Wine of the Week – a Happy, Happy Syrah

Tain-l’Hermitage – photo courtesy of Maison Les Alexandrins.

Personally I think a lot of talk and writing about wine – and I am guilty of this myself – focuses on how fine, interesting or different a wine is rather than how much pleasure it delivers.

Which is really very strange as wine is all about pleasure isn’t it? If a wine does not give you pleasure, then what is the point? I certainly think about the pleasure a wine offers while I am tasting it but do my descriptions and writing about a wine always convey that? I am not sure.

All of this flashed through my mind recently when I tasted a wine that in more normal circumstances I might well have ignored.

For a start it is made from Syrah, or that is what it says on the label anyway. Be prepared to gap in astonishment, but I am not especially drawn to Syrah, or don’t generally think I am anyway, so rarely seek it out – although that seems to be changing.

Secondly the wine is not from an appellation contrôlée / AC / appellation d’origine protégéeor / AOP / PDO or not even a Vin de Pays / PGI, but is a humble Vin de France. This most basic quality level of French wine replaced Vin de Table a few years ago, with similar changes right across the EU.

Fundamentally what changed was that they were given the right to state the grape variety, or the blend on the label. They are also allowed to show the vintage, which means that we can be more selective, choosing the better vintages and perhaps also the fresher years – especially useful with white wines, but a good idea with most modern red wines too.

The vast majority of Vin de France are, as you might imagine, pretty basic, everyday wines – which is why I would normally pass on by. However, as with the Syrah that I tasted some producers use this level to make something altogether more interesting and worthwhile. Certainly this Syrah is a lovely wine – so good in fact that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

The stunning Northern Rhône Valley – photo courtesy of Maison Les Alexandrins.

2016 Syrah

Vin de France 

Maison Les Alexandrins

Rhône

France

Maison Les Alexandrins is a very interesting project that produces some rather good wines. It is another example of a thoroughly modern phenomenon – a micro-négociant that focuses on high quality wines. It grew out of the Domaine Les Alexandrins and is a joint venture between Nicolas Jaboulet, formerly of the eponymous winery in Tain and now the head of Maison Nicolas Perrin, winemaker Guillaume Sorrel and viticulturalist Alexandre Caso. The aim is to give Nicolas Perrin a presence in the Northern Rhône and they aim to buy really good parcels of fruit from top growers across the area and to craft expressive wines from them. Eventually they will have a permanent base as they are building a new winery in Tain-l’Hermitage.

Wine Map of France, the Northern Rhône is just south of Lyon – click for a larger view.

This is the bottom rung of the wines they make, but don’t let that bother you. It comes from a great vintage and the quality shows, but so does the skill of the winemaker.

The fruit comes from younger vines across the Northern Rhône and although the label calls it a Syrah, there is actually 8% Viognier in there too, co-fermented with the Syrah. There was a cold soak to extract flavour before the fermentation which was in stainless steel. Half was then aged in tank for 6 months and the other half was aged in barrel, but from the taste of it I would say very little new wood at all.

Everything about this wine is bright and fresh. The colour is a vivid cerise – like a sorbet. The nose gives bright cherry and blackberry with lightly creamy notes, some spice and a little touch of freshly turned earth.

The palate just delivers pure pleasure. It is fresh, fleshy and juicy and cram packed with bright cherry, cranberry and plum fruit together with bright, refreshing acidity and just enough soft tannins for interest. It is beautifully balanced, perfectly judged, delicious and dangerously hedonistic. All in all it is a fine bottle of really well crafted happy juice.

This is a lithe, fresh and punchy red that will go with almost anything and is a very attractive wine to drink on its own too. Personally I think its charms are mainly upfront in the fruit, but it might be interesting to see what it’s like in five years or so as underneath all that pleasure I am sure there is a more serious wine trying to get. This is so delicious, so drinkable and made me so happy that I will award it 90/100 points – it earned extra points for severing extreme pleasure.

Available in the UK for around £13 per bottle from South Downs Cellars. More stockist information is available from Liberty Wines the UK importers.

Frankly the only mystery about this wine is why it does not have more stockists. Sealed with a screw cap it would make a perfect restaurant wine too.

Wine of the Week 46 – it’s Zinfandel, but not as most people imagine it

Zinfandel is a wonderful grape variety, that is pretty hard to pin down – in many different ways. What it actually is and where it comes from has taken a very long time to get straight. The grape is often regarded as America’s own grape, but if any vine can make that claim it is actually the wayward Norton. Of course Zinfandel made its reputation in California, but it was a long time coming. For much of its time there Zinfandel has been regarded as a very inferior grape indeed and it has only been in the last 20 years or so that it has received the attention that it deserves.

Zinfandel vines in the Napa Valley.

As far as we can tell, the grape that became Zinfandel was taken to the eastern United States from Europe in the 1820’s – long before the annexation of California. Records show that it was taken from the Austrian Imperial nursery in Vienna to Boston and was originally sold as a table grape in New England, but destiny called when cuttings were shipped to California to take advantage of the boom caused by the Gold Rush in 1849. That was all we knew until the 1990s when DNA testing discovered that Zinfandel was identical to the Primitivo that is widely used in Puglia, the heel of Italy.

Plavac Mali vines in the amazing Dingac vineyards on the Pelješac Peninsula near Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Further investigation and DNA work then discovered that Primitivo/Zinfandel were one of the parents of the Plavac Mali grape which is used on Croatia’s Dalmation coast. The other parent was Dobričić, an incredibly obscure Croatian grape that only grows on the Dalmatian island of Šolta. This find narrowed the search down and in 2001 a vine that matched Zinfandel’s DNA was discovered in a single vineyard in Kaštel Novi north west of Split on the Croatian coast. The vine was known as Crljenak Kaštelanski, or ‘the red grape of Kaštela’. In 2011 the researchers discovered another match, this time with a grape called Tribidrag which is also used on the Dalmatian coast. Crljenak Kaštelanski and Tribidrag are as alike as different clones of Pinot Noir, or Tempranillo and Tinto Fino, but  Tribidrag is the more common name, although not much of it is left, so it too is obscure. However, records show the name has been used since at least 1518 and what’s more, Primitivo derives from the Latin for early, while Tribidrag derives from the Croatian for early – they are both early ripening grapes.

Ok, so the roots of Zinfandel are sorted, but then we have the the worry as to exactly what sort of wine Zinfandel makes. Many UK consumers assume that Zinfandel primarily makes sweetish rosé, white Zinfandel, but most of the books and wine courses tell us that it makes high alcohol (15% and more), rich, dry, spicy red wines with rich dried fruit – prune and raisin – characters. That can certainly be true of the old vine Zinfandels that are produced in the hot Central Valley areas of Amador and Lodi, but there is another, totally different style of Zinfandel in California too.

This style comes from cooler production areas nearer the coast and is more elegant – by which I mean less powerful, less of a blunt instrument, instead it has delicate fruit characters, normally red – raspberry in fact – together with some freshness too. I recently tasted a delicious example, that is very good value for money, so I made it my Wine of the Week.

The wine regions of Sonoma – click map for a larger view.

 

2013 De Loach Heritage Reserve Zinfandel
De Loach Vineyards,
Russian River Valley, Sonoma
California
100% Zinfandel aged for a few months in American and Hungarian oak barrels. The grapes mainly come from De Loach’s own organic and biodynamically farmed vineyards, with some fruit from other, warmer areas of California. Sonoma’s Russian River Valley has a long slow even growing season that seems to coax real elegance out of Zinfandel, making the wines quite different from the usual take on the grape. The alcohol is a modest 13.5%.

The colour is a lovely deep, but bright ruby red, while the nose is scented and lifted, offering rich, intense raspberry together with black pepper, smoke and vanilla. The palate is medium-bodied, but is richly textured with rounded ripe fruit filling the mouth with flavour. Those flavours are raspberry and cracked pepper spice together with some cherry and blackberry too. While this is not the most complex Zinfandel in the world, the tannins are soft and velvety and while the fruit dominates from start to finish, making the wine juicy and soft, there is a lovely seam of freshness in the wine, that makes it deliciously drinkable too – 87/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £11 a bottle from Eclectic Tastes and Exel Wines, further stockist information is available from the UK distributor, Liberty Wines.
US stockist information is available here.

If your experience of Zinfandel makes you think they are all huge monsters with high alcohol, this gives a totally different take on the grape and is superb value for money too. A very food friendly wine, this is perfect with almost anything, from burgers, pastas and pizzas, to Sunday roasts and finer fare.

Wine of the Week 45 – an elegant and delicious Port

I love Port, as well as the unfortified wines of Portugal’s Douro region (do try this one here), and given how reluctant winter is to leave us this year, in the UK anyway, I thought this delicious Port that I discovered recently would be a lovely, warming Wine of the Week.

The beautiful terraced vineyards of the Douro Valley.

Port has long been dominated by the big brands, many of them still with British names, such as Grahams, Dows, Cockburns, Taylors etc., but that has been changing ever since 1986. Until that year, Port had to be taken from the vineyards in the Upper Douro Valley to the Port Lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia, near Porto, where the big Port houses are based. It was these companies who aged and shipped the wine rather than the grape growers. After 1986 though, the growers were allowed to age and ship their own wines direct from their estates or Quintas in the Upper Douro.

This means that more and more Port is now made by the growers on their own estates, which can only add to the romance of the product. It is also in keeping with the rest of the wine world, where it is very common to find estates that have been growing grapes for decades, or longer, who in recent years have stopped selling their grapes to the big local producer, or cooperative and instead have started making the wines for themselves.

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

This is exactly what happened with the Quinta do Infantado, which is a delightful family run Port estate near the lovely village of Pinhão in the heart of the Douro. The Roseira family have been in charge here for well over a century, but the Quinta actually dates back to 1816, when it was founded by the Portuguese Crown Prince, or Infante – hence Infantado. Of course, like all the other growers, the Roseiras, and the Infante before them, sold their grapes to the big names shippers until 1986 – which is presumably explains why the Port houses were called ‘shippers’ rather than producers, which was something I always found odd.

The beautiful tiled railway station in Pinhão.

The beautiful tiled railway station in Pinhão.

The Douro is a very beautiful, rugged, wild place with a very hot climate in the growing season. The land slopes dramatically down to the Douro River and so much of the landscape is terraced to allow for efficient agriculture and to stop soil erosion. The soil is schist, which is decayed slate, so everything makes this a hard landscape to work and ensures that pretty much everything still has to be done by hand – and sometimes by foot – just as it always has. Rather wonderfully at Quinta do Infantado they do still tread the grapes in the traditional manner – this gives a rapid extraction of colour in the shallow, stone fermentation tanks called a lagares.

Vineyards are everywhere you look in Pinhão.

Large wooden vats for ageing Port. These are at Quinta do Noval, which is near Quinta do Infantado.

2009 Quinta do Infantado LBV Port
Port
The blend is 30% Touriga Franca, 30% Touriga Nacional, 30% Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) with 10% of other local grapes. The grapes are trodden and the finished Port is aged for around 4 years in large (25,000) wooden vats that are over 100 years old and so give no wood flavour to the wine, but do soften the tannins. The finished wine is not filtered or fined before bottling. An LBV, or Late Bottled Vintage, is technically a Reserve Ruby Port from a single vintage.

The colour is an enticing intense, vibrant, deep ruby.
The nose is lifted, scented and lively with rich black fruit notes of blackberry and black cherry, warming spice, liquorice, aniseed, clove, smoke and cedar. There is a floral prettiness there too, even a twist of orange peel.
The palate is sumptuous and fresh tasting with delicious sweet black fruit and lots of red fruit too – rich red plum and cherry, gentle sweet spice, some dry spice and a little smoky, fine grain tannin on the finish. This was also a pretty dry style of Port, not dry exactly, but drier than most.
This is joyous, vibrant and beautifully balanced with excellent integration between the fruit and the alcohol, indeed for a Port it carries its 19.5% alcohol very well indeed.
If more affordable Port tasted this fresh and juicy, I would drink more of it – 91/100.

I greatly enjoyed this with some Manchego and Gorgonzola cheese, but it also goes superbly with chocolate.

Available in the UK for around £15 a bottle from The Wine Reserve, Slurp, Eclectic Tastes, The Drink Shop, Little Big Wine, Exel Wines and the Fine Wine Company. Further stockist information is available from the UK distributor, Liberty Wines.
The US distributor is Louis/Dressner Selections / LDM WINES INC and more stockist information is available here.

Do try this if you get the chance, it is utterly delicious without being overly heavy or spirity either, Quinta do Infantado also produce a wide range of other Ports and table wines too. If I get the chance to taste them I will report back on what those are like too.

Wine Woman and Song – my visit to Donnafugata

Recently I enjoyed an amazing tour of wine regions and producers in Sicily. I had never been before and was very excited to see this wonderful island. It is a beautiful place that really provides a feast for the senses, the landscape is stunning, the food  a revelation and the wines were generally very impressive indeed. Along with visits to the great estates of  Benanti, Planeta and Tasca d’Almerita, seeing the Donnafugata estate was a real highlight.

A view from Donnafugata

Like all good winery visits – and indeed wines – it started in the vineyards. Standing in Donnafugata’s Contessa Entellina estate near Sambuca di Sicilia I was taken aback by the sheer beauty of the place. I had never been to Sicily before and every time we de-bussed I was thrilled by the variety and vitality of the landscape. The wild flowers in particular – fields of scarlet poppies intermingled with vibrant yellow, purple, pink and blue flowers were everywhere – made my heart sing.

So, here I was at Donnafugata, a winery I only knew about vaguely and even then mainly because of their lovely labels. I was greeted by the lively and animated José Rallo – I found it really hard to take good photographs of Sicilian winemakers as they never seem to keep their hands still. José is the daughter of Giacomo and Gabriella Rallo whose family have produced Marsala for over 150 years and who created the Donnafugata estate to produce premium still wines in 1983.

José Rallo

The wonderful name by the way means ‘fugitive woman’ or ‘woman in flight’ and refers to Maria Carolina, sister of Maria-Antoinette and Queen of Naples and Sicily. In 1799 she fled the invading Republican French troops – under General Napoleon Bonaparte – and found refuge in the country estates of a noble. These same estates are now home to the Rallo’s vineyards and in Di Lampedusa’s great novel, The Leopard, he christened them Donnafugata and the name was adopted by the Rallos as an evocative name for their new winery.

Donnafugata appears to be one of those wineries – as all the best ones are – that never stands still, but continually evolves. Originally Marsala producers, they then became trailblazers of fine Sicilian wines made from international grape varieties, before becoming champions of indigenous Sicilian grapes and creating an experimental project, with other growers, to pinpoint the perfect site for each grape variety to thrive in Sicily.

One of the experimental vineyards.

The cool interior of the winery gave our little group shelter from the searing heat of the sun and we were treated to an informative presentation about the estate and a terrific, comprehensive, but relaxed tasting of their wines. The quality was high, sometimes very high, but certain wines stood out from the crowd:

2002 Donnafugata Vigna di Gabri
This single vineyard wine – Vigna di Gabri in Contessa Entellina – is a blend of Ansonica, the Marsala grape, with some Chardonnay, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Catarratto.
85% of the wine was fermented in stainless steel vats, while 15% was fermented in second use French oak barrels.
The 2002 was wonderfully deep and rich with pithy citrus, wild flowers and pine nut notes, while the dry palate offered dry honey, herbs, a waxy texture, citric acidity and  touch of saltiness on the long sapid finish.
I liked this together with the fresher, more creamy, less waxy 2011 as well.

This wine and vineyard is named in honour of José’s mother Gabriella Rallo who created it  and whose signature graces every bottle. Apparently Gabriellas believe that Ansonica is capable of producing quality table wines as well as Marsala and so she created this vineyard and set out to prove her point with this wine. José seems very proud of her mother, especially that she ‘was the first woman in Sicily to put on boots and supervise her workers in the field’. It is clear that Gabriella has green fingers for things other than vines too, as the gardens she created around the winery and family house are stunningly beautiful and peaceful.

The gardens

More of the gardens

N.V. Donnafugata Brut Metodo Classico
This Chardonnay and Pinot Noir blend was my favourite Sicilian sparkling wine of the whole trip and interestingly the grapes are purposely grown on high north-east facing slopes which protect the grapes from the sun and so preserve the grape’s acids. It was nicely balanced with good fruit and acidity as well as complexity from 28 months ageing on the lees.

Pantelleria 
For me though the wine highlight of this visit was the sweet Zibibbo wines of Pantelleria. I have long been fascinated by this volcanic island that – though politically a part of Sicily – is nearer to Tunisia than Italy.The main grape here of course is Moscato or Muscat of Alexandria, but they traditionally  call it Zibibbo in these parts as it came here via North Africa and apparently zibibb means dried grapes in Arabic.

Donnafugata make 2 very different styles here:

Donnafugata Kabir D.O.C. Moscato di Pantelleria is an aromatic and attractive Moscato with a light, fresh character – there is even a little touch of frizzante to it – and I enjoyed the 2011 vintage of this wine as well as its lovely label.

Altogether more serious, more complex and hedonistic – but no less pleasurable – is the amazingly concentrated Donnafugata Ben Ryé D.O.C. Passito di Pantelleria.
This extraordinary wine is made from grapes that are harvested in August and dried in the sun for 3-4 weeks. Then in September they pick another load of fresh, but very ripe grapes and start a normal fermentation. At this point they de-stem the dried grapes by hand and add them in batches to the fermenting fresh Moscato so that they impart their deeper flavours, higher sugars and great complexity. The fermentation finally stops around the end of November and the wine is then aged in bottle.

I was instantly seduced by the complexity and stunning figgy and salty caramel richness of the 2004, while the orangey panforte-like 2006 was very nearly as complex – give it time. The 2010 was altogether fresher and more straightforward, but still delicious and I am sure will age to be just as memorable as its older siblings.

Donnafugata vineyard terraces on Pantelleria. © Donnafugata – Credit: Anna Pakula – by kind permission

Sadly I have yet to visit Pantelleria, but it seems to be a place of heroic viticulture like Santorini, Cinque Terre, Ribera Sacra and Ischia. It must be back breaking work tending these low lying 100 year old bush vines, harvesting them by hand, drying them in the sun, harvesting another lot and then fermenting them for the best part of 3 months, but it all seems to be worth it.

After a wonderful lunch José sang for us, serenading my friend Keith Grainger with ‘An Older Man is Like an Elegant Wine’ – the day after his birthday too, so I cannot decide if that was apt or just rubbing it in. José is a fine singer who has recorded 2 CDs pairing wines with a mixture of Jazz standards, Brazilian and Sicilian songs and she gave us each a copy of her second CD as a gift.

José serenading the ever elegant Keith.

Happily José had paired my favourite track on the album – her version of Rita Lee’s Agora Só Falta Você with my favourite dry Donnafugata wine, the Vigna di Gabri – I like them both in isolation and will have to try them together sometime to see if fusion works for me.

The whole visit was a great experience and a privilege to get an insight into this beautiful estate and to witness at first hand the passion and love they have for their land and what they do.

Donnafugata wines are available in the UK through Liberty Wines.

Donnafugata wines are available in the US through Folio Fine Wine Partners.

Donnafugata wines are available in Australia through Arquilla.