Wine of the Week 27 – it’s oh so nice to be familiar!

Cabernet Sauvignon is a wonderful grape. I love the sheer intensity and richness that it can deliver and sometimes I crave wines like the juicy, delicious, fruity New World Cabernets of my youth. Well, recently I have discovered a vibrantly fruity Cabernet that also has structure and elegance, so I have been using it in my wine classes to illustrate what Cabernet is all about – the fact that it is good value too is just a bonus.

It comes from Chile and shows what enjoyable wines that amazing country can produce, even at good value prices. I am sure that by now everyone knows that Chile enjoys a blessed climate that is perfect for grape growing and wine production. They have a long growing season, plenty of sunshine, diverse soils and cooling influences coming from both the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountains. All of this, plus a great deal of knowhow means they can make wines that are capable of being utterly delicious – like my new Wine of the Week.

Map of Chile – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

Wild horses at the Caliterra Estate – photo courtesy of Caliterra.

2013 Caliterra Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon
D.O. Colchagua Valley
Rapel, Chile
Cabernet Sauvignon is, of course, grown and made all over the world, but ever since the mid nineteenth century it has been Chile’s star grape and was the variety that made Chile’s reputation as a great wine producing country. Styles vary enormously from being very soft and fruity to something more complex and interesting – this wine manages to be both fruity and interesting. I have known the Caliterra winery for a long time and first visited it more than ten years ago. Now owned by Errazuriz, it was originally a joint venture between Eduardo Chadwick, of Viña Errazuriz in Chile, and Robert Mondavi of California. Sadly Robert died in 2008, but they are both towering figures in the wine world and I have been lucky enough to meet them both over the years. 

Caliterra is a very beautiful place and I enjoyed seeing it, but it is fair to say that their wines have got better and better of late. What’s more, in recent years they have gone all out for sustainable viticulture and have left some 75% of their 1,085 hectares (2,681 acres) untouched to ensure the land has bio-diverse flora and fauna. The place is called Caliterra after all, which is from the Spanish word Calidad – meaning quality – and Tierra meaning land. By the way, although it looks Christmassy to a British eye, that bird on the label is not a robin, but the chucao tapaculo which is native to southern Chile.

Cabernet Sauvignon originates in Bordeaux where it is normally blended with other grapes for greater complexity, well this wine gives a nod in that direction by being 96% Cabernet Sauvignon with 2% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot adding some elegance. The winemaking shows an interestingly light touch with just 30% of the wine being aged in barrels for  7 to 9 months in 2nd and 3rd use barrels, which give less obvious oak flavour than new oak does.

The colour is a deep, dense and an opaque purply-black. The nose is vibrant and lifted with rich cassis, blackberry, deep raspberry and something floral, as well as some vanilla, tobacco and a waft of some mint or eucalyptus together with some black olives for good measure. The palate delivers rich, ripe black fruit balanced by lovely vibrant, fresh blackcurrant acidity, a touch of cream and some espresso on the long finish. This is a wine to enjoy without so much as a backward glance, or to serve with a classic meaty meal like a Sunday roast. There’s no hurry to drink it either, you could easily lay this wine down for four years or so to make it more complex. All in all, an excellent Cabernet for the price – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK at around £9.75 per bottle from The Oxford Wine Company, The Vintage House, Bin 21, Edencroft, Cheers Wine Merchants and Partridges of Sloane Street.
Stockist information for the US is available from Rodrigo Rodero: rrodero@chadwickwines.cl

I chose this wine because I find it so easy to focus on what is new and different, that it is nice to give a shout out for an old favourite from time to time and it offers great value for money.

Just so you know, I do sometimes do some work for Caliterra and their UK agents, Hatch Mansfield, but this is my honest and unsolicited opinion.

 

 

Wine of the Week 27 – amazing value dry Riesling

I love Riesling. It is one of the best white grapes in the world and it produces such a wonderful variety of wines that it pains me that more consumers do not love it as I do. It still seems to evoke laughable images of the 1970s and Liebfraumilch for many people, but what those people have to remember is that all the things they find funny about the 1970s now, were not funny then. Their younger selves – or their parents – actually liked wearing safari jackets and flares, eating chicken kiev and drinking Blue Nun – get over it I say.

It also might interest you to know though that Blue Nun never had any Riesling in it and most Liebfraumilch and cheap German wine was – and is – made from Müller-Thurgau grapes and not Riesling at all.

Riesling can be stylish, classy, refined and elegant and what’s more a great many are dry. If you want dry wines made from Riesling, then drink Riesling from Alsace, Austria, Washington State or Chile. All these places are produce some superb dry Riesling, but my Wine of the Week this week is cracking dry Riesling from the Clare Valley in South Australia. If the delights of Riesling have so far eluded you, but you enjoy Grüner Veltliner or Albariño, do give this wine a try, you might well enjoy it.

Clare Valley Vines at Taylors Wine. Photo courtesy of Taylors Wines.

Map of South Eastern Australia – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

2013 Aldi The Exquisite Collection Riesling
Clare Valley
South Australia
Riesling was once the work horse white grape of Australia and it is still widely grown. However, two areas of South Australia have really made a speciality of it and now produce superb premium Riesling in their own unique style, although many other grape varieties are planted there too. These wine regions are the Eden Valley and the Clare Valley.
Clare is probably the most famous and produces the iconic style of Australian Riesling, dry, medium-bodied and with lots of fruit balancing the grape’s natural acidity. They normally appear richer than their European counterparts and often have an oily character to them.
If you read the small print on the label you will see that this wine is made by Taylors Wines, who are a large, but very good quality family run producer that exports under the Wakefield label to avoid confusion with the Port house. 

Strangely the Clare Valley is not that cool, it actually has a Mediterranean climate, but the nights are cool and together with the height of the vineyards – around 350-400 metres above sea level – this ensures the wines retain their freshness, acidity and balance. It is an area of gently rolling hills in fact and not strictly speaking a valley at all, but it is very beautiful.

The nose is enticing and glorious with the freshness of lime and lime zest, some grapefruit and tangerine too and there is something mineral and stony about it as well. It smells fresh, vibrant and pristine, but has a little oily, waxy richness too.
The palate has lots of zing and fat, ripe fruit too. It has lovely, mouthwatering acidity making it clean, and crisp, as well as a juicy quality to the fruit; apples, pears and white peach, together with lemon and lime zest on the finish and some steely minerality.
Really good stuff that is just perfect as an aperitif or with light meals, fish dishes, shellfish and it is really good with most Asian cuisine – anything you dip into sweet chilli sauce in fact  – 88/100 points, this scores high for value and tastes much more expensive than it is.

I don’t like the label of this wine or The Exquisite Collection name Aldi have given the range, it’s a pretty terrible name, but who cares if the wine is this good?

 Available in the UK at £6.99 per bottle from Aldi.

I will certainly make sure that I have some of this on hand over Christmas, it is utterly delicious and a bargain at that.

Wine of the Week 26 – a deliciously tangy white

My Wine of the Week is a wine that I have actually written about before, different vintages though, but I always enjoy it so much and it so interesting and refreshingly different that it’s always worth another mention.

Earlier in the week I was invited to a wonderful wine dinner hosted by Joanna Simon. The theme was wines and food of South West France – or le Sud-Ouest – and it was in the trendy Boundary Restaurant in Shoreditch. The restaurant has a wine club which runs these wine themed evenings and a good time seems to be had as the food is quite superb and the restaurant is quite a beautiful place to be. In fact The Boundary fills a whole building and includes a hotel, a shop, café, bakery, bars and other restaurants and as if all that isn’t enough, there is also a rooftop bar.

Map of Southwest France including the A.C.s of Bergerac – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

The evening was lovely with a delicious menu of rich, interesting French food including a main course of braised ox check, with smoked wild boar in stunningly rich sauce, and a blindingly good cheese board. The wines that partnered them were all from the delightfully disparate region that is South West France and they went very well indeed. My favourite though, or one of them anyway, was a tangy, zesty, aromatic and richly flavoursome dry white wine that was perfect with both the salad of Bayonne Ham with black truffle and the Ossau Iraty cheese.

Vineyards in Saint Mont.

2012 Saint Mont Les Vignes Retrouvées Blanc
A.C. / P.D.O. Saint Mont (still shown as Côtes de Saint-Mont on my map)
Plaimont Producteurs
Gascony, France
Plaimont are a cooperative and the leading producer in Saint Mont. As such they make a huge array of wines from everyday wines to more ambitious cuvées and they are never worse than decent. This little gem is quite special though, made from the region’s traditional ‘rediscovered’ grapes that give the wine it’s name, it is an exciting blend of 70% Gros Manseng, 20 % Petit Courbu and 10% Arrufiac. Gascony was originally the northern part of the Kingdom of Navarre (Navarra) and some of these grapes are grown over the border in Spain’s País Vasco to make Chacolí / Txakoli. In ancient times the people of Navarra were the Vascones tribe who later evolved into both the Basques and the Gascons.

It’s dry, medium-bodied and unoaked with a richly tangy citrus acidity and a richer stone fruit and pithy grapefruit palate with some creamy and honeyed intensity and texture to the fruit. This texture dominates the finish and makes it feel really succulent – 89/100 points.

Available in the UK at £7.95 per bottle from The Wine Society.

This is such a lovely white wine, so delicious and so interesting that it deserves a wider audience. It would be a great wine to keep on hand to serve guests throughout Christmas – unless they read this site they will never guess how inexpensive it is – and it will go perfectly with anything from a cheese straw to a full blown meal. What’s more it might open the delights of France’s South West up to you, it is a beautiful, varied and sadly underestimated wine region.

More information is available at southwestfrancewines.co.uk

Wine of the Week 25 – a superb inexpensive sparkler.

I love sparkling wine and enjoy drinking it whatever the occasion. Nothing cheers me up so much as some fizz after a difficult day. Sparkling wine before dinner always turns an ordinary day into something of a celebration too. A nice fizz always gives me a little lift and makes the world seem a better place. Sadly a lot of sparkling wines can be a bit expensive for everyday drinking, while the cheaper examples can often be disappointing.

Happily there is help at hand and I have made it my Wine of the Week. It is a Crémant de Jura, so it comes from the Jura region of France. Jura is a small and relatively obscure place in the east of the country, but it makes some wonderful wines and produces stunning cheeses – Comté comes from here. I recently created the maps for the definitive book on the wines of the Jura, which is available here in the UK & here in the US.

My map showing where Jura is. Click for a larger view. © Quentin Sadler 2014.

Jura vineyards showing the dramatic terrain.

Sadly I have not yet visited, but from my research I know that Jura is a beautiful and captivating place full of stunning scenery and picturesque towns, while imposing mountains are never far away. I gather the place is very quiet and rural and a world away from the France of the big cities.

The fact that the wine is a Crémant means it must be made sparkling by the Traditional Method, the same way that they do it in Champagne. The wine comes from Aldi and I think it might well be the best sparkling wine on the market at under £10, but don’t tell anyone, or they will all want to try it! In fact I have been quite impressed with lots of Aldi wines, so while you are there buying this you might want to grab a few other bottles to try.

If you have never been able to try anything from Jura, this wine might be a good place to start as production here is very is small and so the can often be difficult to track down.

2011 Philippe Michel Crémant du Jura Chardonnay Brut
A.C. Crémant de Jura
Jura, France

What makes this so good? It is the balance and the acidity which gives it freshness and elegance. It really is much better than the modest price tag would lead you to think. Made from pure Chardonnay – Jura is not far from Burgundy – it’s crisp with a lean, apply structure, the merest hint of toast and tends towards the firm, taut texture of Champagne, although some flourishes of subtle tropical fruit soften the plate somewhat. This so obviously comes from a cool region and it such a refreshing – in every sense – change from the soft pappy and sweetish style of sparkling wine that is so widely encountered nowadays (I’m talking about cheap Prosecco here in case you didn’t know) – 85/100 points.

Available from Aldi at £7.29 per bottle – you can find your nearest store here.

This just makes a perfect everyday fizz, so stock up early for Christmas would be my advice. What’s more if you like it – and if you like sparkling wine you will – make sure you try something else from the Jura, The Wine Society stock some Jura wines, as do Les Caves de Pyrène.