Wine of the Week 61 – an affordable classic

I am not often one to encourage people buy the cheaper examples of classic wines. As a rule I believe that you need to pay a proper price for the true classics. This is because budget wines are often a pale imitation of what they out to be. Sub £12 Sancerre or Chablis are normally pretty dilute things, all tart acidity and no real character. Cheaper Châteauneuf-du-Pape in no way prepares you for the joys of the real thing. Entry level (under £10) Gewürztraminer lacks true concentration and depth and so on. This is understandable, these wines are really fairly expensive to grow and make and so if there is a cheaper version then it is usually made to a price.

Of course there are exceptions and I am delighted to have found one just the other day. Rather excitingly it is a Barbaresco from Piemonte in north west Italy. These wines, made from the Nebbiolo grape like its near Neighbour Barolo, are often among Italy’s most expensive and sought after, so to find a great value example that is actually rather good is quite something.

The wine is made by the wonderful Araldica cooperative who make a wide range of well made Piemontese wines – I love their La Battistina Gavi for example – and never seem to put a foot wrong. Certainly this Barbaresco is a delicious example that gives a very real idea of what these wines are about, at a good price so I made it my Wine of the Week.

The beautiful Piemontese landscape.

Map showing the wines of Piemonte, click on map for a larger view.

2011 Corsini Barbaresco
Barbaresco DOCg
Araldica Vini Piemontesi
Piemonte
Italy

This is 100% Nebbiolo, made from quite old vines – which give greater depth and concentration – grown at between 180 and 400 metres above sea level. The grapes were hand harvested and fermented in stainless steel vats. It was then aged for 18 months in large oak vats.

The colour is typical Nebbiolo in that it is translucent and red with an orange / bricky rim. The nose is lifted and vibrant with smoky spicy notes mingling with rich cherry and plum together with some rose floral notes and light touches of leather and savoury mushroom and truffle.

The palate is smooth and seductive with lots of tannin, but it ripe and smooth rather than astringent. There is plenty of deep red fruit together with spice and rich truffles, smoke, flowers and a dusting of mocha from the oak ageing. The finish is long and satisfying with those tannins giving some nice firm structure, while the high acid – typical of the grape and Italian red wines in general – make it perfect with Italian style food.

A lovely, drinkable introduction to Nebbiolo, this is well made and refined, with a fresh, clean and vibrant feel – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Waitrose, Waitrose Cellar and Ocado for £11.99 per bottle. Other stockists can be seen here.

Like most wines made from Nebbiolo grapes, this is a deeply savoury wine that really needs to be enjoyed with food. It would be excellent with steak, roast or braised beef, rich risottos and mushroom and truffle dishes. Give it a try if you can, and let us know what you think.

Wine of the Week 60 – a lovely and great value aromatic white wine

Recently I presented a tasting of wines made from unusual grapes and our first wine was a lovely dry and aromatic white wine. I enjoy aromatic wines, but find that many of them can be a little too rich and low in freshness and acidity – think Viognier and Gewürztraminer. Of course in the case of Gewürztraminer the wines can often be sweeter than you want as well. They were a skilled and enthusiastic bunch of tasters and they all loved this first wine.

Two things made it very exciting, firstly it is extremely good value for money, but more importantly it is really delicious and well balanced. It is from Hungary, it’s made from a very unusual grape variety and is made by someone that I admire very much. In fact it is so good and so pleasurable to drink that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

Wine map of Hungary – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

The view from Hilltop towards the Danube and Slovakia. Photo courtesy of Hilltop Neszmély.

Hilltop Premium Cserszegi Fűszeres (there does not appear to be a vintage on this wine)
Hilltop Neszmély
Hungary

I have visited a good many of Hungary’s wine regions, including a memorable trip the the lovely Hilltop Neszmély winery. It is in the far north of the country with just the Danube River between it and Slovakia. The local climate is continental and very similar to nearby Austria and the wines have much in common with Austrian wines too, both in weight and style.

The estate was the brainchild of the charming Éva Keresztury who has run Hilltop since the early 1990s and her success has been amazing. Her wines are available in many places and are always an incredible balance of quality and value, as far as I can see she has never put a foot wrong and makes some of the best good value wines available in the UK today. They also have a lovely hotel on the estate and excellent restaurant that specialises in local game.

Cserszegi Fűszeres is certainly an unusual grape, but please don’t let that put you off. It is also very difficult, if not almost impossible to pronounce – but then I also showed Dr Frank’s Rkatsiteli from New York’s Finger Lakes at the same tasting. That is also quite superb and very hard to pronounce, but well worth trying – but don’t let that put you off. I am sure that you will enjoy it. The grape is actually a cross between the Irsai Olivér (itself an aromatic cross of 2 other grapes) and Roter Traminer ( a near relative of Gewürztraminer) and has only been in existence since 1960. The grape is named for where it’s from, Cserszegtomaj near Keszthely on the north shore of the south west end of Lake Balaton – Hungary’s inland freshwater sea. Fűszeres means spicy.

The nose is delightfully aromatic with wafts of orange blossom, fresh grapes and some sweet spice notes, but it smells fresh and not cloying at all. The palate is soft with lovely weight of fruit sweetness, but is is a dry wine – just very fruity – with some nectarine-like succulence, zingy orange, richer peach and some apricot characters too. The orange dominates the finish, which is pretty and long. The wine is kept balanced by the lovely seam of refreshing acidity that runs through it making it lively, fresh and clean – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Asda for £7.00 per bottle. What’s more it is only £5 a bottle during July 2015!

This wine is a perfect summer drink, light, fresh, flavoursome and very, very drinkable. It would make an excellent aperitif, garden sipper or go with pretty much any food at all. It is especially good with lightly spicy food. Do try it if you get the chance – I am sure that you will like it.

Wine of the Week 59 – a great rosé

I like rosé wine. Rosé can be a delicious drink and just the thing on a summer day. However, I am fully aware that they are normally frivolous wines that seldom hit the heights of complexity and sophistication.

Recently I tasted a rosé that showed just how good the style can be and it was made in a relatively unusual place from an incredibly unusual grape.

It was made by a guy called David Mazza, actually it was made for him, but more of that in a moment, and it was such a thrilling wine that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

David Mazza showing me his wines at Berry Bros. & Rudd, London.

Wine map of Western Australia – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

2013 Mazza Bastardo Rosé
GI Geographe
Mazza Wine
Western Australia

David Mazza’s family left their native Calabria – the toe of Italy – in 1958 and settled in Dardanup near Bunbury, Western Australia. Both his father and grandfather grew grapes and made wine for family consumption, but David is the only member of the current generation, out of 20 cousins, to be bitten by the wine bug and take it further.

This may well be because as a young man he travelled around Iberia and fell in love with the wines of Spain and Portugal, which reminded him of the dry, lightish European styles of wine that his father and grandfather used to make. Something about the grapes of Spain and Portugal spoke to him and when he and his wife Anne finally found the site they wanted for their dream vineyard they decided to plant their favourite Iberian grapes. 14 years later they proudly tend 4 hectares of Tempranillo, Graciano, Tinta Câo, Touriga Nacional, Sousâo (Vinhão) and Bastardo. I tasted all their wines except for the Tinta Câo, which I hope to try soon, and I have seldom been more impressed or thrilled by a range of wines. They were a superb line up and I will write about them all soon.

However, I was also impressed by David and his incredible passion for this project. he delighted in every aspect of what he was doing and that showed in his wines. The sheer excitement he had for hid land and his wines was lovely to see. I fact when I described his land as an estate he was so proud and so excited that I felt it too, it was as though his work had really paid off for him. 

Bastardo is the traditional main grape of Dâo and is used in the Douro, for wine and Port, Madeira and Alentejo, but is also strangely used in the Jura region of France where it is called Trousseau. It’s a vigorous low yielding plant and David dry farms it without irrigation.

The colour comes from skin contact and what a lovely colour it is, somewhere between wild salmon and pale cranberry juice.

The nose offers rose petal aromas, some strawberries and cream notes, mineral earthy notes, some herbs and some pomegranate too.

The palate has lovely weight and a creamily ripe texture that caresses the palate with soft red fruit with an underlying orange acidity with red fruit highlights. There are some light spices and Mediterranean herbs too. The acidity is perfectly judged, making the wine fresh, lively and clean without being in the least bit tart.

There is a fair bite of tannin for a rosé, just enough to give some elegance and structure, and a long finish that delights with redcurrant and cranberry fruit. This is a really satisfying and fine rosé of exceptional quality, it is not exactly light weight, but neither it is it heavy, but it is refreshing and lively. The most complex and fine example I have had in a long time and one of the 2 or 3 best I have ever tasted – 92/100.

This is utterly delicious and very drinkable as well as being a complex rosé. I think it would be  perfect wine to drink with seafood, tapas, starters, picnics, barbecues or just some little nibbles like cheese straws. If you are a fan of rosé but have never tasted a really fine one, then please give this delightful wine a go.
Available in the UK from Berry Bros and Rudd for £17.50 per bottle.

 

Wine of the Week 58 – the other wine from Chablis

Chablis town, you can see vineyards on the slopes beyond.

Having just returned from a week in Chablis I am all fired up with enthusiasm for the place and its wines. Most wine drinkers will feel that they understand what Chablis is, a classic, crisp dry white wine, normally unoaked and made from Chardonnay. Well, as usual I discovered that most of what we believe to be true about the place is not true. There are in fact may different styles of Chablis, many of them much richer than most consumers realise.

However, I will write about Chablis another day and restrict myself to Chablis’s poor relation today – Petit-Chablis.

In truth Petit-Chablis is no poor relation of Chablis, it is just a different wine. The wine of Chablis, wine that is given the appellation Chablis in line with the appellation contrôlée / PDO is named after this famous town, but defined by grape variety and the local soil. Chablis can only be made from Chardonnay vines and must be grown on the Kimmeridgian soils that are found on most of the slopes around Chablis. Kimmeridgian is named after Kimmeridge in Dorset and it is a calcareous clay and is a very fossil rich soil that contains the fossilised remains of ancient oysters and ammonites. The lime content of the fossils helps give acidity into the wine and, it is believed by some, to impart the typical minerality too.

On the outskirts of Chablis, the Kimmeridgian soil is hard to find and makes way for the harder Portlandian soils that are not so rich in clay or fossils and generally produce wines that are less mineral, but more fruity. More importantly Portlandian soils are also found on the top of the Chablis slopes, the plateaux between the valleys, so is often right by some of the very best Chablis, Chablis Premier Cru and Chablis Grand Cru vineyards. The only wine produced on this Portlandian soil is Petit-Chablis.

Chablis vineyards, looking North, the town is hidden in the valley. Some of the vines at the very top of the opposite slopes are Petit-Chablis. On the slopes it is Chablis Grand Cru.

To many of us the name Petit-Chablis implies that the wine is somewhat lesser, although I understand that this is not so in French. With extensive tasting though, I discovered that this simply is not so. Although many of Petit-Chablis I tasted were pretty ordinary, others were far better than the dull generic Chablis wines that grace many of our supermarket shelves.

Wine map of Chablis, Petit-Chablis is in pale yellow.

Frankly I was spoiled for choice as to which Petit-Chablis to write about today, Domaine Mosnier‘s was bright, focussed and very good, Domaine Moreau-Naudet‘s was richer and more mineral, La Chablisienne‘s Petit Chablis ‘Pas si Petit’ (not so little) is fresh with a touch of minerality. The Petit-Chablis from Jean-Paul & Benoît Droin is an extraordinarily fine wine, as is the one from Domaine Vincent Dauvissat. However as these last two are pretty pricey, although well worth it if you feel like treating yourself, so I have chosen a different producer’s Petit-Chablis to be my Wine of the Week – William Fèvre.

Didier Séguier (left) winemaker at William Fèvre. Alin Marcuello, hospitality manager is on the right.

By the by, I often take the view that a top producer’s lesser wine, or appellation, is a better bet than a lesser example of a top wine, so think Gigondas rather than Châteauneuf, Coteaux du Giennois rather than Sancerre, Monbazillac rather than Sauternes, Côte de Castillon or Fronsac rather than St Emilion if you want good value.

2014 Wiliam Fèvre Petit-Chablis
AC Petit-Chablis
Burgundy, France

Unoaked Chardonnay with 10 months lees ageing in stainless steel tank.

The colour is very pale, silvery and clear with a touch of green.

The nose offers green apple, green apple skin together with some blossom and floral notes.

The palate is surprisingly soft and round with appley and pear fruit. A steely, fresh quality balances the fruit with its lovely green acidity that is just off tart. This makes it a nice drinkable wine as the acidity is not too dominant, while little flourishes of chalky and seashore minerality add complexity and finesse. It has a lovely long finish.

This is an excellent classic French dry white and much  better than most of the basic Chablis in the supermarkets – 88/100 points

The 2013 is currently available and is a little richer and rounder. The 2014 will be available around October / November 2015.

This makes a perfect aperitif, or serve it with soft cheese, shellfish, grilled fish and white meat.

For UK stockists look here and contact Fells and Co.

Wine of the Week 57 – a delicious Priorat that will not break the bank

The beautiful landscape of Priorat. Photo courtesy of Oficina de Turisme del Priorat.

As many of my regular readers know, I love Priorat wines. It is without question Catalunya’s most prestigious wine region and apart from Rioja is the only area to be granted Spain’s highest wine classification; D.O.Ca or D.O.Q. in Catalan – Denominación de Origen Calificada.

Everything about this tiny region appeals to me. It feels very wild and isolated when you are there, it’s quite a journey just getting to it in fact. There is only one road and as it winds up into the mountains the terrain is ruggedly beautiful and the views are staggering. Miguel Torres once told me that it was completely different world in Priorat, and he was quite right.

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

Once you are up in this amazing place, the air is clear and it feels very peaceful – I would urge anyone to visit, even if you are not that keen on wine. The villages are all lovely – there are no towns exactly – and while there are no hotels, there are some superb restaurants.

What really sets this lovely region apart though is the wine. Priorat specialises in blends, usually based on Garnatxa / Garnacha / Grenache, but they can include Samsó – Cariñena / Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. The land is made up of licorella soil, which is decayed slate. It seems that this sort of soil is the same one that creates the great wines of the Douro in Portugal and simply rises to the surface again all the way over here.

Priorat has a great history dating back to the early middle ages when the land was given to the Carthusian monks of the Monastery of Scala Dei. The Abbot ran the region as the feudal lord until the early nineteenth century when the locals rose up and sacked the monastery, its ruins can still be seen. The land was then nationalised and parcelled out to smallholders.

The beautiful landscape of Priorat. Photo courtesy of Oficina de Turisme del Priorat.

The wines of the area fell in to decline then until well into the twentieth century and it was not really until the 1970s when a group calling themselves the Priorat Pioneers started trying to create fine wines worthy of the local terroir. They enjoyed quick success and Priorat has gone on to be regarded as one of the great wine regions of the world. In fact so rosy has the view of Priorat become that the only problem, for most of us, is the eye watering prices that many of the wines fetch.

Normally I would say that the best way to try the wines without spending a fortune is to drink the wines of the equally tiny and very similar Montsant region which surrounds Priorat, but recently I tasted an excellent and great value Priorat itself, so I have made it my Wine of the Week.

2013 Noster Nobilis Priorat
DOQ Priorat
Catalunya, Spain

A typical blend of 65% Garnatxa, 20% Samsó and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon aged in French oak barrels for 6 months.

The colour is a deep garnet, while the nose gives off rich brambely fruit and spice. You can almost smell the heat, with richer raisin and liquorice notes. There is a wild herb note too, similar to the French garrigue.

The palate is rich, smooth and warming with wild herbs, dry peppery spices and rich red fruit, fresh, dried and cooked. there is also the distinctive local minerality that tastes like the licorella slate. This is an excellent introduction to the delights of Priorat that over performs for the price – 89/100 points

Available in the UK from Asda and Asda Wine Shop for £7.98 – it is not an own label and does not mention Asda at all.

I cannot find any US stockists, but as Wallmart own Asda that may be a good place to start. If they do not have it, they certainly have this wonderful looking book on Priorat.

Try this wine with slow roast lamb with garlic and rosemary, or even a barbecue and do not be afraid to stick it in an ice bucket on a hot day – the Spanish would.

I hope some of you try this, it is an amazing wine for the money, let me know what you think.