wine Archives - Page 22 of 34 - Wojciech BońkowskiWojciech Bońkowski

Quinta das Maias Malvasia Fina 2006

Portugal’s white wines deserve to be better known.

Franz Haas Pinot Nero Schweizer 2002

I’ve roast a large 4-kg goose and needed a wine to go with those fatty flavours with plenty of umami. One match that I’ve enjoyed many times is an aged dry Riesling, but a 2002 one from Franken I picked from the cellar didn’t thrill, so eating the second half of the bird today with some added sauerkraut, I opted for a Pinot Noir.

This 8-year-old wine comes from the Alpine region of Alto Adige/Südtirol, formally within Italy but German-speaking and historically a part of Austria. Franz Haas is one of the leading producers there – in a region where the best wines are made by co-ops, he is one of the few private estates that can compete – and a long record of excellence with his Pinot Bianco and Pinot Nero. There are two bottlings of the latter and this, with a label drawn by local artist Riccardo Schweizer, is the more expensive cru (the basic PN has a b&w label).The colour is medium light and slowly maturing. The bouquet starts off a little meaty but with airing this quickly becomes cherries and red currents, with a bit of Pinot Noir flowery bonbon sweetness balanced by savoury notes. Really rather structured with plenty of acidity, this shows no evolved notes and has plenty of life ahead. Deliciously fruity but also with stature and seriousness.

Mason vineyards, the Adige valley, and the Alps west of the Adige hit by morning sun.

Alto Adige is home to some very exciting Pinot Noirs. It strikes me that it doesn’t get much recognition as such in the international press – there appears to be more focus on Germany and Austria whose Pinots, in my opinion, cannot match those of Alto Adige. With its variety of soils and exposures this region is well suited to growing many different grapes, but one area reputed for Pinot Noir is on the east bank of the Adige river (hence exposed west), at an altitude of around 300m, called Mason (or Mazzon). Haas’ Schweizer is partly sourced from here. Alto Adige Pinot Noirs can often err on the meaty, savoury side, but they have more vivid fruit, more balanced alcohol, and can apparently digest new oak better than their German or Austrian counterparts. Another really interesting characteristic is their good ageing potential: I think many can age better than good Burgundies. Many at age 8–10 are still showing young and punchy (like my Haas today), and I once had a superlative 15-year-old 1991 from J. Hofstätter, the region’s other champion of Pinot Noir.

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Lake Garda: exciting whites

I’ve spent a week on the Garda Lake last September, exploring the region’s wines and foods. Blessed with hundreds of thousands of affluent tourists each year, the Garda produces predominantly a serious rosé called chiaretto, followed by some interesting lightish reds from the local Groppello grape.

Garda vineyards at Padenghe.

White wine, contrarily to what you might expect from a holiday destination with delicious lake fish, takes a back stage. The area’s historical white, Tocai, has now shrunk to the 60 hectares or so of the obscure San Martino della Battaglia DOC: pithy and mineral with Tocai’s low acidity, the wine has some interest but remains a curiosity. (One good producer is Spia d’Italia whose Bianco dell’Erta 2008 I enjoyed).

Some of the Luganas I recommend.

Far more popular is Lugana, a tourist’s favourite from the Trebbiano di Lugana (aka Turbiana) grape grown on a patch of clay soils at Garda’s extreme south. Lugana is very widely available and at 8–10€ a somewhat pricey but reliable light- to medium-bodied white with good minerality. From a tasting session of roughly twenty wines, my favourites were Olivini, Tenuta Roveglia, Provenza and, last not least, the very serious duo of Luganas from San Giovanni, including the assertive, mouthfilling Busocaldo made according to a bizarre recipe where the wine is aged on twenty times the amount of its own lees (!).

However, it’s the whites wines from Garda’s western shore that have caught my eye during this stay. Curiously, the Riesling Renano (German Riesling) has a long tradition here, and appears as a varietal or blended with Chardonnay, Riesling Italico and/or Manzoni. Given the area’s mild, Mediterranean, well-ventilated climate the wines acquire a rich, broad character unlike Riesling in Germany, but the grape’s inherent acidic drive provides really good balance.

The white Gardas worth seeking come from Comincioli (Perlí blends Trebbiano with local Erbamat – exceptionally there’s not Riesling – short skin contact results in plenty of saline minerality and a really interesting profile); Monte Cicogna (Il Torrione), and San Giovanni (Reis: one of the most mineral wines I’ve had).

Today I am retasting a memorable bottle I had at Cantrina. This peculiar estate a bit further west from the Garda belongs to artist Cristina Inganni, and was originally conceived as a Pinot Noir winery. Over the years the emphasis has switched towards local grapes such as Groppello and Riesling, though the entire range is highly individual and reflects Cristina’s very free, unorthodox approach.

The dry white Riné has also evolved: originally stronger on Chardonnay, the 2002 vintage we tasted was showing broad-shouldered and a little oaky although surely not yet another oaked Chardonnay: the heavy, stoney clay soils here gives wines with plenty of backbone and that distinctive saline taste of minerality. (They’re not too high in acids, on the other hand). The 2007 Riné has over 50% Riesling and so is a crisper, juicier white. It’s already a little advanced (consistently with Cristina’s saying: Mi piacciono vini bianchi evoluti) but has plenty of substance and an interesting interplay between creamy ripeness and mineral terroir. A very personal wine.

Cristina Inganni and Diego Lavo of Cantrina.

Disclosure

Source of wine: received as gift upon a visit to the winery.

Nicolas Jaboulet Saint-Joseph 2007

I need to drink more French wines. I want to drink more French wines. Every time I do, I’m fascinated by their world of flavours and cultural context. For example, I very rarely drink Syrah from the Northern Rhône. Upon a recent visit to the excellent Aux Fins Gourmets shop near Wiesbaden, I asked owner Mathias Hilse to recommend a good-value Syrah. He came up with this wine from an exciting new venture by Nicolas Jaboulet (until recently owner of the Paul Jaboulet Aîné négociant house, before it was sold in 2006) and the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel fame. With such drivers behind the wheel, this new estate surely looks very promising. (The website is here).

Jaboulet and Perrin operate as a ‘boutique négociant’: there are no own vineyards and the cellar space is at Beaucastel. Single barrels of good Northern Rhône wines are purchased from top growers in the region, and Jaboulet is overseeing the élevage.

So how is this Saint-Joseph 2007 showing? From a good vintage, this is drinking nicely now, though a year or two more in bottle will do no harm. What’s really exciting here is the typicity – this is Northern Syrah at its most recognisable, with a mildly flowery, raspberryish nose, high acidity, tight tannins, and an almost Burgundian sense of refreshment to it. There’s indeed quite a bit of Pinot Noir/Gamay character in this wine. It made me think of old books about the Rhône Valley where Syrah from Côte-Rôtie and other appellations here was often defined as the southern outpost of Burgundian-styled wine (as opposed to the fully Mediterranean Syrahs further down south). Back in the 1970s and 1980s, many wines had to be chaptalised here to ever reach 12,5% alc. These times seem as distant as the Hundred Years’ War now: Côte-Rôtie has become full of 14% Parkerized blockbusters. While vinified in a modern way, this Saint-Joseph captures the northern zest well.

I feel a bit ambiguous about it, though. It’s really a rather simple wine, with not a mass of dimension (interestingly it got a lowish 14/20 from Bettane & Desseauve), and the asking price of 18€ seems a bit steep: you’re surely paying a premium for the Jaboulet and Perrin names on the label. For what is a middle-class (though ambitious) appellation, it’s a bit disturbing to see an entry-level wine like this priced so high. On the other hand, the winemaking here is brilliant: there’s not a milligram of oak noticeable in the flavour, and the wine is perfectly balanced with finely gauged acids and tannins. The quality of the latter is top-notch. In the end I enjoyed this quite a bit, but I need to start saving for this producer’s Hermitage which nears 50€ per bottle.

Čotar Malvazija 2003

Following the trail of the recently reviewed amphora wine, here’s another roughly in the same style. This time from Slovenia: Čotar Kras Malvazija 2003. The economic situation of Slovenian wine is of course vastly different from that of Georgia. This increasingly affluent country bordering Italy and Austria has one of the highest wine consumption per capita figures in the world and so finds no difficulty selling its produce. The jump in quality since the political change of 1991 has been dramatic and there are many wines, white and red, that can rival any Western equivalent.

More importantly there many terroir-oriented producers that are making some of the most individual wines in Europe today. This originates in a happy combination of soil, climate, indigenous varieties and more or less ‘natural’ winemaking. People like Edi Simčič, Marjan Simčič, Movia, Santomas, Rojac and Jakončič are now offering stunningly powerful and multilayered white wines oozing with minerality and ageworthy structure.

Primus inter pares might well be Branko Čotar from the spectacular limestoney vineyards of the Kras appellation. His red wines can sing with earthy sap and red fruit freshness given sufficient bottle age (they’re quite extracted) while the white Sauvignon and wild indigenous Vitovska regularly pack in enormous fruit concentration and reverberate with mineral flavours.

My favourite wine from Čotar, however, is the Malvazija. There’s something in this classic north Adriatic variety that lends itself well to the idiosyncratic winemaking here: Malvazija is a touch oxidative but its skins hold a lot of mineral and citrus fruit treasures, and so skin contact and a long ageing reveal plenty of the grape’s natural complexity and dimension (it’s a bit the opposite of Sauvignon, where the same technique effectively removes all varietal character). Čotar’s Malvazija can be surprisingly long-lasting, too, and I was amazed by how fresh this 2003 is tasting. Whites wines from the ‘ devil’s vintage’ should have been drunk up since long, and even the reds are fading. Čotar’s Malvazija seems to be only entering a long plateau of drinkability. The full orange, cloudy colour announces that this is no ordinary cold-fermented white wine, and the intensity of flavour is just remarkable. So is the complexity, too. There a wide panorama of flavours ranging from fresh peach and apricot to baked bread, but the most intense impression is one of saltiness. This is one of the saltiest wine I’ve tasted, and so its minerality is really very direct.

There are wines which aren’t easy to put into words but whose flavour is unique and unforgettable. This is one of them.

Source of wine: own purchase.

Telavi Wine Cellar 10 Kvevri 2007

Today’s wine, one of the most engaging I’ve had of late, comes from Georgia. A country with a longer tradition of vine growing than anybody else, that is now trying to establish itself on the global wine market.

Apart from its unparalleled library of indigenous local grape varieties, one of Georgia’s major assets lies in its traditional production methods. White wines – which are more important here than reds, historically – are routinely fermented on skins, and often in large clay amphorae, called kvevri, which are buried in the ground and provide the best temperature control ever achieved in winemaking. The wine is racked off the skins after several months, taking on a deep amber colour and a very idiosyncratic bouquet of fallen apples, spices and warm yeastiness. As antiquated as this sounds, the amphora vinification is currently being pursued by several natural wine producers in Western and Central Europe, including Sepp Muster in Austria and the famous Joško Gravner in Italy.

Quality inspection in an amphorae room, Kakheti, Georgia.

The large Telavi Wine Cellar is one of Georgia’s leading wineries and as everybody here, is experimenting with amphora fermentation and ageing. When I visited in 2005, the amphorae were just being installed in a special fermentation room. The red Satrapezo Saperavi was first made in 2004 and integrated amphorae from the subsequent vintage. 2007 was the first vintage of the white wine I’m tasting here, the Satrapezo 10 Kvevri, made of 100% Rkatsiteli, Georgia’s flagship white variety.

This wine is presenting all the characteristics of an amphora white in high intensity: the colour is a deep orange-amber, there is little direct fresh fruitiness on the nose but a lot of complexity and intensity: apple skins, dried apricots, quince and peach preserve, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, vanilla, and a lot of raisins. What is really interesting here is how this distinguishes itself from other amphora whites: instead of rustic phenolic oxidativeness it is showing very balanced and actually elegant, with a silky, even texture and satisfactory freshness (not easy to achieve in the style), clean, juicy and mildly mineral where many similar wines are rough, fruitless and alcoholic. This wine is not a curiosity but a fully valid bottle – surely made in an ‘alternative’ style but without sacrificing drinkability and a sense of linearity. I’m a big fan of Georgian wines, and I love to try an amphora white when I have the occasion. This might be one of the best wines I’ve had in both departments.

Grape harvest underway in Kakheti, Georgia (September 2005).

This post also appears in Hungarian on A Művelt Alkoholista.

Source of wine: sample provided by the Polish importer for a WINO Magazine tasting.

Algeria: decline and hope

Just came back from a tasting of wines from Algeria. It’s a rather exotic wine country for most of us, and I challenge you to have tasted any of the bottles mentioned below. Their availability in the West is very limited, with only 5% exported, mostly to France.

Statistics tell us that Algeria today has nearly 70,000 hectares of vineyards (roughly equivalent to Portugal and Hungary, which are serious wine countries) though the wine production is actually more like that of Canada or the Czech Republic. What makes these figures particularly relevant is that in the 1950s, Algeria was one of the largest wine producers in the world with more than 500,000 ha of plantings. That wine was produced and consumed by the French, and as the period of French rule ended in 1962, the Algerian wine sector has been steadily declining.

The French legacy still continues: in the grape varieties that are grown – the Rhône classics such as Grenache, Carignan, Cinsault, Syrah as well as some Cabernet Sauvignon – and the slightly overambitious appellation d’origine garantie system that distinguishes seven major viticultural zones. The vineyard locations are actually exciting: high on the Atlas plateau at 600–900 m above sea level, with large temperature difference between night and day.

The other peculiar characteristic of Algerian wine is that it can only be bottled and marketed by the state-owned Office National de Commercialisation des Vins (ONCV). Grapes from the entire territory of Algeria are vinified in 8 regional centers and blended either under single appellation brands or multi-zonal cuvées. There are no private estates, and wine production is part of a planned economy.

I tasted these wines several times in the past, and this was my most complete session with 12 bottlings. The Coteaux de Tlemcen 2008 is certainly rather bad, dirty and faulty, while things such as the organic El Mordjane 2008 or the Médéa Château Tellagh 2008 were showing rather diluted and characterless. The traditional cuvées here included the Coteaux de Mascara 2008 and the multi-vintage Cuvée du Président. Made in a conservative Rhône style, these wines spend a long time in concrete tanks and used oak, and are perhaps released a tad late by today’s standards: colours are faded, fruit is low, the structure is mellowed and the focus is on a medium-bodied, food-friendly but not terribly expressive fruit & spice substance. There’s occasionally a bit of oxidation. I enjoy these wines for their simplicity and sense of restraint, though they are certainly not commercial.

Algeria also has potential to make seriously good rosé.

ONCV are seeking export inroads and so there is some stylistic evolution. Varietal wines such as the 2008 Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon are made in a much more upfront, almost jammy style that is clearly taking Chile rather than Côtes du Rhône as a reference. The interesting duo of Cuvée Monica 2008 and Domaine de Saint-Augustin 2008 are made with more Carignan, carbonic maceration but then 18 months of oak: denser in texture, low-acid as all these Algerian wines but clean and generous, with no oxidative notes, I thought these were really successful and showing that with more precise winemaking, Algeria can make surprisingly competitive wines.

Whether they can be really high-class is open to debate. Two reserve bottlings had a mixed showing. The Damiette Grande Réserve 2008 is concentrated, plummy, almost amaronish in flavour but also a bit too hang-timey and oxidative; on the whole it’s penalised by the lax winemaking. Selatna Réserve 2008 is similarly concentrated, more solid and fresh, showing the regional, richly fruity, brooding, spicy style, but again a little too pruney and raisiny for my tastes.

This was an interesting tasting. I wonder how well-suited the state-controlled and obviously slightly conservative management of the ONCV is to face the challenges of a global wine market. Quality requires investments but also a vision. Yet with a cleaner approach to winemaking and a more selective viticulture, Algeria seems to have all the assets to produce plentiful, reliable commercial wine in a style that I’d prefer to what can be found in budget bottlings from Chile or South Africa today.

Algeria also needs to invest in promotion materials: Google Translate of tastings notes is not good.

Disclosure

I did a paid presentation of these wines for the diplomatic corps in Warsaw.

In the middle of nowhere

Bosco Eliceo – a confidential wine-making zone on Italy’s Po Delta – is underperforming. But there’s no better wine than its fizzy dry red to match with the famous Comacchio eel.

Germany’s roll of honour

2009 was a vintage of high expectations in Germany. The favourable weather, naturally low yield and excellent harvest conditions combined to generate another excellent year in our stellar decade, after 2007, 2005, 2002 and 2001. My repeated tastings earlier this spring were ones of excitement and consistently high quality. So the stakes were really high when I embarked on the Erste Lage Sneak Preview tasting organised in Wiesbaden by the VDP association of wine estates. From the nearly 400 wines on offer I tasted 170 Rieslings over two days. These wines are the equivalent of grand cru bottlings and are essentially the very best of German dry white wine.

In brief, I was not disappointed. The overall level is very high. What’s really interesting about 2009 is that it’s a ripe year with abundant and expressive fruit (that’s the difference to 2008, which I criticised last year – perhaps slightly too harshly – for being green and mean) but it also pretty high acidity, which gives the wines brilliance and tension and will help them age longer than the 2007s and 2005s. It’s a rare combination to have so much vibrancy with so much ripe fruit, and it’s the real excitement of 2009.

I have liked many of the Rieslings I’ve tried but one region that has really shone is the tiny Nahe. Always high on any connoisseur’s list, it has surpassed itself this year with a long list of outstanding wines from such estates as Kruger-Rumpf (a superb Kapellenberg), Dönnhoff (I’ve not always been thrilled by the dry wines of this sweet wine master but the Hermannshöhle as well as the cheaper Dellchen left nothing to be desired), Emrich-Schönleber and Schäfer-Fröhlich.

The Rheingau has been a bit mixed with definite highs such a Johannishof’s Berg Rottland, Robert Weil, Jakob Jung and Josef Spreitzer, but also some relative disappointments, and I’ve been generally underwhelmed by the Palatinate where many wines were atypically green and fruitless. These two regions failing to take full advantage of the vintage, it’s the Rheinhessen, often an underdog, who I think takes second place. Among the many good wines were the young Wagner-Stempel (especially the Heerkretz) and a tremendous performance from well-established (and fully organic) Wittmann that could well be the best collection of the vintage.

Wine of the vintage?

There are least three dozen wines I would like to own and drink both in the short and long term. It’s all good news provided your banker likes Riesling too; at between 16 and 40€ per bottle these are wines are hardly for everyday enjoyment.

Immortality

An incredible tasting of old Rieslings – we went back to 1909! Most were still very much alive. And even more surprisingly – bone-dry, even though you’d expect a Riesling to have residual sugar to age for so long. Not here!