David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

Recent Wines – December 2016

Posted on 17/12/2016 by dccrossley

The sudden realisation that if I don’t write about some recent wines soon, we shall be into the festive flurry, reminded me I do have a few exceptionally tasty wines to tell you about. In clearing the decks, don’t think this means the wines I shall drink in the next couple of weeks will be far more expensive, nor in any way more festive. In our family, Christmas is no longer about pulling out old classics which no one other than me will want to drink, and in any case, more of the festive season will be spent driving to and from family than actually sitting down and drinking. The one time ritual of Champagne aperitif, an old red with the dinner, a dark dessert wine with the Xmas Pud, and an old Oloroso slumped in front of the TV, semi-comatose, will probably be replaced, on 25th, by a single bottle of red Bordeaux at home (and a nice long doze). It doesn’t matter that I don’t think Red Bordeaux goes all that well with Turkey – none of my family eat meat. But in any event, I’m sure any typical reader of my Blog would be pretty happy knocking back any of these wines over the festivities.

It was difficult, as ever, to choose my usual eight wines from those I’ve drunk at home in the past few weeks. Few bottles have been drunk which would fit the description “winter wines”, because temperatures have been unseasonably high (reaching around 14 degrees some days). This is illustrated by the first wine here, although it’s also true that most pét-nats are probably best drunk by the end of the year following their vintage, if not before (so I am prone to drinking a few up in December).

“Plouss’ Mouss” Pétillant Naturel, Hughes Beguet, Jura – I love Patrice’s pét-nat, but I can never get enough of it. Whenever I visit in September he only has a few bottles left and I’m naturally not allowed to clean him out. I actually decided to have this on my birthday. It’s the palest pink Ploussard, which starts off slightly appley, but as its bubbles turn to froth, this becomes redcurrants. It has that dry mineral edge which, despite its lightness (and low alcohol, 10.5%) means it will go beyond aperitif time. Light, refreshing, you don’t want it to finish…magnums please, Patrice? Purchased from the producer.

Brut de Cuve [2016] Vin de France, Romain des Grottes – This is one of the wines I picked up in Paris on my Beaujolais Nouveau trip, which I mentioned in that previous article (see here if you haven’t read it). Effectively this is a Nouveau, a Gamay from near Odenas, biodynamic and unsulphured and, as Romain says, “produit…sans cochonnerie”. This has that slightly appley note which some people don’t appreciate with natural wines, but I will stress that here it is a long way from the cider vinegar notes which spoil some wines. This is fruity, fresh and tasty, a vin de soif without artifice. Purchased from Cave des Papilles (Rue Daguerre, Paris 14).

Arbois Chardonnay 2012, Domaine des Bodines – “Natural wines don’t age”. Bo****ks! I have a real liking for Domaine des Bodines, and they are rapidly moving onto my “Arbois A-List” too (which is very select, I can tell you). Emilie and Alexis’ Chardonnay had a golden orange tinge, suggestive of a little skin contact, and it isn’t 100% clear of cloudiness. The nose is apples and oranges, quite elegant. The palate has a pleasant hint of lees (I can hear the traditionalists clicking their mouse to exit at this point). It’s light but not wimpy, and both flavour and complexity grow with air in the glass (a Zalto Universal for a wine like this, not a White Burgundy bowl). A truly satisfying bottle where bouquet and palate combine with true harmony. Don’t serve too cold. Purchased in Poligny this time.

Magma Rock “LMR15”, Vincent Marie/Domaine No Control, Vin de France (Auvergne) – This is Vince’s Auvergnat Gamay, made from a 25-year-old parcel grown at 430 metres altitude in Beauregard Vendon (Volvic). Whole bunch fermented in a conical wooden tank with daily punchdowns and no chemical inputs, except plenty of protective CO2. That carbon dioxide froths up a little on opening and some is dissolved in the wine. It does dissipate. The fruit is supple cherry with a “volcanic” bite. There’s a tiny touch of the Lambrusco about it on first sip. It’s light, fruity, sappy, delicious. I’ve seen quite a bit of Vince’s stuff on social media, labels on Instagram etc, but so far this is the first of his wines I’ve tasted. I’m definitely searching for more. Purchased from Solent Cellar, Lymington (Hants). If in Paris try Cave des Papilles (see above).

Bérêche & Fils Brut Réserve NV – This was (I think) my last bottle of Raphael’s NV from the 2012 base. It was disgorged in July 2014 (so two years and four months pda), bottled at a dosage of 7g/l. It’s a blend of all three major Champagne varieties, grapes for the NV coming from Montagne and Marne plots. There’s a little colour from the ageing, but the nose is still piercingly mineral and refined. This is mirrored with a very fresh palate, there’s real precision here. As it warms it evolves. It’s a lovely wine, and although I admit a strong emotional attachment to the house of Bérêche, and a genuine admiration for the winemaker (there’s no grower I admire more in Champagne), I find this almost tear-inducingly good for a non-vintage wine. Purchased from the producer, Craon de Ludes.

Pinot Noir 2014, Elio Ottin, Vallée d’Aoste – Another emotional draw for me is the scenic National Park, the Gran Paradiso, which lies south of the Aosta Valley. The wines of the valley are often distinctive, and on average of a very high quality, which goes unrecognised due mainly to the tiny production of Italy’s smallest region (which can be labelled as either Val d’Aosta or Val d’Aoste, depending on the linguistic preference of the producer in this bi-lingual part of Savoy). This Pinot has a dark colour, 13.5% alcohol, a relatively simple cherry nose, and a palate which, whilst not complex, is nevertheless smooth. There’s more cherry fruit here, allied to a little tannin, giving a nice bit of grip. This may not be a spectacular wine in the context of World Pinot, but it’s very good indeed. There’s a positive review on Jancis’ Purple Pages if you need convincing. It is nice to see Prohibition Wines stocking it, but I understand Flint Wines may be importing it. More people ought to be drawn to trying some of the wonderful, and varied (both autochthonous and international grape varieties) wines from this beautiful place. Ottin’s Petite Arvine and Fumin (two of those more or less local varieties) are also very much worthy of attention, and both are stocked by Flint.

Via Revolucionaria Torrontés Brutal 2013, Passionate Wines (Matias Michelini), Mendoza, Argentina – This is one of a clutch of wines I sought out after Dave Stenton’s trip to Argentina earlier this year (see his article on this site here). I’d forgotten about it and when I saw the vintage I thought maybe I should drink it. It turned out to be in a really good place. It’s made from old pergola-trained vines in Tupungato, fermented in open top vessels with 100 days on skins. It then gets 18 months in barrel, which I don’t think get topped up (although I don’t personally get any strong flor notes?).

Orange in colour with really big legs (alcohol 13.5%), the most unusual thing about it was the nose. Torrontés is an aromatic variety, but the bouquet was a pure cross between Muscat and Gewurztraminer, with a real sweet and sour thing going on. Very much muscat grapey sweetness with eastern spice. The palate, by way of contrast, was bone dry, with a tannic mouthfeel from the skin maceration. There was a lot of texture, and a bitter note on the finish. This is the “brutal” side of the wine, because if anything, as it warmed up, it became even more floral. It also became much more complex, with so much going on for what is a relatively cheap wine (under £20 in the UK). Worth seeking out, this won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you want to try something genuinely different…Purchased in Selfridges Wine Dept, Oxford Street (London).

Mondeuse “La…deuse…” 2013, Gilles Berlioz, Savoie – Gilles Berlioz is based in Chignin, which is south of Chambéry in a sub-region known as the Combe de Savoie. If you imagine the Combe as a bent arm with the elbow furthest south, then Chignin lies a little west of its crook, where the River Isère changes direction. It’s a region famed for some of the best white wines in Savoie, labelled Chignin-Bergeron, but the reds are Vin de Savoie. Berlioz has added a dash of Persan (15%) to his Mondeuse, and it is deliberately made in what he claims is the old fashioned style, where alcohol levels were between 8-10 degrees (this one has 9.5%). The lightness of the wine allows the fruit intensity to shine. It’s lovely. I really don’t need to say more. It matches its stated purpose perfectly, a glugging wine which refreshes the palate. Perfection if four friends glug a large glass each in around ten minutes. The only drawback I can see is that it costs more than you might think, the inevitable result of UK duty and the difficulty of sourcing tiny production natural wines, and shipping them at a safe temperature. I got mine from Winemakers Club in Farringdon Road, although Vine Trail also list it.

A nice set of wines, every one the epitome of deliciousness and individuality. In fact I don’t think I’ve written about a more individual bunch of wines for some time.

I’m not sure how much I shall get to write over the Christmas period, but the diary for January holds some very nice trade tastings, one of which I may turn out to be especially good fun, so please stay “tuned” for the New Year. Festive and seasonal greetings to everyone who has been kind enough to read my blog.

Pearl of Brunswick

Posted on 10/12/2016 by dccrossley

Our Oddities Christmas Lunch took place yesterday at Brunswick House in Vauxhall (London), a completely new venue for us. The theme was Fizz and Fortified. The restaurant, which I’d been desperate to try for some time, really nailed it for us. A simple but well executed menu, really congenial surroundings, very attentive service, and two big tables for a total of eighteen people in the middle of a spacious room, surrounded by the other diners. Brunswick House comes highly recommended on many levels, and seems worthy of a reputation which has spiraled fairly quickly. The wine list looks pretty good too, although we took our own wine, obviously!

The menu at lunch provides a limited number of choices, but with plenty of variety. As you can see below, the price is especially remarkable and it represents superb value. We decided to take both a cheese course and a dessert, and the restaurant were very happy to accommodate that. I chose the duck liver parfait, cod main course, and chocolate dessert, plus the cheese, all of which were very good. I also heard very good things about the carrot starter. Thank you Brunswick House.

ex-duck liver parfait

cod

Colston B

choc pot

I will be relatively honest on the wines…it was our Christmas Lunch, and it’s fair to say that whilst we were all, without exception, well behaved, we certainly drank a lot, and alongside the dozen bottles brought along by members of our table of nine, there were numerous bottles which appeared from the guys on the other table. By the end it was a little anarchic, but I hope to mention almost everything which passed my lips.

Dom Pérignon 1973 (en magnum) – Hmmm! Start with a wine like this and where do you go after that? Brown, if more onion skin than gravy, the nose was pretty good for its age (though with obvious oxidative notes, more minims than quavers), doubtless the magnum effect. There were also bubbles to begin with, although they dissipated quite soon after pouring. It began complex, and remained so as it faded. At this age it was not typical Dom, but actually a profound wine, nevertheless. It goes without saying that it was a rare treat.

Vouvray Pétillant Brut 2005, Huet – This was, of course, completely overshadowed by the DP. It has less pressure than a fully sparkling Vouvray, and at a decade the Chenin is soft and the acidity less than one might expect. I’ve had this particular bottling (Huet also do a non-vintage pétillant) at a great age, although I’m not sure this 2005 would last another twenty-five years or so. I hope that those who tasted it (many who know Huet’s Vouvray still wines don’t know the sparklers) might be persuaded to look out for some aged examples.

Lanson 1996 – Lanson’s Gold Label Vintage is probably severely under rated, and this was one of my wines of the day from a purely quality perspective. Despite its age it began with a rapier thrust of acidity on the tongue, made all the more striking by the very fine bead and non-malolactic style. Despite two decades passing since harvest, the fruit retained its precision, but complexity came in the way which it was changing constantly in the glass. There was even cherry fruit, very prominent, at one point.

Franciacorta Satèn 2010, Bellavista – When I see a Bellavista wine I always start humming Nick Cave’s “The Curse of Millhaven”, but you are certainly not slumming it with Bellavista (the most obscure music pun to appear yet). The wine, for those who don’t know it, comes from Brescia Province in Lombardy. Satèn equates pretty much to the French term, “Crémant”. This wine is made from Chardonnay, although I think Pinot Blanc is technically allowed in the DOCG. It’s metodo classico, a pale straw colour, very dry, slightly appley and fresh. Probably a wine to drink rather than age, but one of the highest quality sparklers at this level which Italy has to offer.

Caluso Spumante “1968”, Cuvée Tradizione, Orsolani – Whereas Franciacorta has become a well known sparkling wine DOCG, Caluso is the opposite. The grape here, Erbaluce, is famous enough, in wine circles at least, for its sweet passito wines from the same region, whilst many Londoners at least know Tim Manning’s stunning dry Erbaluce, from Northern Tuscany. But I think we were all impressed by Orsolani’s bottle fermented version. Higher in alcohol than Champagne (13%), you’d call it super-dry, definitely a food wine for me, though it doesn’t lack underlying fruit. Simon, who brought it, said he thought it was the best example from a press trip, another unusual wine well worth seeking out. “1968” is the name of the cuvée, not the vintage.

Ferrari “Maximum” Brut, Trentodoc – Trentodoc completes our string of Northern Italian bottle fermented fizz. It’s a little bit cheaper than the Franciacorta, but, as with that DOCG, also made from Chardonnay. Non-vintage, this is another very dry, so food friendly, wine. Lots of nutty/bready notes and quite floral on the nose. Very good length too. Of course, the producer is one of the best known in Italian sparkling wine, and this is very high quality fizz. The fact that one UK regional merchant currently has it priced below £24 makes it a genuine bargain over many cheaper Champagnes.

Montlouis-sur-Loire Méthode Traditionelle Brut, François Chidaine – Chidaine is one of my favourite Loire producers, and every time I’m near Montlouis I always visit his shop, just outside the town on the banks of the Loire (not least because of the other carefully chosen producers whose wines are stocked alongside his own range). This is another pure Chenin Blanc, but the key here is that the vines are old, some up to fifty years of age. It’s one of the most well made Loire sparklers you’ll find. Fresh acidity with a great bead of tiny bubbles, you get flowers and peach stone, giving a wine which I’d use either as an aperitif, or a lunch time refresher, rather than as a dinner accompaniment, but that should in no way detract from a lovely wine. I did eventually guess this, after an embarrassing suggestion that it might be Savoie. Pay Chidaine a visit! Jacky Blot’s Taille-aux-Loups address is just down the road, in the hamlet of Husseau, as well. Then on to Cheverny…

Prisme .05, Champagne Guiborat – Richard and Karine Fouquet farm 8 hectares around the Côte des Blancs village of Cramant, although they sell off more than half of their grapes and bottle the rest. Prisme is a Blanc de Blancs (Chardonnay) made entirely from Grand Cru fruit and bottled as an Extra Brut (in this case a dosage of 2.5g/l). Around 10% of reserve wines are blended into the cuvée. This wine, in magnum, was from the 2005 harvest, bottled in April 2006, and disgorged April 2015. I’d never heard of this producer, yet served from the larger format it was drinking beautifully, as indeed many top 2005s are doing from bottle. A very pleasant surprise, and with that fine, almost mineral, quality indicative of Cramant fruit.

The third photo below is of the first wine to sweep in from our friends on the other table, the aptly named Bat-Nat (though what was wrong with Pét-Bat, guys?). A light wine, in colour and flavour, it’s made from Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier to you and me). It’s made by the team at 2Naturkinder, who are getting masses of underground press at the moment. They’re based in Kitzingen, a little to the east of Würzburg, in Germany. Former publishers who took over one parent’s vines with one mission – to make natural wines with nothing added and nothing taken out. The wine tastes pretty light (though it’s 12%), and only 800 bottles were made of the 2015 (first vintage, disgorged July ’16). A name to watch for fun wines made with care.

At some point Peter from the other side slipped us a taste of the delicious Cape Fortified 2008 from Swartland, produced under the Niepoort & Sadie label. You just know that when Dirk gets his white socks dirty in any collaboration it will be good, and he scores again here. A blend of old vine grapes from some of the more traditional Portuguese and Mediterranean varieties found in South Africa. A hard to find wine, not least because the EU doesn’t treat “Cape Port” too kindly, and not inexpensive too, so this was a treat to try for the first time.

The first fortified from our table proper was one of my stash of Equipo Navazos wines, Palo Cortado “Bota No” 47. Bottled (at 22% alcohol) in December 2013, it comes from the cellars of Gaspar Florido, the contents of which are now owned by Pedro Romero. This very wine was once bottled and sold as the incredibly rare “Ansar Real”. The contents of the bottle are very old, so it isn’t too surprising that it is very intense, too intense for some people. It’s a wine to sip in (preferably quiet) contemplation, rather than glug. But there’s also a wild side to it, almost a rawness of soul. It has something a little different, that breaks out of the constraints of how a sedate old brown sherry should age to the more conservative drinker. As an aside, I used hardly ever to buy Palo Cortado, yet I now find myself drinking more of it than I do Amontillado and Oloroso. It seems to have an intellectual side to it which increasingly appeals to me. I apologise to no one for making something I brought along another of my wines of the day.

ENOTY

Taylors 1985, Porto – We guessed hard at this. Vintage Port, of course, but vintage guesses tended to go older (I guessed Vargellas, so in the right producer ballpark, but way out on age). It’s often hard to describe the beauty of a nicely aged vintage from Porto, but elegant and smooth sums it up. You know, without me telling you, that there will be cigar box aromas, and fruit which goes on forever, with only a hint of spirit to give just enough of a tiny kick. You can still find this if you have around £100 to splash. If you do, it is well worth it.

Mavrodaphne of Patras 1944, Karelas Winery – This lovely wine obviously has a story which didn’t manage, in its full details, to make it over to my side of the table. The vintage, as the back label attests, is 1944, so this was made in German occupied Greece towards the end of the Second World War. For some reason, it seems (from a little research), that the wine was never bottled from the 10,000 litre wooden vat in which it has sat for well over 65 years. Around 1,000 bottles were produced, I’m not entirely sure when (the label looks very new), from 100% Mavrodaphne grapes, fortified to the level of a Fino Sherry. It’s brown with raisins, caramel and apricots dominating. It has amazing length and was astonishing. Like me, you may have tried a Mavrodaphne of Patras before. I’ve sought them out when in Greece. They are usually inexpensive and, to be frank, pretty commercial, in most cases. This is something entirely different, going to show how the fame of a once well regarded wine can be eclipsed by modern commercial interests.

Look at the bottle below. What do we think it might be? Well, it is unlabelled, of course, but the contents give it away as another Port. This time we have absolutely no idea of the producer, and age can only be guessed, albeit an educated guess. We didn’t have time for carbon dating but the person who brought it said it might be pre-20th Century, or perhaps up to around 1925. It reminds me of when an eminent Madeira expert poured a similar bottle, saying he didn’t know the vintage, only that it was pre-1800! In some ways, wines like this are museum pieces, which give us a thrill for their age more than their flavours. Yet this wine also reminded us of the great ability of fortified wines to go on, and on, and on…

I know the wines of Jean-Paul Brun (Beaujolais) pretty well, but I’d never tried “FRV” before. Slipping a sparkler of that colour in after the fortifieds was suicidal, but it was another wine from our friends, and I was really glad to try it (it’s not the first “Sparkling Beaujolais” I’ve tried, but they don’t come my way all that often). Very low (7.5%) alcohol, aromatic, light and medium-dry, wholly out of place for my alcohol sodden palate, but it made me interested enough to want to try it next summer, once the garden furniture can be safely left outside.

Plum Sake Liqueur! Nazawa Brewery, Japan – Perhaps if you can decipher the back label (magnify the photo below) you will find out more about this intriguing beverage. I should warn you that there were people there yesterday who did not like this one bit, who were not at all enamoured by its plummy sweetness and, it must be said, a very strong nose and flavour of almond, from the plum kernels, apparently (someone said it reminded them of Disaronno, the ubiquitous super sweet almond liqueur from Italy). I suppose it’s possibly because I have a secret Bakewell Tart crush, and also that after ingesting a certain quantity of alcohol I am game for this sort of thing, but I quite liked it. For me, as a coffee didn’t come my way to sober me up, it seemed a potentially risky business to ingest a few centimetres of this stuff, but I did so with pleasure, and without any incident. It’s only 11% alcohol, you kind of expect it to be higher.

Brunswick Oddities

I apologise for not mentioning a few other wines which made their way over to our table, after the point where my pen went back in my pocket. I think I may have desired a little snooze, although I managed to stay awake and take part in what I remember as a detailed conversation about Beaujolais Nouveau which Mr Uber must have found very bizarre, as we slunk back in our comfortable limousine, en-route to the after party at Winemakers Club. Here, notes went out of the window. The Heymann-Löwenstein Schieferterrassen Riesling 2012 was a great palate cleanser, but the Domaine Lucci (Anton von Klopper) Estate Pinot Noir “Jasper’s Vineyard” 2014 was stunning (ultra-fresh). After that I had to begin the long trek home. I know I missed a 2001 Salvioni Brunello, but hey, I think I’d had a pretty good innings.

Posted in Dining, Oddities lunches, Sparkling Wine, Wine | Tagged 2Naturkinder Bat-Nat 2014, Bellavista Franciacorta Satèn, Brunswick House, Caluso Spumante Orsolani, Champagne Guiborat Prisme 05, Dom Pérignon 1973, Equipo Navazos Palo Cortado 47, Ferrari "Maximum" Trentodoc, François Chidaine Montlouis Brut, Huet Vouvray Pétillant 2005, Jean-Paul Brun FRV, Karelas Winery, La Bota de Palo Cortado 47, Lanson 1996, Mavrodaphne 1944, Niepoort-Sadie Cape Fortified, Oddities Lunches, Plum Sake Liqueur, Taylor's Vintage Port 1985 | 5 Comments

Where To Now, Saint Vincent?

Posted on 07/12/2016 by dccrossley

I think there are many wine obsessives who begin life very traditionally, enjoying the red wines of Bordeaux. But after that, Burgundy begins to fascinate, and fascination soon turns to something stronger. There are many reasons why this can happen, but for me it was without doubt about falling in love with the Côte d’Or itself, the landscape, the villages, and the food, all contributing to enhance the wines when experienced in situ. There’s no escaping the fact that Burgundy appeals to the romantics.

This was true for me through the later 1980s and the 1990s. In those days there were no endless lines of traffic snaking along the Route du Vin, and apart from market days, Beaune was not the crowded town it is today. But even with the increase in wine tourism, Burgundy retains most of its charm. Where it becomes problematic for wine lovers is its prices. Increased global popularity and extremely small harvests have pushed prices inexorably higher. Once we could afford the odd Grand Cru from a good producer, but now even the village wines from such sources are becoming prohibitively expensive, if indeed we can get an allocation.

At the same time that we’ve seen Burgundy prices rise, from Chablis to Macon, we’ve also seen Pinot Noir and Chardonnay take off in other parts of the world, “New” and “Old”. For many, good as these wines are, they remain Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. They are not “Burgundy”. But the news for Burgundy lovers doesn’t need to be bleak. The wider region we call Burgundy is large and varied. There are many sources of reasonably priced and highly individual wines within it. All we need to do is to decide whether these wines merit our attention. The question we must ask is whether we are just buying these wines because we can’t afford the wines we used to buy, or has winemaking improved so much as to make some wines from less glamorous corners of the region as worthy as the wines we bought of old? In deciding this, we must remember one of the frustrations for lovers of all things Burgundian in the last decades of the last century – for every heavenly bottle there were many which should by rights have been consigned to Hell at the point of bottling. Real consistency in the region is a relatively new phenomenon.

I’m going to offer a few suggestions of what to take a look at – the wines and sub-regions I think are worth exploring. I’m by no means the first to do so, and there are many more examples I could have chosen, yet it might make interesting reading. I can only apologise to regular readers and followers of Wideworldofwine, who might already know all of the producers I list.

But first, a few facts…

Burgundy – it covers a lot of ground

Burgundy is obviously much more than the Côte d’Or. The whole region produces close to one-and-a-half million hectolitres of wine in an average year – that’s around 180 million bottles, which makes up about 7% of French AOC wine production by volume, yet approaching 20% by value. That’s about 3% of world quality wine sales by value. More than 60% is, some may be surprised to learn, white (red and a little pink making up about 30%, with the other 10% going to crémant). Only 1% of this is designated “Grand Cru”, and more than 50% comes from the basic or bottom tier, regional wines such as Bourgogne Blanc and Rouge. The Burgundy pyramid has a wide base and a tiny tip on the top. So amidst all that there is bound to be value for money, and hidden quality, but whilst both exist, they are no longer a well kept secret. Let’s take a little trip north to south and see what we find.

The Cold North

Chablis is the furthest north you can get and still be in “Burgundy”. Not much further north and you are into the Aube, whose vineyards are classified as part of Champagne, although you’ll find a good smattering of still wines along with the fizz, not just red and white but a very interesting pink Pinot Noir, Rosé des Riceys, which only just fails to slip into Burgundy. Chablis is so famous that it isn’t hard to find wine which is a pale shadow of the finest bottles. There is value in Chablis, but I suggest that you don’t look to the Premier Crus of lesser producers as a substitute for the long lived Grand Crus of Raveneau and Dauvissat. If I were to name one domaine which for me epitomises what is right about this region today, it is that of Alice & Olivier De Moor. Based in Courgis, southwest of Chablis itself, they make a range of highly individual, biodynamic, wines expressive of so much more than the mass produced wines of some larger producers. And they also make a stunning Aligoté.

Aligoté is the forgotten grape of Burgundy. Aficionados of your usual white Burgundy (you might say wine snobs…), made from Chardonnay, may tell you it tastes like paint stripper. I got laughed at once for taking a Coche-Dury Aligoté to a wine lunch…seriously. But so many producers are making good ones today that it cries out for at least a little exploration. Another good example of Aligoté is made by a producer based not too far from Chablis, in St. Bris-le-Vineaux, Domaine Goisot. This producer makes largely Côtes d’Auxerre wines, from around Saint-Bris and Irancy. They used to be a well kept secret but no longer. They make lovely wines which are fine, yet never lose a touch of earthy terroir, and coming from an appellation many have never heard of, their quality often comes as quite a surprise.

If these are too well known to the expert, the new northern frontier of Burgundian viticulture is still further east, in the sub-region of Bourgogne-Vézelay, near one of the most beautiful romanesque abbey churches in France, though still in the Yonne Département. Catherine and Jean Montanet run a leading estate here, Domaine de la Cadette. Look especially for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir (sometimes, like the Goisot’s, with a touch of César in the reds) of character here, but don’t ignore their strange speciality, Melon de Bourgogne. You will know it as the oddly named grape of Muscadet. Well, here we have it in its homeland, so to speak, on clay-limestone slopes nestling into the wild Morvan hills.

Côte d’Or – surely not?

When I were a lad there were parts of this famous sliver of vineyard that few connoisseurs would venture into. Whilst you can find good wines up in the Hautes-Côtes, viticulture in the hills above the Côte d’Or can be hit and miss. On the other hand, the once neglected villages of the Côte itself have sprung to life. It is no longer the case that villages such as Marsannay and Fixin in the north, Pernand and Aloxe in the centre, and St-Aubin and Santenay in the south, are on the fringes. It’s all down to producer.

Seven or eight years ago I’d be getting all excited, telling you about Sylvain Pataille. He may be rather more famous today, but no one has done more, not only to put Marsannay on the map, but also to draw attention to other unfashionable villages. Try the Marsannay “Clos du Roy” to see what I mean. Oh, and he also makes a very good Aligoté.

If anywhere is less fashionable than Marsannay, it has to be its neighbour Fixin. Not as famous as Pataille, Domaine Berthaut has been quietly ploughing its furrow since the 18th Century. You pay a fortune for Côtes de Nuits Premier Crus, yet Berthaut makes four single vineyard Fixins which still manage to illustrate their different terroirs without the Gevrey price tag (although the domaine does make wine from some of the more famous villages, including Gevrey, too).

Other villages worth seeking out are Pernand-Vergelesses and Aloxe-Corton, via the estate of Chandon de Briailles. They have some of the best value Corton Grand Crus on the market, but their Pernand “Île des Vergelesses” (in both red and white) is one of my favourite wines from around Beaune, for character, value and quality.

Saint-Aubin is probably the village which has most gained in reputation in the past decade, and there are several Premier Cru sites, and even village wines, worth seeking out. With a village like Saint-Aubin, even though prices are spiralling, you don’t need to seek out the cheapest domaines. When the producer is a hundred percent committed to quality, the premium is worth it. You should grab anything you can from Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey (PYCM to his fans), but my recommendation here is the Saint-Aubin “En Remilly” Premier Cru, for value.

I’d also like to make a shout for Chassagne. Not the whites, but the rarely seen nowadays red Chassagne-Montrachet. Much of the vineyard in this famous village was turned over to white wine to capitalise on the “Montrachet” connection at the end of the last century, yet the village used to be dominated by Pinot Noir, and many sites are much more suited to that red grape variety than they are to Chardonnay. I enjoyed some quite earthy and rustic reds from here in the late 1980s, and you can occasionally still find them, if more often in local restaurants. If you do see one, it is probably worth giving it a go.

Alongside the growers, we are seeing a real growth in the new breed of micro-négociant. Prohibitively expensive land prices have forced small growers to buy in extra grapes so as to make their domaines economically viable, but some outsiders have also moved in. You’d assume that they would be left with the dregs that no one else wanted, but when you taste some of the wines, you realise you’d be wrong. There are plenty of grape growers on the Côte d’Or who don’t want to use all of their grapes, or occasionally, any of them.

One of the most successful outsiders is Andrew and Emma Nielsen, whose Côte d’Or wines come under the Le Grappin label. They produce very good wines from several Côte d’Or villages, although my personal favourites remains their two Beaune 1er Crus, Boucherottes (red) and Grèves (white). Their prices have risen quite a lot in recent vintages, not helped by the very short recent harvests, leading to those spiralling grape prices. But any wine in the range, including those from Southern Burgundy and Beaujolais (labelled “Du Grappin”) are genuinely worth seeking out, including their great value “Bagnums”.

Another micro-négoce who’s been incredibly successful on the Côte d’Or is former Yarra-Yerring winemaker, Mark Haisma. Whilst the Nielsens work out of cellars in the walls of Beaune, Haisma is based in Gevrey. He makes some very grand wines from around there (and a brilliant Cornas), but he also makes a particularly excellent Bourgogne Rouge.

There are dozens more names to look out for, but lovers of minimal intervention in the vineyard and cellar will probably have already discovered Fanny Sabre and Philippe Pacalat.

Bourgogne AOC, in its simple form, is the bottom tier of Burgundy, and can cover a multitude of sins. But as the tasting of Bourgogne Blanc in the last issue of Decanter Magazine shows, there can be some lovely wines which cost a fraction of the price of the grander wines from the top domaines. Whilst the Decanter piece mentions the Bourgogne Blanc of Domaine Leroy, my very favourite Blanc is that of Domaine Roulot. It’s a brilliant wine (though not quite as good as their rarely seen Monthélie, which is close to Meursault quality), but you will pay an eye-watering sum for a basic Roulot Bourgogne Blanc these days. Yet as the Decanter tasting shows, there are plenty of wines around the £15 mark which are worth exploring – and many are from the big négociant houses as well as the growers.

Further South

Ten or fifteen years ago you began to see more frequent recommendations for wines from the Côte Chalonnaise (Rully, Mercurey etc). I think if truth be told, it took this region of mixed farming, stretching south of the Côte d’Or, a few years for consistent viticulture and winemaking to catch up with the marketing, but today there are several producers making Pinot Noir and Chardonnay worthy of their growing reputation. There are more than 2,000 hectares of vineyard down there, with a little more than half devoted to Pinot Noir (thus bucking the overall trend towards white wine).

There are plenty of producers to explore on the Côte Chalonnaise, but those who have been slowly establishing good reputations include Paul Jacqueson (Rully), Michel Juillot (Mercurey), François Lumpp and Michel Sarrazin (Givry), and Stéphane Aladame (Montagny), to mention just a few.

We’ve mentioned the Aligoté grape several times, and we can’t leave the Chalonnaise without mentioning Bouzeron. Bouzeron was promoted to full village status in 1998, but for Aligoté only. One of Burgundy’s most famous names, Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée Conti, shares a domaine here with his wife, Pamela, although it is managed by his nephew, Pierre de Benoist. They produce another excellent Bourgogne Rouge called “Le Digoine, but they are most famous for one of the finest Aligotés in the whole of Burgundy, which also has a reputation for ageing really well.

I think Aligoté is starting to be taken much more seriously, and I think it is making a bit of a comeback as a wine in its own right, not just a base for a Kir. You didn’t exactly hear it first here, but I don’t think its slow rise has been spotted by many.

Further south still lies the Mâconnais, a vast area encompassing a host of full AOCs, named villages, and basic Macon Blanc and Rouge. We are talking the likes of Viré-Clessé and Saint-Véran, or Pouilly-Fuissé, -Vinzelles and -Loché. There’s more than 5,500 hectares down here, the vast majority of them planted to Chardonnay, although there are one or two producers making very good reds, something that could not be said very often twenty years ago, when a sea of “Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire” used to be made with Gamay, not Pinot Noir. Some of these were, I’m afraid to say, the worst red wines with the Burgundy name on them that I’ve ever drunk.

Today the situation is very different. It’s not hard to find lovely wines down here, whether from the famous Pouilly-Fuissé estates, or the newer named villages. Famous names like Dominic Lafon (Héritiers du Comte Lafon) have moved in and lead the way in quality, and they produce a string of whites which are all worth trying. But I have a favourite producer down here as well, one whose wines I will always grab when I see then in the UK, or in France – it’s Julien Guillot’s Domaine des Vignes du Maynes. Based in Sagy-le-Haut, near Cruzille, this domaine makes two wines I’d recommend as an introduction to the new (bio)dynamism of the region – the white Mâcon-Cruzille “Aragonite“, and its red brother, “Manganite“.

But if you’d like me to finish with something really unusual, try Guillot’s Clos des Vignes du Maynes Cuvée 910. The Clos used to be owned by the monks of the Abbey of Cluny, and Julien has made a wine in the image of how it might have been done when the abbey was built, eleven centuries ago. Hand picked, the grapes were transported by oxen. The grapes were foot trodden at the Prieuré de Blanot, fermented with wild yeasts, and no additives were used whatsoever. Like all the produce of the domaine, a natural wine, yet as others have remarked, a very fine Burgundy too.

Vignes du Maynes is also a prime example of a new trend in Burgundy, one which has in part crept up from the Beaujolais – the onward march of natural wine. These wines may not appeal to the Burgundy traditionalist so much, but they are at the cutting edge of a movement trying to make “Burgundy” more accessible (and exciting) to the drinkers of the future. Something which Bordeaux has thus far failed to do. This is why, ultimately, the region may come to appreciate these producers and their wines.

So there we have it. You might not be able to afford Clos de Bèze and Bonnes Mares any more, but there’s plenty more where they came from. My point is not to pretend that the wines I have recommended here can match in quality the best of those famous names, but if you came to Burgundy looking for wines of personality and individuality, wines which contrast with the more uniform fare of some other regions, then they are still plentiful, both on the Côte d’Or, and in wider Burgundy. And you will find that you can afford these wines, because although some may not be cheap, they all represent fantastic value in their own way. Even if some of them are not easy to track down.

There is one other alternative, though: Drink Beaujolais…

Posted in Burgundy, Wine | Tagged A&P de Villaine, Aligoté, Alogoté, Aragonite, Bourgogne Rouge Le Digoine, Bourgogne-Vézelay, Bouzeron, Burgundy, Catherine & Jean Montanet, Chandon de Briailles, Cotes d'Auxerre, Cuvée 910, Domaine Berthaut, Domaine de la Cadette, Domaine des Vignes du Maynes, Du Grappin, Fixin, François Lumpp, Goisot, Héritiers du Comte Lafon, Ile des Vergelesses, Julien Guillot, Le Grappin, Macon-Cruzille, Maconnais, Manganite, Marsannay, Michel Juillot, Michel Sarrazin, micro negociants, Olivier & Alice De Moor, Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, PYCM, Roulot Bourgogne Blanc, Roulot Monthélie, Saint-Bris, St-Aubin En Remilly, Stéphane Aladame | 4 Comments

Butter or Marge, Daz or Dreft?

Posted on 01/12/2016 by dccrossley

“We don’t know which one is best?” as the words of the song go! Well, to put two world class wines in the same bracket as washing detergents is obviously unfair, but a while ago a small disagreement broke out among Equipo Navazos-loving friends about the relative merits of two of the Equipo Navazos Amontillados (numbered 31 and 61). As I was absent at the dinner where they tried to resolve these differences I was kindly sent samples of each in order to add my opinion. Of course they have ended up sitting here for a month whilst I’ve been either travelling, or neglecting my duty, but now I can tell you what I think. Of course, I’m sure some of you will think it’s a bit geeky arguing the toss between a pair like these, and some people will rightly think themselves lucky if they have either of the two in their racks. But it does give me another opportunity to extol the virtues of Equipo Navazos, not that they require my help.

The wines were brought up to room temperature this morning, although my dining room is not very warm right now after this morning’s frost. I decided to taste the wines in two different glasses. I usually drink wines like this from a Riedel Sangiovese/Riesling glass, the most versatile in the range (I’ve used it for Champagne as well on many occasions). This time I thought it would be fun, and possibly instructive, to try out a Zalto Universal as well.

The Wines’ Origins

Both La Bota 31 de Amontillado “Bota No” and La Bota 61 de Amontillado “Bota No” emanate from the same source, the cellars of La Guita, on the Jerez road just outside Sanlúcar, to where these butts were moved in 1980. The solera labelled 1/10 contains, in the view of the EN team, the most balanced and elegant wine. It goes without saying that it is also of a high average age, and the “Bota No” designation does, of course, denote that it is drawn from especially distinctive barrels which have not been refreshed, in order to preserve those distinctive qualities, a by-product of which is a raising of that average age of the wine inside them.

The Tech

La Bota 31: Four butts selected (just under 900 litres, making around 1,700 to 1,800 50cl bottles)
Saca of October 2011
Alcohol – 20%
La Bota 61: slightly more bottled here, 1,000 litres (making 2,000 50cl bottles)
Saca of August 2015
Alcohol – 20%

There were no EN bottlings from this solera between these two releases.

Tasting (details from the Riedels)

La Bota 31 – It’s hard to believe that this wine, poured from a small sample bottle, could fill a small room so quickly with its profound bouquet. The nose is both saline and nutty. After a few moments you begin to get spice (cinnamon), and something akin to dark brown sugar.

The palate is dry, but there’s a glycerin texture. It’s smooth as a result, although there’s also a tangy, nutty, acidity. The salinity on the nose is there on the palate, but it isn’t intrusive. The wine has real depth, almost as if you are looking down a dark well. You do get a sense of the age of this wine. The complexity is astounding, and at the time of release the 31 got glowing references, many writers suggesting it was clearly the best EN Amontillado release so far.

I understand that at the dinner the 31 was a touch cloudy initially, which was caused by the sediment it had thrown. There was no such issue with the wine I was sent.

La Bota 61 – Around four years later EN revisited the same solera. The wines look almost identical. If I can see a difference (and to be frank I’m fed up trying to distinguish them), the 61 looks to be a tiny bit darker, although they are both a lovely burnished brown, glinting in the winter sunlight. The nose has a less deep tone, a touch more lifted, although it’s no less pronounced. Quite figgy, and that higher tone shows a little iodine in the background.

The palate is dry. The acidity for me is more pronounced and there’s much less of that glycerin smoothness. I’m also getting a touch of orange citrus. There’s a more youthful freshness to it, although I’ve no idea why that should be. Yup, that salinity comes through here, and also more of what seems almost like wood tannin than with the 31. I’m not sure why. Although it doesn’t intrude for my palate, I can see why some might think it makes this wine the more angular of the two – it surely does.

Bota 31

Bota 61

The Outcome

Boy this is difficult. These wines retail for about 50€ for a half-litre bottle (but be warned, you can pay quite a lot more), and at that price I assume that few people will have the chance to measure them up side-by-side. They are both great wines, and I don’t use the word lightly. As they grow in the glass they do become more distinctive of each other, or at least perhaps the palate becomes attuned to their differences.

I’m going to be honest here and say that I made things over complicated for myself by going for the two glass trick. The Riedel seems to emphasise the deeper notes of the wine, making it seem more concentrated but also seeming to narrow the profile a little. The Zalto loses some of that concentration, but as the aromas leave the glass you don’t lose the precision. The results in each glass are so different that it becomes as much a test of the glasses as much as the wine, but I can’t go back…and that’s why I’ve only reproduced my tasting notes from the Riedels.

On which glass to choose, my conservative side suggests that most people will prefer the Riedel Sangiovese/Riesling glass, and indeed a larger Riedel bowl would surely work too. My more rebellious side was intrigued by the difference the Zalto made (whether because of its wider brim or the more angular shape of the bowl). The wines almost tasted lighter, or perhaps more fleet of foot is a better way of putting it.

As for my assistance in the debate, I’m not really going to help move it along a great deal. For me, the 31 is a wine I’d sip in the chair in front of a log fire (not that I have one). I wonder whether the 61 would be the better suited to food? I don’t just mean hard cheeses, which both might satisfy. I mean something like that Amontillado favourite, lobster. If I had the chance to try it with something like the lovely partridge I had at The Glasshouse in Kew a week ago, I’d jump at it as well.

But if I had a 50€ note in my pocket? Probably the 31. Age before beauty, always! Although now I’m not so sure…

Posted in Sherry, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Glasses, Wine Tastings | Tagged Amontillado, Equipo Navazos, Jerez, La Bota Amontillado 31, La Bota Amontillado 61, Sherry, Sherry - Riedel v Zalto | Leave a comment

Tuscan Raiders

Posted on 28/11/2016 by dccrossley

There’s a group of aficionados of all things Toscana which meets several times a year to drink frankly far too much wine in impressive restaurants. It has been a while since I’ve been able to join them, so I was very pleased that a change in travel plans left me free to do so last Friday.

It has also been some years since I visited Tuscany. Despite several trips to Piemonte in recent years, it’s a good many since I’ve luxuriated in the sunshine of the Chiantigiana, or walked Montalcino’s medieval walls. Tuscany was one of the wine regions which became very dear to me in the early years of my wine passion, and much as Burgundy supplanted Bordeaux, I guess that Piemonte, with its pattern of ownership and vineyard designations more resembling Burgundy, came more recently to play a larger part in my cellar than Tuscany. This has certainly been the case in the past decade and this lunch served to remind me that I own all too few of these lovely wines.

The venue for lunch was The Glasshouse, on Station Approach, by Kew Gardens. It may be the least well known restaurant in the Nigel Platts-Martin stable (The Ledbury, Chez Bruce, La Trompette, and formerly The Square), but it has been open since 1999, and provides an experience combining fine dining with the kind of unimpeachable service typical of the other venues in the group. More on the food later.

Seven people drank thirteen wines, two of them magnums (I did say we drank far too much, though I do appear to have lived to tell the tale), so don’t expect an essay on each, but we did drink some lovely wines, none of which disappointed me. There’s normally a theme which loosens as the day approaches. Our theme for 25th was ostensibly “Montalcino”, but we began with a couple of very good whites, threw in a couple of non-Montalcino reds, and finished with a couple of Vin Santos from Chianti.

The two whites could not have been more contrasting, yet both were exemplars of their type, and without question the two best Tuscan dry white wines I’ve drunk so far this year, with the possible exception of Tim Manning’s ever astounding Vinochisti Erbaluce. Montenidoli “Carato” Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2009 is very fine. Big legs and a lick of oak, it is radiant with green flecks, and a palate of herby lemon acidity balanced by great texture. It’s the kind of wine which gives an often under performing DOCG a good name.

It contrasted nicely with Il Torchio “Stralunato” Vermentino 2015, from Liguria’s Colli di Luni, right up on the Tuscan border. This is a pale wine, also with lovely green glints. Refined on nose and palate, yet there’s a salinity which gives a savoury edge. Vermentino rarely gets taken seriously, except perhaps from Sardinia sometimes, but this wine is both delicate and delicious. Oddly enough, I find both of these wines very easy to recall quite vivdly as I type.

The first of the reds was served blind, and it did take a little while to tease out its identity. I think that the Sassotondo Ciliegiolo “San Lorenzo” 2010, Maremma, was a touch young, not that Ciliegiolo is a grape for long ageing but this is Sassotondo’s top bottling of this rare autochthonous grape variety. Garnet in colour, it’s juicy and spicy, with some balsamic notes. It still retains the grippy tannins of youth. Personally, I’d recommend this to anyone seeking something a bit different from the region, although there’s plenty of exciting experimentation on the coastal side of Tuscany.

Next up, two Brunello’s from the same stable. Altesino Brunello di Montalcino 1975 and 1985 were both lovely at different times at the table. The ’75 started off as an old wine drinking well, and despite showing the colour of its age, and showing some caramel notes on the nose, it was still in very decent condition, a fine wine from a very fine vintage. Yet, as expected, it did fade.

Back in the 1980s I used to shop at Winecellars, the original wine warehouse run by David Gleave (now Liberty Wines) and Nicolas Belfrage (Enotria Winecellars, Vinexus). There were two tastings which ignited the spark for me, as far as Tuscan wines were concerned. One was with Paolo De Marchi of Isole e Olena, and the other was Altesino. After that tasting I bought some 1985 Altesino Brunello, along with their 1982 Riserva. Those 1985s are long gone from my cellar, and to be fair, Altesino entered a period some time later during which many wine writers were not praising this estate in the north of the DOCG as much as they had previously. It seems that whatever happened, the estate is on form today, so how was the 1985? Initially it seemed even older than the 1975, drying a tiny bit. Yet with time in the glass it blossomed as it opened out into a lovely wine. Very hard to say which I preferred, the 1975 or the 1985? Both were long and complex, and typical of mature Brunello.

The first flight was rounded off with a beauty, Poliziano “Asinone” 1997, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano (far right in the photos above). The wines of Montepulciano often get ignored just a little beside those of Montalcino, and to be frank, in many cases you can see why. But Asinone is a class act, a Riserva aged in a mixture of barrique and larger oak. It’s concentrated and quite powerful, and this 1997 is not fully mature by any means, still showing some oak influence. But saying that, it’s lovely as well as impressive, and best of all, it’s distinctive. I’ve never bought this wine, I’m not sure why? The desire to always reach for Brunello over Vino Nobile, I suppose. Something I ought to put right as far as Asinone goes.

The second red flight was all Brunello, albeit of differing stature. Sesti Brunello di Montalcino 2001 was a good start from this favourite biodynamic producer, located south of Montalcino. Full of fruit, fresh and flowery (intense violets), there’s always an elegance to this estate’s wines. We followed it with the same producer’s Riserva from magnum, Sesti Brunello di Montalcino Riserva “Phenomena” 2001. This might have been my “Wine of the Day”, and when someone mentioned that it probably has twenty years in the tank, that may be no exaggeration. This is on another level, still closed to begin with but offering enough over its time in the glass to show real class, with smoothness and depth. Phenomenal, of course, although the name celebrates a significant astronomical event in each harvest (in 2001, the Leonids shooting star shower). And all power to the magnum format, of course.

Following that was a tough task for Il Marroneto Brunello di Montalcino 2004, quite a pretty wine by comparison, but wholly delicious. I’m always wary at lunches and dinners like this one, a cornucopia of vinous delights where those which seem to show less well would clearly shine, either in less exalted company or on their own. I think that this wine, and Sesti’s straight Brunello, both fall into that category.

This was emphasised by the wine which followed it, Col d’Orcia Brunello Riserva “Poggio al Vento” 2004. In giving this wine a score of 95 points, Parker and Galloni also gave this a drinking window of 2014 to 2044. Add to that, the fact that we were drinking another magnum, and you will guess that we were very much in the territory of youth, here. But there’s already spice, smoke, and mint, along with concentrated Sangiovese fruit, and from those descriptors you can understand how impressive this is, and will be. But this wine’s most outstanding feature in this vintage is that it is quite unique, quite different in nature to so many other Brunello Riservas.

As is so often (I lie, always) the case at these gatherings, something appears from under the table. Served blind, I was pleased my tastebuds were on reasonable form, identifying what it was, but making a fool of myself over the vintage. Florio Marsala 1840 (I had guessed 1966, but to be fair, how many times do we all make similar mistakes with old Madeira, which like this Marsala, so often appear a couple of hundred years younger than they really are?). There’s little you can say about a wine like this (or at least, little that is printable). Wow! is polite, but inadequate. Some people have no idea how much their generosity is appreciated…so thanks, Chris. It went beautifully with the cheese course, …of course.

We could perhaps have found some sweet wines from Montalcino (though Moscadello is not usually a wine that springs immediately to mind for such occasions), but instead we were treated to two very contrasting Vin Santos. Riecine “Sebastiano” Passito 2001 is not strictly a Vin Santo, rather an IGT Toscana made from Trebbiano and Malvasia, grown on chalky soils at up to 500 metres altitude near Giaole. It is both fermented and aged in barrique, probably the reason why it is the darker of the two wines. Notes of pear fruit with caramel and honey, very sweet. That made it not to everyone’s taste, but I like it, as I like this wonderful estate.

The contrasting wine was Selvapiana Vin Santo del Chianti Rufina 2007. This younger wine is a classic of the genre and, at least once Isole e Olena’s Vin Santo became so expensive, has been one of my more frequent purchases. This is a pure Trebbiano (grown on clay and limestone), and as it says on the label, it comes from the northern Tuscan Rufina sub-region. After drying and pressing, the grapes are vinified and aged in small caratelli. This is dryer than the Riecine. There’s still a touch of sweet caramel, but more dried fruits, and with more complexity than the sweeter passito. Personally, I rather wish I had either, I don’t mind which, to serve with the Christmas panatone. I wonder whether it’s too late…

I promised to mention the food at The Glasshouse. It was generally excellent, fully deserving individual photos so you can really see the dishes. We began with seared Orkney scallops with cauliflower, grapes and Italian truffle. This was “dish of the day” and one of the best handful of starters this year. A truly memorable dish.

Next, red-legged partridge with Puy lentils, lardo di Colonnata, red cabbage and trompette de mort mushrooms – the partridge was beautiful and cooked to perfection dans son jus (as they say, please excuse obscure French pun), really very good indeed, though some of us found a few hard bits of bone in the wrapped element.

The main course of Cornbury Estate fallow deer with roasted salsify, pine and beetroot was classic “NPM” – from The Ledbury to The Glasshouse you can pretty much rely on exceptional deer and this delivered.

The cheese course – well, every one seemed in perfect condition so what more can you ask for?

The dessert of warm apple and pecan brioche was delicious. The ginger ice cream accompaniment was good, although for my less educated palate I felt it was not a perfect match for the brioche, somewhat dominating. I love ginger, but I’m not a big sweet ginger fan, so I’m sure it was just me. By this stage in all honesty I’d probably reached the point where remembering to take a photo of the dessert was not at the forefront of my mind, though you’ll be pleased to know that there was no staggering, no loud behaviour, at least from me, and all proper sense of decorum was completely observed. Have a pic of a few of the empties instead.

Thank you to all the staff at The Glasshouse for looking after us so well, both professional and friendly in equal measure. A long trek out on the District Line, but well worth it.

Posted in Dining, Fine Wine, Italian Wine, Wine, Wine and Food, Wine Tastings | Tagged Altesino 1975, Altesino 1985, Brunello di Montalcino, Col d'Orcia Poggio al Vento 2004, Florio Marsala 1840, Il Marroneto Brunello 2004, Il Torchio Stralunato, Marsala, Montenidoli Carato Vernaccia, Poliziano Asinone 1997, Riecine Sebastiano Passito, Sassotondo Ciliegiolo San Lorenzo, Selvapiana Vin Santo, Sesti Brunello 2001, Sesti Phenomena 2001, The Glasshouse Kew, Tuscan Raiders, Tuscan Wine, Vermentino Colli di Luni, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano | Leave a comment

Le Beaujolais Nouveau…Est Arrivé?

Posted on 22/11/2016 by dccrossley

Is anyone here old enough to remember, back in the 1980s/90s, when the Beaujolais Nouveau marketing machine got into full swing? For most lovers of half-decent wine it was horrible to behold. The UK, a nation of beer drinkers, was really just getting into this wine drinking thing. As more of us explored our neighbours in the “European Economic Community” (remember those heady days?) in the 1970s and early 1980s, the new fangled foods we tried there (oh the croissant! oh the Camembert!) started to appear in restaurants and homes back here, and with those dishes went wine (well, maybe only accompanying the croissants in the most extreme of francophile homes, of course). It’s probably as impossible for some young wine lovers today to imagine an England without wine (for the masses) as it is to imagine a time without mobile phones, computers and the internet.

Wine isn’t an easy drink for the novice, at least not the tannins of young Bordeaux, or the complex bouquet of aged Burgundy. Even Champagne, with the relatively high dosage common back then, was a bit “dry” for palates weaned on German sugar water and “Spanish Sauternes”. What could be better suited to the tastes of the mass consumer who wishes to get to know red wine than nice fruity Gamay? And when it is rushed to market, just fermented, even better…perhaps.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a vin de primeur, fermented for just a few weeks, by the carbonic maceration method (whole berry fermentation in a sealed container filled with CO2, the fermentation starting within the grapes themselves). Such wines thus produced are low in tannin, so that they won’t often age well, but are potentially easy and pleasant to drink as soon as they are bottled.

A simple wine of this type was always made in the region to satisfy the locals, but it soon dawned on the producers and the authorities alike that it might be a good way to shift vast quantities of very ordinaire wine, from the broad and generic Beaujolais AOC, which didn’t have a quarter of the cachet of the finer Crus (such as Morgon and Fleurie) from the region’s northern granitic hills.

The real commercialisation of Nouveau began with the idea of a race to get the new wine, the first of the new vintage in France, to the bars of Paris, and quite naturally this rather good marketing idea gained a lot of publicity. An early release date of 15th November, stipulated by the Regional Body, was soon changed to the third Thursday of November, thus giving the cavistes a good long weekend to promote the wine.

The idea really caught on in the UK in the 1980s, with the Beaujolais Run, a mad dash of both merchants and consumers, down to Beaujolais and back with cases of the new wine. It all became a little tasteless, perhaps to match some of the wines. In fact, rather than being tasteless, some of them tasted rather unflattering. The vast sea of fairly unsaleable basic Beaujolais flowed out by the thousands of hectolitres into supermarket own brand labels. It was fun for some people, for a while, but by the mid 1990s “Nouveau” was a bit gauche, and consumers had moved on. The vast pallets of the stuff which once hogged supermarket aisles had gone, and perhaps a few cases stacked on a shelf was all you’d see.

At around this time the finer Crus of Beaujolais were stirring into life again. Today, the region is one of the most dynamic in France. The “Gang of Four” (Lapierre, Thévenet, Breton and Foillard, the original disciples of Jules Chauvet) were spreading their influence and the region’s reputation was slowly being restored, so that today it is possibly the trendiest wine region in the country, perhaps alongside Jura. This renaissance is being driven with increasing assistance from a host of new and younger producers who adorn the shelves of any self-respecting wine merchant, especially in Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and Berlin.

For the last couple of years these producers have been reviving Beaujolais Nouveau, albeit with fairly miniscule quantities of wine. Sure, it’s a great help to their cashflow at a time when they need tiding over until their Crus are bottled, perhaps in the spring. But these vignerons are committed to quality. They already produce exciting wines, and although their Nouveaux are still simple wines, intended for swift enjoyment among friends in any glass or beaker which is to hand, there’s no reason to expect anything less than good wine, devoid of any cynical desire to exploit the consumer.

In 2016 pretty much any bar in London known for selling natural wines had a Beaujolais Nouveau event on last Thursday. But I was in Paris, and the whole city appeared to be celebrating the event. Of course, the wines were not all good. The norm was perhaps exemplified by the “own label” Beaujolais Nouveau I tried in a branch of the Nicolas chain, far more ubiquitous in Paris than London. It was a vibrant purple, smelling slightly of cherries, tasting slightly more acidic than one might like, but overall it was drinkable, and only 4.50 € a bottle. Expect to pay between 9 € and 15 € for the good stuff in Paris, whilst the UK’s Duty regime makes most up towards the top end of that spread in a London wine shop.

Whilst much Nouveau still emanates from the south of the region, those cuvées made by the new producers are more likely to come from the granitic north, where the named Beaujolais Crus are located. One major difference between the two is often signified by a clue on the label, many of the better wines being “Beaujolais-Villages” Nouveau rather than straight Beaujolais. But you might equally find one of these wines labelled as a Vin de France.

Although it is commonly stated that Beaujolais Nouveau doesn’t age, these better wines will certainly keep fresh for at least six months if well stored, unlike in the old days when it was not unusual to find a bottle of supermarket Nouveau tasting tired by Christmas. So it might be helpful for me to list those producers I think are worth looking out for. Some of them are available in London, although with imported quantities being small, most wine shops will have sold through their stocks. If you find yourself in Paris there are plenty of bars and cavistes who stock the wines listed, but there are perhaps two which have a wider selection than others. Le Verre Volé (their wine shop), on Rue Oberkampf in the exciting 11th, and La Cave des Papilles on Rue Daguerre (14th). Irrespective of whether they have any Beaujolais Nouveau left, those two addresses should be in the little black book of any adventurous wine lover.

Of all the wines to look out for, one of the rarest, a unicorn wine among Beaujolais Nouveau, is that of Jean Foillard. It does exist! Karim Vionnet, whose wines I’ve written about recently, makes a really tasty version as well.

One of the most ubiquitous Nouveaux, to be found in several of the the Parisian natural wine cavistes is Jean-Claude Lapalu. Other producers whose wines graced parties at cavistes across Paris on the night of 17th include France Gonzalvez (you may still find some left at branches of The Sampler in London), Rémi Dufaitre, Château Chambon, Guy Breton and Xavier Benier. From the south of the Beaujolais, long-time star in what used to be a sea of mediocrity, Jean-Paul Brun, makes a Nouveau, though I haven’t tried it this year. Tasting notes suggest it has more bite and spice than most of the surrounding producers would be able to muster.

A good example of one of the “Vins de France” I was talking about is the “Brut de Cuve” of Romain des Grottes – although I’m not entirely sure why Romain doesn’t label this as a Beaujolais, his Domaine des Grottes being located at St-Etienne-des-Ouillères, near Vaux-en-Beaujolais, not far south of Odenas.

There are many outsiders who are making wine from the Beaujolais region now, Jean-François Ganevat being perhaps the most famous. A couple of producers known for their Burgundies have turned to Beaujolais, and both have released a Nouveau this year. Philippe Pacalat’s version I have only seen in France, whereas conversely, that of Andrew and Emma Nielsen (Le Grappin/du Grappin) was all rushed over to the UK, most of it sold from the keg by the glass in selected London bars and restaurants. I believe a little was bottled, well worth grabbing if you can find it.

I’m sure there are plenty of other ” bojo noovos” you all tasted last week. I’d love to hear what you thought were the best, wines for my search list next year.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that “Nouveau”, or more accurately, “vins de primeur“, come from other regions too. To complement Beaujolais Nouveau we are seeing increasing numbers of Muscadets released as primeurs, although they don’t have the lees ageing that a really good sur lie version has undergone. The Côtes du Rhône also makes light and fruity primeurs, and so do a number of Loire producers, just to mention a few French regions from where such wines can be found. They may not get the publicity of the Beaujolais wines, but if you know the producer then it will be worth trying the wine. Drink them with friends and without ceremony. They prefer a noisy and animated environment, not the silence of worship. They are a different beast to the sea of plonk which makes many of the older wine writers rightly shudder when they think back.

Posted in Beaujolais, Natural Wine, Paris, Wine, Wine Festivals | Tagged Andrew Nielsen, Beaujolais, Beaujolais Nouveau, Brut de Cuve, Chateau Chambon, Domaine des Grottes, France Gonzalvez, Guy Breton, Jean Foillard, Jean-Claude Lapalu, Jean-Paul Brun, Karim Vionnet, Le Grappin, Les Papilles, Philippe Pacalat, Remi Dufaitre, Romain des Grottes, Verre Volé, Xavier Benier | 3 Comments

Master of Fino

Posted on 12/11/2016 by dccrossley

The wine pro of the 21st Century has to know a lot more than their Bordeaux and their Burgundy these days, but ironically a Master of Wine would, in the past, have known a lot more about his Sherry (I say “his” because they didn’t let in a lot of ladies back then) than many do today. Every time we think that this star among alcoholic beverages will break back into the limelight its moment is snatched away…by craft beer, craft gin, the New Beaujolais and whatever comes along next.

Yet to be fair, Sherry has made something of a comeback. Even in the 1990s, when Lustau started to market the Almacenista concept, there were tiny signs of a revival for a wine genre which had been pretty much destroyed by the commercial decisions and takeovers of the 60s and 70s. This century has seen a more concrete revival. Equipos Navazos deserves a very large medal, and the undying thanks of all Sherry lovers, for showing the world what vinous treasures, wines of world class finesse and complexity, still lie in the bodegas of Jerez, Sanlucar and the other regions producing sherry styles in the rest of Andalucía, in Southern Spain.

The Equipo Navazos bottlings are of necessity fairly low production, and as a consequence, expensive. But their undoubted success has led to others reevaluating their stocks, and the opportunities they might have to market such high quality wines. At the same time, we must not forget that there have always been gems, often selling for ridiculously meagre prices, lurking unloved on the dusty racks underneath some old fashioned wine shops, or in traditional Spanish bars and on Spanish restaurant wine lists.

This week has been International Sherry Week 2016 (7-13 November), though it may have passed you by. At least once a year a group of us get together to celebrate sherry in the convivial surroundings of Masters Superfish, one of London’s finest fish n chip restaurants, just down the road from Waterloo rail terminus. It seemed fitting that we were able to mark this week for celebrating all things Sherry with a very fine array of Fino and Manzanilla styles, plus one table wine made from Palomino Fino. It was wholly expected, but unlike many a wine tasting, every wine below was a star.

Within these fairly anonymous four walls you’ll find some of the best battered fried fish in London

Navazos-Niepoort Vino Blanco 2014

This is a Palomino table wine coming in at 13% alcohol. This partnership with Niepoort is now in its sixth vintage and this wine, with its precision, delicacy and steely backbone yet soft finish, is drinking wonderfully now (though this cuvée usually ages very well, which is why I bought a few magnums). It is made from 100% Jerez Palomino (all from Macharnudo Alto), fermented in bota (40-year-old American oak of 600 litres) using local indigenous yeasts, and aged for eight months under flor. The 2014 was bottled in December 2015.

The freshness of the 2014 possibly exceeds that of any previous version I recall. There’s fruit under the flor, and a lightness of touch despite the 13% alcohol. It has body but you kind of don’t really notice it as the wine takes off. This went down very well with the Sherry aficionados and, I won’t lie, I’m glad I have a decent few bottles (and mags) of this vintage. It seemed a little tight on delivery, but it is now in a good place to try it with all that freshness. I might drink my bottles over the next twelve months and keep the magnums.

Delicado Fino, Gonzalez Byass

This is a limited production wine made exclusively for the UK supermarket, Waitrose. It’s on sale for a bargain £13.99 (for 50cl). The name hints at the style. The wine in the blend is well aged and the flor has been maintained, yet the wine is relatively pale in colour and has a freshness and delicacy which is hard to retain in an aged fino. The elegant nose mirrors the palate. This is actually a great summer aperitif, being fairly light, yet with more complexity than you’ll find in a cheaper branded fino. Waitrose suggest tapas and paella, though my own choice with the latter dish might be something with more body. But this is a fine wine at an exceptional price, and with a nice label too.

Classic Dry Fino, Rey Fernando de Castilla

“One of the most exciting producers in the region today” according to Peter Liem and Jesús Barquin (Sherry, Manzanilla and Montilla, Manutius Press 2012), and no one who knows Sherry is going to disagree with that sentiment. The Fernando de Castilla range divides between “Antique” and “Classic”, this wine being, obviously, from the latter category. Whilst these are not in the same league as the Antiques, the fino is perhaps the best of them. It is classic in both name and nature, very fresh, and combines both fruitiness and salinity. It retains that light chalky mineral texture all through its good length. It has that knack of showing a very slight sweetness on the palate (it’s the fruit, there’s no sugar), which can make it a good match with spicy food. At around £12 here in the UK, it’s about half the price of the exceptional Antiques, a very good everyday fino, yet way above the ordinary, and pretty perfect with fish & chips too.

Fino, Bodega El Maestro Sierra (37.5cl)

This is an old family house (founded 1830) which created a stir at the time. The Sherry business was dominated by the nobility, and the idea of a barrel maker becoming an almacenista was quite shocking. Owning no vines, the company sources its wine from the Jerez co-operative, but everything is done traditionally. The fino is exceptional. The wines may average around five years of age, but the bodega’s good hilltop location provides good ventilated conditions for flor to thrive. Consequently you get a richness in this fino, with a depth and complexity assisted by minimal finishing (fining and filtration). It’s quite full on the nose yet there’s a lightness on the palate. A wine of character.

Fino La Panesa, Hidalgo

The solera used for this wine was created in 1961 to mark the birth of Alfonso Rodriguez Hidalgo. This is a marvelous wine where the average age of the bottle’s contents will be 15 years. As Liem and Barquin point out, this represents the upper limits for biological ageing, so the wine is darker and quite rich. It is also perhaps the most complex fino we drank yesterday (though that would be challenged by the last wine of the day, a manzanilla). Of course, complexity and indeed richness, is not what we are always looking for in a fino style. We may want more of the refreshing clean lines of some of the lighter bottles. But sometimes we do like to taste a different style, and I must admit that on the rare occasions this wine comes my way, I’m always thrilled by its myriad flavours. Especial, as they say, though you may have to pay around £30 for the chance to sample a bottle.

Tio Pepe Fino “En Rama”, Gonzalez Byass

Another wine from the Gonzalez Byass stable. The straight Tio Pepe fino must be the most recognisable brand of dry Sherry on the high street today, and a very decent drop it makes. It’s my mother’s favourite, so I know it well, drunk fresh from the fridge, not a month or two lurking on the sideboard. En rama wines are bottled directly from cask and usually, as is the case with this version, undergo minimal filtration, so that the wine can be somewhat cloudy. En rama wines are bottled in springtime, when the flor tends to be most active, and this is truly captured in the wine. The nose is pungent with flor‘s nutty character, yet even as a special cask selection, it doesn’t lose that elegance which the regular Tio Pepe, in its own way, always exhibits. The overriding experience when you drink this wine is one of naturalness. I don’t know how otherwise to describe it.

Because of the nature of en rama, it is released soon after bottling, and producers generally recommend consuming within three months in order to capture that moment of freshness and purity.

Fino Chipiona “Los Madroñales”, Bodega Cooperativa Catolico Agricola

This is a pale straw colour, with characteristic green olive flecks accenting. You might not expect it to be as rich as it is. There’s a yeasty, bready, nose with toasted almonds. Chipiona is a town situated on the coast southwest of Sanlucar, once famous for its pre-phylloxera Moscatels. It enjoys similar cooling sea breezes to Sanlucar, and so the wine retains a delicate lightness after around three years in solera. This wine was bottled in February this year and was lovely and fresh, without being at all insubstantial. We see very few Chipiona wines, and production there has almost disappeared, so it was a treat to have one.

Manzanilla La Gitana “En Rama”, Hidalgo

Perhaps La Gitana doesn’t have the profile of Tio Pepe, but with a good distribution I would guess that many people who’ve drunk dry Sherry have tried it. Our second “en rama” wine was a nice foil to the Tio Pepe version, it being a Manzanilla. Like regular Tio Pepe, La Gitana is a fresh manzanilla fina these days, with about five years of age. The en rama version was originally released in 2011 in partnership with UK wine auction site, Bid For Wine. It is both richer and more complex than the regular release, quite full in the mouth in a dry and chalky sense. But it still shares with the Tio Pepe version that lovely tingle of natural freshness characteristic of the genre. It’s rare to be able to compare and contrast the two, and choosing which is the better is a difficult task best left to experts.

Flor de Lebrija 12 Years, Gonzalez Palacios

Lebrija is, like Chipiona, one of the smaller towns in the wider Sherry production area, but Lebrija is way inland, twenty or so kilometres north of Jerez, on the road to Seville. Lebrija’s wines were not allowed into the Jerez-Manzanilla DO, so in 2009 it was given its own designation as a “Vino de Calidad”. Gonzales Palacios is another producer with a well chosen hilltop location, ensuring a well ventilated bodega, which means that the flor can survive as a fairly thick layer all year round. It also happens that Lebrija is, rather counter-intuitively, not only cooler than Jerez, but cooler than Sanlucar as well.

This is a well aged wine with about 12 years in barrel. The wine is probably bottled unfiltered as it’s a bit cloudy, and it has a darkness indicative of its age. It has a very distinctive nose, a sort of umami/mushroom note, but also a hint of whisky. What you get here is a more yeasty, nutty wine (a result of the enhanced flor), and the complexity of bottle age. An altogether different style to some of the paler, lighter, earlier finos, with more complexity if less elegance. Try hunting down a half bottle from Warren Edwardes’ Sticky Wines. At around £7 for a half-bottle, it’s a fairly cheap way to try this fuller style.

Manzanilla Pasada Bota 59 “Capitaz Rivas”, Equipo Navazos

I’m sure everyone knows the Equipo Navazos story. Not a bodega, they are effectively a micro negociant which releases small quantities of special wines in a series of consecutively numbered botas throughout the year. Bota 59 is named after the famous cellarmaster (Capitaz) for La Guita, Rafael Rivas. He started a solera in 1986, from which this wine (from Hijos de Raneira Pérez Marín) is drawn.

A manzanilla pasada, of which this is a true example, is a manzanilla which is potentially on the way to becoming an amontillado. The flor will, as a result of great age, be quite fragile. It is restrained from becoming an amontillado by topping up of the butts, which are filled not to the usual 5/6 full, but to a mere “finger” from the top. This keeps the flor alive. With age, the power and influence of the flor decreases, yet the tiny area of the wine’s surface, and the regular topping up, keep it alive and protected from the air at the top of the cask. As it ages, the alcohol in the wine actually increases. This bottling has reached 16%, and as I said earlier, this is at the true limit of biological ageing.

This is a powerful wine, no question. The oxidisation is gentle and the nutty notes are accentuated, balanced by a remarkably fine acidity. The wines extracted for this bota come from a solera founded in 1986, and will average 15 years of age, so you really get a remarkable degree of complexity, and indeed a smoothness rare in Sherry without sacrificing acidity. There’s almost a whisky note coming through, bags of salinity (salted nuts) and something gently woody, but it’s the kind of wine which will go through many changes in the glass as you contemplate and sip it. Don’t drink it too cold. I personally recommend it with food, and it’s a rare biologically aged wine that I would always use with food as opposed to as an aperitif (rich lobster or crab would go nicely). It’s also a match for the cheese board. Whereas with hard cheeses I would open an amontillado, a palo cortado or perhaps an oloroso, this will do nicely for some well matured runny cheeses.

I’m wholly biased. I’ve amassed a nice little stash of EN, though because of rarity and price I do have to ration them (I do try to share the pleasure with other Sherry lovers). But whilst these wines are relatively expensive for Sherry (you might pay £40 for the 59, more in some places), as fine wines they deliver a level of complexity which you’d have to pay three or four times more for, at least, from any of the other classic fine wine regions of the world. Just pointing that out to those who balk at a £40 sherry. And at least with this 59th bottling, a saca of June 2015, there were a reasonable 3,500 bottles to go round. If you can find one it will be magnificent.

Posted in Sherry, Spanish Wine, Wine, Wine Tastings | Tagged Delicado Fino, El Maestro Sierra Fino, En Rama, Equipo Navazos, Fino, Fino La Panessa, Flor de Lebrija, Gonzalez Byass, Gonzalez Palacios, Hidalgo, International Sherry Week 2016, Jerez, Jesus Barquin, Manzanilla, Manzanilla La Gitana En Rama, Manzanilla Pasada Bota 59, Manzanilla Passada, Masters Superfish, Navazos Niepoort 2014, Palomino Fino, Peter Liem, Rafael Rivas, Rey Fernando de Castilla, Sanlucar, Sherry, Tio Pepe Fino En Rama | 2 Comments

Jura Come to London

Posted on 09/11/2016 by dccrossley

If you have read my wideworldofwine blog since I began posting you will know I visit the Jura Region every year, usually around harvest time, but you will also know that my focus is generally on the newer producers, the up-and-coming stars of the region, so to speak. And it’s fair to say that these, often younger, winemakers provide a good half of my Jura drinking throughout the year, supplemented by some of the international stars this region has produced: Stéphane Tissot, Ganevat, Puffeney, Labet and so on.

There is, of course, another side of the coin. A large group of domaines who are not such new kids on the block, who are not always experimenting with zero sulphur or amphorae. It is largely these producers who are brought to London by the Comité Interprofessionnel des Vins du Jura, in conjunction with the Comté Cheese producers, for what may become known as the Chandos House Tasting. It is perhaps ironic that the younger producers who usually attend the Nez dans le Vert tasting in spring each year, were actually exhibiting in Paris the day before this tasting. A shame I couldn’t be at both. The 2016 London tasting took place in the attractive, neo-classical, Robert Adam designed 18th Century Chandos House, once owned by the Royal Society of Medicine, and now a small hotel close to Oxford Circus.

There were seventeen producers showing their wines, with what appeared to be a maximum of six wines each. I think one or two sneaked in a few extras, something I can sympathise with because this is a region known for multiple cuvées. In a small room, perhaps a little cramped with the number of visitors, it was too difficult to taste all the wines. That was a shame. I’d particularly have liked to taste the wines of the region’s historically pre-eminent negociant, Henri Maire, because I haven’t done so for a long while, and not since the change of ownership. I only managed to taste one wine from Domaine Rolet too, generally one of the most reliable of the large family domaines in Arbois, with a wine shop in the centre of town. But I did taste the ranges of twelve out of seventeen, and those which appear below are my personal pick of the bunch. I will admit that as a seasoned Jura veteran (since the 1980s), I’m probably looking for some spark of something new, beyond “tradition”. Other tasters may well prefer other producers.

Domaine Pignier, Montaigu

Pignier is based in the lovely village of Montaigu, just a few kilometres from Lons-le-Saunier. It’s one of the old Jura family estates, making wine here since the late 18th Century (their property used to belong to Carthusian monks up until the Revolution, when it was purchased by the ancestors of the same family as run the domaine today). They have been certified biodynamic by Demeter since 2002, so no standing still. Only a little sulphur is used and, for the past eight years, they have been producing a sulphur-free cuvée, their Trousseau “Les Gauthières”. The 2015, a deliciously fruity wine, was possibly my favourite of those on show on the Pignier table, though I loved their fresh, topped-up, Côtes du Jura Savagnin, “Sauvageon” 2014, made in a cement egg. The Chardonnay “La Percenette” 2014, which has twelve months in barrique, shows signs of complexity to come with the 2015 (from 25-year-old vines). This is one of an ever widening group of the best ouillé (non-oxidative) Chardonnays in the region. There’s also nice Crémant du Jura, 100% Chardonnay, which has ripe, almost sweet, fruit. The Vin Jaune 2009, the new vintage in the region, is good too.

Jean-Etienne Pignier was pouring the wines, assisted by Grant Butcher from their importer, Raeburn Fine Wines, in Edinburgh. Raeburn’s other domaine was at the Paris tasting the day before, the exceptional Domaine Buronfosse. Raeburn has bagged a couple of gems in the seemingly frantic fight of nearly every British importer of French wines to finally get in on the Jura act this year. But there are still gems to be dug up and polished.

Domaine Berthet-Bondet, Château-Chalon

This is a domaine you may have heard of? Their Château-Chalon has a very high reputation in the region, and so it might come as something of a surprise that they have no UK importer. Surely that will soon change? Château-Chalon is a stunningly situated village, perched high on a rocky outcrop near the centre of the region, its best vineyards on a cliff-topped steep slope falling away below it. It is not only for this reason that photos of it appear in so much of the publicity you’ll see about the Jura. It is also, arguably, Jura’s most prestigious, and often most expensive, wine. For this reason, it can be difficult to enter that tiny world of vin jaune production here, but Jean and Chantal Berthet-Bondet have always had a reputation as two of the village’s most open producers. Their wines were poured by their daughter, Hélène.

If I were to attempt to describe the Berthet-Bondet range, I’d probably say “classic”, but in the best possible sense. The wines are correct, and perhaps risk free, but they go much further, with perfect balance, structure and elegance. From the light, pale, “Trio” 2015, which blends all three red varieties (Trousseau, Poulsard and Pinot Noir), through the Chardonnay “Balanoz” 2015 (1 year in mixed age oak), and the Savagnin “Savagnier” 2015, there’s a real line of freshness.

I ought to say something of the 2015 vintage. Throughout the region 2015 has been described in glowing terms. Some of the younger vignerons say it’s the best they’ve made, and as they are bottled one can’t help but agree – an exceptional year. But there is richness in 2015, and without attention to this, the wines do risk being out of balance. Jura wines are not blockbusters and even though it’s a vintage which should not be missed, a fill your boots opportunity, do beware of wines which may have sacrificed that all important freshness, which perhaps in 2014 was less easy to lose than in 2015. There are no such issues at this address.

There were two oxidatively aged whites on show, the lovely blend of 70% Chardonnay/30% Savagnin (“Tradition” 2013), and the varietal Savagnin 2011. This has real depth. When Vin Jaune or Château-Chalon is made, the individual barrels are checked over the long period (some 60 months) of ageing. Some Savagnin is kept aside from harvest for this cuvée, but to it are added barrels from the Château-Chalon cellar which may not go the distance to be included in the rigorous selection for the senior wine. This wine has real depth, and a long “flor” aged Savagnin can actually be almost a kind of mini Vin Jaune/Château-Chalon at a bargain price. Puffeney’s version is one of the classic examples. This is a very impressive wine, without quite the weight and complexity of the Château-Chalon.

The big brother wine is, as I intimated, one of the finest in the AOC in my view. The 2009 is a strapping youth, but even now you can see the potential for complexity which, in time, will go way beyond the lemon acidity and the hazelnuts and walnuts of a young version, destined to be consumed in some Michelin-starred restaurant before its time. Here, if you are patient, you will get more earthy notes of funghi and exotic spice, with a smokiness on the nose, but you will not lose that elegance.

Most Vin Jaune wines are indeed consumed way too young. Some don’t mind being consumed soon after release. Their freshness entices the drinker. But if you are going to pay €50 for a clavelin containing 62 precious centilitres of wine, it’s worth ageing it properly, as you would any other wine of that price. Releasing a wine close to seven years from the vintage in which it was made can confuse consumers. There are almost no 2009 (the current vintage as I write) Vin Jaune styles I would open now.

Good luck Hélène in finding an importer. It is remarkable that you don’t have one for the UK, and I hope someone appreciated your wines as much as I did. Having admired this Château-Chalon on several occasions over the years, it was nice to try this and the newer cuvées all together.

Vins Rijckaert, Villette-les-Arbois

Jean Rijckaert is a Belgian national, famous for his partnership with Jean-Marie Guffens in Domaine Verget in Southern Burgundy in the 1990s. He diversified into Jura and made a name as a white wine only producer, but in 2013 he made over the business to his partner, Florent Rouve who, it appears on the evidence of this tasting, is taking the domaine to new heights.

Florent is not a proponent of organic and biodynamic viticulture, but he does believe in intervening as little as he can in vineyard and winery, in order to express the main philosophy of the domaine, that terroir must shine through. So much so that all his wines undergo the same regime: a long, slow and gentle, press as in Champagne; seeking a low ph level in the must, ageing in inert wood (5-8 year old barrels); a natural and spontaneous malolactic; with all wines spending 23 months on their lees.

The six wines on show included one refreshing blended 2014 Chardonnay and five more single site whites. You could not fail to spot the terroir differences in these quite exceptionally pure and open cuvées. Of the five terroir-specific wines, “En Paradis” is a Chardonnay from old vines on a cold and wet northwest facing slope which is always the last site to be harvested. It contrasts with the weightier “Vignes des Voises” made from 55 year old vines on a warmer, south facing, slope. “Les Sarres” produces a complex Chardonnay and a pure, fruity, ouillé Savagnin. Finally, the “Grand Elevage” is a more complex Savagnin from three plots where the vines average 65 years, topping up the barrels every 3-4 weeks.

So these are not natural wines, and neither biodynamic nor organic. Yet they are some of the purest expressions of topped-up Jura whites I’ve tried all year, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I’ve never visited Rijckaert, and I’ve only had the wines in isolation before. As well as the freshness and directness of these wines, some have a lovely salinity which one occasionally finds in other producers, but it’s very marked here. I must try to drive out to Villette, just off the Route de Dôle, when I’m next in Arbois. This domaine impressed me, and also gained a mention from pretty much everyone I spoke to at the event.

Florent Rouve

The remaining domaines listed here, I would maybe rank just a little below the three I have described above, but don’t view that as in any way negative. They are all looking for a UK importer and they would all sit well with any number of those agencies looking for a Jura domaine, perhaps one without the commercial risk for an importer who perhaps lacks a clientelle which might appreciate one of the natural wine domaines.

Domaine Baud, Le Vernois

This domaine is quite large, at a little over 20 hectares, based close to Château-Chalon, where their holding includes between two and three hectares which are “sustainably” farmed (certified by Terra Vitis) for Château-Chalon itself. My favourite wines were a Chardonnay “Cuvée Flor” which was quite steely-fresh of its type, though young (2015), and a very good sous voile blend of 50:50 Chardonnay and Savagnin, “Tradition”. The former is perhaps misleadingly named for an English speaking market. “Flor” here means “floral”. The wine is topped -up, or ouillé, and a wine aged under flor in French is, of course, described as sous voile…but you knew that…

Baud’s Château-Chalon is perhaps lighter, and maybe a little softer than some. It might not impress me quite as much as that of, say, Berthet-Bondet, but it’s certainly a nice one to try if you are new to the style. At around €20 ex-cellars, it’s also a relative bargain. I also liked the Crémant very much. It blends 70% Chardonnay with 30% Pinot Noir. Usually my own taste turns out to be for the pure Chardonnays in this category (and I’m a sucker for BdeB Champagne), but this is labelled Brut Sauvage, so a much drier style. I think the blend suits it. It’s very good indeed, and €7.60 ex-cellars, which deserves at least one of these…!

Domaine Daniel Dugois, Les Arsures

Les Arsures, not to be confused with the more famous Montigny-les-Arsures, lies in the northeastern section of the Arbois AOC. Beyond Les Arsures you move into the tiny enclave of vines which remain near Salins-les-Bains, and the up-and-coming sub-region towards Mouchard and Port-Lesney. There are ten hectares, located in Les Arsures, and near the more southerly Montigny-les-Arsures, which are farmed “sustainably”. Philippe, who was on hand to pour, has worked in Burgundy, South Africa and Australia, and seems to want to combine new ideas with the traditional approach of his parents.

Standouts include a very nice old vine Trousseau from the “Grévillière” vineyard, where many of the vines reach 70 years of age. This is, perhaps as a result of the old vine material, a wine with the potential to age. Young, it is already distinctive, showing quality potential, but it’s pretty tannic right now, even from 2013. The Arbois Savagnin has a gentle “Savagnin-sous voile” nose, and quite a bit of acidity but with a gentle nutty note on the palate. The Vin Jaune 2009 is very good indeed. Mushrooms and umami in evidence here as a complex addition to the usual notes.

Perhaps the labels here suggest that the wines are a little old fashioned. You may like them or you may not, but these bottles contain some nice wines.

Domaine Grand, Passenans

Passenans is another of those attractive Jura villages which I would say just scream out “La France Profonde”, except perhaps they are far too quiet to scream. I only know of two producers in the village. One is Les Dolomies, the tiny 4ha estate of the elusive Céline Gormally, whose wines I’ve been trying to track down for two years, without success. The other is the somewhat larger Domaine Grand, whose wines from a much larger holding had, until yesterday, also eluded me.

Unlike Céline, who has only been around for eight years, there have been Grands growing grapes in Passenans since 1692. Again, viticulture is “traditional”, but the use of chemicals in the vineyard, and also of SO2 in the winery, are being decreased bit by bit. My favourite two wines here were the Savagnin “Floral Expression” 2014 and the Trousseau from the same vintage. The Savagnin is in a pure and fruity style. Those who know wines like Stéphane Tissot’s “Traminer” will know what I mean. There’s almost no telltale Savagnin nuttiness on the nose, and I really liked it. I didn’t see the alcohol content, but it tasted nice and refreshingly light.

The yield on the Trousseau is around 30 hl/ha, and the wine seems to blend a nice fruitiness with an already developing, attractive, sous bois note. They also make a single site Château-Chalon from the “En Beaumont” vineyard, in the sector towards Menétru-le-Vignoble (not all of the Château-Chalon vines lie on the slope below that village). The 2009, whilst not hitting quite the heights of a couple I tasted yesterday, is well above the average. I’ve no idea of the prices from Domaine Grand, so I can’t say whether they represent good value, but I can say that this is another domaine I can add to my list of wines to try again when I see them in a restaurant in the region. And if I can ever gain admittance at Les Dolomies, I’ll pay the Grands a visit as well.

And now for something completely different…

Some of you know, from reading this blog, that I spent an evening with Brad Hickey recently. Brad is one half of the married partnership behind the increasingly talked about McLaren Vale producer, Brash Higgins. Brad gave me a few wines to try, and his Riesling/Semillon was downed some days ago. I’d promised to take along a rare bottle of his “Bloom” on Tuesday. Where better than a Jura tasting to pour what I believe to be Australia’s only sous voile wine (the name Bloom is clever because, of course, the flor under which it ages is a bloom).

There’s plenty of Savagnin in Australia, most of which was actually thought to be, and labelled as, Albarino, the Spanish grape synonymous with Galicia and the Rias Baixas. But that is pretty much made as a normal table wine. Bloom is made from Chardonnay. It’s aged for a little longer under flor than a Vin Jaune (eight years for Bloom), so this first release is actually from the 2008 vintage.

What’s it like and what did they think? Well, to be fair it isn’t a copy of a Jura Vin Jaune. Where it differs most is in the richness of the ripe Chardonnay fruit, and the evident oak. I’d also say that, for whatever reason, the oxidative influence of the flor is less manifest. Perhaps the layer was thin (although in Jura it’s always much, much thinner than in Jerez and Sanlucar)? Perhaps the flor was not persistent throughout the whole ageing period? Perhaps a year less under flor might have actually produced, counter-intuitively, a more intensive flor effect, and perhaps that was not the intention anyway. But I’m digressing. This is a fantastic wine in its own right, and pretty complex when you get under the oak and fruit. With only 35 cases made from this inaugural vintage, it was a genuine privilege to be able to have a squat, not quite but almost clavelin-like, 700ml bottle. I won’t deny that a tiny part of me was jealous of sharing it with so many.

I ended up pouring samples for at least twenty people, a mix of a few wine journalists and MWs, some UK trade professionals and the Jura producers themselves. When one or two producers tasted it their friends were soon queuing up for a slug. I’d say a good 85% were really impressed. The producers could see it was not a faux Vin Jaune. They were thrilled to try it, seeing it as a compliment to their region that someone should make this experiment out of a love for a unique wine style. Those few who were not so keen were without exception of a slightly older generation. One Frenchman (not a producer) let out the sort of characteristic pouf! that you hear when you pop a quality English sparkler, or a great Californian Chardonnay. The sound of unassailable prejudice. It’s no challenge to Vin Jaune, it’s simply a brilliant attempt to create something purely Australian in the oxidative, flor-aged, style and the wine world is richer for Brad Hickey’s adventure down this path, one which I, and a good number of London wine folk, are hoping he continues to pursue. Thanks again Brad for giving us a taste of yet one more of the world’s unicorn wines.

Bloomin’ marvellous!

I probably should not go without mentioning that the Tasting was also jointly held with the producers of Jura’s best known cheese, Comté. A stall giving us all the opportunity to sample three ages of Comté provided a nice nibble with which to exit into the cold London late afternoon. I admit being extremely partial to Comté, and it is the perfect match for so many of the region’s wines, perhaps a coincidence, I’m not sure. In particular, one of life’s great pleasures is to have the time to sit with a bottle of Vin Jaune or Château-Chalon, a bowl of fresh walnuts, and a spread of three ages of Comté – a fruity young 8 month old, a middle aged 24 monther, and a venerable, crystal packed, 36 month version. Perfect to lower the heart rate after all the excitement of the second half of the year.

Posted in Jura, Wine, Wine Agencies, Wine Tastings | Tagged Berthet-Bondet, Brad Hickey, Brash Higgins Bloom, Chandos House, Chateau-Chalon, Daniel Dugois, Domaine Baud, Domaine Grand, Florent Rouve, Jura, Jura Wine, Passenans, Philippe Dugois, Pignier, Rolet, Vin Jaune, Vins Rijckaert | 1 Comment

Catching up – Recent Wines

Posted on 04/11/2016 by dccrossley

I haven’t written a roundup of “recent” wines since mid-September, so I’ve had to be fairly strict about how many I mention, and culling it down to a case-sized dozen seems reasonable. The fact that the wines below contain four Austrians and five from Jura suggest that my focus has been on those two favourite wine sources. It’s not strictly true, I’ve had a lot of wines from other places. But it’s these I think warrant most attention. All were drunk at home, except for the last one, which I had at Noble Rot on Wednesday.

THE AUSTRIANS

Sankt Laurent 2013, Burgenland, Meinklang – Both of the Meinklang wines featured here, and indeed all of these Austrians, are relatively inexpensive wines intended for enjoyment with friends. Austria makes some fine and expensive wines, and isn’t really known for cheap quaffers. But they are increasingly filling that gap in my house, even without a bottle from Claus Preisinger on the list. Sankt (or Saint) Laurent plays third fiddle to Blaufränkisch and Zweigelt these days, but this is dark in colour with lightish brambly fruit, and a bite to the finish which might remind you of the kind of effect a Dolcetto has, albeit with a different flavour profile. If you are buying Meinklang’s star wines for £40-£50, don’t neglect to try these entry level Burgenland cuvées.

Look for it at: Winemakers Club

I thought the posh corks would make a neat contrast with this appealingly gluggable Sankt Laurent

“Secco-Frizzante Prosa” 2015, Österreicher Perlwein, Meinklang – Okay, so I’ve written about this before, but look at the lovely colour of this gently fizzy Pinot Noir. It was just made to go with paella, even #vegan paella – well, in colour at least. The strawberry and raspberry red fruits, not so much, but it’s just 10.5% alcohol and be assured, most of it was gone before we hit the food. Totally refreshing, almost a perfect aperitif. Nicely edging towards rusticity too.

Look for it at: Wholefoods (though it may be out of stock); Vintage Roots

Blauer Zweigelt 2013, Wagram, Eschenhof Holzer – Another regular in our house. You’d think that obsessive wine lovers like me would drink posh wines all the time, wouldn’t you? When you can get such gems for not much more than a tenner, why would we? Arnold Holzer is another young guy whose wines can set you back £40 if you wish, but the dark fruits (blackberry, plus a little blackcurrant) here, along with a grippy finish, make this “basic” cuvée perfect for “quaffing” with food, rather than contemplating and pontificating over.

Look for it at: Red Squirrel; Solent Cellar

Sieveringer Ringelspiel Gemischter Satz 2014, Jutta Ambrositsch, Wien – Jutta is a proudly independent natural winemaker, and you don’t see her in the conservative Austrian wine press too often, despite her apprenticeship with some of the saviours of Viennese Gemischter Satz wines. She has a couple of small holdings of old vines and this vineyard is, in the GS tradition, planted with a field blend, of no less than twelve varieties in Jutta’s case, which are co-fermented to create this individual and harmonious wine. Precise but fruity too.

Look for it at: Newcomer Wines; Solent Cellar, Lymington

THE JURAS

Savagnin “Empreinte” 2011, Côtes du Jura, Domaine des Marnes Blanches – Pauline and Géraud Fromont are two of the rising stars from the south of the Jura region, where there is a vibrant scene fomented by the likes of the Labet family and Ganevat. “Empreinte” (which translates as it looks) is the label for their biologically aged wines (sous voile). Golden yellow, a whiff of flor (though the bouquet of Savagnin is often confused with the sherry-like smell of the ageing under a veil of yeast), but there’s also a serious lemon freshness and (I can’t avoid saying it) a direct in the mouth minerality, which you might get with the topped-up (ouillé) wines. There’s also a touch of nuttiness which suggests that as, for example, with a Puffeney ouillé Savagnin, we are on the way to a Vin Jaune style. But that freshness is amazing. It’s a young wine, but so hard to resist now. If you haven’t tried Marnes Blanches, I really recommend you do. The rest of the range is just as good.

Look for it at: Winemakers Club

Dora Bella 2014, Vin de France, Domaine L’Octavin, Arbois – Dora Bella (sometimes you’ll see “Dorabella”) is a gently fruited (strawberries and cherries) Poulsard with a mineral-like streak and gentle tannic bite. It comes from vines over fifty years old, mainly from Arbois’ Le Mailloche vineyard, plus a bit from their “En Curon” holding just above Les Corvées (between Arbois and Montigny-les-Arsures). A producer whose wines will take you to the wild side, I find them stunning. Stunningly different, stunning your preconceptions when you first try them, but just stunning. If you love these wines I think you know you’ve overcome the hurdle of unconscious bias in wine appreciation.

Look for it at: I’m afraid that this came from the Domaine. However, Tutto Wines have begun importing L’Octavin into the UK. Contact them to see which of their wines they have left in stock.

Arbois Pinot Noir “C’est Max” 2014, Domaine Les Bottes Rouge, Arbois – Jean-Baptiste Menigoz seems to be cementing his fast-growing reputation as one of the new kids in Arbois, or to be more precise, Abergement-le-Petit (off the Route de Dôle, not far from Vadans, where I wrote about the wine festival back in early October). If you want a cracking fruity Pinot with a vibrant colour, packed with “cherries”, low in alcohol (11.5%), then this is for you.

Look for it at: This is another bottle from my September Jura trip, but Les Caves de Pyrene are importing Jean-Baptiste now. I’m not sure whether they have this cuvée, but I noticed that Doug has been drinking a few Bottes Rouge bouteilles recently, a good sign.

Savagnin-Chardonnay “Cuvée L’Automne” MV, Domaine de la Pinte, Arbois – This is quite an unusual cuvée. It contains 80% Savagnin from 2007 and 20% Chardonnay from 2009. The Savagnin is itself a blend of both ouillé and sous voile wines. It has that burnished yellow-gold colour of age and is wonderfully aromatic. The palate is quite exotic for Arbois too. I’d like to bang a gong for La Pinte. You may have read my tasting notes from my September visit. La Pinte is a fairly large producer, for the region, and they often get forgotten when we are gushing about the young guns. But they were one of the first organic domaines in the Jura, and their wines are improving all the time. The wines I chose to sample on that visit were all excellent.

Look for it at: Liberty Wines are the UK importer for Domaine de la Pinte, and so their wines have a reasonably good distribution around UK independents. However, they don’t, as far as I’m aware, import this wine. For that you’ll need to go to Arbois…but you were planning to anyway, were you not?

Kopin! Vin de France 2014, A & J-F Ganevat – Glougueule (see label) is a French natural wine website, Kopin is (in this particular instance) a cartoon character. If you think that the wine above is unusual, this is even more so. You probably know that Ganevat has been making negociant wines to help ameliorate grape shortages from recent tough harvests (his Gamay from the Beaujolais will spring to mind). Well, here he’s blended around 70% Chardonnay from both Jura and Macon sources with near to 30% biodynamic Alsace Riesling. It’s an unusual blend but believe me, it’s brilliant. Made for knocking back, no more, no less.

Look for it at: Quite widely available around London, although one main stockist, Roberson, are clean out at the moment. My bottle came from Solent Cellar (Lymington).

BEST OF THE REST

Beaujolais-Villages 2015, Karim Vionnet – We’re frankly spoilt for choice with new beaujolais producers. Karim is especially identified with continuing the philosopy of the original “gang of four” (Lapierre, Thévenet, Foillard and Breton) who, in many ways, were both behind this region’s undoubted revival in the 21st Century, as well as the natural wine movement itself (with a little help from the Loire etc). This cuvée is one of my favourites from this Morgon-based producer. It’s a pretty perfect “Villages” really. It’s packed with fruit, set off by lively acidity. Distinctive cherry notes combine with a little backbite, so absolutely no bubblegum softness here, and for my palate, it’s drinking perfectly now. The senior cuvées have a bit more structure, and those 2015s need keeping a bit longer. This one’s a cracker.

Look for it at: Outside of Paris, he’s hard to source, but Winemakers Club have some at the moment.

R/SM 2016, Brash Higgins, McLaren Vale, Australia – Another unusual blend (Riesling and Semillon) from one of Australia’s most exciting wine regions. It’s a field blend where the two elements seem to mesh together perfectly. There’s the lime signature of classic South Australian dry Riesling which gives the lift of, as its maker says, a fresh margarita. Supporting this table top you have the legs of lemon-fresh Semillon, which also seems to give a little weight and just a tiny touch of puppy fat. Altogether very nice. There’s a salinity which refreshes the palate, and adds versatility – aperitif, or wine for white meat salads and freshly cooked fish, for example.

Look for it at: Well, sadly, you won’t find it in the UK as there is currently no UK importer. A work in progress which I think may hopefully have a positive result in 2017. If you are in America, you may well already know these wines as they are available in many US outlets, with good distribution back home as well. The label enjoys being quite well known over there, and well known here too, despite lack of distribution. Rarely have I heard so many sighs and pleas when I told people I had some of Brad Hickey’s wines to taste. Especially his sous voile Chardonnay, Bloom, but that’s a story for next week.

Tête à Claques 2014, Mas Coutelou, Languedoc – This is the one wine not drunk at home from this set of notes. I was in Holborn on Wednesday, and couldn’t resist a cheeky lunch at Noble Rot in Lamb’s Conduit Street. I’m not generally in a habit of going to restaurants alone, but the friend I was meeting had to dash off, and Noble Rot have just started a brilliant value set lunch – two courses for £16, three for £20. On Wednesday the main course was a generous chunk of ox cheek with mash and leaves in a rich gravy.

This blend of Syrah with Grenache and Cinsault, from the village of Puimisson, not far from Béziers, was a perfect match. The Syrah is bright and, on the nose, quite obviously Syrah. Under this you have nice, plumply fruity, Grenache. The Cinsault adds perfume, and maybe a bit of herbs and spice. Colours to the mast here, I’m a very big fan of Jeff Coutelou’s wines. I’ve seen a review of this (limited edition, I believe, I don’t think it appears on the Mas Coutelou web site) cuvée which describes it as spritzy. None of that here, served in a nice big glass. In fact, Coutelou’s wines are usually exemplary and don’t display the so-called common faults associated with some (increasingly few, I find) natural wines. This has both elegance and body, and it’s actually the best Languedoc red I’ve had all year. I really have to get myself down there some time. £7 for a larger (125ml) glass, and an excellent lunch deal as well. I’m not sure there’s any left in the UK at the moment, so pop into Noble Rot…seats seem available at lunch time.

Posted in Austrian Wine, Jura, Natural Wine, Wiener Gemischter Satz, Wine | Tagged Arbois, Arnold Holzer, Beaujolais, Beaujolais-Villages, Brad Hickey, Brash Higgins, Burgenland, Chardonnay-Riesling, Cuvée L'Automne, Domaine de la Pinte, Domaine des Bottes Rouges, Domaine des Marnes Blanches, Domaine L'Octavin, Dora Bella Poulsard, Eschenhof Holzer, Ganevat Kopin!, Gemischter Satz, Jean-Baptiste Menigoz, Jura, Jutta Ambrositsch, Karim Vionnet, Languedoc Natural Wine, Les Caves de Pyrene, Liberty Wines, Mas Coutelou, McLaren Vale Wine, Meinklang, Meinklang Prosa, Newcomer Wines, Pinot Noir C'est Max, Red Squirrel, Riesling-Semillon, Sankt Laurent, Savagnin Empreinte, Sieveringer Ringelspiel, Solent Cellar, Tete a Claques, Tutto Wines, Vienna Wine, Vintage Roots, Wagram, Wholefoods Wine, Winemakers Club | 2 Comments

Drinking with Brad

Posted on 31/10/2016 by dccrossley

I spent a pleasant evening with Brad Hickey last week. Brad is one part of the couple behind Brash Higgins, a McLaren Vale estate which has a good following in the USA, Scandinavia, and some other parts of Europe, but inexplicably has no UK importer. I have a tenuous link with Brad, and as he was over in the UK for a few days he suggested we get together for a beer. Usually, when an Aussie winemaker invites you for a beer you need to line up the medical support, but Brad is actually an American by birth, from the Windy City. Maybe that’s why I got off lightly with a few glasses of wine and the odd beer, and was home by eleven, though I think Brad had more people to drink with after me.

Our little jaunt took in Sager+Wilde Hackney Road, where I lurched for the Milan Nestarec 2014 Klasika Hibernal, from Moravia in the Czech Republic (just 15km from the Austrian border). I tasted the Nestarec range at Raw Wine this year, and was thrilled that he had recently found a UK importer in Newcomer Wines. This is pretty “orange”, though not his most orange wine. It’s full of the flavours of citrus peel and a slight marmalade note, and seemed wonderfully autumnal. Hibernal is the grape variety. I’m definitely grabbing some of Milan’s cuvées when I head up to Newcomer’s new Dalston shop and bar. Brad went for something more trad, a Leroy d’Auvenay Bourgogne Rouge, which the man behind the bar cheekily said was “Domaine Leroy”. Oh the language of wine!

Moving on to Winemakers Club, underneath Holborn Viaduct, we went straight for a Meinklang Urkorn-Bier, made from spelt and other ancient grains. I think you’ve seen enough photos of this to know I drink it whenever I can get hold of some. It’s just not heavy on the stomach, and it really cleanses the palate. We followed it up with a lovely Macle Côtes du Jura 2011. This is a Chardonnay/Savagnin blend (Macle began making a pure Chardonnay version as well in 2011), made sous voile. It’s quite nutty with a slightly saline finish which is very attractive. It accompanied one of Winemakers’ platters of charcuterie and cheese very well indeed. I still have a little 2010 left at home, but there’s no hurry to drink this, it will last at least another five years, getting more complex as we go.

What of Brash Higgins? Brad’s wine background began as a sommelier (and aspiring food writer) in New York. On his wine travels (working the 2007 vintage for Chris Ringland) he met Nicole, and fell in love with the lady and the land. They farm the Omensetter vineyard on the southwestern lip of the McLaren Vale wine region, around seven hectares of red clay over limestone on an east facing slope. The vineyard is currently undergoing organic conversion, certification expected in 2017. Brash Higgins is the nickname Brad was given by the locals, but although I know how the Aussies do like a nickname, and how brash an American might seem in a different cultural context, when you meet Brad you wouldn’t exactly call him brash.

The Brash Higgins label produces a grand selection of different wines, which range from what we might term “normal” to stuff on the outer fringes of experimentation. The reds include Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro (Mourvedre), along with Nero d’Avola. The white grape selection is pretty extensive, with Chardonnay, Riesling, Semillon, a little Viognier, Chenin and Zibibbo in the mix.

The “out of the box” thinking at Brash Higgins is exemplified by the Riesling/Semillon blend (labelled R/SM) which I drank at home this weekend. It’s a field blend, but obviously an unusual one, and the grapes are co-fermented. In some respects it reminded me ever so slightly of Ganevat’s Kopin, which we coincidentally drank last night. Kopin is a blend of Chardonnay (Jura and Macon) with Alsace Riesling, and you can quite clearly identify both grapes in the blend (at least when you have prior knowledge). The Riesling/Semillon is similar. Riesling forms the table top with all the dry character of that grape in Australia, whilst the Semillon sort of provides the legs which support it, a fresh lemony weight, though the wine is not heavy, and at just 12.6% (sic) alcohol, it is well balanced.

At the outer limits of the range sits Brad and Nicole’s most famous wine. Bloom is a sous voile Chardonnay, aged for eight years under a thin veil of flor. Only 35 cases of this saw the light of day so it’s pretty rare, 2008 being the current vintage. Brad also has his “Amphora Project“. He has 24 of these vessels (I think – he told me the story of the worst day of his winemaking life, when he smashed a full one with a forklift truck, eek!). He fell in love with the amphora wines of Northeastern Italy and Sicily during his time as a sommelier, and he uses them for Zibibbo (ZBO), Nero d’Avola (NDV) and Merlot (MRLO). Brad found an Adelaide potter, John Bennett, who constructs and fires the pots, so there’s a whole new source of beeswax-lined vessels available now for the adventurous winemakers of South Australia. The Zibibbo is sourced in the Riverland, normally viewed as an irrigation district producing very cheap fruit for mass market blends. Brad says he’s made a “silk purse out of a sow’s ear”, which is how the wine was described by one of our most esteemed wine writers not that long ago. I’ve not tried this Amphora Zibibbo, nor the Bloom, but I hope to do so very soon. Watch this space.

As I mentioned earlier, Brad doesn’t have a UK importer, although I think there’s some interest, and I know that’s one reason why Brad was over in the UK. Where does the range sit? That’s a difficult one. Many of the wines would fit into the portfolio of any medium sized importer with a good Aussie selection. Yet some of the wines, as described above, are the result of really exciting projects and some radical thinking. As my son said on looking at the label, they look like “hipster” wines (I drink too many so-called hipster wines to know what one looks like), yet they are not biodynamic, nor are they sulphur free, which probably means they won’t be of interest to a certain section of the UK wine trade. But if a man comes to London and visits Sager+Wilde, Winemakers Club and 40 Maltby Street, you can see what’s going on in his head (and he was off to visit Raw in New York next, and hopefully Ten Bells). I have an idea or two where they might fit, but let’s see how things pan out. Brad’s a really nice bloke, and I hope he finds UK success soon. Every time I told a wine friend I was meeting up with him, they certainly knew who he was, and two of them asked whether he had any Bloom on him! So there you go, Brad.

Brad Hickey, a man with a big heart (he needs it, he runs marathons)

Posted in Australian Wine, Jura, Wine | Tagged Amphora Zibibbo, Australian Amphora Wine, Australian Flor Wine, Australian Sous Voile Wine, Australian Zibibbo, Brad Hickey, Brash Higgins, Macle Cotes du Jura 2011, McLaren Vale, Omensetter Vineyard, Riesling/Semillon Blend | Leave a comment

David Crossley's Wide World of Wine

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Pearl of Brunswick

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Catching up – Recent Wines

Drinking with Brad

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