Wine of the Week – Aussie Riesling personified

Larry Cherubino’s Panoo Vineyard in Porongurup.

As regular readers will know, I love Riesling. There is something so fascinating, mysterious and beguiling about this grape. It is hard to pin down. The flavours and aromas seem to come and go and to give you unformed sketches rather than fully formed pictures – much like Pinot Noir does for red wine.

I find Riesling to be very versatile – I will happily drink it on its own and it is equally good wth most light dishes as well as being perfect with Mediterranean dishes – it seems to really compliment olive oil and garlic. Riesling is also perfect with spicy cuisine – especially Thai, south east Asian and Keralan (southern Indian). What’s more the wine is usually quite low in alcohol – rarely more than 12% – so it never takes the same toll of my few remaining brain cells that a red wine does. Add to that the high acidity makes it not only clean and – hopefully – vibrant, but refreshing too.

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

Well, the other day I tasted a stunning Riesling from the Great Southern region of Western Australia that was delicious and hugely enjoyable. So much so in fact that I made it my Wine of the Week.

Larry Cherubino’s Riversdale North Vineyard in Frankland River.

2015 Robert Oatley Signature Series Riesling
Robert Oatley Vineyards
Great Southern
Western Australia

Robert Oatley was an amazing man who had many business interests and passions. He famously owned the racing yacht Wild Oats XI and created Hunter Valley’s Rosemount Estate in 1968, making him a true Australian wine pioneer. After he sold Rosemount, Robert and his family set up Robert Oatley Vineyards in 2009 by purchasing the old Craigmoor Estate, which was founded in 1858 and was the first winery in Mudgee. They are based there, but also farm and make wine from grapes grown in the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale in South Australia, the Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley in Victoria and Pemberton, the Great Southern and Margaret River regions of Western Australia. They aim to show the diversity of Australian winemaking and all the wines that I have tried show that their quality is very high. Sadly Robert died last year, but the winery that bears his name lives on and from what I can see makes some very good wines.

We see quite a lot of wines from the Margaret River region in this sparsely populated state, but not much from the other wine making areas. The Great Southern and its sub zones is a pretty impressive wine region – the largest Geographical Indicator in the world at 150 km north to south and 100 km east to west – and seems to be producing some very high quality wines, especially Riesling, but also Cabernet, the Mediterranean grapes – Fiano, Tempranillo, Grenache, Mencia, Counoise and even a little Pinot Noir. Broadly speaking the climate is Mediterranean, although more continental as you move inland and this wine is made from fruit grown in the Porongurup, Frankland River and Mount Barker zones.

Larry Cherubino’s Riversdale South Vineyard in Frankland River.

The great Larry Cherubino is the chief winemaker for Robert Oatley wines. Larry produces his own wines too and his vineyards are all in Western Australia, especially the Great Southern and Margaret River.

The wine making for this wine is simple, as befits Riesling, leaving the fruit to speak for itself. Only free run juice is used, cold fermented with neutral yeast.

The wine has an alluring pale lime and silvery hue, while the nose is bright, but pure, stony and taut with a waft of lifted lime, dry honey and the merest hint of Riesling’s trademark kerosene – don’t let that put you off though, it’s lovely.

The palate sings with this cleansing feel of high, lime-drenched acidity making it feel pure, like a mountain spring. There is however an underlying richness and texture to the wine that balances that freshness beautifully. A real triumph with a long clean finish bursting with zesty lime flavours – 91/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £13 per bottle from the Cambridge Wine Merchants (currently 2014 vintage), The Halifax Wine Company (currently 2014 vintage), Hailsham Cellars (currently 2014 vintage), Wine Direct (currently 2014 vintage), Bon Coeur Fine Wines (currently 2013 vintage).

 

Wine of the Week 43 – an excitingly different Spanish style

Many drinker’s knowledge and experience of Spanish wines revolves almost entirely around Rioja, which is a great shame as there is so very much more to enjoy and experience from this wonderful country.

I love Rioja, it is a great wine region that produces many world class wines. However, Spain is brimming over with other exciting wine regions that all produce fascinating wines that are well worth drinking. What’s more many of them are made in a completely different style from Rioja and are often made from different grape varieties too.

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

One region that would repay trying is Bierzo. It’s just in Castilla y León, or Old Castille, but looks and feels more Galician and Celtic than the rest of the province and indeed it was a part of Galicia until the 18th Century. It joins on to the Galician wine region of Valdeorras and has much in common with it. The geography, climate and landscape are very similar and so they use the same grape varieties, Godello for white wines and Mencía for reds. Recently I tasted a really delicious and drinkable Mencía from Bierzo and so I made it my Wine of the Week.

An ordinary night out in Bierzo with the late John Radford.

Las Médulas, a World Heritage Site in Bierzo that was once the most important gold mine in the Roman Empire.

2013 Mencía Luna Beberide
D.O. Bierzo
Bodegas Luna Beberide
Cacabelos, Léon
Castilla y León, Spain

100% Mencía and unoaked, this could not be more different from Rioja if it tried. Alejandro Luna is the owner and winemaker at this wonderful little estate. He is a local boy who travelled all over Spain learning his craft before he returned home to the far north west of Castille. Some of his vines are well over 60 years old and are grown high up – between 600 and 750 metres above sea level – on south facing slopes. This means they have good sun exposure to make them ripe, but are protected from the Atlantic rains, while the cooler air at that altitude retains the grape’s natural freshness and acidity, the conditions are so cool actually that he can also grow some Riesling and Pinot Noir. All the farming is organic with no pesticides or herbicides used. Harvesting is all done by hand and the wine is unfiltered.

Ploughing the old fashioned way at Bodegas Luna Beberide, see how high they are and how wild the landscape is. Photo courtesy of the winery.

The colour is an attractive, opaque, yet bright violet purple.
The nose gives off lovely lifted aromas of blackberry, sugar plums, cherry and violets together with a little liquorice spice and earthy minerality.
The palate is soft, round, juicy and lively with freshness balancing the rich dark fruit. Mulled wine flavours together with  Blueberry, bilberry and blackberry dominate together with cherry stones and light, supple tannins. It is light to medium bodied with lots and lots of character. A hugely enjoyable wine that should appeal to Syrah / Shiraz lovers as well as Burgundy and Beaujolais drinkers – 90/100 points.

A very food friendly wine that is perfect with pastas, pizzas and lighter meat dishes and is soft enough to drink without food too.

Available in the UK for around £10 a bottle from Devinos and Grey’s Fine Foods.
Available in the US through Grapes of Spain and these stockists here.

If you have never tried a Bierzo, or Mencía as it is grown in other regions, then this fruity and supple example might be a very good place to start. Alejandro Luna also makes more high end wines and I will tell you about some of those another day.

Drink More Grapes

Ever wondered why people don’t try a wider variety of grapes? I have because I believe that is in part variety that makes wine fascinating. The amazing points of difference between the various grapes and wine types should be applauded, not shied away from. They should be tasted and celebrated rather than deemed confusing.

We should all try as many different grapes as we can, that way we will really see how few most of us actually drink.

I also sometimes wonder why some grapes enjoy world-wide fame while others of equal quality struggle for a hearing.

It often seems that a Shiraz will always sell when a Mencia or a Castelão will find it hard to even be tasted.

2 superb grape varieties growing at Contino in Rioja

I recently published an article on Catavino where I mused on this and a few grape varieties that I think deserve to be more loved than they are.

You can read the piece here.

In my opinion it is perfectly possible to really enjoy a wine that you know nothing about and whose label is indecipherable to you after all surely it’s all about how the liquid tastes rather than what words are on the label, isn’t it?

Albariño & Mencía – Spanish Delights

Many of you know of my deep fascination and love of Spanish wines. Of late I have become especially excited by the wines of Galicia, which is a place that appeals to me immensely. Sadly I have yet to visit but I intend to put that right soon, as it looks so beautiful and very different from the rest of Spain.

The region has a cool, rainy, Atlantic influenced climate and as a consequence is known as Green Spain. It produces every style of wine, but is renowned for its dry whites and,  although the region uses many different varieties, Albariño is their most famous and is the grape that has really brought this region to the attention of discerning wine drinkers.

To the South Galicia borders Portugal’s Minho / Vinho Verde region and the two places are not dissimilar in that they are wet and cool, so wine producers have to be very clever indeed to beat nature. Historically that has been a problem in both places, but over the last thirty years or so viticulture has improved almost beyond recognition – as has wine making – and it really shows in the wines.

No longer a land of subsistence farmers making a little wine for themselves and their friends, where quality barely mattered and wasn’t questioned – Galicia has become a region of confident, ambitious, thoughtful grape growers and wine makers whose wines are highly sought after and can command a very high price. This is especially true in Spain itself where Galician whites are considered to be amongst the country’s finest. They certainly tend to be the Spanish white wines that have the most purity and minerality and as such are quite superb with a bit of fish.

Map of the Wine Regions of North West Spain including Galica – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement

Exciting drinkable and affordable wines

It has been quite a couple of weeks for finding new and exciting wines and I find that is what makes wine really interesting. It might seem strange to some people, but to me wine is only partly a drink, it is also a constant voyage of discovery into places, people, culture and traditions – as well as seeking out delicious flavours.

Most of the time that does not mean that the wines are weird, whacky or odd in any way, just that they are slightly off the beaten track, made in places and from grapes that are a little less well known than they ought to be. It is for those very reasons they often reward trying as they can frequently offer better value than more well known wines, as well as an enormous amount of pleasure.

I have written before about how the majority of consumers seem to only drink wines from a very narrow range of wine styles and grape varieties, which is a real shame when there is so much good wine out there that often passes people by.