wine Archives - Page 31 of 34 - Wojciech BońkowskiWojciech Bońkowski

Austrian dining

Springtime wine

Tomorrow is the Austrian trade tasting here in Warsaw; one of Poland’s most important events throughout the year. And tonight I met up with Willi Klinger and Christian Dworan of the Austrian Wine Marketing. At the C.K. Oboźnia wine bar & restaurant, we drank through some nice wines and discussed some exciting projects for the future, including a Polish food & Austrian wine matching campaign.

We ate well (asparagus risotto and spicy duck breast), drinking a mixed bunch of wines, including two reds, a very spicy (white pepper and caraway) Kirnbauer [K+K] Mittelburgenland DAC Classic 2006 that was a little green and tart, and a Heinrich Hartl Pinot Noir Classic 2007 that started as an oaky disaster and finished generous and tasty but banal. More luck with the whites: from Matthias Hager in the Kamptal came the Urgestein Grüner Veltliner 2007 that was a big, spicy animal with lots of phenolic ripeness and correspondingly little minerality (I would have preferred it the other way around), and the Schmelz Pichl Point Grüner Veltliner Smaragd 2007 which also very ripe but with better depth and poise.

Strangely enough, the most memorable wine of the evening came at the very beginning: fresh from the fermentation tank (well, almost), the Schmelz Buschenberg Grüner Veltliner Steinfeder 2008 was light (11.5% alc.), exuberantly fresh, zesty, green and positive. I never drink Steinfeder (the lightest style of wine from the region of Wachau, which by law needs not exceed 11.5%) and generally dislike drinking Austrian whites this young, but this was a good example of how youthful and invigorating these newborns can be.

I’ll be on the lookout for more of the same during the tasting tomorrow.

C.K. Oboźnia ‘wine lounge’ in Warsaw.

Le Vigne di San Pietro I Balconi Rossi 2001

I’ve cellared this bottle since 2004, and time has been gracious to it. Today, it has shown the complexity and interest of a maturing wine: an experience that no young wine, no matter how compelling, can emulate.

The Veneto I Balconi Rossi 2001 is a Valpolicella-styled wine that does not come from Valpolicella. Technically it originates from Bardolino, but Le Vigne di San Pietro’s owner, Carlo Nerozzi, is too serious and ambitious for the lowly, trattoria-sullen image of the Bardolino appellation. (In fact, I regret this, because his wines would help elevate this very image, but that’s another story). In brief, the ‘Red Balconies’ are made with the typical grape variety of Verona and Valpolicella: Corvina, with splashes of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Normally you don’t expect Valpolicella to age seven or eight years, and certainly not Bardolino. It is inferred that in order to age, Corvina has so be slightly or totally dried, as in the famous amarone or the intermediate ripasso style. Here there is no drying, but the wine is made substantial and ageworthy through low yields, long extraction, and ageing in oak. ‘French-styled’ is perhaps not a bad term, given the vaguely Bordeauxesque architecture of this bottling (and the less vaguely one of Nerozzi’s top bottling, the Refolà Cabernet).

At seven years of age this wine is showing no signs of tiring. Upon opening it is showing fairly oaky and one-dimensional, but changes significantly for the better with a few minutes of airing. Clearly a maturing wine but still with quite some substance, this is a modern, dark-fruity rendition of Corvina with a pleasant balance of meaty, spicy, fat, and fruity elements. Rich, attractive, with Corvina’s typically high acidity hidden at first but asserting itself increasingly over time. With its nice complexity and spice, this is a lovely wine to try with stewed or roast meats: Verona’s classic of pastissada de caval (horse meat stew) would do wonder here, but I’ve had equal fun with a tajine-style veal roast with root vegetables.

An Alto Adige dinner

Alto Adige wines are a bit like Volkswagen cars. They offer no passionate romantic emotions (at least to me) but embody the notion of ‘consistent quality’. You always know what to expect and you are never disappointed. Sometimes I wish they showed, as do their neighbours from the region of Trentino, a bit of wildness at heart and irrational genius, but I appreciate the fact that in many real life situations, Alto Adige wines are a safe and satisfying choice.

Chef Stefan Unterkircher.

Never more so than at a restaurant when for any reason, a more adventurous choice is not available. Tonight’s dinner at the San Lorenzo restaurant in Warsaw, organised by the EOS Alto Adige chamber of commerce, was a good reminder of that adage. Plus we’ve had the bonus of sampling the culinary creations of South Tyrolian chef Stefan Unterkircher, normally in residence at the Castel Ringberg restaurant in Caldaro.

Unterkircher was here to train Polish chefs under an EU programme. If they can deliver this kind of cooking in Poland during my lifetime, I’ll be a very happy man. This was simply excellent food. Simple, flavourful, respectful, exuding experience and freedom at the stoves. Freedom and panache is what Polish chefs most often lack; some have great ideas but just lack the seamlessness that only comes with generations of quality cooking and table service, I think.

Below are my notes on the wines tasted without and with food, as were taken during the dinner.

Cantina Produttori Caldaro Pinot Bianco Vial 2007
This is an impressive if really austere, rock-solid, limestoney, dolomitic wine, with a vague soapy character of Pinot Bianco. Acidity is high, there is a rigidity of the 2007 vintage, and on its own it is not showing very friendly.
With cannelloni of IGP speck and IGP apples, grilled dumplings, caraway foam: the tricky part is the featherlight mousse of caraway and gorgonzola, just slightly overpowering the unaromatic Pinot (if a feather can overpower). Good match with the speck-wrapped mild apple, and sufficiently structured (in fact surprisingly so) with the fried canaderlo dumpling.

Elena Walch Pinot Grigio Castel Ringberg 2007
Oaky, rich and butterscotchy, pronounced varietal character but uncomplex at the stage. Palate is rich with a flavour of cereals and baked apple but also a surprising, seary acidity. This has a really odd balance between oak and acids. Not really my style of white, clearly good but a bit heavy-handed without food.
With ravioli of potatoes and dried pears filled with Stelvio DOP cheese and melted butter: Here the acidity is very useful to cut through the beurre noir oxidative richness of the dish. (Take a sip of the above Pinot Bianco to see how tricky this dish is: wine becomes opaque, fruitless and dusty). This Grigio seems almost capable of addressing a wild boar. Impressive match.

J. Hofstätter Gewürztraminer Kolbenhof 2007
A fantastic wine, consistent with several tastings since summer 2008: its usual flowery, exotic self with excellent acidity courtesy of the 2007 vintage. Long, structured, moderately fat for Gewürz, the balance is truly unique: I can’t think of a Traminer this mineral and refreshing.
With fillet of pike perch in black bread crust, creamed Val Venosta cabbage: dish is a little heavy, wine showing high alcohol but otherwise this is a good textural match: very bourgeois and comfy. Interesting counterpoints between the wine’s minerality and flakes of Atlantic sea salt served on the side.

Erste & Neue Lagrein Riserva Puntay 2005
This has the reductive, granitic, wet-basin aromatic austerity of Lagrein, with minor oak in the background. Not a bad wine, with integrated wood and subdued spice. Good acidity, too, and length. Some greenness (as almost all Lagreins in my book). All in all this is very good but perhaps missing the train to excellence.
With beef’s cheek, honey sauce, purée of celeriac and vanilla: An outstanding dish. Very precise cooking with an umami flavour dominating. Match is interesting: bitter cherry core of Lagrein with a hint of caraway matching the obvious spiciness of the dish well, and the wine’s salinity probably the best match for umami.

Cantina Produttori Colterenzio Gewürztraminer Canthus 2007
10.5% alc, 220 g/l sugar. Very varietal, spicy, peppery, with an excellent moment of peach & mango fruit. Even when served quite warm this is never flabby or sticky. Excellent balance. 3.3
With ‘Pink Lady’ apple in French pastry, Gewürztraminer foam, crème fraîche sherbet: As often at gourmet dinners, dessert is the highlight, exuding quality ingredients and a sense of luxure. The sour cream sherbet is a really fantastic match with the similarly rustic, almost animal acidity of the wine. An outstanding combination.

‘Pink Lady’ apple in French pastry, Gewürztraminer foam, crème fraîche sherbet.
An outstanding dessert.

Domaine de Torraccia

A desert island red

Went to a new wine shop & bistro today: Vinarius. The import company itself is actually one of Poland’s veterans, having been founded by Frenchwoman Cécile Bergasse in the late 1990s. Following Cécile’s family connections the original catalogue focused strongly on the Languedoc, and wines such as Château Viranel Rosé (and the Blanc, for which I have a soft spot) and Clos Fantine were big time hits on our market.

Times have changed; growing market competition and family life have pushed Cécile to sell the company to an investor last year. This has surely proved beneficial to the portfolio, which is now overseen by Sławomir Chrzczonowicz, a very competent buyer of French wines (and a good friend). He has added blue chips such as Château Pibarnon and Mas de Daumas Gassac, and has unearthed lesser-known quality estates such as Château Mourgues du Grès from Nîmes, Château de Brau from Cabardès or Domaine Grossot from Chablis. Now he is looking beyond France, including the overperforming La Purísima co-op from Spanish Yecla whose inexpensive bottlings I like a lot.

Today I bumped onto an informal tasting of Corsican wines tutored by Sławomir at the new bar, and there one of my all-time favourites: Domaine de Torraccia. My personal preference for the wines of Corsica largely sprang from a single bottle of 1991 Oriu, Torraccia’s top bottling, that I tasted at the already mentioned Rouge Gorge wine bar in Paris 4e.

The owner of Torraccia Christian Imbert surely belongs to vinous France’s most colourful characters. He spent many years in Chad, and only moved to his wife’s native Corsica in his 40s. The 40 hectares of vineyards are located at Porto-Vecchio, at Corsica’s southernmost tip, overlooking Sardinia. This is not usually considered the best zone for Corsican wine: the island’s major protagonists usually operate in Patrimonio to the north or Ajaccio to the west. Whatever his terroir’s credentials, Imbert has been consistently producing some very exciting wines for two decades now.

I am not terribly fond of his Vermentino-based white (reductive and somewhat fruitless) but the Porto-Vecchio Rosé 2007 as tasted today is excellent: classic, restrained but with good structure and elegant hints of red fruits, it makes a perfect food wine. The focus is, however, on three red wines, none of which see any oak (which Imbert considers an adulteration of the traditional Corsican character). The varietal Niellucciu is light, fresh and gluggable while the 2006 Domaine red, in which Niellucciu is spiced up with some Syrah, Grenache and Sciaccarellu, is a distinctively perfumed, medium-bodied wine with surprising ageing potential (the 1998 was drinking beautifully last year).

If I were to choose one Corsican wine to take on a desert island, though, it would surely be the Porto-Vecchio Cuvée Oriu. Made from oldish terraced Niellucciu with 20% Sciaccarellu, it packs considerably more power and concentration than the Domaine red, and is perhaps the most ageworthy wine from Corsica: the 1998 is mature only now, and the 2001 – a brilliant vintage here – needs more time. Today, we tasted the 2004, which is really young and needs a good half hour of airing: the initial bouquet is taut, herby (call it garrigue if you will), sausagey, even gamey, and the cherry fruit unfolds slowly over a core of earthy minerality. The profile is very traditional: Oriu is a wine that starts quite evolved (there is no oak stabilisation, remember) but has an amazing staying power and shows a wonderful combination of depth and elegance. And make no mistake, this is no Sciaccarellu cerasuolo type as in the Clos Capitoro 2000 I reviewed back in January: this is a sturdy, peppery lad that can tackle a game dish. Truly a wine to take on a desert island.

Quinta do Ameal Escolha 2003

A perfect substitution

I had a bottle of Chablis in the fridge to open with a Thai dish I cooked. But it turned out awfully corked. So I had to go down to the cellar to quickly find a replacement. My choice was the Quinta do Ameal Escolha 2003.

It all reminded me of stories of famous pianists or singers. Your career is deadlocked, you failed to make an impression on the critics, you’re about to leave that hostile Paris or London where musical competition is too strong. On your last day you go strolling to the zoo and when back at the hotel, a message awaits: the primadonna is ill, you need to replace here in Aida tonight. This Portuguese white behaved like an exceedingly good soprano on replacement. It sang all the notes right, and brought a sense of relief.

It is interested that I blogged on 2003 whites a couple of weeks ago. If there is one country you wouldn’t expect to deliver any interesting whites in this vintage, it has to be Portugal. It’s usually considered a red-only producer, even by experienced critics (e.g. see a recent discussion here). I think the best Portuguese whites, such as Bucelas, Encruzado from the Dão region, and some Douro whites are much underrated. And then there is vinho verde, ‘green wine’ from the granitic soils and rainy Atlantic climate of northern Portugal. Among the myriad of local grape varieties here, Loureiro is one that shines. Ameal’s Escolha, produced at only 5,000 bottles, is perhaps the grape’s best interpretation. Aged in oak – which very few local wines can survive – it is a wine built for ageing. But six years in a hot, low-acid vintage?

This has not only survived but now seems at peak. Oak is present on the nose and (less so) palate, but integrated with the rich, peachy, almost Viognier-like substance. On the finish there is a bitterish grapefruit pithiness of Loureiro peeking from underneath the oak. A round wine in texture but not flabby or fat (as in many other 2003s). I think part of the success lies in Loureiro’s inherent lightness, and part in the low alcohol (12%; the difference with the 14% Grüner Veltliner from Austria I reviewed recently is telling). I’ll be keeping my bottles of the 2006 vintage for a few more years.

André Kientzler Riesling Osterberg 2007

Another tricky Alsatian

Today was the last day of the five-day tasting marathon I blogged on the other day. Bad lack throughout. The Menetou-Salon from Henry Pellé I much looked forward to was awfully corked. And the Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Brunate–Le Coste 2004 was oxidative and underwhelming.

And we had another controversial Alsatian. I have never liked the wines of André Kientzler as much as some of my colleague tasters, but there is no denying this is currently one of the top domaines for dry Riesling. So expectations for their Grand Cru Osterberg Riesling 2007 were justifiably high. It’s an obviously good wine, but difficult to really enjoy. It has a pretty odd mixture of late harvest aromatic notes (raisins, peaches and honey) with a searing acidity that somehow doesn’t taste fresh at all. Alcohol is high (14%), which only adds to the searing impression. In my experience, a Riesling needs to have really superior concentration and body to sustain 14% alc. This wine, oddly, seems a little thin in texture, although it is built around a solid mineral core.

Osterberg is a vineyard with a quintessentially Alsatian mixture of soil: sandstone, limestone, gravel and even some marl. Sandstone usually yields wines that are very high in acidity, and rather quiet in their youth. Surely this shows in this Kientzler 2007. I kept the bottle open for three days and retasted it several times. Hardly any change, and hardly much pleasurability: this is intellectual, ungiving, mildly off-putting wine. It only shone when served with a dish of braised young cabbage.

A Krug dinner

Champagne excess

A taster’s treat tonight. A Krug champagne dinner cooked by Poland’s best chef, Paweł Oszczyk at the Régina hotel in Warsaw. Nominally this dinner was for the launch of the Krug Rosé in Poland, although we drank the Grande Cuvée Brut for most of the evening (and started, atypically, with a most pleasant glass of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2007; Cloudy Bay and Krug belong to the world’s most glamorous brand conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy).

As improbable as it sounds, it was hard work. No fewer than 12 courses were served, and I tried to evaluate the wine & food match each time. Some of the highlights were a scallop ragoût where a mild note of burnt butter paired very well with Krug’s long-aged richness, a fantastic discovery with a side dish of gingered al dente lentils, and a stunningly savoury dish of apple-flavoured quail broth with a single tortellino on top (this proved perhaps a bit too gamey for the champagne).

There were also a few duds, such as a prawn tempura with fresh grapefruit that didn’t match at all, and a very well-cooked rack of venison with caramelised shallots which cried for the Krug Rosé – but the latter was only served with dessert. It was a night of excess, and 11 courses paired with a single wine was really too much – there was no way to keep the diners’ attention sharp throughout the menu.

The wines? The Krug Rosé is well-tailored wine with good structure and discrete pink fruit, but it is really nothing special against other rosé champagnes, and costs the earth. The Krug Grande Cuvée was its usual rich, complex, potent self. We actually tasted a range of various disgorgement dates (i.e., wines that had a different time in the cellar after the post-fermentative yeast deposit was removed; sounds geeky but it is a crucial factor for the taste of a champagne). Contrarily to expectations, the younger bottles were showing richer, really quite oaky, with a lot of what the French call charpente – I preferred them over the older bottles that were quite acidic. I probably drank more Krug tonight than I will for the remainder of my life.

Weinbach Muscat 2007, Dal Forno Valpo 2003

Ups and downs

Having a heavy week this week. With my colleagues, we are tasting through 250 wines for the bi-monthly tasting panel of the WINO Magazine. That means 50 wines per day, plus quite a bit of logistics and organisation to handle (tasting is double blind for everybody but me, who control the order and numbering).

Tomorrow we have a themed tasting of Argentine wines, which already makes me shiver with horror at the amount of oak and extract I’ll need to inhale. Today, we went through an assorted bunch of wines from Italy and France. Among them, the Domaine Weinbach Alsace Muscat Réserve 2007. Although it’s never been as exciting as the Riesling offerings from this stellar domaine, I expected a lot more from this. It showed very average, losing even to a cheaper Alsatian Muscat from Laurent Barth (which was really, really good). The Weinbach had a faint varietal nose (apples and grapes) over a core of cool stone, and a rather thin palate with a greenish acidity. Better as it warmed up in the glass, revealing a richer medium body and good balance. But still not the expression and cut one associates with the Weinbach name.

I took the bottle home to retaste with dinner… and there was obvious TCA (cork taint). Upon opening, it was so minor as to pass unnoticed (even among a half-dozen experienced tasters), but clearly robbed the wine of freshness and complexity. This makes you think of how many faulty wines are assessed as if they weren’t…

The other noteworthy wine of today was the Romano Dal Forno Valpolicella Superiore Monte Lodoletta 2003. Dal Forno is about as high one the Italian wine hypometer as can be, but I dislike his heavy, showy style and interventionist winemaking. Still, given the prices and recognition these wines command, it is also worthwhile to taste them when an occasion arises.

This wine is an amarone in all but name. It smells of prunes, stewed cherries, tobacco, chocolate and spices, and has 15% alcohol. It is to the best of my knowledge made of dried grapes like amarone, and is priced higher than almost all amarones (73€ here in Poland at the current exchange rate). So why call it a Valpolicella? For Dal Forno, it is his ‘second label’ or ‘second selection’ wine: perfect grapes go into his Amarone, and less-than-perfect ones go here. But if you don’t know about this curious policy, you’d be nonplussed by this.

Is this 2003 a good amarone? No. There is far too much extraction and new oak for good balance. The wine smells stewed, tasted stewed and finishes dry-tannic. There is no freshness or finesse, and the fruit is dead. Amarone comes in various guises; I like the more vinous, crisp, less sweet style, and you might like the richer, more powerful one, but balance is the key to success in both. This wine is unbalanced. It tries to impress with its sheer power but goes far too much in the extraction.

Will it ever integrate? We left it in the decanter overnight to see. But predictably, it only got worse. Whatever little freshness of fruit was there upon opening was gone; all that was left was alcohol and oak tannins. Admittedly, it didn’t oxidise even with 18 hours in the decanter. But there was no drinking pleasure. Even the label drinkers among us were skeptical.

Cantalupo Ghemme Collis Breclemae 1998

A trustworthy wolf

Time for another wine from Piedmont. In all honesty it doesn’t exactly fall into the ‘rare grapes’ category, being made from the region’s prime variety, Nebbiolo. But it is a particular kind of Nebbiolo called Spanna. A speciality of the Alpine vineyards in the northern part of the region, it is to be found in such classic appellations as Boca, Lessona, Gattinara and Ghemme. These are zones with a very long tradition of winemaking, producing prestigious ageworthy wines that rose to European fame in the 19th century. Compared to Nebbiolo from Barolo and Barbaresco in southern Piedmont, Spanna yields wines that are lighter in colour and body but higher in acidity and with some quite sturdy tannins that need a long, long time in bottle to settle: wines from the 1950s and 1960s are often in very good shape (and affordable). The bouquets are often less fruity and floral, tending towards the herby, meaty and mineral; ‘austerity’ is a good overall descriptor, but ‘finesse’ is too.

All these appellations are quite small: Gattinara today is down to only 95 hectares (historically it was perhaps four times that), Ghemme has 50 registered hectares. In the past wines were produced either by medium-sized aristocratic estates – sort of châteaux – or, more often, blended by small local négociants that offered a couple of labels from each zone. Yields are low, vineyard work costs very high, the wines were often aged in wood and bottle for 6–7 years: a big investment that was often beyond the means of the small farmers. Today négociants are less important, and the best wines are made by medium-sized private estates such as Travaglini and Nervi (in Gattinara), Le Piane (Boca), the new Proprietà Sperino (Lessona), and Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo in Ghemme.

Cantalupo is a veteran of the Upper Piedmont, having been making good wines since at least the 1960s. Apart from the flagship Ghemme there is a number of interesting labels, including Il Mimo, a rosé Nebbiolo that’s one of Italy’s most exciting, the good white Carolus (which includes a splash of the ultra-rare Greco di Ghemme grape), and Villa Horta, a rare 100% Vespolina (a light, perfumed red grape added to soften harsh Nebbiolo tannins).

At the top of the pyramid we have three crus of Ghemme: Carellae, Breclemae and Signore di Bayard (the only wine here to see small oak, whose is generally discouraged in this district). I have cellared the Ghemme Collis Breclemae 1998 since release, and expected it to be maturing now. But it isn’t – courtesy of the cool 1998 vintage perhaps, but also of the excellent mineral structure of this wine. Colour is a Nebbiolo lightish ruby but no signs of tiring. Nose at first reticent, needs at least 30 minutes’ airing time in glass. A core of clean semi-aged strawberry fruit, melting into an almost chocolatey richness (from maturity, not oak). Not very complex at first but there is not a hint of tertiary character. Palate is really very good, long, fresh and tasty but not particularly acidic. Tannins on finish are firm, and increasingly so with airing time. This wine has poise and stature; it is not austere, but doesn’t give itself away in modernist flatter; it is fresh, authentic, linear and engaging. Overall an excellent bottle, and can / should still wait.

Serge Batard Muscadet 2006

Keep it simple

I don’t drink enough Muscadet. Together with its red counterpart – Beaujolais – it is France’s and perhaps Europe’s most undervalued wine, and can really deliver a boatload of enjoyment and refreshment for the modic price of 4–6€. I was reminded of this obvious fact by the Serge Batard Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu sur lie 2006 I picked up in the deli today.

It isn’t a great wine, but I found its simplicity and clean, mineral flavour delightful. A pleasant granitey nose with moderate intensity; perhaps some appley fruit. On the palate there is again an impression of stoniness, and freshly ground pepper. Some expansive fruit of the generous 2006 vintage, otherwise a rather linear, not very long, medium crisp wine. I downed the bottle in a short time and felt like I could open another. That’s what I call drinkability.