Wine of the Week – delicious Greek treats

Looking towards the sea from Rapsani’s vineyards.

I love Greek wine and wish they were more popular and easier to buy in the UK than they are. I really enjoy presenting Greek wines to wine societies and recently I talked a wine group into agreeing to a tasting of Greek wines. Despite being nervous at first the tasters really enjoyed them. All the wines showed really well and impressed the tasters. Of course a handful particularly stood out and proved to be widely popular in the room and I will mention three of those today and tell you about some of the others another time.

The first one was a superb dry white from the Island of Santorini made from the wonderful Assyrtiko grape. I showed a terrific, mineral example made by the Santo Wines cooperative, which you can buy mail order in the UK – click here . If you want to try a more easily available example, Marks & Spencer stock a lovely, affordable version made by the splendid Argyros Estate – click here for details. I have written about Santorini wines in more detail before – click here.

Amongst the reds I showed a couple of wines form the same region as a contrast and I loved them so much that together they are my joint Wine of the Week.

The village name in the Greek alphabet as well as ours.

That wine region is called Rapsani and it is a very beautiful place in Thessaly near Mount Olympus. I visited a few years ago and it was wonderfully peaceful up there with stunning views of Mount Olympus to the north west and the Aegean Sea to the east. The vineyards sit at between 250 and 800 metres above sea level allowing for a staggered harvest giving very different characters and complexity to the wines. The soil higher up also put me in mind of Priorat, as there is a lot of schist, red, iron-rich schist in this case which warms up quickly and drains superbly.

Map of Greece’s Wine Regions – click for a larger view

The wine has long enjoyed local fame and respect and historically the Rapsani cooperative was strong, however it fell on hard times and the Tsantali company took it over in 1991 and brought in much needed investment and know-how. For a long time they were the only producers here and remain the most important and widely seen label.

Traditionally Rapsani wines were a blend of Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto and Tsantali keeps to that tradition by using one third of each grape in a field blend – so the grapes are fermented together, not blended. The latter two by the way only grow here while Xinomavro is used right across northern Greece. This makes Rapsani quite different as on its own Xinomavro has something of the dry structure of Nebbiolo about it, while the other two grapes add a feeling of more body and alcohol.

Rapsani Vineyards

2012 Rapsani
Evangelos Tsantalis
PDO Rapsani
Thessaly
Greece

A third each of Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto co-fermented and aged for 6 months in 300 litre French oak casks, 30% new.

The grapes for this wine are harvested from the lower slopes of Rapsani, 250m above sea, and the extra heat shows in a slightly raisiny nose with richer dried cherry, some fresher, sweet raspberry aromas as well as the classic tomato stem of Xinomavro. There is sun dried tomato and tapenade too, which gives it a real savoury tang. The palate is medium bodied and very smooth with little touches of vanilla and caramel and lots of rich fruit. This is a terrific wine with just a an attractive touch of the rustic about it. It will appeal to Rioja drinkers and go perfectly with lamb and Mediterranean style food – 89/100 points.

Available in the UK from Agora Greek Delicacies and Evingtons Wines – for £8.50-£10 per bottle and from Amazon.co.uk for £28.58 per case of 3 bottles.
For US stockists – click here.

2012 Rapsani Reserve
Evangelos Tsantalis
PDO Rapsani
Thessaly
Greece

A third each of Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto co-fermented and aged for 12 months in 300 litre French oak casks, 50% new.

The grapes come from further up, 250-500 metres above sea level, and the wine feels cooler and more elegant. It is also deeper, darker and more concentrated, with rich black fruit aromas, blackberry, cassis and plum, together with wafts of black pepper spice, coffee and leather. There is also a touch of that tomato stem and black olive umami / savoury character, even a touch of balsamic. The palate is concentrated, smooth and plush, with lots of fruit and spice and a lovely core of freshness to give balance and vitality. That savoury / umami note follows on to the palate as well, which makes the wine brilliant with food. A classy and elegant wine that wowed the room at my tasting – 92/100 points.

Available in the UK from Agora Greek Delicacies for £16.95 per bottle.
For US stockists – click here.

It always surprises people that I bang on about the delights of Greek wines so much, but they really can be very good indeed and well worth trying. The wines are classically European in style and structure, but because Greece has such wonderful indigenous grape varieties, they taste different and wonderfully exciting.

Try either of these with slow cooked lamb, or Kleftiko, and you will not be disappointed.

Hardscrabble & Feasts in the Douro

The Americans have a genius for words that describe exactly what they mean, so that you can understand it even if you have never heard it before.

Hardscrabble is just such a word and means that the land is so difficult to farm and so poor in nutrients that all you can do is to scratch a subsistence living. I first came across the expression at Linden Vineyards, where Jim Law had bought an abandoned “hardscrabble” farm and turned it into one of Virginia’s most exciting wineries. The place was so steep and stoney that Jim even named the vineyard and the wines produced from it “hardscrabble”.

Rugged, unforgiving vineyards are very often the best place for wine grape growing though, as they force the vine to work hard at surviving and so produce a small crop of tiny grapes with concentrated flavours and depth. In fact land like that, steep, stoney, inhospitable, inaccessible and harsh is perfect for wine grapes, but almost useless for any other marketable crop, which is why so many of these places have become famous as vineyard regions. These hard landscapes tend to be a feature of European wine making more than anywhere else and seem to be most frequently found in the Mediterranean world. Roussillon, Cinque Terre, Santorini, Pantelleria, Rapsani and Priorat could all be regarded as “hardscrabble” wine regions.

Portugal and Galicia do not actually have Mediterranean coasts, but surely they are culturally part of that world too, so I would add the astonishing Ribera Sacra to that list and perhaps the most wild and romantic wine landscape of them all – Portugal’s Douro Valley.

The Douro – vineyards and cruise ship.

Terraced vineyards in the beautiful Douro Valley.

Untended vineyards are a common sight in the Douro.

The terraces soften the landscape and look very appealing.

The Douro is the 3rd longest river in Iberia, after the Tagus and the Ebro. In Spain – where it is called the Duero – it flows through Castilla y León, home to Ribera del Duero and Toro. The countryside here is beautiful, but not rugged or particularly harsh, that comes later once we are within sight of Portugal.  Arribes (del Duero) – where the river marks the frontier – is where the dramatic landscapes start, from here to Vila Nova de Gaia, near Porto, major centres of population are scarce and the wild, rugged, steep, hardscrabble hillsides dominate. In Portugal’s Douro Valley these slopes are home to the vineyards that create Port wines and the still / table wines of  D.O.C. Douro.

The Douro is one of the world’s great wine regions, but I had never managed to visit the place for myself until just the other week as a guest of the Discover the Origin campaign. What I saw fascinated me and educated me about the wines from this beautiful place.

New terraces side by side with rubbed out vineyards.

The region is renowned today for the rich, sweet, fortified Ports, but of course it wasn’t always like that. In the middle ages – and before – this valley made normal wine, probably quite ordinary stuff as far as we can make out from the sparse records. It is even possible that the first wines known as Ports to the outside world were more akin to red Vinho Verde – light-bodied, low in alcohol and very acidic. We certainly know that even though Cromwell favoured them these wines did not catch on with English consumers until the early eighteenth century.

In those days the spirit was only added as the wine was being shipped, this was to protect it from turning bad on the voyage, so that ‘Port’ would most certainly have been dry – as long as the alcoholic fermentation was complete. It seems that until well into the 1820s there was no set time to add the spirit and no set amount of spirit either, so wines labelled Port could have varied enormously from dry red wines to something like the Port we know today. From what I have read it would appear that adding the spirit before the fermentation was complete – and creating a sweet wine – was not universal practice until the 1850s.

Even then not everyone approved, the influential Joseph James Forrester – created Baron Forrester in 1855 in recognition of his important work in mapping the Douro wine region – was campaigning against fortification and trying to persuade Port makers to return to making normal, but high quality, red wines.

Looking at the vineyards it really struck me just how much Port some people must drink! I like Port, very much but just cannot drink very much of it and yet, looking at the vast expanse of vineyards, someone must drink it all. Looking at those intensively planted slopes it is astonishing that is took so long for table wine production to catch on here. It was not until 1952 that a serious attempt was made to produce a fine red table wine from the region, the legendary Barca Velha made by Ferreira. It was slow to catch on at first, but gained in reputation until eventually the tide turned and more and more growers started making table wines in the Douro region. Finally in 1979 the Douro Denominacão de Origem Controlada / D.O.C. was created for the dry, still / table wines of the region – Port had already had its production zone defined by charter in 1756, making it probably the earliest such official wine region in the world.

Even today though the wines of this valley remain less famous than Port, which is a shame because many of the wines that I tasted were really good, but then so were the Ports themselves.

I have often wondered why the ‘Port’ region is so far away from the city whose name it takes. Well the reason is simple, near the coast the weather is wetter and more humid, so the grapes are grown further East and inland where they are sheltered from the Atlantic rains and winds by the Marão and Montemuro mountains. This gives the Douro a more continental climate with extremely hot summers and harsh winters – there are some pockets of a Mediterranean climate too the closer you get to the Spanish border.

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

Baixo Corgo – the original area where it all began. This westernmost subregion is wetter than the others and is widely regarded as most suitable for the production of the simpler Ruby and Tawny Ports. However, some of the wines that I tried from this area were superb.

Cima Corgo – the heartland of Port production, this is where the majority of the famous Quintas, or grape farms, are located.

Douro Superior / Upper Douro – this is the hottest and driest zone and extends all the way to the Spanish border. Because it is so cut off it is the most recent zone to be cultivated and so is not intensively planted. Much of this zone is used for table wines rather than Ports.

Large terraces at Quinta do Noval.

Classically the vineyards for Port production are on the well drained schist soils – decayed slate – and are terraced to make them easier to farm and to counter soil erosion. The traditional terraces look lovely, either the socalcos – the original type that look like dry stone wall steps, or the bigger nineteenth century type terrace that is a gentle slope contained by a dry stone wall that allows use of horses and mules.

Patamares at front right, terraces behind.

The more modern patamares, with their big earth banks and very low density planting are not nearly so attractive or in keeping with the landscape and I understand they are now out of favour again.

Everywhere you look in the Douro there is a feast for your eyes, it truly is beautiful and you can clearly see why the wines are like they are. It is a place that draws in the heat and almost abuses the vines that grow here by denying them water and nutrients – all so they can produce tiny amounts of deeply flavoured juice that always has a deep mineral character to it. When drinking the wines you can almost imagine that you are tasting these hillsides.

I will write more about some of the wineries I visited and some of the wines I tasted, but here are some of the highlights of my trip, the first of which had nothing to do with wine:

Trainspotting in the Douro
It has long been a dream of mine to travel on the Douro railway, the wonderful meandering train track that opened up this inaccessible valley in the mid to late nineteenth century. Sadly this was a short visit, so that ambition is still to be fulfilled. However, I was able to se the famous railway station in the delightful town of Pinhão. It’s a famous tourist attraction in its own right because of the beautiful tile decorations, which really are worth seeing.

Pinhão Railway Station.

Pinhão Railway Station.

And now for some wine highlights:

Alves de Sousa, Quinta da Gaviosa
The first stop on my visit was at Alves de Sousa, this turned into a real highlight because they made us feel so at home – oh and the wines were really very good indeed.

Tiago Alves de Sousa telling us about his 80 year old Abandonado vineyard.

This is a true family concern run by Domingos Alves de Sousa and his son Tiago. The impression I got was of a really good balance between Domingos, who seemed traditional and old fashioned in all the good ways and Tiago, who clearly loves his land, but would have been equally at home in a New York bar or an architects practice. The family have long owned some superb vineyards, but have only been producing and bottling their own Ports and table wines since 1987.

They own several Quintas, but we were at the beautiful Quinta da Gaviosa near Régua in the Baixo Corgo, which is the hub of their operation and the family home. The slopes are steep and the deep schist soils clearly visible through the thin ground cover.

The 80-100 year old vines in their Abandonado vineyard. It was abandoned and has been nurtured back to productive life.

The Alves de Sousa were among the pioneers of table wine production in the Douro and I thought all their wines were fascinating. Good though their reds and Ports are – and they  are very good – it was a couple of whites that really fired my imagination here.

For their white wines they use traditional white Douro grapes – a mixture of Malvasia Fina, Gouveio, Viosinho and Arinto – from a mixture of very old vines – 60 years old or so – and newer carefully planted vineyards very high up on north facing slopes where the air is cooler and so the grape’s acids are better preserved.

The 2009 Alves de Sousa Branco de Gaivosa Reserva is a beautifully complex, textured, richly fruity, herbal and flavoursome wine, full of flavour and all balanced by a wonderfully crisp acidity – 88/100 points.

The 2007 Alves de Sousa Reserva Pessoal Branco  is an altogether more individualistic sort of wine, full of character and depth. For this dry white they decided to make a wine with some of the personality and intensity of a white Port. To achieve this it was fermented (on the skins for the first 48 hours) in new French oak with hyper-oxidation and hard pumping over and a further 6 months in new French oak. The result is extraordinary, full flavoured, concentrated and quirky with barley sugar, caramelised orange, rich apricot, spices and honey, in fact it sort of tastes like a very rich Sauternes, but is bone dry. It put me in mind of those new wave amphora aged wines and orange wines, but unlike most of those it is utterly delicious  – 93/100 points.

The entrance to Quinta do Noval.

Quinta do Noval.

Quinta do Noval
A wonderful highlight was staying at the beautiful Quinta do Noval, whose Ports and table wines are justifiably famous. It was tremendously exciting to spend a night at this wonderful place surrounded by the neatly ordered terraced vineyards. A comprehensive tasting of their range followed by a stroll around these terraces gave spectacular views – mind you the one from my bedroom took a lot of beating too – and helped get an overview of this amazing place.

The view from my bedroom, the building bottom right is Noval’s winery.

The beautiful terrace at Quinta do Noval.

Later a civilised aperitif of Noval Extra Dry White Port and tonic prepared our palates for a fabulously traditional dinner of roast goat that paired perfectly with the superb Quinta do Noval red table wines. My favourites were:

2009 Quinta do Noval Touriga Nacional

D.O.C. Douro

 

This had a deep and beautiful colour, while the nose was scented, aromatic and herbal with heather, oregano and rosemary, spices and an earthy, rocky, granite minerality.

The palate was savoury and rich with deep sugar plum fruit, earthy and granitic savoury characters, round tannins with just a touch of bite and great length – 89/100 points.

2009 Quinta do Noval

D.O.C. Douro

 

If anything this blend of 80% Touriga Nacional; 20% Touriga Franca was even more exciting, more intense and vibrant.

The colour was a lovely opaque and intense cassis, while the very rich nose offered liquorice, earthy mineral notes, wild herbs, mocha and a hint of spice.

The palate was very smooth and supple with fine grain tannins, fleshy black fruit to the fore, a supple texture and touches of warm granite, clean earth, leather and eucalyptus. I really loved this wine, it was rich, concentrated and pretty full-bodied, but still had plenty of freshness and elegance – 93/100 points

As I say it was only a short trip of a few days, but I was able to visit some wonderful places and try some superb Ports and wines that really made me aware of the great quality and wonderful things that are produced in this astonishingly beautiful valley. It may be a hard place to grow grapes, but the results do seem to make all the hard work worthwhile.

Other delights
I will tell you about some of my other experiences another time, but I will leave you this time with one of the great simple pleasures of Portugal – the coffee.

Coffee is everywhere in Portugal and the bars all announce who their coffee supplier is on their signs, much as pubs here used to indicate their brewery. The coffee in Portugal always seems very high quality to me and much hotter than the strangely cold coffee they serve in Italy. My favoured style is the Café Pingo or sometimes Pingado, the local term for a cortado, noisette or macchiato. I have been told that the same coffee in Lisbon and southern Portugal is a Café Garoto, but some people describe that as a weaker version as well, so order with care.

As well as coffee the Portuguese like their cakes too, and what cakes they have too. My favourite and the signature cake of Portugal is the scrummy pastel de nata – or if you are greedy (yes, yes, like me) the plural is pastéis de nata. Some people translate these as custard tarts, but that is to do them an injustice. Made properly the pastry has a crisp and flaky texture that makes these tarts irresistible when partnered with the rich creamy, eggy custard-like filling.

Pasteis de nata really are delicious…

The lovely city of Porto / Oporto – I can never work out whether it starts with an O or a P! –  has a vibrant café culture and boasts a handful of wonderful cafés from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, all are worth a visit. So far my favourite is the beautiful fin de siècle Café Majestic.

The beautiful Café Majestic.

A café Pingu.

So, you see the Douro is an amazing place, beautiful, a joy to visit and full of delights. I will tell you a bit more about my trip there and to Porto very soon.

A Greek Original – Naoussa & Xinomavro

Naoussa vineyards.

As some of you will know I visited Greece last year to tour some of that country’s amazing northern wine regions. I have written about some of the highlights already in my articles about Rapsani and the amazing Mount Athos, but I thought that I should tell you all about some of the wines made from Greece’s star northern black grape – Xinomavro.

My favourite road sign – photographed in Macedonia in 2012.

Do, please remember to click on all the links…starting with this one about my Greek wine tasting in London perhaps?

This part of Greece is where some of their truly classic wines originate and I was fortunate enough to experience a wide range of them last year and to visit many of the really exciting producers in this beautiful part of the world.

Xinomavro (pronounced K-see-NOH-mah-vroh) is the signature grape of Macedonia and makes some of Greece’s finest red wines. Agiorgitiko (pronounced Ay-yor-yitiko) from Nemea region in the Peloponnese is arguably Greece’s other really important black grape and I think they should both be a more widely grown. Indeed in my opinion both could well have a future as international grape varieties – as should Spain’s Tempranillo and Italy’s Aglianico.

Map of Greece’s Wine Regions – click for a larger view

Xinomavro is grown across the north of Greece and is the only grape permitted in the mono-grape wine region appellations / PDOs of Goumenissa, Amynteo and most importantly Naoussa. It is Naoussa (pronounced Now-sir) that is considered to be the finest of all the regions up here and to have the greatest potential for even more future greatness. The others must not be ignored, but it is easy to see why this particular place has earned such a high reputation.

How it used to be done – the Dalamára Winery in Naoussa in the mid 1950s.

How it’s done now – the Dalamára Winery in Naoussa in 2012.

Kostis Dalamaras – the 5th generation of his family to farm at the Dalamára Winery. He now makes beautifully supple and elegant modern wines from organically grown grapes.

As you might suspect the area has a long history of wine production, so much so that the artist Cousinery wrote in 1831: “The wine of Naousa is to Macedonia what Burgundy wine is to France. I am in a position to say that the wine of Naousa is the best in the Ottoman Empire .” In truth though I would be willing to bet that with a few exceptions we would barely recognise the wines made around here before the Second World War. Phylloxera hit this part of the world very late, so when it did arrive in the 1930s it was just one of the many problems to be coped with – world wide recession and world war followed closely by civil war must have seemed like more urgent horrors. So it was not until the tourist boom of the 1960s that the region began to be properly replanted and new wineries built – interestingly the timing is identical to the blossoming of California and Spanish wines, which just goes to show that all wine needs to develop is a long period of peace and relative prosperity.

What makes Xinomavro stand out from the crowd is its potential for elegance. The wines it makes, especially in Naoussa, can be very fine indeed. The whole place is basically a south facing slope, sheltered so the extremes of climate that other parts of Macedonia are subject to are somewhat tempered here – and it shows. What’s more the sun exposure balances the grapes variety’s natural high acidity very well indeed.

Some people like to compare Xinomavro to Pinot Noir and in terms of colour and tannin that contrast gives you a pretty good idea of what it is like. If I have to compare it to anything though, and it does make things easier if you have never tried one, then I think Nebbiolo might be a better bet. True it is less tannic, but everything else is bang on, body (not that full, whatever the books may say) and acidity, more improtantly it has red fruit characters and a similar deeply savoury, umami nature.

Delicious traditional nibbles at the Dalamára Winery in Naoussa.

While Pinot always makes think of red cherry and raspberries, I see from my notes that Xinomavro for me is often very tomato-like in flavour and aroma. Sometimes the tomato feels fresh, other times more sun-dried or cooked and even occasionally just tomato stalk, but it is always there and makes the wines go superbly with the wonderful local cuisine.

My favourite Naoussa wines so far:

Tsantali’s Naoussa vineyards.

1997 Tsantali Naousa Reserve
Tsantali
PDO Naousa
Originally from Thrace, the Tsantali company created their Naoussa estate and winery in 1970. is one of Greece’s major producers of wines – and spirits. In my opinion their quality is pretty high, whether you are just drinking one of their straightforward everyday wines or indulging in something a little more special.
40% fermented in small open fermentors and hand plunged four times daily and 60% in stainless steal tanks. 12 months in French oak, just 10% of which is new.
A little tawny and earthy red, but the colour is still quite vibrant.
The nose was smoky with prunes and concentrated cooked tomato notes.
Loads of sweet deep dried fruit and ready vanilla and caramel, some spice and raisins and prunes. Very elegant, and joyous the tannins dry the finish and the acidity just sits in the background. Superbly balanced and stunning. The finish is fresh and lively still with studs of rich sweet, smoky bacon, tomato and savoury meaty characters.
Amazingly long and intense and the finish is really smooth. A great wine that is ageing very slowly – 92/100 points.

As far as I am aware the Tsantali Naousa Reserve is not available in the UK at the present, but their tasty and excellent value non-reserve Naousa is available from Wine Rack at £7.49 a bottle.
Tsantali wines are available in the US via Fantis Foods Inc.

Stelios Boutaris, charismatic winemaker and owner of KIR-YIANNI evangelist for Greek wine and the 5th generation of his family to make wine, but the first to embrace a true ‘estate’ concept.

The beautiful Ktima (Domaine) Kir-Yianni.

1997 Kir-Yianni Ramnista Estate Naoussa
Ktima (Domaine) Kir-Yianni
PDO Naousa
The Boutari family have been a key part of the development of Greek wine. In many ways it was their negociant company that put Naoussa and Santorini on the wine map as quality regions and that family firm continues to this day, but Yianni Boutari, Stelios’s father branched out on his own to create this estate in 1997. When he was a negociant all the grape growers had respectfully referred to him as “Mister Yianni” or Kir-Yianni in Greek. The grapes are from selected vineyard blocks on their Yianakohori vineyard and the wine spends 12 months in a mix of 225 and 500 litre oak barrels.
Deep earthy savoury aromas mingle with black treacle and leather notes together with an underlying mix of cherry and sun-dried tomatoes.
Lovely integrated palate of wild raspberry and leather, tomato and earthy minerality. High in acid, but very soft, with smooth fine smoky tannins and tomato stem flavours. Lovely texture and tension between the freshness and richness. The finish is slightly drying, but has great balance and real finesse – 93/100 points.

Kir-Yianni wines are available in the UK through London General Trading.
Kir-Yianni wines are available in the US through different companies listed here.

Ktima Chrisohoou.

The delightfully hospitable Keimis & Betty Chrisohoou.

2001 Chrisohoou Naoussa
Ktima Chrisohoou
PDO Naousa
The Chrisohoous are delightful people and their beautiful winery includes a fabulous museum of local culture and wine together with an amazing restaurant. Our little group were the only guests the night I was there and we were treated to course after course of stunning food – do go if you are anywhere near. The family have made wine since the 1940s, but they were basically negociants until 1978 when they started specialising in estate bottled Naoussas. They still make an enormous array of different wines, but the Naoussas are where the quality is. They are aged for 12 months in French oak barrels.
Earthy red with a kiss of orange pink in the rim too.
Delightfully vibrant nose, with red cherry and leaf mulch forest floor sort of aromas.
Plenty of soft fruit, red raspberry and deep cherry on the palate. Lovely almost creamy texture with some spice and oak characters like toffee and coffee and the acidity provides a balancing touch of freshness.
The most Pinot Noir like Xinomavro I tasted on the trip, beautifully balanced and ageing very very slowly – 92/100 points.

Kostis Dalamaras in his vineyard.

Kostis Dalamaras amongst his vines.

Feeding time at Dalamara – they really are inseparable pals!

2008 Paliokalias Naoussa
Dalamara Winery
PDO Naousa
Kostis Dalamaras farms his vineyards organically and seems to really love this land that his family have tended since 1840. The place is small, homely and teeming with cats. It reeks of tradition, but there is nothing old-fashioned about Kostis’s wines, they really are exquisite and very Burgundian in feel. His Paliokalias is a lieu-dit and is a remarkable wine made from 80 years old vines and is aged for 12 months in French oak barrels.
The nose was very Burgundy-like here, earthy and savoury, while the palate was a beautifully poised and elegant wine with gorgeous balance between the fruit and gently spicy oak. Lots of red berries and plums gave way to sun-dried tomatoes and then a twist of tapenade for good measure – 91/100 points.

Naoussa vineyards.

2011 Thymiopoulos Young Vine Naoussa
Domaine Thymiopoulos
PDO Naousa
31 year old Apostolos Thymiopoulos is great winemaker and like Kostis Dalamaras is a rising star of Naoussa. He doesn’t make much, so his top wines are hard to track down – in the UK anyway. Luckily the same problem does not exist for this wine made from the younger vines on the estate and vinified using only the wild yeast and 30% is aged for 3 months in a mixture of 225 litre, 300 litre & 500 litre oak barrels – both of these give more complexity.
This could well be the best wine to try first, if you have never tasted a Naoussa. It is gloriously bright and seductive, bursting with cherry and raspberry fruit with fresh acidity and attractively chalky light tannins. Fresh tomato and tomato stalk characters provide the savoury notes to balance the sweetness of the red fruit. A lovely user-friendly wine that goes with all manner of lighter dishes and tastes good lightly chilled too, if you like good Gamay, Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo or Barbera this is the wine for you – 89/100 points, it scores especially high marks for value.

Available in the UK from The Wine Society for £10.50 a bottle.
Available in the US from K&L Wines for $14 a bottle.

But wait, there’s more: Alpha Estate – Amynteo
So, if wines in the Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir mould are your thing then you have a wonderful new region to explore in Naoussa. Excitingly though there is even more for you to discover. It isn’t in Naoussa, but no article about Xinomavro would be complete without a mention of the Alpha Estate.

Angelos Latridis the evangelistic winemaker and owner of the Alpha Estate.

The Alpha Estate.

Alpha Estate vineyards, note the sandy soil.

The Alpha Estate was the brainchild of Angelos Latrides and Makis Mavridis who saw great potential in the underused Amynteo region. It is higher and cooler than Naoussa with more rain in the winter, but enjoys hot summers, which are tempered by the nearby lakes and excellent sun exposure. In addition the sandy soil is protection against phylloxera and because of that there are pockets of very old vines in the region.

Old Xinomavro vine – more than 80 years old – in sandy soil at the Alpha Estate.

Alpha Estate is an exciting wine producer, it has the feeling of being cutting edge and experimental and as a consequence they grow lots of different grape varieties, including Syrah, Merlot, Negro Amaro and Barbera, but the signature grape for them is ungrafted Xinomavro and they make several different examples, all of which are very, very good, even the more affordable Hedgehog label. It seemed to me that the hallmark was freshness and terrific integration in their wines and it was interesting that they use oak with almost no toast at all.

2006 Alpha Estate Old Vine Xinomavro
Alpha Estate
PDO Amynteo
Medium to deep black cherry colour with deep black cherry aromas together with freshly cooked tomato aromas, dried cherry, cherry stone, herbs and molasses. The palate has a lovely succulent texture with fantastic freshness and gentle opulence. The fruit is the thing right now with bright tomato and cherry and cooked tomato dominating the underlying dryness and austerity. Real freshness, elegance and finesse, but very very drinkable too and no sign of leather or ageing yet – 92/100 points.

Alpha Estate wines are available in the UK through Novum Wines.
Alpha Estate wines are available in the US through Diamond Importers Inc.

I do hope all this has whetted your appetite to go and try some Xinomavro from Naoussa or Amynteo. There is a wonderful array of quality Greek wines just waiting for intrepid wine drinkers to discover. What appeals to me is that they are classic European wines, but with new and different flavour profiles, so both familiar in many ways, but also exciting and different.

Go on, try some and let let us all know what you made of them.

2012 – a look back at the best bits

Me with my favourite vintage of Tsantalis Rapsani, Greece – Photo by kind permission – ©Brett Jones http://www.thewinemaestro.co.uk

2012 was an amazing year for Quentin Sadler’s Wine Page. I tasted some wonderful wines, visited some amazing places, was shortlisted for an award and my readership doubled – all trends that I hope continue in 2013.

Me & fellow traveller Patrick Maclart hard at work on Mount Athos, Greece – Photo by kind permission – ©Brett Jones http://www.thewinemaestro.co.uk

To celebrate all this I thought that I would start the new year with a backward glance at some of my highlights of 2012 – so you can click on the links to read the pieces if you missed them first time around, or just enjoy them all over again.

Those of you who know me well know how much I relish new wine experiences and 2012 got off to a cracking start for me with a tasting of wines from the Ukraine. It was a fascinating glimpse at a fledgling wine industry just setting out on the path to producing quality wines and there was much promise there.

Champagne

Richard Goffrey at the Dom Pérignon launch

Champagne
One of the most sophisticated and stylish experiences of 2012 for me was the launch of the 2003 Dom Pérignon. In many ways the whole piece of theatre of the launch was bonkers, but the wine was sublime and there is no doubt that my sparkling wine of the year was the 2003 Dom Pérignon, it was possibly my wine of the year too – I just wish I could afford it.

2003 Dom Pérignon
The aromas were astonishingly lifted and perfumed with fresh floral notes, lemon zest and lemon peel as well as richer tones of lemon curd and the flaky pastry that shows yeast autolysis as well as pine nuts hinting at a creamy ripeness to come. Running through the whole bouquet were strands of minerality, iodine, saline and wet stones that promise well for the acidity on the palate.

The palate was a revelation, this was not simply fresh and lively, indeed it was subtly the opposite, being textured and intense. The mouthfeel was silky with the merest hint of creamy ripeness, while the acidity was in a supporting role and never dominated. Rather wonderfully there was a twist of deep green olive bitterness to the wine’s finish, even a touch of tannin which accentuated the mouthfeel – those phenolics perhaps? This makes it a real wine to appreciate and enjoy rather than a straight-forward Champagne to frivolously guzzle. It offers soft richness and poised balancing acidity. It has ripe fruit in abundance, but nothing that overpowers or dominates as a single flavour and it has taut minerality – in short it has tension. The competing sensations vie with each other for your attention, which makes it fascinating to drink.

The finish was of epic proportions, I was still tasting it more than 2 minutes after I had drunk it. I would without doubt give it a gold medal in any wine competition I was judging, so cannot help but award it a very high mark – 94/100 points.

English Wine

Vines at Plumpton, Sussex

Even less likely inhabitants of the Sussex countryside!

One of the things I really enjoy about writing my wine page is the scope it gives to stray far and wide. Well in 2012 I used a few chances to taste some wines made nearby, but that in many ways seem off the beaten track – English wine. I have enjoyed English wine on and off for 20 years or more, but I have never been more thrilled by the quality or more confident in the future than I am now. You can read the beginnings of my optimism about English wine here.

Pruning at Stopham – photo by kind permission

This delight in English wine continued with a pair of exciting wines from the Stopham Estate, in Sussex, that seem to be a possible pointer to the future. Their 2010 Stopham Pinot Blanc and 2010 Stopham Pinot Gris struck me as being excellent quality and sensibly priced, so were able to hold their own against wine from anywhere – and indeed they did sell out pretty quick as production is small.

My English experiences contiuned later in the year when I was able to taste this amazing wine:

2006 Eglantine Vineyard North Star

which is a stunning dessert wine made in Leicestershire of all places.

And while Welsh wine is clearly not from England I thought this the right place to mention that I tried some excellent Welsh wines in 2012, read about them here.

Hungarian Wine
My ongoing quest for different styles of wine and unusual grape varieties caused me to try a couple of fascinating wines from the tiny region of Somlo in Hungary and I would highly recommend them as something a little different, but very high in quality.

My Italian Trip

The charming Eva & Leonardo Beconcini

Pinzimonio – one of Eva’s many lovely cats

My first trip of 2012 was a personal pilgrimage to Tuscany to visit an estate that not only makes Chianti, but grows some Tempranillo as well. What’s more it isn’t just a marketing ploy, they have always grown it here. I got excited by this and wanted to see the place for myself and try the wines. In the end I had a fabulous time walking the vineyard and tasting the terrific wines that Leonardo Beconcini makes at Pietro Beconcini Agricola. This was followed by the most glorious lunch made by his charming wife Eva before finally being introduced to their many cats.

Cinque Terre

Manarola one of the Cinque Terre

Cesare Scorza’s shop in Manarola

I was loathe to leave Italy, so took the chance to visit a nearby area that was completely new to me. The Cinque Terre is a short train ride away from Pisa and is an amazing place to visit. I highly recommend it for its wildly beautiful landscape with an air of mystery as well as the incredibly attractive towns that give the region its name, of course it also produces some lovely wines and I was fortunate enough to meet two passionate local wine makers.

My Vinho Verde Trip

Me dressed for the weather in Vinho Verde

In all my years in the wine trade I had never visited Vinho Verde, buts as the sheer quality of the wines had impressed themselves on me of late, I was determined to put that right and in May I was able to do just that. I learnt a lot, not least why that region of Portugal is so green. Boy does it rain there, I was quite relieved that my hotel room was on the twelfth floor as I expected all the lower ones to flood at any moment. However, in the brief moments when it wasn’t raining the scenery was lovely and I visited some terrific winemakers and tasted much more variety in the different Vinho Verdes than most people expect – the place makes all colours and styles.

My Spanish Trip

The Riojan landscape

No sooner had I returned from Portugal than I returned to Iberia with some colleagues for a trip to northern Spain that took in Rioja, Navarra and Ribera del Duero. We were guests of Bodegas Faustino and it was a delightful experience and one of the many highlights was the tapas bar crawl of Logroño, it was a memory to cherish and I enjoy reading about it every now and again.

Stylish pintxos – Basque Tapas – in Bilbao

My Greek Trip

Looking from the Rapsani vineyards east towards the sea

The border between Mount Athos & Greece

In a fabulous year for trips one stood out from all the others. In June I visited the vineyards of northern Greece with some fellow bloggers as the guest of Tsantalis and it was an incredible experience. We visited quite a few regions and beautiful places and had experiences that will stick in my memory for ever. The wines were fabulous, as was the food and the hospitality of the people. The one downside was that it was an all male trip as we went to the closed monastic settlement of Mount Athos and you can read about that here..

New Experiences

George Sandeman – complete with halo

In June I was invited to an amazing dinner that paired Sandeman Tawny Ports with Japanese food. I only went because the idea seemed completely mad and it was hosted by George Sandeman, but it was a delightful experience and really opened my eyes as to what is possible and enjoyable with food and wine pairing. I hope to repeat it with American barbecue food as it seems to me that could be a brilliant match with Tawny Port.

Southern Italian Delights
I have never been to Sicily, but hope to put that right soon, as I have become utterly captivated by the exciting wines of southern Italy, including Sicily. So far I have more experience of the whites and they are so good they deserve to be more widely appreciated. I wrote about some fantastic white wines here.

http://www.domainejones.com

Shades of Grey
In November I was moved to write about some more unusual grape varieties that have ‘gris’ in their name. It seems that most people know Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio, but I have become very excited by Sauvignon Gris and Grenache Gris and decided it was time to speak out about some of the lovely wines made from these grapes – you can read the piece here.

Chile Branches Out

The wild side of Chile at Luis Felipe Edwards 2003

This year I was delighted to be able to taste some really excellent Chilean wines made from blends and slightly more unusual grapes, so Chile remains a wine producing country to watch – read about some of the wines here.

Classic French Regions

My Loire Valley Trip

Angers from the Castle ramparts

The Loire valley personified

It was quite a year for trips and one of my unexpected highlights was a visit to the Loire Valley. I visited the area around Angers with a group of fellow bloggers and we tasted some fabulous wines and enjoyed some superb meals, but for me the centrepiece was a visit to Savennières whose wines had never really impressed me in the past, so I wanted top see what I was missing.

Burgundy

The delights of Beaune

Aloxe-Corton

In my rush to experience the new, I didn’t leave the classics behind though and in October I presented a sumptuous tasting of red Burgundies from the house of Louis Jadot. It was aterrific experience and a wonderful insight into how these great wines develop. Read about it here. I also enjoyed a wonderful visit to Burgundy as a guest of the Discover the Origin campaign and I shall be writing about that soon, however I did taste my white wine of the year on this trip:

2010 Bourgogne Blanc Cuvée Oligocène
A.c. Bourgogne Blanc
Patrick Javiller
Do not be misled by the humble appellation, this is a great wine. The vineyard –  les Pellans – is only not Meursault by a technicality, in fact half of it is within the appellation as this piece of land is in the village of Meursault, but not all of it has the A.C., which is why this wine comes in at a fair price. This really shows what white burgundy is about. It illustrates terroir and offers plenty of richness as well as elegance and tension. What’s more it is absolutely delicious and great with almost and elegant fish dish or white meat. 91/100 points – it gains points though for being stunning value for money.

Available in the UK from James Nicholson and Goedhuis & Co at around £20 a bottle.

Bordeaux

As French as tarte aux pommes

As if that wasn’t enough, I was then invited to Bordeaux as the guest of Yvon Mau and was able to visit a great swathe of impressive Châteaux and try some superb wines that made me finally realise that there is some wonderful wine from Bordeaux available at non stratospheric prices. I will write more about some of these soon, but this piece gives you some of the flavour and tells you about a stunning wine from Montagne-St Émilion that has my vote as my red wine of the year, if for no other reason than it so exceeded my expectations of what a wine from this appellation can offer:

2009 Chateau Guadet Plaisance
Montagne Saint-Emilion
The colour was an intense opaque purpley black that managed to be vivid and bright as well as dark.
The nose was dominated by cedar, spice & singed meat aromas, together with brooding deep plum and fresher redcurrant and a touch of a ripe sweet, almost creamy note.
The palate was luscious, round and concentrated with a smoky sweet ripe fruit quality together with sweet ripe tannins and firm oak structure, all balanced by a taut freshness. All this gives a gloriously succulent texture and a spicy bite to the palate. Even the oak tasted nice, like mocha mixed with toasted coconut. There is an attractive and elegant opulence to it and I suspect it will age superbly, but it really is delicious now too. I consider it deserving of a gold medal if I was judging it in a competition, so award it 91/100 points – it gains points for being great value and seductive.

All in all 2012 was a great year for Quentin Sadler’s Wine Pages. I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts and that you found it useful and some of you tried the wines that I wrote about. Please keep coming back in 2013 and do leave comments – it is always nice to hear from you.

 

Greece – Part 1: Tsantali and Rapsani

Rapsani Vineyards

One of the best things about wine for me is the excitement of new experiences. Too many wine drinkers seem to restrict themselves to a very narrow range of possibilities, so I love to show them just what an amazing variety of good wine there is. Just because a wine seems unusual to us does not make it necessarily an oddity or a niche wine, just one we have not yet tried.

So, whether they are made from grapes I have never experienced before or produced in regions that are new to me I get very excited by new wines – as long as they are good. You can imagine my excitement therefore when I was invited on a tour of vineyards in northern Greece. I had never been before, but did know something about the wines from my days at The Greek Wine Bureau in London during the early 1990s. I was only a small cog there, but I helped to create a little interest in Greek wines in the UK and have retained a love of them ever since. Updating that knowledge and actually seeing the regions sounded like a wonderful opportunity.

We were a small, all male group of wine writers, bloggers and educators who set off to explore the wine regions of Macedonia, it is unusual for these things to be men only, but that was a stipulation this time. You see the centrepiece of our journey was a visit to Mount Athos and this self governing part of Greece is a monastery-covered peninsula where women are not allowed to set foot.

I have been back from Greece for a few weeks now and have been telling everyone I meet how great it was and how good the wines were. They all seem to expresses amazement that I find Greek wines so interesting and it seems that even those who have enjoyed holidays there have a low opinion of the wines. Well I don’t know what they drank, but we tasted dozens of different wines from different regions, made from many different grapes in a wide variety of styles. A few were merely acceptable quality, but most were very good indeed.

The trip was made possible by the generosity of the Tsantali (pronounced Santar-lee) company and they certainly did us proud by taking us to places that were either physically very hard to get to or, as in the case of Mount Athos, just picky – apparently very few non monks or pilgrims are allowed to visit.