...and the rest Archives - Wojciech BońkowskiWojciech Bońkowski

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Memories of 2013

My best wines, places, and people of 2013.

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Moreish Slovenia

Greetings from Slovenia – a neat, efficient, fascinating country.

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In the Wachau: why genes matter

Spent a day in the Wachau region in Austria with its spectacular scenery of terraced vineyards in the narrow valley of the Danube, and its beautiful Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners. We visited some of the region’s giants: Franz Hirtzberger with his powerful, late-picked, botrytis-affected wines from Spitz; Rudi Pichler with his meticulous, modern, puristic approach and transparent wines (the 2009 Kirchweg Riesling has fantastic punch and dimension, and is one of my wines of the vintage); Knoll with his very classic, long-maturing, alluringly spicy wines from the warmer Loiben vineyards.

Franz Hirtzberger Jr. in the spectacular Singerriedel vineyard.

But it was a 2-hour tasting with Toni Bodenstein at the Prager winery that proved the most memorable. Though defining himself as Homo rusticus, Bodenstein has a fantastically thorough approach and one of the deepest knowledge of the vine and terroir that I’ve come across. If you think the geological difference between gneiss, paragneiss and amphibolite have nothing to do with the wine in your glass, taste Prager’s two Rieslings from the Achleiten and Klaus vineyards: basically coming from adjacent parcels on the same hill but on different rock formations, the wines are like night and day, the Klaus an acidic, skinny, inquisitive, stern creature and the Achleiten its solar, open-minded, high-spirited opposite.

Toni Bodenstein: Wachau’s deepest mind?

The 2009 Rieslings here are impressive but the Grüner Veltliners are simply awesome (especially in the context of other 2009s, often excessively soft and rich). Bodenstein made the wise decision of acquiring many old vineyards when he took up the property: now these 1940s and 1950s plantings are delivering wines of great depth and complexity. It has also encouraged Bodenstein to reappreciate and saveguard the old clones of Grüner Veltliner that can be found in those old vineyards. The Wachstum Bodenstein, from a small parcel in the Achleiten that was replanted in 2003 with selected old cuttings from a variety of sourced in the Wachau and other regions in Austria, is a glowing testimony to the complexity and dimension that is lost when just a few ‘approved’ clones are reproduced by vine nurseries and replanted on a large scale by wineries. And yet this wine is towered by the 2009 Stockkultur Grüner Veltliner: painstakingly farmed at a record 16,000 vines/hectare on high narrow terraces are forgotten old clones going back to 1937, giving amazing complexity with a vibrant vegetal sappiness and spicy reminiscences of the Orient.

Rudi Pichler (not) posing for a photo.

No relation to the wine in your glass? On the very contrary; the genetic diversity of our grape varieties is a crucial issue for the future of viticulture and winemaking.

Disclaimer
Accomodation during my stay in the Wachau is paid for by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board. All wines were provided by the producers.

Museum shots

Pre-opening photos of the brand new Chopin Museum in Warsaw.

Happy birthday, Fryc!

Two hundred years ago from today, a shy boy was born.

Apenninic wine

Rúfina is a town east of Florence that produces, on just 750 ha of vineyards, a red wine from the Sangiovese grape that is labelled Chianti Rúfina. Like many Italian appellations it invites journalists to come and taste through the new vintages and so I’m in Florence to report for you on the 2007, 2008 and other trivia.

Rúfina is a zone with many assets. It is well located on the Western slopes of the Apennines, rather high by Tuscan standards (some vineyards up the 650m mark) on very good dolomitic soils. On paper, in a good sunny vintage with a prolonged autumn (Sangiovese’s favourite conditions) it should produce an exciting medium-bodied red wine with good structure, minerality and considerable ageing potential.

Yet it rarely does. The level of bad wines here – oxidised, reduced, vinegarish, dirty – is the same as everywhere else but there’s a surprisingly high proportion of average stuff: not downright bad but just devoid of any character. Or perhaps it’s not so surprising after all when you look at the figures: on 750 ha of vines there are just 23 bottlers operating (the similarly sized DOCG Barbaresco in Piedmont has 10 times that). Rúfina is dominated by large industrial players and there isn’t enough competition between the small estates to guarantee a steady increase in quality. Viticulture in many places is still primitive.

Rúfina has two world-known names: Frescobaldi and Selvapiana. The former are producing – besides an ocean of every conceivable Tuscan wine from Chianti to Ornellaia – two definitely engaging Rúfina bottlings, Nipozzano and Montesodi, which however are so much Bordeaux-styled that in a comparative tasting, anyone would pick them out of a bunch of Rúfina Sangioveses. The 1985 and 2007 Montesodis I’ve tasted over the last two days are very serious wines with considerable concentration and a fine design to the tannins but the blueberry register is so un-Tuscan. Selvapiana, on the other hand, remains a benchmark for its 1960s and 1970s Riservas – last year I’ve had a superlative tasting of the 1965, 1970, 1979 and 1982 that were second to no other Tuscan wine – but it seems to have changed its course considerably over the last years. In 2006 and 2007 the flagship bottling, Bucerchiale, is tasting puzzlingly modern and international with big extract and lavish oak notes; the finely poised structure of Rúfina is there but it remains to be seen whether it can rise to proficiency again from underneath the oak. Given Selvapiana’s track record I trust it will. The 2004 Bucerchiale is very good indeed, too.

On the side of uncompromised tradition there is really a single name: Cológnole, belonging to the same family that used to own the well-known Chianti brand of Spalletti. From an impressive estate of 700 ha in the highest crus of the appellation come structured, ungiving, mineral, majestic wines that need a long time in bottle, though the 2007 Riserva del Don is approachable now and, by a margin, my best Rúfina of this very good vintage.

There are some other dynamic estates including the modern-oriented Lavacchio and Castello del Trebbio, whose owner Stefano Casadei is doing some impressive work in the vineyards and whose Riserva Lastricato has been consistently good in 2006 and 2007, with fair weight, balanced oak and very good potential. I’ve also been happy with Fattoria di Grignano that is a bit more traditional-oriented, especially with its basic Chianti Rúfina that’s perhaps the most consistent of the bunch.

From the other 16 estates that I’ve tasted this year and last, the impressions are mixed but 2008 Chianti Rúfina from Frascole, Il Pozzo, Il Lago and Dreolino are recommended, as well as the 2007 Riservas from Travignoli, Fratelli Bellini and Il Capitano. These estates are still rather inconsistent in quality but they remain a good source of reasonably terroir-driven, continental-profiled, structured, mineral, ageworthy wine. In your diet of Chianti Classico, do make room for Rúfina from time to time. It’s well worth a detour.

1976 Baozhong

1 year = 1 minute?

After my entry on the gargantuan anniversary wine tasting it’s time to report on the tea that was served. I’m sure all tea lovers know the headache: how do you serve tea to a party of 10? Unless people are interested in seeing a proper tea session (not here), it’s practical to make a single large pot of tea.

But in my case, the tea had to be special. With so many old wine vintages being poured, I wanted a tea with several decades on it. Old puer was best avoided, though, as the taste could be challenging to some diners. So I went for this 1976 Baozhong from Tea Masters (see description here; the tea is out of stock at the moment, although Stéphane says it might be available again in the autumn).

I tasted this tea several times upon arrival in November 2008, with the usual gongfu procedure of high dosage (4–5g / 150ml) and short infusions, both in porcelain gaiwan and yixing pots. While an obviously good tea, it left be a bit underwhelmed. The leaves are of a very good grade and quality (there’s very little breakage) as you can see on the photo above. This tea has been roasted to a medium-high degree (likely several times) with obvious skill: the roasted notes are well integrated into the whole. But the aromas are unremarkable, dominated by prunes and roast, and somewhat short-lived in the aroma cup. On the palate, it’s balanced and rather smooth but offers little complexity. In subsequent infusions there’s a pleasurable firmness on the finish from the roast, but not a lot of mid-palate presence and the flavours are again rather vague. It’s a comfortable but rather absent-minded tea and my notes say ‘forgettable’.

Last week’s anniversary dinner was an eye-opener for this Baozhong, after circumstances forced me to change my brewing style. To accommodate so many people, I had to choose a really large pot. My choice went for this glass pot which contains roughly a liter:

It’s the equivalent of what is called ‘glass brewing’ or ‘bowl brewing’ (see discussions here, here, and a variation here). You use, in proportion, very little leaf (I used 8g for a liter of water! I often put as much puer into a 120ml clay pot) but very long infusion times. You get only one brew that will obviously be lighter in body than a gongfu infusion, but not necessarily in flavour: the long infusion concentrates the extraction and you get a kind of summary of your tea, instead of fractioning its aromas into a progression in time (as you do in gongfu when a series of different-tasting infusions follow one another).
The surprise with this Baozhong was how much time was needed to get the best results. 10 minutes was really too little! It’s best after around 20. And I got similar results with a much smaller glass pot (150 ml – then only using 1g of leaf). After such a long steeping, we get a lovely ruby-brown colour and a delightfully rich aroma. Roast is now very much in the background, as the lighter, fruitier aromas have developed: dried prunes, candied cherries, dried apricots, dark honey, a hint of bitter chocolate. Taste-wise, there is a bit of the tannic dryness I observed in gongfucha, but the texture is totally different: there is a lot more sweetness from the dried red fruit notes, and overtones of Christmas spices.
Looking at the wet leaves, it’s no surprise this tea is so good. The roast has been really virtuosic as many leaves are still dark green in colour (have a closer look at the twisted leaf to the far right of the photo below). And for their age, they are really impressively intact. On top of it, it’s a really inexpensive tea for its age (40€ / 100g). Dear Stéphane, I truly hope you can source some more!

Two decades of freedom

It began in Poland

A famous 1989 poster by Tomasz Sarnecki.

Today’s a big day for Poland. Two decades ago, on Sunday 4th June 1989, the first free elections since World War II were held, resulting in a landmass victory for Solidarity and effectively putting the Communist regime to an end. Other countries of the ‘Eastern bloc’ followed suit. Five months later, the Berlin wall was demolished, and two years later, the USSR ceased to exist.

In this day of pride and satisfaction, we look back at that amazing summer of 1989 and what we’ve been able to achieve since. Among many far more serious things, we can enjoy a boundless diversity of wines, buy tea directly from Taiwan on the internet, develop private breweries and buy the latest music CDs in a range of high-street shops. Many things wouldn’t exist without Poles going to the polls two decades ago, including this blog.

Between 8 and 8:20pm today, all across Poland people raised a toast to our happy past and, hopefully, auspicious future. Chez Bońkowski, it seemed suitable to do so with a wine from our Slovenian brothers-in-freedom. The Dveri-Pax Eisenthür 2005 is a wine that couldn’t have happened two decades ago. Slovenia was still part of a country called Yugoslavia, where wine could only be bottled and sold by state-controlled cooperatives. Now this historical estate in Slovenian Styria (it was founded in the 12th century as a Benedictine abbey) has been reprivatised and with a large investment, vineyards have been renewed and a new state-of-the-art cellar established. The first wines were released in 2002 and Dveri-Pax quickly confirmed its rank as one of the leading wineries in Slovenia.
This 2005 Eisenthür single vineyard wine is a blend of 70% Sivi Pinot (local name for Pinot Gris) and 30% Šipon (local name for the Hungarian Furmint), and weighs in at 12.5%. A little capricious at first, it really gains from some airing, showing a very clean minerality from the strong volcanic terroir. It is quite Austrian in style (back in 2005 the winery’s consultant was Erich Krutzler from the famous red wine estate in Burgenland, now making wine at Weingut Pichler-Krutzler) with ripe green fruit and a clean, zesty style. It’s not a great wine, showing a bit of dilution and underripe greenness – but bear in mind 2005 was a fairly difficult vintage in this part of Europe, and the wine is fairly balanced with a good sense of place. Even its imperfections seemed to fit in today’s mood of Central European celebration.

2008 Harayama Shincha

Kissing 2008 goodbye

My green teas from 2008 have to move out quickly to make room for 2009s. Longjing, Biluochun, Sencha are all being harvested at the moment, and some are ready for immediate EMS shipment.

But drinking tea up is no easy task. Any tea lover will know the embarras de richesse of a drawer full of samples. With 70 at this moment, I think I am among the least overstocked. Some teas can age, of course, and these will be happy with a few months’ oblivion as I delve into newly delivered 2009s. But fragile green teas – especially those from Japan, in my experience – should ideally be consumed within the year of harvest.

Today’s is definitely a belated note, then. The 2008 Harayama Shincha was made with the first spring harvest of last year. Shincha – ‘new tea’ – is often nicknamed the Beaujolais Nouveau of the tea world. It is equivalent to what the Chinese classify as pre-Qing Ming (or ming qian): the first spring buds plucked before this major Chinese festival that usually falls at the beginning of April. So in essence, this Harayama (a prestigious origin in the prestigious region of Uji) is an early harvest sencha Japanese green tea.

Merchant: Eastteas
Price: £16 / 100g
Brewed in: Korean clay cup (see photos)
Dosage: 4g / 120ml

Leaf: Immaculate elongated pressed leaves boast an impressively consistent dark green. This clearly belongs to the light-steamed family of Japanese tea (a.k.a. asamushi). I somehow found these wonderful leaves representative of the perfectionist Japanese aesthetics. Dry leaf smell is a concentrate of vegetality, with notes of asparagus, artichoke, and especially extra virgin olive oil.

Tasting notes:
1m @ 70C: A typical pale golden / celadon colour. The nose is quite aromatic with a top note I identified as nutmeg. Body is round and flavourful, allying sweetness with vegetal freshness, losing its bite gradually as there is very little overt grassiness: this is true to the shincha sort in being airy, light, without the tang of full-season sencha.
30s @ 70C: Good character, if a little less intensity than the first brewing. With fruity notes a bit lower, the full glutamic scharge is arriving with more power. This tea is easy to overbrew (in fact brewing at 85C results in too much astringency) but if you find the right balance it is really delightful.
80s @ 80C: Now slowly eclipsing into a vague greenish soup. Still pleasant but with limited interest.

Overall this tea has held reasonably well (my notes from November 2008 and this morning are consistent), and although hardly complex, it really delivers very good intensity of spring leaf flavour. Just what shincha should be. I can’t wait to receive my 2009s!

I also draw your attention to the lovely tea items on the photos (also purchased from Eastteas). The handy crackled celadon clay pot and accompanying cup are by Korean potter Mr. Bo Hyun, and have an effortless elegance while being very practical for brewing a single cup of green tea (especially fragmented-leaf, as in this case). The carved wooden tray is my Mr. Kang. It is perfect as a small tea table for one, or for serving three or four guest cups on.