklers (often made with Gamay and Poulsard when vinified as the pink Bugey-Cerdon).

Back in Savoie you’ll find Chardonnay used for a variety of other sparkling wines, either made by bottle fermentation (méthode traditionelle) under the relatively new Crémant de Savoie AOP, or merely tank fermented. Some readers will remember the once popular sparkling wines from the Seyssel AOC, which can be much improved today.

For the past few years I’ve been touting Savoie and Bugey as wine regions which are about to take off. This is in large part down to a younger generation learning from, and joining, the old masters. At the same time, the growth in “natural” wine and low intervention wine production seems to have reached these remote regions, and given winemaking a bit of a boost, and a profile outside the region. Like Jura, Savoie in particular provides cheaper vineyards, interesting autochthonous grape varieties, and a viticultural tradition due to be reawakened.

Wink Lorch has a new project!

The time is ripe to discover French Alpine Wines, and with remarkable perspicacity, along comes Wink Lorch with a project to introduce these wines to us. Wink needs little introduction to 90% of regular readers of my Blog. She is the author of one of the finest wine books of the past few years, Jura Wine. It brings that small but fashionable region to life in a scholarly way, touching on all aspects of Jura wine, history and culture, and with intensely evocative photographs, most taken by the well known Cephas lens of Mick Rock.

Wink, as she did for her Jura book, is undertaking a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, in order to fund the writing of her book, to be called Wines of the French Alps. It will cover all the regions I’ve mentioned above, and will follow pretty closely the format used in Jura Wine. Although she has long been acknowledged as the foremost authority on Jura wines, it is perhaps less well known that Wink actually spends half of her year in Savoie, and has an equal interest in the wines of that region and beyond.

Wink’s Kickstarter Campaign has, as I write, just 21 days to run. She has managed to raise pledges for around half the sum of £12,000, required to enable the project to move forward. There are several options for interested parties, ranging from a discounted copy of the book (publication due November 2017) through multi-book deals (ideal for wine shops), having a Savoie tasting event organised for you and your friends, right up to guided tours of Savoie (one day), or Savoie and Bugey (3-4 days).

I know this book will be good, but if my word does not sway you, the prestigious Best Drinks Book prize in the 2014 André Simon Food & Drink Awards for Wink’s Jura book ought to.

To find out more about Wink Lorch’s project, and her Kickstarter Campaign, and indeed to make a pledge, follow the link HERE.

You might ask why I am writing this? I know Wink just a little, meeting occasionally on the tasting circuit perhaps once or twice a year. I did assist her a tiny bit before, taking part in a Twitterthon along with many others to promote the Kickstarter Campaign for her Jura book. After all, I see myself as that region’s number two fan, after Wink. In this case, I just really want, no “need”, this book. I’ve made my own pledge and I sincerely hope that many readers will feel they would like to do the same.

Posted in Wine, Wine Books | Tagged Alpine Wine, Bugey Wine, French Alpine Wine, Kickstarter Wine Book Project, Savoie Wine, Wine Book, Wink Lorch | 3 Comments

Recent Wines (…ish)

Posted on 12/04/2017 by dccrossley

I’d fallen into writing a series of ongoing articles on “recent wines”, those I’ve been drinking at home. Not necessarily the poshest wines at all, but those I thought you’d enjoy reading about. But 2017 has really taken off in terms of the number of wine events I’m attending, and as we head into mid-April I haven’t written one since December last year.

So, catch-up time. I’d fallen into the habit of keeping these pieces to eight wines, but despite some heavy culling, I will stretch to twenty wines in order to bring us up-to-date. Don’t worry, I’ll split them into two articles over the next couple of weeks. The following bottles were drunk at home during January and February 2017. The next part will bring us up to Easter.

I hope you enjoy reading about my usual eclectic mix. I hate missing out a lot of very good wines, many of them being a bit too “classic” or, dare I say it, normal, for the many wine aficionados who I know read Wide World of Wine regularly. All of these wines below are worth seeking out, with the usual caveat that I’m talking here to the more adventurous wine lover. Let’s face it, who else reads my Blog?

“Simone” 2014, Vin de France, Julie Balagny (Beaujolais)

Julie’s wines just speak to me. I have been buying them in Paris for a few years, and continue to do so, but I shared a case after tasting this at the Tutto Wines tasting at Ducksoup in Soho last October (which you can search for quite easily on the Blog).

This particular wine is usually a “Fleurie”, but in the 2014 vintage the fermentation stuck and Julie had to restart it with some must from 2015. It’s not completely unusual. I know a young Jura grower who had a similar problem. So Vin de France it is. Light in colour, this is still vibrant cherry juice, with fruit and freshness (and just 12.5% abv). In fact it’s so fruity you forget it’s alcoholic, almost. Tutto will always sell out of Balagny’s wines as they are so sought after. But it’s worth asking.

Crémant d’Alsace Brut, Clément Klur

Klur is one of several new Alsace discoveries for me. He is based in Katzenthal, just a few kilometres more or less east of Colmar. Clément does like his slogans. This unsulphured sparkler, for instance, he calls “Crémant de Clément”, and his little quip “Klur, c’est Pur” on the back labels sums up his philosophy in the vineyard and cellar. This has fine bubbles, quite a floral nose, dry on the palate with apple and brioche, finishing with a citrus intensity. Klur is distributed in the UK by Alliance Wine, and mine was purchased from Solent Cellar (Lymington).

Allegro 2013, Castagna, Beechworth

Beechworth, in Victoria, is one of Australia’s most exciting wine regions, and ought to be seen as one of its most prestigious. Giaconda may well be the most famous of the wine estates here, but Castagna, along with producers like Sorrenberg, is not far behind. This wine is a rosé made from 100% Syrah, and if truth be known I was a little worried by its age. It’s not unknown, given the random mix of single bottles I own, for wines to get forgotten, as this one had. It was one of several wines I purchased after a tasting with Julian Castagna a couple of years ago (it was with the reds, which continue to age, gracefully I hope).

The Castagna vineyards in Beechworth are farmed biodynamically, and this wine is full of biodynamic life, even after three-and-a-half years post-harvest. Dark salmon pink in colour, the bouquet is quite evolved, both fruity but also hauntingly floral (violet). The palate was still very fresh, it has held up rather well. I include this here because Castagna is known for very fine red wines, and this is something rather different. A pink to match with Asian-Pacific food, perhaps. Altogether a lovely surprise.

Saint-Véran 2015, Domaine de la Croix Senaillet, Macon

This is a domaine unknown to me before a friend gave me this bottle. Richard and Stéphane Martin farm 25 plots on the slopes around Davayé. They make wines within the AOCs of Pouilly-Fuissé, Pouilly-Vinzelles and Macon-Davayé, along with six or seven St-Véran cuvées. This is their sulphur free bottling, from vines grown on limestone and clay, and made in oak.

It was very good indeed, a Southern Burgundy of real beauty. It opened a little dumb, but after ten minutes was really singing. There’s not masses of acidity, but the fruit is very ripe and the richness just seemed in balance. This is the sort of wine for which you pull out a word like “harmonious” and know it’s not being misused. The lack of acidity makes it seem a little understated, but its qualities build as you drink it, stopping just short of a crescendo. Not a wine for a grand Burgundy dinner, more one to surprise two or three genuine lovers of White Burgundy on a Wednesday or Thursday evening.

La Bruja de Rozas 2015, Comando G

An Instagram friend was asking me about wineries nearest to Madrid the other day. These guys may be an hour or so away, but if you want to try some of Spain’s most exciting wines right now, then the Gredos is one of the places to head for. Comando G is the joint venture between Daniel Jiménez Landi, Fernando Garcia (Marañones) and Marc Isart (Bernabeleva). As individuals they make the finest wines in the region, and in Comando G (the G is for Garnacha), they have revolutionised their chosen grape, turning it from jammy blockbuster into something fruity and pure.

“La Bruja” is labelled Vinos de Madrid, and comes from the Valle del Tiétar in the Sierra de Gredos. In fact, whilst Comando G make several wines from very tiny parcels, genuine terroir wines of Grand Cru quality (and prices), this is their “village wine”, from vineyards around Rozas del Puerto Real. The grapes are grown on granite at around 850 metres altitude, surely one of the key reasons these wines have a purity so rarely found in the past in Garnacha/Grenache wines.

It has a darkish colour, some tannins, and lots of concentration. I’d recently had a corked bottle of the 2014, so this bottle made up for it several times over. This will age a little, but it doesn’t have to. It’s a super wine and pretty exceptional value for money, the perfect introduction to the range. You can read about more Comando G wines, and also the wines of Daniel Landi, in my Viñateros writeup here.

Regnié 2014, Antoine Sunier

Many readers will have come across the wines of Julien Sunier. Antoine is his brother. Julien started making wine in 2008, and soon got spotted for his lovely Morgon, Fleurie and Regnié (working with Jasper Morris MW). Antoine’s wines are a more recent addition to the Beaujolais canon (2013), with most of his small holding of around five hectares being in Regnié.

Both Julien and Antoine make lovely Regnié, and in fact their wines have done much to raise the profile of this most recent addition to the Beaujolais Crus. If both make very good Regnié, and indeed I read someone recently suggesting that their Regniés might be their best wines, how do they differ? It is said that Antoine’s version is a little darker and a little more intense.

On the evidence of this 2014, it is very fruity indeed, the hallmark of the wines of all of the young generation of Beaujolais producers. Fermentation begins as a carbonic maceration, but then proceeds with punching down, as in what some call the Burgundian style. Antoine aims for a wine which has depth and terroir expression, and indeed he succeeds (not that I could claim to identify Regnié terroir myself). But for me, the essence of this wine is that it is light(ish) and fruity, exhibiting all the positives of a sulphur free natural wine, and the characteristics of this lighter Beaujolais Cru. Or, in fewer words, it’s simply delicious.

Fledermaus NV Deutscher Landwein, 2Naturkinder

Melanie Drese and Michael Voelker aver to make wines inspired by Alice Feiring’s definition of Natural Wine – “wine with the intent of nothing added and nothing taken away”. They worked in publishing (including in London, where they first got bitten by the natural wine bug), before taking over Michael’s father’s vines in Kitzingen, just east of Würzburg, in Franken (Franconia), Germany. They make several cuvées, this one being a blend of around 75% Müller-Thurgau with 25% Silvaner.

Cloudy and darkish yellow, this is going to put a lot of people off, at a guess. It’s cloudy because it’s unfiltered, and yellow because of skin contact. It comes off limestone soils, and other than the skin contact (in stainless steel), its vinification is not remarkable. It has undergone its malolactic, and it comes out with just 11.5% abv.

The nose is hard to describe as well, neither fruity nor herby. Perhaps it’s stone fruit you get? The palate is also rather hard to describe, because there’s both austerity and softness, which strangely cohabit in the same mouthful.

I’m sure that by now a couple of readers will be running scared, but it’s this slightly odd palate which frankly makes this wine, if not unique, one of a small bunch of hard to describe wines which leave some of us so irrepressibly fascinated.

The name comes from the fertiliser used on the vines, harvested from a local bat colony. I drank their equally edgy Bat-Nat pét-(b)nat, made from Pinot Meunier (Schwarzriesling) at our Oddities Christmas Lunch (at Brunswick House) in December, and was equally enthralled. I know fellow blogger Simon Reilly (www.wineloon.com) is a fan, he wrote about them in December last year, and was really the person who sparked my interest. 2Naturkinder wines can be found at small importer Wines Under the Bonnet.

Pinot Noir “Cuvée Julien” 2010, Côtes du Jura, J-F Ganevat

This is Ganevat’s simple entry level domaine Pinot Noir, but I kept a bottle to see how it would age. It probably wasn’t a big risk, based on the chosen vintage and the ability of J-F’s domaine wines to age well generally. The colour was vibrant pale red and the bouquet smelt intensely of raspberries. We are not looking at a kind of Burgundian complexity here, but more the kind of fruit-centred pleasure one hopes for with a Bourgogne Rouge from the finest domaines. But this cuvée does have the advantage of fairly old vines, planted in 1977 on Ganevat’s limestone/clay soils near La Combe, south of Lons-le-Saunier in the Revermont (a region between Jura and L’Ain).

What this wine dishes out is vivacity. At more than six years old, and with no added sulphur to protect it, you’d be hard pushed to nail this as a natural wine, I think. You shouldn’t expect complexity, as I said, but with its mouth filling fruit and very long and persistent finish, this is something quite magnificent in its simplicity. Perhaps it is in the wines at this level, rather than in the expensive masterpieces, that Jean-François best demonstrates his magicianship? If you ever were to buy wine after just looking at its colour in the glass, this might be the one.

“Mauvais Temps” 2013, IGP Aveyron, Nicolas Carmarans

The Aveyron is, without question, one of the most beautiful regions of France. It is also one of her poorest, most rural and, sadly, least well known to both tourists and wine lovers. Perhaps if I mention Marcillac, it will place Aveyron on the map a little more clearly?

What I can say without exaggeration about Nicolas Carmarans is that he is a very fine winemaker. After meeting him and his wife a year ago, I can also say that they are two of the nicest winemakers I’ve met, and nice winemakers is a pretty large field, is it not.

Carmarans used to own and run the Café de la Nouvelle Marie, one of the forerunners of the natural wine scene in Paris. Bitten by the bug he eventually moved to Campouriez, his old ancestral home village, near the former VDQS of Entraygues-et-Le Fel.

Mauvais Temps is the name of the vineyard, once a 20 hectare vine-clad slope until the devastating frosts of 1956. The land up here is mountainous, mostly on schist with some sands. The soils are largely volcanic in origin, near the edge of the Causse d’Aubrac. Most of the hillsides are covered in forest now, but they used to be covered in vines, making wine to slake the thirst of the coalmining industry. Coal mining has all but died out now, but it began around the town of Decazeville as early as the sixteenth century (the last mine closed in 2001, but I do remember small miner’s cottages in the late 1980s).

This red, the lightest in the range, is comprised 40% Négret de Banhars, 50% Fer Servadou (Mansois) and 10% Cabernet Franc, made by semi-carbonic maceration in conical wooden vats, after which it spent 12 months in old barriques. The resulting wine is light, but not simple, has only 11% abv, and is lovely. Pure grippy dark fruits sums it up, along with a soft concentration. It’s the kind of wine where one bottle is not enough. I wonder whether Nicolas has considered magnums…?

Just writing about this wine makes me yearn to go back to this beautiful part of France…and, of course, to visit Les Carmarans.

Chardonnay Vielles Vignes 2012, Vin de Pays de Franche-Comté, Vignoble Guillaume

Guillaume is probably best known to French winemakers as one of the country’s best vine nurserymen, Pépinières Guillaume. Their operations are based in Charcenne, near Gy. But they are also the largest producers of what used to be called Vins de Pays de Franche-Comté (now IGP), Franche-Comté being the French region in which you will find Jura. Their range is surprisingly large (more than twenty wines are stocked by Theatre of Wine in London), perhaps a result of the large number of grape varieties grown by the nursery side of the business. One of the best wines in the range is a Vin Jaune lookalike called Cuvée des Archevêques, made from Savagnin, well worth asking for if you visit one of Theatre of Wine’s three shops in Greenwich, Tufnell Park or Leytonstone.

The best value in the range, in my opinion, is to be found in the two Vielles Vignes wines, a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay. This Chardonnay is dark straw in colour. The bouquet is quite nutty (hazelnuts), with a citrus note on top. The palate is fresher. It’s more Jura than Burgundy, very much a country wine with a little rusticity, fascinating. The Reserve wines come with ageing in new oak and are altogether different. They are also approaching £10 more expensive. I think I prefer these VV cuvées, although they are more of the type for recommending to those who want to seek out something unusual, rather than the out-and-out you must try it recommendation for the Carmarans wine above.

Posted in Natural Wine, Wine | Tagged 2Naturkinder Fledermaus, Aveyron Wine, Castagna Allegro, Castagna Beechworth, Clement Klur, Comando G, Cremant d'Alsace Klur, Daniel Jimenez Landi, Domaine de la Croix Senaillet, Entraygues Wine, Fernando Garcia, Ganevat Cuvée Julien 2010, Gredos Wine, Guillaume Vielles Vignes Chardonnay, IGP Franche-Comté, J-F Ganevat Pinot Noir, Julie Balagny Simone, La Bruja de Rozas, Marc Isart, Mauvais Temps Carmarans, Melanie Drese, Michael Voelker, Nicolas Carmarans, Regnié Antoine Sunier, Saint-Veran Sans Soufre, Vignoble Guillaume | 2 Comments

Up the Junction

Posted on 10/04/2017 by dccrossley

Thirty years ago I lived less than ten minutes’ walk north of Dalston Junction. This part of London was very different back then. There was no spanking new Overground Station where there are now two. There were certainly no “luxury flats” on Kingsland Road, advertising their roof-terrace views of the city skyline, now fully visible to the south. There was, and long may it survive, one of London’s least well known but most vibrant street markets on Ridley Road. And now we have food, wine and vegan dining. After my third time back in the area in recent weeks, I thought I should let a few others in on the secret.

I’m sure some of you read the first part of my article on the recent Tasting at The Vaults (home of Winemakers Club on Farringdon Road). It focused solely on Otros Vinos, the small importer of wild Spanish wines. Quite a few of their wines are retailed out of the equally tiny Spanish deli, Furanxo, which I mentioned in that article, run by Manuel Santos (Santos & Santos Imports) and Xavier Alvarez (chef and co-owner of Tagállan in Stoke Newington). I decided to head over to Furanxo, to meet up with Otros Vinos’ Fernando Berry and to bring back a stash of wines.

Furanxo is like a traditional Sevillano Albaceria, selling a selection of Manuel’s artisan food products and a selection of well chosen (don’t they say carefully curated these days) Spanish wines. The shop is tiny, but there’s an impressive array of cured meats off the bone, mainly acorn fed Iberico hams. The cheeses are unpasturised gems from small Spanish farms. Manuel is adamant about supporting traditional farmers. The rest of the shop is filled with high quality tinned fish, bottled vegetables and fruits, and even hand gathered and dried Galician seaweed (four different varieties). We left with several items.

As well as the food store, Furanxo is also a bar in the evenings, where you can go for a tapas and a glass or two of wine. There’s a basement room which is used for culinary workshops and other events. Then there’s the wines themselves. Not all of the wines on the shelves come from Otros Vinos, but take a look here for a roundup of what I tasted at The Vaults.

Fernando popped the cork on something cold to lubricate our conversation. I’d tasted and liked three wines from Marenas at The Vaults. It’s José-Miguel Márquez’s six hectare estate on the sandy-clay soils of Montilla. Montepilas is an old indigenous grape variety, pretty much almost extinct. It ripens very late, in October, where it still only makes a wine of around 12% abv, so it’s ideal for table wine. Freshness is retained because the vines are grown at higher elevations which cool dramatically at night.

Marenas Montepilas from Montilla

Viticulture is about minimal intervention, and soil health is everything to José-Miguel. His neighbours think he’s insane not to plough, nor treat his vines. He just uses a tiny bit of copper, and a tiny bit of sulphur in the vineyard (none during winemaking). The Montepilas has a lovely sun-kissed yellow-gold colour, but there’s no skin contact, and it is aged in stainless steel. It’s nicely aromatic and soft on the nose, but the palate is bone dry and has a slight steeliness coupled with a chalky (ahem, mineral) texture. It’s surprisingly long, with a haunting, ethereal, finish.

My Otros Vinos stash (suitcase not shown)

Furanxo is a small shop, and good as it is, some people who don’t live near Dalston would not be persuaded to venture into the wild east without a few more enticements, perhaps. But just a few minutes’ walk away, right opposite Dalston Junction Station, is Newcomer Wines. I’ve written about Newcomer recently right here. Newcomer originally set up in Shoreditch Boxpark, selling Austrian wines out of one of the shipping container units there. They moved over to more permanent, and larger, premises in Dalston last year. They have expanded their offering beyond Austria now, whilst keeping their original focus at the core of the range. But you can find a lot of hidden gems, like the Czech wines of Milan Nestarec, or the newly added wines of Swiss maestros, Mythopia, alongside some of Austria’s newest producers and most exciting wines.

Newcomer Wines

Newcomer becomes a bar in the evening as well, with a selection of Austrian inspired small dishes. Now the summer is arriving in style, they have opened up the outdoor area at the back. They have one of the most exciting ranges of wine in London now, and they are more than worth checking out if you like what is happening in Austria’s winelands.

Round the corner from Newcomer, on Kingsland High Street (on the outside of Dalston Cross Shopping Centre) is one of London’s absolute best vegan restaurants. If you want something more substantial, head here, but do book in the evenings, and turn up early for lunch if you want to dine on spec without a reservation. Like all the best vegan restaurants, Fed by Water serves great food, whatever your tastes and tolerances. It calls itself “Italian Vegan”, and that’s its focus. There are plenty of pasta dishes, pizzas and great desserts, but they serve a mean calzone, for which a good appetite is recommended.

Fed By Water, with calzone, bottom right

Your journey back to the City, the West End, or further afield, should not happen until you’ve taken a stroll down Ridley Road Market. It hasn’t really changed since I used to wander down in the early 1980s. You still get the loud and friendly banter from the stall holders as they try to lure you into making a purchase.

The shops along the roadside are not for the faint-hearted (nor perhaps for true vegans). They sell meat of every description, from pig’s trotters to unidentified offal. But the stalls are largely a blend of fruit and veg, bolts of bright Caribbean-inspired fabrics, clothing (one stall sold just bras, all loose on the table) and groceries. Look for the fruit and veg stalls with their produce in clear plastic bowls. Each one is £1, and may contain anything from five long red peppers, to enough ginger to last three or four weeks. My guess is that they are around 75% cheaper than the supermarket. You could probably get a week’s supply of veg for a fiver, same for fruit.

Ridley Road Market

On a very sunny Thursday lunchtime the whole scene is at once both relaxing, and redolent of vibrant London at its best.

Furanxo is at 85 Dalston Lane, London E8 (turn right, round the corner from the far end of Ridley Rd Market). See Santos & Santos.

Newcomer Wines is at 5 Dalston Lane (opposite Dalston Junction Overground)

Fed By Water is at 64 Kingsland High Street (on the outside of Dalston Cross Shopping Centre)

Ridley Road Market is on Ridley Road and is open Monday to Saturday

This part of Dalston can be accessed via the London Overground, to either Dalston Junction or Dalston Kingsland Stations. Several buses come up here via The City, from where it will take about 20 to 30 minutes.

Not wine related, but on the way back we jumped off the bus at The Barbican to see the exhibition The Japanese House: Architecture and Life After 1945 at The Barbican Art Gallery. Highly recommended, runs to 25 June. Check it out here.

Posted in Austrian Wine, Dining, Natural Wine, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Shops, Wine Travel | Tagged Austrian Wines, Best Calzone London, Dalston Food and Wine, Fed by Water, Fernando Berry, Furanxo, Marenas Montepilas, Newcomer Wines, Otros Vinos, Ridley Road Market, Spanish Delicatessen, Spanish Wines, Vegan London, Vegan Restaurants London | 2 Comments

Senorans at The Shipyard

Posted on 07/04/2017 by dccrossley

I was back at Lymington’s wonderful Shipyard Restaurant last week for a dinner with Javier Izurieta, Export Director of Pazo Senorans. The Shipyard is getting a reputation for wine, and in fact they have a tasty looking event on 4 May with Olivia Barry (Jim Barry, Clare Valley), which will doubtless include a taste of their much anticipated Aussie Assyrtiko, the first one from down under.

The Shipyard is a few minutes away from Lymingtom Quay, within the famous Berthon Boatyard. Close to Lymington Harbour, on the Lymington River, they are attached to The Fish Market, purveyors of fresh fish of real quality, which also supplies the restaurant. The Shipyard put together a Galician menu featuring octopus with padron peppers and chorizo, roasted cod fillet with olives and patatas bravas, and a wonderfully executed Tarta de Santiago, with a home fashioned stencil for the traditional icing sugar topping. A wonderful meal is guaranteed here, and the people are unimaginably friendly (and more than happily compliant with any special dietary requirements).

The Shipyard, Lymington

Pazo Senorans is acknowledged as one of the very top producers in Galicia, some would say the top producer. They have a very simple mission – to produce the finest Albariño in the world. They do this in one of the most beautiful, rugged, parts of Spain. The landscape is granite, very Celtic, and topsoils are poor and thin. Formed largely of this decomposed granite, they are also very acidic. The antithesis of our idea of the Spanish climate, it is a green land, washed by Atlantic winds and waves of rain which swirl down the Bay of Biscay. It was one of Europe’s poorest regions up until the end of the 20th Century.

Winemaking is not complicated at Pazo Senorans. They eschew oak as they believe it masks the Albariño grape variety, but they are great believers in using the lees, which Javier passionately told us bring “life” to the wine. The Bodega is in the historic town of Pontevedra, at the head of the Ría of the same name. The town is the provincial capital, allegedly founded by the Greeks, and has a wealth of arcaded houses with glazed balconies, along with a host of architecturally interesting religious buildings, and a Templar castle (I passed through very briefly a long time ago).

Javier Izurieta of Pazo Senorans

We tasted the entry level Albariño 2015, the Pazo Senorans Colección 2013 and 2009, and their complex Selección de Añadas from 2008 and 2007 in bottle. We finished dinner with the Añada from 2006 in magnum. These bottles range in price from around £17 for the current vintage to around £23 and £40 respectively for the two more expensive cuvées (only available from the domaine, or perhaps speak to their UK agent, Alliance Wine). The Tasting was organised through Solent Cellar, Lymington’s classy wine shop, who (if you are swift) may be able to source some of the wines for you.

Pazo Senorans Albariño 2015 is the current vintage of Senorans’ standard release. It’s no mere “standard” wine though, fresh and delicious with genuine character. It’s amazing value, and drinking now, but it really will age and improve, perhaps over three more years.

Pazo Senorans is all about proving the ageability of the Albariño grape variety. The Colleccíon 2013 clearly has greater depth. It has an extra herby character and superior length as well. If it is available, it’s only a relatively small step up in price over the straight 2015. The 2009 Colleccíon has a beautiful nose, with a limey “sweetness”. The (bone dry) palate is still fresh, and there’s more clean acidity than you might expect. It’s a lovely wine.

Añada is a big step up. The 2008 is surprisingly pale still. The nose is quite appley (one taster insisted Cox’s Orange Pippin). It has spent three years on lees before going back into small stainless steel tanks for a while before bottling, thereafter spending at least a year in bottle before release. There is genuine depth here and it’s hard to imagine any finer aged Albariño.

2007 seems to have a bit more dry extract than 2008, but it still shows that lovely rounded citrus freshness which is the hallmark of the Senorans wines, and a touch, almost, of the Riesling about it. It also has a mineral feel on the palate. The vintage variation is a positive for me. Naturally some people expressed a preference, but such variation just emphasises that these are wines of personality and character, not some industrial product with only a commercial imperative.

We finished on the 2006 Añada from magnum, an impressive wine for several reasons, not least in showing Albariño’s ability to age. More of that classic freshness and pale colour, green-gold, with great legs (glycerol), plus lees-induced texture. Proof, if proof were needed, not only of this producer’s position at the pinnacle of Albariño production, but also of this grape’s place as the queen of Spanish white varieties.

A few pictures of our dinner, below, will hopefully whet the Friday evening appetite.

The Shipyard Bar and Kitchen is at Anchor House, Bath Road, Lymington, Hampshire: see web site here . Their website is very colourful and is well worth scrolling through.

Contact The Solent Cellar for availability of wines on 01590 674852.

Alliance Wines is the UK Agent/importer for Pazo Senorans.

Posted in Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine and Food, Wine Tastings | Tagged Albarino, Galician Wine, Javier Izurieta, Lymington Dining, Lymington Restaurants, Pazo Senorans, Rias Baixas Wine, Solent Cellar, Spanish Wine, Wine Dinner | 4 Comments

Crémant – More than Mere Froth

Posted on 05/04/2017 by dccrossley

Following The Vaults Tasting last Monday, I was back in London for an interesting little tasting the following day. Organized once more by Business France, Crémant presented twelve producers of this category of sparkling wine from five out of the eight French wine regions designated for Crémant production. Sadly there were no individual producers of Crémant de Savoie, nor Jura, both of which are making some particularly interesting wines at the moment and, ironically, both of which I’m particularly fond. Nor was there any for Crémant de Die. But this did allow me to focus on the other production zones. I didn’t taste the wines of Les Grands Chais de France. They are the UK’s largest supplier of Crémant (they also own brands like Calvet and JP Chenet), and have a presence in every French sparkling wine production zone.

The tasting was at the Edel Assanti Gallery in Newman Street, Fitzrovia, and its white walls provided a good visual environment for the wines. It was a little hot, but the wines were well chilled and the organisers ensured there was plentiful, constant supply of ice.

So What is Crémant? – A Brief Introduction

Crémant is the designation for the finest sparkling wines of France outside of Champagne. Well, that’s the theory. All grapes for Crémant must be hand harvested, and rules for gentle, whole bunch, pressing apply (as do rules on maximum yields, grape varieties pertinent to each region, etc). The production method is effectively the same as Champagne, using the Méthode Traditionelle, which means that the wine undergoes the second fermentation in bottle.

There are currently eight designated production regions, or AOPs, for Crémant. Apart from the aforementioned Savoie and Jura, these are Alsace, Bordeaux, Bourgogne, Die, Limoux and Loire. The last on that list, Crémant de Loire, was the first to be designated, in 1975.

There are a couple of basic differences with Champagne. One is bottle pressure. Although the term “Crémant” was once used for Champagnes of a lower pressure (now often called Perle by some growers), modern Crémant can in fact still sometimes have a lower pressure than most Champagne. Champagne usually has a pressure of between five and six atmospheres (famously the sort of pressure you’d find in a tyre on a London Bus). But the Crémant category does allow for a lower pressure (I know, for example, that the rules for Jura stipulate a wine above 3.5 atmospheres). But generally, the consumer will be unable to tell the difference.

A more important difference relates to ageing on the lees of the second fermentation, in bottle. Lees ageing is the key to quality in sparkling wine, and long lees ageing gives Champagne its characteristic autolytic complexity. Non-Vintage Champagne must spend a minimum of 15 months on lees, but the best has much longer, and Vintage Champagne even longer still. You might have read about Weingut Peter Lauer’s Reserve Sekt in my last article, wine which spent 24 years in bottle – an exception, and probably not intentional (Florian’s father forgot about it!), but the wine is truly astounding in its complexity (and fresh too).

When you read the notes on the wines here, you will notice that most of these Crémants see just 12 months, maybe 18 months in some cases, in bottle before disgorgement. As the effects of autolysis really kick in from 18 months onwards, it becomes clear that these are not often wines of massive complexity. Instead, they are wines to celebrate for their fruit and freshness. As one producer said, that’s a nice way to enjoy sparkling wine.

Does the Future Look Bright, and What do we Do with Crémant?

In the past people have tried to compare Crémant with Champagne, and invariably it has come off worse. That’s not always right. Many readers will have been given Champagne of dubious quality, especially if purchased from one of the supermarket Christmas offers, where they knock out something with an unknown name for a tenner. At the same time you might have tried a bottle of Stéphane Tissot’s Crémant du Jura BBF, or his Indigène, where complexity and interest rivals a top grower Champagne. So, within the category there’s a lot of variety.

Where Crémant scores highest is surely value for money. In the UK we drink oceans of cheap Prosecco. Crémant tends to cost more than the kind of Prosecco we cart home from our supermarkets, but it’s still a lot cheaper than fine Champagne. Instead of seeing Crémant as a rival to Champagne for the big celebration, why can we not acknowledge it as the perfect wine for summer, especially for picnics and outdoor dining. Even for the barbecue. I mean, why do we insist on drinking 14.5% Shiraz or Malbec when its 25 degrees and the coals are nudging it up to thirty?

If I learnt anything from this tasting, it’s that there’s a lot of pleasure to be had from what are largely, except for the special cuvées, fairly simple wines which are nevertheless long on fun and pleasure. Look at how much pét-nat is glugged by young people, at least in London and Metropolitan Britain. Crémant, when well executed, should fit into that demographic. Okay, some Crémant might taste good, but it is made in industrial quantities, you say. True, some is, but this is generally a quality category, sparkling wine made from decent quality handpicked grapes, vinified traditionally. And the volumes do help to keep the price down.

The problem for Crémant on this particular export market lies perhaps with other rivals from the New World, especially Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Chile. These wines are well established in the UK, and are often keenly priced in supermarkets and wine chains. Not all are bottle fermented, and it is unclear whether consumers really know, or care.

THE PRODUCERS

Domaine Zinck, Crémant d’Alsace, Equisheim

Alsace is the largest production zone for Crémant (more than 20% of Alsace wine is sparkling, though vast quantities are made by the tank method). It’s a little known fact that the region is planted with quite a bit of Chardonnay, used only in sparkling wine, yet most Crémant d’Alsace is blended from among the four Pinots (Blanc, Auxerrois, Gris and Noir), plus a little Riesling.

Domaine Zinck was established by Paul Zinck in 1964 and today comprises 20 hectares producing both still and sparkling wines. There are two Crémants, a white Brut and a Rosé, and both were available to taste in bottle and magnum.

Crémant Brut is a blend of 60% Pinot Noir, with 30% Chardonnay and 10% Pinot Blanc. The current bottling is from a 2014 base with 20% reserve wines, mainly 2013 with 5% from 2012. You can see, if you are au fait with Champagne releases, that the wine is younger than many current releases from that region. But there’s still a bit of a biscuity note here in the Brut, along with crispness and freshness.

The pale salmon-coloured Rosé is also sold as a non-vintage. It’s 100% Pinot Noir, largely from 2014 again, with 20% reserves from 2013. It’s crisp and fruity, with quite high acidity, which the fruit copes with.

The Magnum Effect

One story of the Tasting involves the “magnum effect”. Generally it is true that wines age better in magnum. This doesn’t just apply to premium cuvées of Vintage Champagne, and certainly not exclusively to bottle fermented sparkling wine. The theory is that with twice the wine and no more air ingressing into a magnum than a standard bottle, the wine ages more slowly and achieves greater complexity. This is unquestionably true of long lees aged Champagne, but is it true of Crémant?

Every producer brought at least one wine in magnum, and there was a thread through the tasting. I didn’t find one wine which didn’t taste better in magnum, including those Zinck wines above. One reason might be that the magnums currently on the market had actually been aged for longer than their 75cl counterparts. Or maybe they just looked more impressive! With a magnum of Crémant often costing the same as a bottle of Champagne, there are certainly occasions where, let’s face it, “impressive” is no bad thing.

The Magnum Tasting Lineup

Domaine Schwach, Crémant d’Alsace, Hunawihr

Schwach has 19 hectares in the region, which François Schwach began purchasing in the 1950s and 60s. The company is run today by the third generation of the family, Sébastien. Schwach makes a wider range of Crémant cuvées than Zinck, and six cuvées were on show.

Four white bottlings cover Blanc de Blancs (Pinots Blanc, Auxerrois and Gris); Blanc de Noirs (Pinot Noir); Chardonnay and Riesling. The Chardonnay is dosed with a low 4g/l dosage, but is still quite creamy compared to the other bottles. The Riesling is very mineral and almost chalky. There’s also a fruity Rosé.

Crémant d’Alsace “S” is the special cuvée. It’s a blend of equal parts Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with one year on lees, bottled at 8g/l liqueur. It’s a vintage wine, and this bottle was a 2011. It’s the last vintage Sébastien’s father made, and he named it “S” after his son, who was about to take over. It has a degree of extra complexity on the nose, and more personality.

Domaine Joseph Gruss & Fils, Crémant d’Alsace, Eguisheim

This is a slightly smaller estate, at just over 16 hectares, split into more than 50 plots on differing soils around Eguisheim, one of my favourite Alsace villages. I liked the wines here, doubtless swayed by the amiable winemaker, André Gruss, who was on pouring duty. André said he is aiming for balance, purity and elegance, so let’s see how he did.

Crémant d’Alsace Brut is a Pinot Noir with extended lees contact (15 to 20 months depending on vintage) and the wines go through malolactic (which many crémants avoid, to retain freshness). This is more fruity than some, easy going but well made.

Extra Brut Classic is different. 80% Pinot Blanc with 20% Riesling, a little less time on lees (12 to 15 months) and no malo. Dosage is 3g/l. Despite being served a little cold, there’s a biscuity arrowroot nose, plus good fruit. The palate has a fruity acidity, with some citrus from the Riesling, and a fine spine running through it.

Brut Prestige blends 60% Pinot Blanc with equal proportions of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with no malo again, and 5g/l dosage. Longer lees ageing (up to 30 months for each year, but at least 24), but very fresh. All of these wines will drink well now, which is how André likes them, young and fresh.

Cuvée Prestige is the same wine as above, but with a minimum of 30 months in bottle on lees, and bottled in magnum. This one had undergone malolactic, and was disgorged in November 2016. It was the most impressive wine so far, and one of my favourites on the day.

Célène, Crémant de Bordeaux, Haux (Entre-Deaux-Mers)

Célène has been making sparkling wine in Bordeaux since 1947, a fact which might surprise those who have little idea Bordeaux even had a sparkling wine industry. And Célène make a lot of wine – 1.3 million bottles a year. There are two ranges, going under the “Ballarin” and “Célène” labels.

Several of the wines contain Semillon, which, counter-intuitively perhaps, makes for quite an interesting flavour profile. Ballarin Noble Cuvée blends Semillon with Muscadelle and Cabernet Franc (vinified white). The oddly named Black Pearl White Brut blends the same varieties, but with a bit more precision and freshness.

A couple of other wines proved equally interesting. Célène Saphir Rosé is 85% Cabernet Franc plus Merlot. The finish had quite a nice bitter touch. I preferred it to Perlance Brut Méthode Traditionelle, blending Colombard and Sauvignon Blanc. Just nine months on lees and dosed at 10g/l, this would make a decent aperitif if well priced.

The most interesting wine was Célène Opale Blanc de Blancs Crémant de Bordeaux, a blend of 60% Semillon, 30% Muscadelle and 10% Sauvignon Blanc. This gets 12 months ageing on lees in the company’s cold underground galleries. Quite delicate and floral on the nose, there are exotic fruits on the palate, and plenty of lingering flavour. It makes a nice point of difference to the many Crémants made from the traditional Champagne varieties.

Moutard-Diligent, Crémant de Bourgogne

Moutard will not be unknown to Champagne drinkers. They are one of the producers from the Côte des Bar (Aube), which by coincidence is just across the regional border north of Chablis/Irancy. They have been making still wines from those appellations for some years, but only started producing Crémant de Bourgogne, from vineyards around Tonnerre, since 2015, so this is a new venture. The wines are only just on the market this year.

There were six wines on show, all well made and showing the expertise of a well regarded Champagne House. There’s a Brut, Brut Nature with zero dosage, a cuvée vinified in oak, a Brut Rosé from Pinot Noir, and a 3 Cépages cuvée (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Aligoté).

Of the six, the most interesting, though certainly the most expensive one would assume, is the cuvée Les Vignoles. This is from a selected parcel, or lieu-dit, a plot at Molosmes, just east of Epineuil. 100% Chardonnay, there’s more complexity. The fruit is citrus, with some tropical flavours, but overall there’s a nice line of fresh acidity. With a touch more presence than the other wines, this will certainly accompany food – paté to seafood and (as Moutard suggest) sushi. It will be interesting to see how they price this one.

Veuve Ambal, Crémant de Bourgogne

This company is the largest producer of Crémant de Bourgogne (they make 40% of the AOP), based in the Côte Chalonnaise, at Rully. They have been operating for more than a century, and are also responsible for the still Burgundies of André Delorme.

There were several sparkling wines on show, but they were showcasing a new “product”, Veuve Ambal Expression. It’s a Crémant de Bourgogne with a “random bottle design”, so that the pattern on every bottle is different. Now one could be cynical about all that, but to be fair the wine tastes fine, no, more than fine. The blend is 90% Pinot Noir with the addition of Gamay. Dosed at a friendly 11 g/l, it has plenty of fruit on the nose and it’s not all that dry (to a Champagne drinker). You’d call it a crowd pleaser, and if that, along with the bottle design, encourages novices to try a Crémant de Bourgogne, that is a good thing.

Maude Metin, who was on the stand, told me she thought it would retail around £15. If she’s right, they may have the potential for success. Too much more and I think you are getting into territory where people want something a bit more serious, where the colourful bottle could be a hindrance.

Victorine de Chastenay, Crémant de Bourgogne, Beaune

This Crémant House is part of the La Chablisienne Group, but has made around 6,000 h/l of sparkling wines since 1995. The three basic cuvées are all well made (Brut, Rosé and Blanc de Blancs). These are wines which will provide satisfaction for someone wanting well made fizz without the expectation of complexity.

The two Vintage bottlings are a step up. Blending Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. 2011 was served in magnum, and had some complexity. It’s surrounded by the typically florid marketing you expect from these larger producers, who no doubt have the budget to pay marketing companies. The language doesn’t always translate well for the British market. But it’s the wines which matter in the end, and this magnum, with an extra year of age (over the 2012), was very good. Another example of the magnum effect.

The 2012, less complex than the 2011, was nevertheless fresh and attractive. As a range, these wines were all attractive for what they are. The Vintage 2011 in magnum vied with the Moutard Vignolles as my favourite of the Crémants de Bourgogne.

La Compagnie de Burgondie, Crémant de Bourgogne

This grouping comprises the Caves Bailly-Lapierre (for Crémant), Vignerons de Buxy (Côte Chalonnaise still wines) and AVB (Beaujolais). Rully claims to be the birthplace of the Crémant de Bourgogne AOC.

Bailly-Lapierre showed four non-vintage Crémants. The best of these is labelled Chardonnay. This bottling gets an extended three years ageing, and can quite rightly boast of its finesse.

The white Vintage, made only in the best years, is made from the best Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at their disposal. I preferred the 2010 Rosé to the 2009 Blanc. It’s a nice salmon pink colour with good fruit. It sees three years on lees. Both are called “Vive-la-Joie. Pinot Noir Brut 2013 is much paler, with just a wink of colour from the press of the grapes. Served from magnum, the mousse and bead was subdued, but it had a nice vinosity.

Domaines Auriol, Crémant de Limoux

Domaines Auriol is owned by the Vialade-Salvagnac family, but they make wine all over the South of France, at a number of estates. Their Limoux wines come under the Maison Vialade label, but are made at an estate called Terres Blanches, which the family acquired in the 1980s.

Crémant de Limoux is not one of the better known Crémants, but has an increasingly good reputation based on one or two up-and-coming estates. The terrain can be hilly and the best fruit is grown at elevation, benefiting from cooler night time temperatures. This version, 70% Chardonnay with 20% Chenin Blanc and 10% Mauzac, is very fruity but with an elegance which I’d put down to Limoux Chardonnay (which in the region’s best still white wines can be exceptional). The wine gets 15 months on lees and it has genuine character.

Auriol were the only people to sneak in some still wines. I couldn’t resist trying two unusual IGP Aude wines, a white Albariño and a red Marselan under the “Jardin des Vignes Rares de Ciceron” label. The Albariño had a lovely nose and was a good example of an easy drinking version of the Galician grape. The Marselan (a Grenache-Cabernet Franc cross) was purple in colour with sappy fruit. Both good gluggers.

Ackerman, Crémant de Loire, Saumur

Ackerman began life in 1811, so they have a history comparable to many of the Champagne Houses. They also own 366 hectares of vineyard. So their importance to the Loire economy cannot be underestimated. They specialise in both Crémant de Loire and sparkling Saumur, which has its own AOP, with a different (mainly Chenin Blanc) grape mix, and its own regulations on yields etc.

Of the several Crémant de Loire cuvées on show, Cuvée 1811 Brut Rosé was one of my two favourites. The grape blend is unusual for a pink sparkler, being Cabernet Franc with Grolleau. Fifteen months on lees gives a wine with elegant red fruits on the nose, and ripe fruits on the palate.

Crémant de Loire Cuvée Louis-Ferdinand Brut 2013 is a special prestige cuvée. Just 3,000 bottles were produced of the 2013, and the liqueur for dosage is the sweet Coteaux de Layon. Three years on lees gives a buttery, toasty wine of some elegance. Very interesting.

As was the magnum offering from Ackerman, X Noir Brut Rosé, made with the Pineau d’Aunis variety. Very aromatic with red fruits, definitely a wine to pair with food (fish or fowl).

Ackerman may be large but they are not scared to experiment. Saumur L’Esprit Nature Brut is made from Chenin Blanc, 12 months sur lattes, it’s pale gold in colour, fresh, fruity…and has no added sulphur. A creditable experiment which I hope succeeds.

Caves de Grenelle, Crémant de Loire, Saumur

Slightly younger than Ackerman, but nevertheless founded in 1859, it does remind us that sparkling winemaking in the tufa caves of Saumur goes back a long way. Another seven cuvées were on show, and this House is making nice wines, most with a lifted, floral character, from the fairly easy going Cuvée Si made by a variation on the Méthode Ancestrale (with just three weeks on lees), to the more complex Cuvée 3/7.7.4.

That strangely named cuvée is made from three grapes: 7 parts Pinot Noir, 7 parts Cabernet Franc and 4 parts Pineau d’Aunis (which explains the name). It’s a Blanc de Noirs. They call it “chiselled”, with reason. There’s red and stone fruits, with a nice berry nose. Pretty, elegant, and savoury on the finish, it probably needs six months to settle but I think it will be impressive. I liked it, anyway.

If I want to make a couple of conclusion, I think they would be first, as I said at the beginning, these wines need to be assessed on their own merits, not as some kind of second class Champagnes. But equally, whilst those made using some of the traditional grape varieties of the Champagne region can be very nice, don’t be put off trying some of the interesting wines made using other varieties. Each company at this Tasting produced at least one wine, and in most cases more than one wine, which I think even a reasonably fussy wine aficionado would enjoy.

Many of the producers above are still looking for a UK importer. For further information, contact Business France.

Posted in Burgundy, Loire, Sparkling Wine, Wine, Wine Tastings | Tagged Ballarin, Business France Wine Tastings, Caves Bailly-Lapierre, Caves de Grenelle, Célène, Crémant, Crémant d'Alsace, Crémant de Bordeaux, Crémant de Bourgogne, Crémant de Limoux, Crémant de Loire, Crémant Tasting, Domaine Joseph Gruss, Domaine Schwach, Domaine Zinck, Domaines Auriol, La Chablisienne Sparkling Wines, La Compagnie de Burgondie, Moutard-Diligent, Sparkling Saumur, Sparkling Wine, Veuve Ambal, Victorine de Chastenay | 4 Comments

Return to the Vaults Part 4 – Howard Ripley

Posted on 03/04/2017 by dccrossley

In this final part of my article on March 2017’s Vaults Tasting I want to concentrate on the wines of Peter (Florian) Lauer, imported by Howard Ripley, but of course there were some other wines I had to try among the many crowding their table, one or two of which will merit a mention.

Weingut Peter Lauer is now under the management (since 2005) of Florian Lauer, and he was on hand to pour. I’ve been a very big fan of his wines for a few years, and I was thrilled to meet him. His estate, at Ayl in the Saar, is producing a range of some of the finest wines currently coming out of the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer.

This might seem a step change from the “natural wines” I’ve been largely writing about in Parts 1 to 3, but I try to attend all of Howard Ripley’s German Tastings. For me, sulphur or no sulphur, German Rieslings are among the purest tasting wines on the planet.

In his 2012 book The Finest Wines of Germany, Stephan Reinhardt calls the wines from this estate “some of the finest, most classic Rieslings in Germany: pure, precise, piquant, racy, mineral and chiselled, but also ripe”. After that, you won’t require any tasting notes from me. It does encapsulate what Florian’s wines are all about.

One of Florian’s secrets is the estate’s sparkling wines. By law they are Sekt, by style they are Riesling Crémants. The very well priced NV has three years on lees (for a French Crémant you’d expect 12 months, maybe 18). It’s very good, of course, and I recommend it wholeheartedly, but for double the price (somewhere over £40) you can buy a Vintage 1991 or 1992. Whilst the 1991 (disgorged 2015, not on taste last Monday) is a softer wine, 1992 is bottled with no dosage. This wine is little short of amazing. It has had 24 years (years, not months) on lees in bottle, and has aromas of nuts, spice and salt. It’s dry, the acidity is a pure rapier thrust (gets to the heart without tearing), and it sits there, complexity building as it warms.

Apparently these vintages, made by Florian’s father, were discovered in the Lauer cellars, and Florian has released them, all 3,000 bottles, into the world. In my next article, by coincidence, I’ll be writing about French Crémant, and suggesting that it is probably unfair and unnecessary to compare the genre to Champagne. But this wine is for lovers of the finest Champagne, just so long as zero dosage Champagnes don’t upset you. If you can get just one bottle!

At the lower end of the Peter Lauer portfolio there is a Saar Riesling Fass 16, here shown in the 2015 vintage. Michael Schmidt, writing on Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages, wrote in May last year that 2015 might be the real deal, the “vintage of the century”, and in such years the so-called lesser wines from the best estates invariably provide a lot more pleasure than their relatively modest prices might suggest. This might be a “basic dry Riesling” but here you are still getting a wine from the steep slopes of Ayl. It comes in at around the £15 mark all in, but the smart drinker will opt for magnums at little more than double that.

Kupp Fass 18 Riesling GG 2013 is the dry “Grand Cru”. It comes from part of the famous (or is it infamous) Ayler-Kupp vineyard, near Biebelhausen. This has rich fruit but is mineral driven. It shows the finer side of the Grosses Gewächs, that balance between ripe fruit and Riesling’s taut steel line. Great length already, but it will improve over a decade.

Schonfels Fass 11 Riesling GG 2012 is also from site which is part of Ayler-Kupp, sadly subsumed by the 1971 Wine Law. It’s a smaller site than the Kupp, the fruit is a little richer and there’s a touch of spice. But there’s a lightness too, and it often drinks earlier. Yet the vines here are 100 years old and yields are low. Neither are wines for the uninitiated, nor perhaps those who prefer Germany’s Prädikatswein, but their complexity repays those who come to love them.

But do not worry if the Prädikats route is your preference. Florian is a fan of these wines too, especially at Kabinett level. Ayler Kupp Fass 8 Riesling Kabinett 2013 has everything you want from a Kab. Elegance, freshness, minerality (or whatever you prefer to call it), plus a touch of sweetness. That sweetness comes on the mid-palate. The finish is dry. It’s so good, truly. At 7.5% abv you have to restrain yourself. I know, I bought some in Germany and it won’t last this summer, fact.

Now for the other wines I want to mention. Perhaps you’ve read my articles on previous Howard Ripley German Tastings (usually held twice a year in the Hall of one of Legal London’s Inns of Court), so you know that I’m more partial than many for German reds. One producer I’m consistently buying, albeit just odd bottles, is Ziereisen.

Weingut Ziereisen can be found down in the south of the Baden wine region, almost at the gates of Basel, at Efringen-Kirchen. Their vineyards are protected by the the Vosges Mountains of Alsace and the Black Forest. The micro-climate is therefore warm, but is ventilated by the Belfort Gap, to the west at the bottom of the Vosges, which means that growing black grapes is not as risky as you might think.

Whilst Ziereisen is well know for its reds, the first wine I tasted, true to form, was their Gutedel “Heugumber” 2015. Gutedel is none other than France and Switzerland’s Chasselas variety, of which I’ve written a fair bit in the past month or so. This may not light the fire of the average Mosel aficionado, but it’s a nice dry white, perfect as an aperitif, maybe with a bowl of salted nuts, or with cheese dishes. It has a bit more presence and a little less acidity than many examples from the French speaking regions, and in fact their top Gutedel bottling, Steingrüble, spends almost a year on lees.

Ziereisen grow a fair bit of Pinot Noir, but if you wish to go right off-piste with them, you have to try one of their Syrahs. Jaspis is the impressive top bottling, and it is the one I know best. But if you prefer to go in a rung below, around Burgundy Premier Cru in terms of price, then Syrah “Gestad” 2012 won’t disappoint.

The vines are younger here (Jaspis is old vines, but both are grown on a barren, steep, limestone vineyard with high density planting). Ageing is in oak (25% new). There’s still scope for more ageing in bottle, but this is very good. I know not many will go right out and buy a German Syrah (the Germans lap these up, anyway, so some might think the price is quite steep for the quality), but do try to taste them if you can. The Jaspis Pinot Noir Old Vines cuvée is pretty damn good too.

Before tasting the reds, I tried several other Rieslings from estates which you would almost buy blind – Schäfer Fröhlich (Felsenberg GG), PJ Kuhn (Rheinschiefer) and Zilliken (Saarburger Rausch) in particular, but as the Howard Ripley tag says, “We like Riesling – and when that runs out we drink Burgundy”. There is one particular Burgundian grape which has always been a little unfashionable, perhaps the Gutedel of the region, Aligoté. It really seems to be making a comeback, not doubt because Burgundian Chardonnay is so expensive now, but also because in some cases yields have been lowered and the acidity tamed.

There has always been very good Aligoté. I don’t just mean Coche-Dury’s marvel (if you age it), or Aubert de Villaine’s Bouzeron. Goisot, at Saint-Bris, have always made a super version, and people as diverse as Alice and Olivier De Moor in Courgis (Chablis, but they have Aligoté at Saint-Bris) and Sylvain Pataille (single vineyard versions from Marsannay/Fixin) are really creating a stir with the grape. It seems to have a new lease of life.

I’m trying every Aligoté I can, and Howard Ripley import Jérôme Castagnier Aligoté 2015. The domaine is in Morey-St-Denis, but has vines in Gevrey and Chambolle too, including parcels in Charmes-Chambertin and Clos-St-Denis. This relatively modestly priced Aligoté is very nice, without the acidity one came to expect of old (Aligoté really did only seem fit as the base for a Kir at one time). It even has a bit of texture from two months on lees. You’ll pick this up for under £20, if you want to explore the grape further, especially as the Goisots seem to have no wine to sell right now, and it’s a lucky man (or lady) who can source a few bottles of De Moor.

Before finally signing off from this marathon that was The Vaults VI, I should mention that there are always a few purveyors of other victuals on hand. Androuet were there with a table of very fine cheeses, as befits their status as one of London’s top cheesemongers, Urban Farmhouse were there, showing their sour and farmhouse beers, and so was The Charcuterie Board, who wholesale and retail fine British cured meats (also representing Moons Green and Native Breeds, two of the UK’s foremost charcuteries).

If you are a member of the Trade, or Press, do try to devote some time to The Vaults next time they are showing. It’s one of the best wine gigs in town for the sheer variety of wine we get to taste. But guys, try not to hog the tables and give others a chance to taste.

Posted in German Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Ayl Saar, Florian Lauer, Howard Ripley, Jerome Castagnier Aligoté, Saar Wine, Vaults Tastings, Weingut Peter Lauer, Ziereisen Baden, Ziereisen Gutedel, Ziereisen Syrah | 1 Comment

Return to the Vaults Part 3 – Winemakers Club and Gergovie Wines

Posted on 02/04/2017 by dccrossley

By splitting my article on the March 2017 Vaults Tasting into four parts, I hope I’m making it more manageable. If you really want to skip anything, it makes it easier, but to do so would be a mistake. I don’t mean because of my elegant writing, merely that all of these importers have a raft of exciting wines on their lists, and plenty of these were on show on Monday this week.

THE WINEMAKERS CLUB

I do write about Winemakers Club (John has decided to forego an apostrophe) with some regularity, but even if I cull a few perenial favourites (like Meinklang), there are still too many here to mention.

One producer I’ve not written much about is Királyudvar in Tokaj, Hungary. Their Furmint Sec 2013 is harvested late with low yields. Spicy apple, almost strüdel, on the nose, with really vibrant fruit, nice acids, and dry.

Relatively new to Winemakers is an Alsace producer I’d never heard of until a few months ago. La Grange de L’Oncle Charles can be found at Ostheim, close to Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere before, Jérôme François began making wine here in 2014, and this Sittweg 2015 is just his second vintage. The boy done good. Sittweg is a lieu-dit planted with 40-year-old Riesling and Pinot Gris, blended together here. It’s in the commune of Ammerschwihr, comprising a north facing granite slope sitting just below the forest, right next to the Kaefferkopf Grand Cru. It’s a textured beauty which is as terroir focused as you can get, in the new tradition of Alsace blends, placing site above grape variety. It has some rocks on the label!

Serbian wine isn’t something you have an opportunity to drink every day. Oszkár Maurer makes wine in Northern Serbia, at Szeremi. The Collective 2015 is Yellow Muscat, known in Serbia as Sárgamuskotály, or Muscat Lunel to aficionados of Southern France. Here, it is treated to two weeks on its lees. The nose has that sweet, grapey, Muscat florality. It’s rich, with texture. More than just an oddity, it’s here because it deserves to be.

Back to viticultural normality, Domaine des Hauts Baigneux is in the Touraine-Azay-le-Rideau Appellation, and is run by Nicolas Grosbois and Philippe Mesnier. The wine I tasted is simply listed as Chenin Blanc 2015 but as the back label shows, it does hail from that AOP. It’s very much a traditional old oak Chenin, clean and precise at this age, but there’s a nicely restrained richness under the surface (the vintage, perhaps?). Just 12.5% abv. Yet another lovely Chenin – 2017 seems to be shaping up as a year for discovering them.

I’m rarely drawn to a wine labelled Côtes du Rhône unless for a good reason, there are just so many of them, but Pascal Chalon Petite Ourse 2015 is interesting. It’s made from 40% Syrah and 60% Grenache and coming in at 14% alcohol, it’s very rich. There’s also a “Great Bear”, La Grande Ourse, which has a darker savoury quality and more weight (there is the addition of Mourvèdre and Carignan). Both are reasonably inexpensive for wine of this quality. The domaine and its vines are mainly around Visan (somewhat to the north of Rasteau in the Vaucluse).

There were some other wines I can’t really leave Winemakers Club without mentioning, even though they’re probably well known to most readers. Domaine des Marnes Blanches Vin Jaune 2008 is a wine I’ve written about before, but I don’t own any so I had to have a glug (I didn’t spit, sorry). The ’08 is very young, of course, but I’ve noted before how this is one of those Vin Jaunes where, although a shame to waste its potential, it is (hopefully) not going to put you off Vin Jaune if you drink it now.

I’ve drunk quite a few of Karim Vionnet‘s Beaujolais wines in the past twelve months, and lots of them have been below Cru Village level (I had his 2016 Nouveau a week ago and it was still fresh and alive). They are just so amazingly fruity. When I last tried his Moulin-à-Vent 2013 it was still youthful. Not that surprising, as it is made from 60-year-old vines. Now it has come out of a little slumber and is waking up. Lovely, and with a serious side.

I’m really falling for the wines of Hegyi-Kaló. Ádám and Júliá are lovely people and it’s hard not to. They make wine in Hungary’s Eger Region. I wrote about their wines at the Great Exhibition Tasting back in January here . I was only able to try their Kekfrankos 2015 on Monday. Kekfrankos is, of course, better known as Austria’s Blaufränkisch. At that last tasting it was my favourite red, and it was on good form on Monday, beautiful, pale, with a haunting nose and concentrated sappy flavours, with that characteristic intense, slightly peppery, fruit.

Finally, Stefan Vetter. Stefan is Winemakers’ new Franken producer, based at Iphofen, southeast of Würzburg. I drank a bottle of his Müller-Thurgau 2015 only a week or so ago, and if I’d had time to write one of my “Recent Drinking” articles it would certainly have made the cut. Now, Müller-Thurgau is the infamous grape of much changed Liebfraumilch and other bottles of 1970s/80s sugar water which nearly did for German fine wine. I’m not suggesting M-T is a noble grape, though there are some very good (and famous, even) versions in NE Italy and Switzerland. Vetter’s is another which will make people reassess the variety, if they are prepared to fork £30 for a bottle. His Silvaner is even better…and even more expensive.

GERGOVIE WINES

Gergovie are based not far from London Bridge Station, on the same site as their bar, the eponymously named 40 Maltby Street. This is another sulphur free zone, with a portfolio boasting names like Bobinet (Loire), Barmès-Buecher (Alsace), and the ever hard to find Barranco Oscuro (Alpujarras).

Another Alsace producer was the first I tasted at the Gergovie table. Nothalten is a village in the norhtern sector of the region, known as Bas-Rhin. Once unfashionable, in the last decades of the 20th Century, the area around Mittelbergheim and Andlau became a hotbed of excitement, especially for young growers. Some of that excitement has moved even further north for the true aficionado, but Patrick Meyer of Domaine Julien Meyer came to cutting edge production late. He is now one of the names to look out for if travelling around there.

Patrick took over from his mother (Julien was Patrick’s father, but died when he was young), having been taught the “new ways” at wine school. He blitzed the vines and, somewhat famously in natural wine circles, realised what he had done. The old ways of his mother had created a healthy domaine, the biodiversity of which he managed to ruin. Thankfully he could see that, and now he works biodynamically, and all his experiments (including the ubiquitous concrete eggs and his love for Sylvaner) come from a desire to implement everything possible to rectify what his costly errors have taught him was misguided.

Crémant d’Alsace 2013 is a blend of Pinots Blanc and Auxerrois, which has more depth than most examples you’ll find. Fresh arrowroot notes on the nose combine with appley freshness on the palate, with a mouth-coating texture, perhaps from the lees.

Nature 2015 blends Sylvaner and Pinot Blanc. Appley freshness is again to the fore. There’s good acidity but it doesn’t dominate. If he’s aiming for purity he hits it on the head. Two delicious wines.

Le Petit Domaine de Gimios is a Minervois domaine, more specifically from the hamlet of Gimios, near Saint-Jean-de-Minervois, run by Marie and Pierre Lavaysse. Marie farms biodynamically and yields are insanely low, down to 8 hl/h. Muscat Sec 2015 is made from basket pressed fruit without skin contact. Dry…ish, it has that richness which suggests a tiny bit of sweetness.

Rouge de Causse 2013 is made from 100% ungrafted vines (actually planted in 1880). It’s a real field blend of untrained bush vines on a rocky site: Carignan, Aramon, Cinsault, Grenache, Terret, Oeillade and Alicante Bouchet to name some of them. They aren’t even planted in blocks, just random vines, so they all get vinified together, though in 2013 about a third of the cuvée was made from the Carignan. You almost get a sweetness on the nose here. It’s pure fruit. The wine itself is quite structured, some might say “old fashioned”, in once sense, but the fruit adds a roundness which softens that side of it. In the end, both facets combine into a lovely complexity.

Gilles and Catherine Vergé make Macon, near Viré. That’s one simple statement which may paint a certain picture. Then try this one by Aaron Ayscough, from his Blog Not Drinking Poison in Paris, about one of their several Vin de France cuvées: “…like white Burgundy that’s been raised by wolves in the forests of Arbois”. So we’ve established these wines are different.

L’Ecart [2008] is also a Vin de France. It’s made from ninety year old Chardonnay vines grown on Jurassic limestone. This is a 2008 (from before you could put a vintage on a Vin de France). It was bottled in 2013. The wines here are all totally “natural” with no chemical additions and as few interventions as possible. Not cheap, but what a wine! Amazingly complex, juxtaposing fruit with a sour and savoury quality, very different from most White Burgundy you’ll come across.

Klinec Ortodox 2006, Brda, Slovenia is mainly Verduzzo (60%) with Rebula, Malvasia and Friulano. It’s orange. Aleks Klinec only makes orange wines now. Each variety is macerated separately and elevage is in a mix of mulberry and accacia wood. It’s from a site called Medana, which before the Communist era was mapped to be a Premier Cru (the listing appears in faded text from an old document on the label below).

There is fruit (apricots and plum), but you also get caramel, orange peel, and even salted nuts, along with a bit of tannic texture (each variety gets individually up to two weeks skin contact). It’s all wrapped in 14.5% abv. Seriously impressive, as the best Slovenian wines increasingly are.

Finally from Gergovie, a couple of wines from small but very much up-and-coming French wine regions. Jérôme Jouret Pas-à-Pas 2015 is a wine from the Southern Ardèche. The grape mix is unusual for the region, perhaps: Carignan, Alicante and Grenache. The Carignan (65% of the blend) undergoes whole bunch fermentation and the result is crunchy but soft fruit, accompanied by a very concentrated fruit compôte nose. Delicious. Jérôme makes half a dozen wines from 12 ha. No chemicals are used at all, yields are kept low and the wines see no wood, just stainless steel. A vigneron to keep an eye on, making beautifully crafted but very drinkable wines.

Cross the Rhône and head northeast and you come to the foothills of The Alps. As that river flows past Seyssel, southwest, out of Lac Léman, it eventually turns northwest, on its way to meeting the Saône at Lyon. The land in the crook of that elbow is Bugey, and like the Ardèche, it is a hotbed of viticultural excitement, albeit on a small scale.

La Vigne du Perron is one of a number of domaines creating interesting wines in a relatively unknown region. Les Etapes 2014 is a pure Pinot Noir from a scree slope near Villebois on the western side of the region. Fermentation is by carbonic maceration in truncated oak vats, and ageing is one year in old oak. There’s a little tannin but very concentrated fruit. A very nice wine with which to finish Part 3.

Posted in Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Aleks Klinec Ortodox, Domaine des Hauts Baigneux, Domaine des Marnes Blanches, Domaine Julien Mayer, Domaine Julien Meyer, Gergovie Wines, Hegyi-Kalo Eger, Hegyi-Kalo Kekfrankos, Hegyikalo, Jerome Jouret Ardèche, Karim Vionnet, Kiralyudvar Furmint, Klinec Medana 1 Classe 2006, La Grande Ourse, La Grange de L'Oncle Charles, La Vigne du Perron Bugey, Le Petit Domaine de Gimios, Marie Lavaysse, Muller-Thurgau, Nicolas Grosbois, Ostheim, Oszkar Maurer Serbia, Pascal Chalon Cotes du Rhone, Patrick Meyer, Petite Ourse, Philippe Mesnier, Pierre Lavaysse, Serbian Wine, Sittweg, Stefan Vetter Franken, Vaults Tasting, Vergé L'Ecart, Vergé Viré Macon, Winemakers Club | 2 Comments

Return to the Vaults Part 2 – Tutto and Vine Trail

Posted on 01/04/2017 by dccrossley

Part 1 of my March 2017 Vaults Tasting Article covered the exciting new importer of Spanish wines, OtrosVinos. Part 2, here, covers Tutto Wines and Vine Trail. Winemakers Club and Gergovie get a shout in Part 3, and finally, Part 4 will cover the wines of Peter (Florian) Lauer, imported by Howard Ripley. I had four hours at Farringdon Street, and that means this time I didn’t get to taste at the Carte Blanche and Clark Foyster tables. This was partly down to time and partly down to the press of people bunched around the tables chatting to their friends on pouring duty. Better luck next time. I am wholly to blame for not getting to Wines Under The Bonnet, especially as I’ve had several of their 2Naturkinder wines and have been pretty impressed. I’ll be looking out for any future chances to taste their portfolio.

TUTTO WINES

Tutto have an excellent range of very natural, sulphur free, wines, with a good spread around Italy and The Loire, with diversions into Beaujolais and Slovenia among others. Like all the best wine importers (those here), they really do put in the leg work, literally, to seek out great wines.

Again, there were crowds around this table and during the whole time I was stretching my arm for Damiano to charge my glass there was a young couple blocking half the table and the spittoon. Etiquette, daahlings, etiquette. I still managed to try most of the wines.

Of the non-Italians on the Tutto list, I adore the wines of Marko Fon, and the Vitovska 2014 is the place to start. It comes from Kras, an area of limestone strewn with herbs in the region of Slovenia which borders its better known Italian counterpart, Carso. Vitovska is a delicate wine, orangey in colour, with extract and texture from the skin contact to be sure, but with refinement and elegance.

One of Tutto’s core growers is Jean-Pierre Robinot from the Loire outliers of Jasnières and the Coteau du Loir (sic). There’s no better wine to begin with than their Bistrologie (2014). This is made from younger parcels, but ha! These Chenin Blanc vines are still 40 years of age. It sees about a year in old wood, and it’s mouthfillingly fresh and alive.

It’s hard to really chose the best from Tutto. Their wines are often edgy, but always exciting. I’ve selected half-a-dozen of the Italians here, but I didn’t taste anything I didn’t like (I’m more tolerant of a nose that needs to settle down or be rectified with a carafe than some tasters, but I do have experience handling such wines).

Matej Skerlj only has two hectares and this is only the second time I’ve tried his wines. He’s in Carso, so just over the hills from Marko Fon. As I suggested Fon’s Vitovska I’m going with Malvasia here. Orangey again, with a lick of citrus and wild herbs. Fresh acidity too.

Testalonga is one of the best producers in Liguria. This is real garage winemaking, literally. The vines are over a hundred years old (Antonio Perrino reckons some of his olive trees are a thousand years old), and the resulting red and white show it. I’ve chosen his red because you don’t often see Rossese di Dolceacqua. A pale cherry colour, the wine itself is all red fruits. It will age, but it’s already a perfect candidate for the description “ethereal”.

Barraco was a fairly new producer to me (I’d only tasted their very good Zibibbo back in October last year). We are in Sicily here, around Marsala, so the grape variety in Alto Grado 2009 is Grillo. This, apparently, is Nino’s first Marsala proper. The grapes are late picked, fermented, and then left in 1,000 litre old oak for six years, under flor. Bronze in colour with a sherry nose and complex nutty flavours. Quite astonishing.

ArPePe is pretty well known in natural wine circles, and they are probably, now, the most sought after wines from Valtellina. It’s that hidden stretch of “Nebbiolo” vineyard in the bit of Northern Italy hardly any of us go to (east of Lake Como, on the Adda River, near the town of Sondrio). The Rosso di Valtellina 2014 on show at The Vaults is grippy and pleasantly bitter/savoury. Nebbiolo here is called Chiavennasca (after the nearby village of Chiavenna). This is hot country. The slopes are steep and south facing, and Valtellina even has its own Côte Rotie, a cru called Inferno. This wine hails from another of the Valtellina crus, Sassella. It’s also another wine for which “entry level” is quite misleading. The vines are 50-years-old.

I get the impression that Babacarlo is close to the heart of the guys at Tutto, and one or two customers too. Lino Maga makes wine on slopes surrounded by forest, near Broni in Oltrepó Pavese (the Pavia Province part of the River Po, in Lombardy). Try Lino’s Montebuono 1986 (not a typo). This bottling is a blend of Croatina, Uva Rara, Ughetta (obscure grape of the day) and a touch of Barbera. You get fruit that seems both sweet and bitter. High acids make it unquestionably a food wine, but imagine a nice savoury Barolo. This doesn’t taste the same, but the experience is similar. Expensive, though. This quality doesn’t come cheap, even from Oltrepó Pavese.

Not too far from Barolo is the underrated Piemontese region of Roero. There are many unsung estates here, making increasingly attractive wines (in both flavour and price, as the two “B”s get ever more expensive). Luca Faccenda, of Valfaccenda, makes a very attractive Roero Nebbiolo 2014 near Canale. Don’t expect a Barolo lookalike exactly. It comes from a vertiginous, but sandy, slope surrounded by woodland, and the wine is made the old way – stick it in old oak and more or less do nothing (no punchdowns or pumpovers or anything). There are tannins, for sure, but freshness underneath, and the perfume of a much more expensive Nebbiolo…which means you’re half way there.

VINE TRAIL

Vine Trail import French wines from small domaines, all sought out by themselves. They have a good nose and import a couple of my favourite Champagne Growers in a list which includes Domaine Sainte-Anne (Bandol), Léon Boesch (Alsace), Jean-Philippe Fichet (Burgundy) and Daniel Bouland (Beaujolais) to name a few.

Here, I’d like to concentrate on the Savoie wines of Gilles Berlioz. It’s not the first time I’ve tried to plug the wines of France’s Alpine region, suggesting (perhaps optimistically, but you never know) that one day they will be as fashionable as Jura. Gilles and Christine Berlioz are, in any event, one of the producers you must try, though they have not yet reached the popularity (and consequent scarcity) of Belluard. They founded their domaine in the sub-region of Chignin, south of Chambéry on what is known as the Combe de Savoie in 1990, and they soon began organic conversion. Today they are moving towards biodynamics.

Chignin “Jaja” 2013 is made from the Jacquère variety, often considered the workhorse of the region. The Berlioz plot consists of 30-year-old vines on clay over limestone. It has the usual lemon zest of the variety but the older vines add a chalky, saline quality. A touch of crisp apple and “ice” finishes it off nicely.

Roussette de Savoie “El Hem” 2013 (named after Gilles’ Moroccan-born lawyer friend) is made from pure Altesse. It is quite exotic, with a bit more weight than the Jacquère. Think ripe peaches with a hint of spice or quince.

Chignin-Bergeron “Les Filles” 2013 comes from Chignin’s special cru. Biodynamic Roussanne (the Rhône variety) is fermented in fibreglass and given a short ageing before bottling in spring. This wine shows extra dimension in elegance, greater depth, and is more mineral too. The fruit here is reminiscent of ripe apricots. It’s a lovely wine which will not hurt if kept a year or two.

Gilles makes a version of the region’s signature red grape, Mondeuse “La Deuse”. This 2013 Mondeuse has the addition of around 10 to 15% Persan, and the nose is very concentrated. You can buy pretty nice, sappy, Mondeuse for half the price, but the Berlioz version is very concentrated on the nose. The fruit is dark, the acidity fresh, and it’s long too. It’s hard not to imagine it coming from a site covered in glacial moraine, however much such fancies have been “scientifically disproved”. This is a romantic wine anyway. At just 10% alcohol it does, as Vine Trail say, hark back to another time.

I wasn’t going to leave the Vine Trail corner without a taste of Champagne. Agrapart Terroirs NV is a Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut based on 2011 and 2012, made from 50% Avize fruit, plus grapes from Oger, Cramant and Oiry. Winemaking here is quietly biodynamic, Pascal Agrapart following the phases of the moon for all tasks. This cuvée was bottled in March last year after three years in bottle on lees. It’s this long lees ageing, sur lattes, which really creates the quality and complexity of fine Champagne. But Agrapart has a kind of House signature, at least for me. It’s a mineral texture and a very pure line of acidity, perhaps enhanced by the lowish 5 g/l dosage here, which also helps make this Champagne taste bone dry.

Raphael and Vincent Bérêche make my favourite Grower Champagnes. Instagram users might spot that I managed to scoop some more of their special Reflet d’Antan on Thursday, just one more precious bottle. The Bérêche Brut Réserve NV is one of the most impresssive entry NV blends you can find. This new edition (my first taste of it) has equal proportions of each of the three Champagne grape varieties, with a fifth of the wine seeing oak, bottled at 7 g/l, from a 2014 base with 2013 reserves. It was disgorged in September. Wow! Fresh, precise and ever so slightly saline. And, considering the fame that Raphael and his brother seem to have gathered in the past five years or so, this remains remarkably good value (around £30). Drinking now, if a little tightly wound, but it will open in the glass so long as you choose a good one.

Posted in Champagne, Italian Wine, Natural Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Agrapart Terroirs, ArPePe Valtellina, Babacarlo Montebuono Oltrepo Pavese, Barraco Alto Grado Marsala, Bereche Brut Reserve, Chignin Savoie, Gilles Berlioz Chignin, J-P Robinot Bistrologie, Luca Faccenda, Marko Fon Slovenia, Matej Skerlj Carso, Pascal Agrapart, Testalonga Rossese Dolceacqua, The Vaults Tasting, Tutto Wines, Valfaccenda Roero Nebbiolo, Vine Trail | 2 Comments

Return to the Vaults Part 1 – Otros Vinos

Posted on 29/03/2017 by dccrossley

Back in the last century it was pretty simple if you liked wine. You had your own “wine merchant”, a decent fellow, one hoped. If you wanted “claret” then you took what he recommended, what he had. Likewise Hock, and Burgundy, and Champagne, and that was about it. The 21st Century Schizoid Man (or woman) has a multitude of problems not faced back in those days. There are now so many really interesting importers that loyalty to even half a dozen, let alone just one, is impossible. Just when you think you have your wine purchases limited to a just about manageable dozen or so, another comes along whose wines you just cannot resist. Otros Vinos is one of those. I knew three of their producers already, so at Monday’s Vaults Tasting (at Winemakers Club, Farringdon) they were the first table I hit.

OtrosVinos is a very small outfit. They only have ten or so growers, and are based over in East London. They have their wines in a number of smart restaurants around the capital, but their main retail outlet is Furanxo, the Dalston deli co-owned by Xavier Alvarez, chef and himself co-owner of Tagállan, the increasingly well regarded Spanish restaurant in Stoke Newington, and Manuel Santos (Santos & Santos Imports). OtrosVinos piqued my interest because, as I said, I already know three of their producers (from both Raw Wine, and my trip to Granada last summer).

The three I know already are Ambiz, Fabio Bartolomei’s wonderful estate from El Tiemblo in the Sierra de Gredos (see Part 2 of my 2017 Raw write-up for my most recent comments on this producer), and two Granada names, Cauzón (from Graena) and the excellent back to the future wines of Purulio (Torcuato Huertas’ 2.5 hectares of magical terroir near Marchal, on the north side of the Sierra Nevada). The wines I tasted on Monday proved that the rest of the portfolio is just as good. If you like wild wines from Spain…and they are quite wild! Anyway, I’m putting my own money where my mouth is…

Clot de les Soleres – This is a small biodynamic producer from Piera, close to Barcelona (about 45 minutes by jeep). The soils are limestone with quartz, and like so many of the producers here, altitude and the cool nights it brings, helps to ameliorate daytime temperatures, further assisted by sea breezes off the Med.

Xarel-lo Ancestral is a delicious pet-nat style of gentle sparkler with a nice line of mineral freshness, but just a little residual sugar too. It’s a fantastic wine, one of the best in the pet-nat style I’ve drunk this year. And only 10% alcohol.

Macabeu (Macabeo in Spanish) is the entry level still white. In contrast to the sparkler, where only 400 bottles were made of the 2015, this 2014 is more plentiful. It’s aged purely in stainless steel, but it does have texture along with an appley freshness (but not too much acidity).

Cabernet Rosat is Cabernet Sauvignon, made from a gentle whole bunch direct press. There’s a slight effervescence, and it’s more orange than pink (or at least appeared so in the relatively dark light of The Vaults). This wine has really nice texture, and a sort of sweet and bitter thing going on for the finish (almost honeyed, but dry). The flavours linger.

Costador Terroirs Mediterranis – This is a producer in Conca de Barberà, near Tarragona. Old vines (60-110 years old) and altitude (400-800 metres) produce grapes which retain their acidity. Old oak and amphora are the preferred vessels for ageing.

Metamorphika Sumoll Blanc/Brisat 2015 blends two rare grapes (I know the red Sumoll grape variety well, and love it, but the white version is almost extinct). The Sumoll Blanc here are 80-year-old bush vines, pressed as whole bunches in amphora for just six weeks (as with whole bunch fermentation in Beaujolais, the grapes on top press the grapes on the bottom by their sheer weight, which also adds a touch of skin contact). Following that, the wine spends seven months in 500 litre oak foudres. This is a fairly complex still wine with real personality despite its youth, but even after the skin contact and amphora fermentation, it tastes very clean.

Metamorphika Moscat/Brisat has a floral, Muscat grape, nose but tastes dry on the palate. Tasted blind, this is not only exceptional, but again has real character. Not your usual simple Muscat. Then, when you see the bottle…(the one below, on the left).

Marenas – makes wines in one of the hottest parts of Spain, Montilla. José-Miguel Márquez has six hectares of vineyards on the sandy clay soils of this part of Córdoba Province. You get around 3,000 hours of sunshine in a year here, and temperatures can reach fifty degrees centigrade. But there are cooling breezes (without which the flor on the traditional Sherry-like Montilla wines would not form), and by harvesting in the early hours, freshness can be retained.

I tasted Mediacapa 2015, made from 100% Pedro-Ximenez. The wine is aged in stainless steel without skin contact, yet seems to have lots of dry extract. It’s dry on the nose, but there does seem to be a tiny bit of residual sugar on the palate, adding a touch of richness. Alcohol is a very creditable 12%. The colour might look a bit dubious for a still, unfortified, wine (see photo to the right of the Clot de les Soleres wines above), but think of Equipo-Navazos Florpower. That should be enough to tempt some of you.

Cerro Encinas is 100% Monastrel given ten days’ maceration with stems. A smoky wine with hints of dark fruit and liquorice, but retaining a crispy freshness. Finally, Asoleo is a Moscatel, picked early in July, after which the berries are dried. Then the grapes are fermented in stainless steel before spending a year in 200-year-old oak. It comes in a half-bottle. A stunning wine with great concentration without losing freshness. There’s caramel and toffee, but it isn’t cloying, and there’s only 8% alcohol, which results in that lifted lightness above the concentration. Very sensual.

OtrosVinos import six other wines from Marenas, a list worth exploring further.

Cauzón – Ramon Saavedra farms around six hectares at around 1,100 metres or so altitude near Graena, on the northern side of the Sierra Nevada range. The soils are mineral rich sandy loam, and although the summers are hot, the seasonal melt from the snows, which make these mountains so stunningly beautiful throughout the year, helps to provide essential irrigation. Nevertheless, yields are very low. I met Ramon a couple of times in 2016 and he’s a great guy, quite a force of nature (in a good way), as are his wines.

I just tasted one wine from Bodegas Cauzón on Monday, Cabronicus. This is an earthy red made, as the name suggests, by carbonic maceration from a very windy high altitude vineyard (1,200 metres) on red sand. I said “earthy”, but it’s also light and fruity.

Have a look at Ramon’s Blog here. One of the fascinating things you’ll see in the photos are the traditional caves where wines were habitually made in the past, perhaps some of the first attempts at a version of cool fermentation!

Verdevique – this is another Granada Province producer, based at Cástaras in the beautiful Alpujarras. The García family farm 22 hectares at between 1,150 and 1,400 metres altitude (famous for being among Europe’s highest vineyards). This elevation means that, contrary to what you might think, temperatures rarely exceed the low 30s centigrade. The soils up here are pure slate, with almost no organic matter to bind the roots, which survive by burrowing deep and, again, waiting patiently for the melting snows to bring life.

This is an estate which champions rare autochthonous varieties, but Tinto Cosecha (2014) is their entry level red, made from a blend of 60% Tempranillo and 40% Garnacha. But the twist is 25 days’ skin contact, which gives a wine which is full in the mouth, with grip and presence, softened with sappy fruit (and reaching 14.5% alcohol, but you would never know until, presumably, you stagger a little on finishing the bottle).

Purulio – Torcuato Huertas has a very interesting social media profile. He appears to be a prolific poster on Instagram (where I’ve followed him for some time), although Fernando at OtrosVinos did point out to me that it’s not him who does the posting – I’d guessed as much. It’s hardly surprising when, without appearing to insult Torcuato’s considerable abilities, you see him in these photos. You can tell that he is completely wedded to his tiny plots of vines and to making some special wines. His family traditionally made wine in the once again fashionable terracotta tinajas, but he prefers to age his own wines in oak.

OtrosVinos import three wines from Purulio: a Blanco, a Tinto, and the red Jaral, made from the highest parcels of vines which are often covered in snow in winter. Fernando was showing just the Purulio Tinto 2014, which is blended from vines in both of Torcuato’s plots at 500m and 950m. The wine is a blend of seven co-planted varieties which undergo 25 days on skins before spending around nine months in old oak. Wine like this is not intended for lengthy, complex, tasting notes. It’s fruity with grip, simple as that. I’ve tried several Purulio wines and they are all very much alive. Old fashioned in some ways, perhaps, but they don’t conform to any preconceived idea of what wine from Southern Spain tastes like. They speak of their beautiful but tough surroundings, and of a life in which their bringing to fruition is frankly tough as well.

Posted in Natural Wine, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Merchants, Wine Tastings | Tagged Alpujarras Wines, Ambiz, Bodegas Cauzon, Clot de les Soleres, Costador Terroirs Mediterranis, Furanxo Spanish Delicatessen, Granada Wines, Marenas Asoleo, Marenas Montilla, Metamorphika, Otros Vinos, Purulio, Ramon Saavedra, Torcuato Huertas, Vaults Tasting, Verdevique | 2 Comments

David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

Il Popolo del Sangiovese

Savoie Fare

Recent Wines (…ish)

Up the Junction

Senorans at The Shipyard

Crémant – More than Mere Froth

Return to the Vaults Part 4 – Howard Ripley

Return to the Vaults Part 3 – Winemakers Club and Gergovie Wines

Return to the Vaults Part 2 – Tutto and Vine Trail

Return to the Vaults Part 1 – Otros Vinos

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